Education, Culture and Values

Education, Culture and Values
Volume III
The six volumes that comprise the Education, Culture and Values series bring together
contributions from experts around the world to form, for the first time, a comprehensive
treatment of the current concern with values in education. The series seeks to address this
concern in the context of cultural and values diversity.
The first three volumes provide a wide-ranging consideration of the diversity of values
in education at all levels, and thus represent a framework for the second three volumes
which focus more specifically on values education (moral, religious, spiritual and
political) per se. The six volumes, therefore, bring the fundamental domain of values
together with the important issue of pluralism to generate new, fruitful and progressive
reflection and exemplars of good practice.
The series will be of huge benefit and interest to educators, policy-makers, parents,
academics, researchers and student teachers. The six volumes contain:
• diverse and challenging opinions about current educational concerns and reforms in
values education
• chapters from more than 120 contributors of international repute from 23 different
countries
• conceptual clarification and theoretical analysis
• empirical studies, reports of practical projects and guidance for good practice.
Volumes I–III: Values Diversity in Education

Volume I—Systems of Education: Theories, Policies and Implicit Values is concerned
with the theoretical and conceptual framework for reflecting about values, culture and
education and thus provides an introduction to the series as a whole. It is concerned with
state and policy level analysis across the world.
Volume II—Institutional Issues: Pupils, Schools and Teacher Education considers
values and culture at the institutional level. What constitutes a good ‘whole school’
approach in a particular area? There are discussions of key issues and reports of whole-
school initiatives from around the world. Several chapters focus on the vital issue of
teacher education.
Volume III—Classroom Issues: Practice, Pedagogy and Curriculum focuses on the
classroom: pedagogy, curriculum and pupil experience. Areas of curriculum development
include the relatively neglected domains of mathematics and technology, as well as the
more familiar literature and drama. There is a useful section on aesthetic education.
Volumes IV–VI: Values Education in Diversity

Volume IV—Moral Education and Pluralism is focused on moral education and
development in the context of cultural pluralism. There are highly theoretical discussions
of difficult philosophical issues about moral relativism as well as practical ideas about
good practice.
Volume V—Spiritual and Religious Education distinguishes religious and spiritual
education and takes a multifaith approach to pedagogic, curricular and resource issues.
The important issue of collective worship is also addressed.
Volume VI—Politics, Education and Citizenship is concerned with political education
and citizenship. Again chapters from several countries lend an international perspective
to currently influential concerns and developments, including democratic education,
human rights, national identity and education for citizenship.
Education, Culture and Values
Volume III
Classroom Issues: Practice, Pedagogy and Curriculum
Edited by
Mal Leicester, Celia Modgil and Sohan Modgil
London and New York

First published 2000 by Falmer Press 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Falmer Press, 19 Union Square West, New
York, NY 10003
Falmer Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.“
© 2000 Selection and editorial material Mal Leicester, Celia Modgil, Sohan
Modgil; individual chapters the contributors
The rights of the editors and contributors to be identified as the Authors of this Work have been
asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Classroom issues: practice, pedagogy, and
curriculum/edited by Mal Leicester, Celia Modgil, Sohan Modgil. p. cm.—(Education, culture,
and values; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Moral education. 2. Teaching.
3. Learning. 4. Curriculum planning. 5. Multicultural education. I. Leicester, Mal. II. Modgil,
Celia. III. Modgil, Sohan. IV. Series. LC268.C52 1999 370.11′4–dc21 99–39368 CIP
ISBN 0-203-98410-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-7507-1018-7 (Print Edition) (6-volume set)

0-7507-1002-0 (Print Edition) (volume I)
0-7507-1003-9 (Print Edition) (volume II)
0-7507-1004-7 (Print Edition) (volume III)
0-7507-1005-5 (Print Edition) (volume IV)
0-7507-1006-3 (Print Edition) (volume V)
0-7507-1007-1 (Print Edition) (volume VI)
Contents
List of Contributors viii

Editors’ Foreword x
Mal Leicester, Celia Modgil and Sohan Modgil
1
Part One: Classroom Practice
1 Value Issues in Developing Children’s Thinking 2

Michael Bennett
2 Cooperative Learning, Values, and Culturally Plural Classrooms 18
David W.Johnson and Roger T.Johnson
3 Explicit Values in the Classroom: Is it Possible? 37
Karen Caple
4 Growing up Today: Children Talking about Social Issues 53
Cathie Holden
5 Discussion of Values and the Value of Discussion 72
Graham Haydon
82
Part Two: Pedagogy
6 The Way Tests Teach: Children’s Theories of How Much Testing is Fair in 83
School
Theresa A.Thorkildsen
7 Cultural Diversity: Concept and Ideology as a Pedagogical Resource? 106
Karsten Douglas
8 Motivating Students to Succeed: The Work of Birmingham Compact 1988– 117
94
Stephen Bigger
9 Mapping Schooling Types and Pedagogies within Different Values 132
Frameworks
Frameworks
Jan Currie
149
Part Three: Curriculum
10 The (Multicultural) Educational Value of the Aesthetic Dimension of 150

Experience
Janet Ferguson
11 Cultural Diversity in Art Education 166
Helen Charman
12 Who Decides for Posterity? On the Concept of Classical Art 183
Ruth Lorand
13 The Use of Stories in Intercultural Education 198
Piero Paolicchi
14 Aesthetics, The Arts and Post-School Education 212
David Jones
15 Values and Visions: Values Education in a Pluralist Society 224
Sally Burns
16 Tolerating the Alien: Empathy in History Education 240
Marnie Hughes-Warrington
17 Language Education for a Pluralistic Society 252
Elisabeth Gfeller
18 The Role of Values in Psychology: Implications for a Reformed Curriculum 271
Ben Bradley
19 Sexuality Education, Values, and Cultural Diversity: International 291
Developments and Questions Arising
Ronald W.Morris
20 Mathematics as Social Practice in a South African Workplace Context 304
Dave Baker
21 Design and Technology Education for a Pluralist Society 324
Bernard Down
Index 341
Contributors
Dave Baker Senior Lecturer in Education, Faculty of Education, Sport and Leisure,
University of Brighton, UK
Stephen Bigger Head of Applied Education Studies, University College, Worcester, UK
Michael Bonnett Senior Lecturer in Education, Homerton College, Cambridge, UK
Ben Bradley Professor of Psychology, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Sally Burns Educational Consultant, Wales, UK
Karen Caple Coordinator, Schools Values Project, Association of Independent Schools
of Western Australia, Australia
Helen Charman Formerly Educational Coordinator, The October Gallery, London, UK
Jan Currie Associate Professor in Education, School of Education, Murdoch University,
Western Australia
Karsten Douglas PhD Candidate, Department of Educational and Psychological
Research, Malmö School of Education, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden
Bernard Down Senior Lecturer in Education, Brunel University, UK
Janet Ferguson Independent scholar and Training and Development Consultant,
Bermuda and UK
Elisabeth Gfeller Consultant to Switzerland Linguistic Training Centre and Member of
the PROPELCA team (an experimental trilingual Education Project of the University
of Yaoundé, Cameroon)
Graham Haydon Lecturer in Education, Institute of Education, University of London,
UK
Cathie Holden Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Exeter, UK
Marnie Hughes-Warrington Lecturer, Department of Modern History, Macquarie
University, Australia
David W.Johnson Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota, Co-
operative Learning Centre, USA
Roger T.Johnson Professor of Education, University of Minnesota, Co-operative
Learning Centre, USA
David Jones Senior Lecturer in Adult Education, Pilgrim College, UK
Mal Leicester Senior Lecturer in Continuing Education, Warwick University, UK
Ruth Lorand Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of
Haifa, Israel
Celia Modgil Senior Lecturer in Education, Goldsmiths College, London University, UK
Sohan Modgil Reader in Educational Research and Development, University of
Brighton, UK
Ronald W.Morris Associate Professor in Education, Department of Culture and Values
in Education, McGill University, Canada
Piero Paolicchi Professor of Social Psychology, Dip. di Scienze Sociali, Universitá di
Pisa, Italy
Theresa A.Thorkildsen Associate Professor of Education and Psychology, College of
Education, University of Illinois, USA
Editors’ Foreword
This is one volume in a series of six, each concerned with education, culture and values.
Educators have long recognized that ‘education’ is necessarily value laden and, therefore,
that value issues are inescapable and fundamental, both in our conceptions of education
and in our practice of it. These issues are particularly complex in the context of cultural
pluralism. In a sense the collection is a recognition, writ large, of this complexity and of
our belief that since values are necessarily part of education, we should be explicit about
what they are, and about why we choose those we do and who the ‘we’ is in relation to
the particular conception and practices in question.
The first three volumes in the series deal with values diversity in education—the
broader issues of what values ought to inform education in and for a plural society. The
second three focus more narrowly on values education as such—what is the nature and
scope of moral education, of religious and political education and of political and
citizenship education in and for such a society? Thus collectively they consider both
values diversity in education and values education in diversity. Individually they each
have a particular level. Thus volumes 1–3 cover the levels of system, institution and
classroom. Volumes 4–6 focus respectively on moral education, religious and spiritual
education, politics and citizenship education. This structure is intended to ensure that the
six volumes in the series are individually discrete but complementary.
Given the complexity of the value domain and the sheer diversity of values in
culturally plural societies it becomes clear why 120 chapters from 23 countries merely
begin to address the wealth of issues relating to ‘Education, Culture and Values’.
Mal Leicester, Celia Modgil
and Sohan Modgil
Part One
Classroom Practice
1
Value Issues in Developing Children’s Thinking
MICHAEL BONNETT
It is a commonplace to observe that education is a highly value-laden notion and the

general sense in which this is true was nicely captured in R.S. Peters’ (1966, p. 25)
classic characterization of the concept as the transmission of something worthwhile in a
morally acceptable manner. And formal definitions such as this apart, it is clear that the
practice of education unavoidably exhibits certain values. For example, the selection of
curriculum content and teaching style, discipline regimes, the use of praise, the teacher’s
overt enthusiasms and ways of interacting with children, all do this. Yet notwithstanding
this awareness of the ways in which values are embedded in education, there sometimes
remains a tendency to see the development of children’s thinking as a purely cognitive
matter—a ‘neutral’ getting them to ‘think better’: more logically, rationally, critically,
creatively, etc. This stance is reinforced to some extent by the influence of notions of
children’s thinking as passing through universal cognitive stages as for example argued
by Piaget, or as being enhanced through the development of certain techniques or the
acquisition of ‘executive thinking skills’ identified by metacognitive psychology.
The problem here is that this general outlook can divert attention from the fact that not
only is developing children’s thinking a highly value-laden activity, there is also an
important diversity of views over some of the values involved. This point becomes
explicit in general terms when we start to examine the notion of quality in children’s
thinking. This paper will begin to explore some important senses in which developing
children’s thinking raises value issues and to explore their further ramifications for
education.
I will begin by briefly mentioning two fairly obvious senses in which the development
of children’s thinking involves values, before moving on to examine in more depth some
further equally important but less overt senses. First, from the point of view of the
traditional curriculum in which thinking is structured in terms of different subject areas,
some of these are quite explicitly concerned with values, e.g. those that deal with moral,
social, political, aesthetic, and spiritual issues. ‘Neutral’ approaches to teaching in these
areas have sometimes been advocated precisely because the values element is prominent
and there is a pluralism of views with regard to many of them. Second, what we think
affects how we feel and how we act: our emotions and behaviour are informed by our
appraisals of the situations in which we find ourselves. For example, to feel indignation
involves seeing a situation as in some way unjust. It is therefore very important for the
thinking integral to our affective and practical life to be examined in terms of the values
which inform it. Such critical evaluation can make a significant contribution to
overcoming the power of blind prejudices and stereotypes in the shaping of attitudes and
behaviour.
But sometimes the presence of values is less obvious and/or occurs at a deeper level.
The most potent kind of values transmission is that which is implicit since there is then
no opportunity to monitor what is going on. And some of the values embedded in
developing children’s thinking have remained so implicit as to be virtually invisible to
Value Issues in developing children's thinking 3
both teachers and learners. For example, this can often be true with regard to the
underlying criteria—and therefore values—which have determined the selection,
presentation and interpretation of ‘the facts’ taken to describe a certain historical or
religious event.
This brings me to a critical point: no thinking is simply a matter of the neutral
application of concepts or mental ‘skills’, but centrally involves motives and attitudes.
This is true in (at least) two ways:
(a) Unlike the Platonic picture of thinking which has as its ultimate point of reference a
realm of pure abstract ideas, more plausible views of the matter suggest that the
touchstone of thought is our ongoing involvement in a world of everyday things and
situations in which we conduct the business of living. Affect and cognition are
intimately interwoven in our participation in, and understanding of, this world. The
whole enterprise of thinking is therefore shot through with values—and, often, value
conflicts. A specific example of the latter on the grand scale was Darwin’s dilemma
over the publication of the Origin of Species, more widespread might be tensions
between business, professional and personal ethics. But, more generally, it is now
widely recognized that the very terms of our everyday language and thought reflect the
values embedded in different social practices and ‘forms of life’.
(b) Arising from the above, it will be argued that it is possible to identify certain
fundamental ‘modes’ of thinking which express different ambitions and thus different
sets of values. Emphasizing any such mode of thinking in education is to inculcate its
associated values at the expense of other possibilities, and some of these values are
increasingly contentious. Clearly differences in emphasis in what is taught imply
certain priorities and status-relationships between the values involved.
Now there are myriad ways of classifying thinking. The ten-subject UK National
Curriculum is one such and it is not difficult to detect value tensions within it—and some
pretty unambiguous indications of differential status and priorities in its subject structure
as, for example, in the identification of English, mathematics and science as ‘core
subjects’. In the rest of this paper I will make use of a classification of basic modes of
thinking which undercuts the issues raised by subject divisions and reveals some
fundamental value issues which lie at the heart of the development of children’s thinking
and the quality of their understanding. It will be argued that this analysis has wide
ramifications and presents educators with some far-reaching issues.
Three fundamental modes of thinking
There have long been dichotomies within the western tradition of thinking (and in some
senses between its dominant motives and those of some other traditions) along the
following lines: public/private; objective/subjective; classicism/ romanticism;
‘rational’/‘intuitive’; sciences/arts. These have not altogether been eclipsed by the
modern/postmodern debate and they continue to resonate in many guises. (Indeed, the
fragmentation and relativism of postmodernism can of course be seen in part as a
subjectivist response to the Enlightenment project of achieving ‘grand narratives’.) It
seems to me that some central facets of this complex tension can be brought to the
Education, Culture and Values 4
surface by an analysis of thinking as operating in three distinctive modes: ‘rational-

calculative’, ‘authentic’, ‘poetic’. Before developing this analysis, let me say immediately
that it is not being suggested that concrete examples of thinking are necessarily, or indeed
often, ‘pure’ in terms of such modes. Nonetheless each mode will be taken to represent a
significantly different way of relating to the world and to express an important set of
values. Furthermore, it will be argued that in modern technological society, the rational-
calculative mode is very much in the ascendant and this has important consequences for
our underlying relationship with the world.
I will now attempt to give a characterization of each of these modes of thinking and to
outline the motives and values that lie at their heart. (These will be illustrated further
when their broader ramifications are explored in the final sections of the paper.)
Rational-calculative thinking
‘Rational-calculative’ thinking is essentially instrumental in outlook. In this frame of
mind we classify things—and people—in terms of their use: as ‘chairs’, ‘tables’ and
‘telephones’; as ‘doctors’, ‘dentists’, ‘customers’, ‘manpower’, etc. Rivers may be seen
as a source of hydro-electricity, mountains as a source of ore, and both as a source of
attraction for a tourist industry. Plants and animals, relationships and institutions, ideas
and theories—all are encountered and set up in instrumental terms. Thus for this type of
thinking, things do not have an intrinsic value, but are valued centrally in terms of how
we ‘reckon them up’ in terms of their capacity to serve further ends. Their value, and
indeed their very meaning, becomes a function of where they are located in the complex
webs of self-orientated human purposes which constitute our commerce with the world
around us.
It is important to recognize that such thinking subordinates things to these ends in two
ways: (a) through viewing them in terms of its instrumental plans and (b) in tandem with
this, and through its aspiration to manage things—its need to get them ‘ordered up’
through the imposition of a system of publicly shared conceptual schemes which enable
common purposes to be expressed and pursued. The fluid, the changing, the mysterious,
cannot be organized: it has first to be captured, stabilized, by being defined. This has the
effect of transforming unique things into instances of general categories. Things become
objects—defined in terms of the properties that are standard for the category to which
they have been allotted, other aspects losing visibility. Thus the vital ‘presencing’ of a
wild flower in the grass—the unique fullness of its standing there—may be reduced in
our sight to its exemplifying a certain genus, to its being the product of some
evolutionary process or the source of some drug or other commodity. A person may be
viewed primarily as instancing a certain personality type or as occupier of certain roles so
as to lose sight of her unique and in some ways indefinable many-sidedness. Through this
process of objectification, things can be the better manipulated in thought, i.e. put into
chains of reasoning which constitute our theories and plans and whose ultimate goal is to
predict, control and exploit aspects of our environment.
The underlying values expressed by this calculative thinking, then, are those
associated with mastery: systematic analysis and organization; pre-specification and
objectification, with the ultimate goal of converting everything into a possessable and
efficiently manageable resource. It expresses a sort of ‘frontier’ spirit towards the world;
a constant drive to extend control, to harness and to utilize.
Clearly such thinking is an able servant of a society whose main goal is economic
productivity (whether centralized or free market) and its huge success in this context
holds the danger of making other modes of thinking appear feeble or wayward in
comparison. Rational-calculative thinking in its various modes (such as scientific,
mathematical, and technological) promises to set the standard for all thinking and the
values that it expresses promise to assume an impregnable position—particularly in a
consumerist, market-driven society.
Authentic thinking
Preoccupation with the publicly agreed categories, procedures and standards through
which rational-calculative thinking is articulated runs the risk of producing a
depersonalized understanding. With its focus upon what is technically correct in terms of
public standards rather than the personal and moral significance of what in some sense is
known, it could lead to one having a near-perfect intellectual grasp of, say, the theory of
evolution, the working of society, the global ecosystem, etc., but feeling no personal
point or value in such knowledge. A student might be able to give the rationale for a
moral code, but feel no commitment to it. He or she might be able to evaluate a piece of
literature or the actions of some historical character through the estimations of others
more knowledgeable, but feel untouched by what they know.
‘Authentic’ thinking involves relating what one knows to one’s sense of one’s own
existence: appreciating what it implies for one’s outlook and one’s actions in a way that
properly acknowledges the element of personal responsibility that each of us has for how
we live our lives (Bonnett, 1978, 1994; Cooper, 1983). Søren Kierkegaard (1843) once
made the point that what we so often need to do in order to progress in our understanding,
is not to acquire yet more knowledge, but to ‘catch up’ with what we in some sense
already know. He was writing in the aftermath of the knowledge explosion of the
eighteenth-century European Enlightenment and this emphasis on what we might term
‘subjective depth’ of understanding seems no less pertinent today when the rate of
proliferation and dissemination of knowledge is even more rapid with the burgeoning of
information and communications technology.
Clearly this subjective dimension to thinking and understanding is relevant in varying
degrees and in different ways depending on the particular content of what is to be
understood. Sometimes, as say in the case of learning the rules of arithmetic, it may be
sufficient that one simply sees the point of what one is learning and how it may feed into
one’s own life. But sometimes, as say with learning about World War I, a deeper
response needs to be evoked. If one learnt the statistics, but remained unaffected by the
conditions under which this war was fought—the fear, the courage, the suffering, the
pointlessness—such learning would be shorn of much of its educative quality. From this
perspective, then, the development of the learner’s own view on what is learnt is
paramount and is seen as the source of personal meaning in education. The idea of
authentic learning suggests that proper understanding requires a reflective interpretation
of material which is infused with the individual’s own feelings and concerns, and through
which those feelings and concerns themselves are enlarged and refined. It values
subjective quality of knowledge rather than objective quantity and involves a range of
attitudes constitutive of personal integrity such as sense of self-worth, courage of one’s
convictions, perseverance, confidence to question, take risks, face consequences. It places
respect for learners and their genuine individuation through taking personal responsibility
at the heart of developing their thinking.
Poetic thinking
What appears for rational-calculative thinking is conditioned by the instrumental and pre-
specifying categories which it imposes on the world. What appears for authentic thinking
is conditioned by the self-referencing concerns expressed by the thinker. By contrast,
poetic thinking attempts to be receptive to things themselves—in their many-sidedness
and particularity. It represents a frame of mind in which instrumental and self-referencing
concerns drop away to a significant degree so that a more direct participation in the here
and now is possible. Instead of subjecting things to rational scrutiny it celebrates the
sheer presence and vital immediacy of things. It is thus often expressed in a language
which breaks down the levelling and constraining power of rational-calculative categories
through the use of metaphor and through potentially more direct forms of expression such
as art and music which can invite us to experience things afresh, freed-up from
instrumental and commercial preoccupations. Take for example the paintings of Van
Gogh: in these we are invited to participate in the unique vibrant qualities of these
sunflowers, these trees outside Saint Remy asylum, this cornfield, etc.
The most obvious manifestations of poetic thinking are of this kind: contemplation of
works of art; wonderment in the presence of certain aspects of nature such as the variety
and beauty of life in a drop of pond water or the immensity of the galaxy; entering into a
poem or novel or dramatic role; responding creatively to inherent qualities of materials
such as wood or clay with which we are working (in contrast to the process of modern
manufacturing which decides in advance the detail of what is to be produced and attempts
to order up materials to suit). Here we may have experiences which quite outrun our
ability to capture them in rational categories and explanations. But poetic thinking is
potentially more extensive than these examples suggest. For example, it is sometimes
natural to, and often highly appropriate to, human relationships. The ability to empathize
with another or to love wholeheartedly are cases in point. Such an orientation does not
seek to manipulate and change another, but is receptive/responsive in spirit and therefore
encourages others to reveal themselves in their uniqueness more fully.
The values that inform poetic thinking, then, can be summarized as follows: it seeks
harmony rather than power, receptiveness rather than imposition, it celebrates rather than
dominates, it is openly curious and wondering rather than goal-orientated and ‘problem-
solving’, it acknowledges mystery and strangeness rather than demanding transparency
through explanation, it stays with things in their wholeness rather than analysing them
into constituent parts. There is a sense in which poetic thinking is itself deeply
pluralistic—it seeks to preserve and enhance the rich individuality of things in their
organic interrelatedness. It seeks not to use (up), but to serve in the sense of bringing
what is incipiently there more fully into being, as say when a craftsperson brings out the
quality of grain dormant in wood or the lustre resting in metal. And in this way it can be
of the greatest importance in understanding and appreciating our world, providing a more
direct and evocative intuition of the truth of a situation. Consider, for example, how the
image of an oil-covered bird can affect our sense of what risks it is appropriate to take
with the environment. Here again deeper feelings and understandings, hitherto perhaps
half-formed, or tranquillized, or covered over, can be disclosed.
Now clearly it would be wrong to assume that these three dimensions of thinking are
mutually exclusive, or that (as previously mentioned) any specific example of ‘real’
thinking will be ‘pure’ in terms of them. Much is hybrid and frequently it will be a matter
of emphasis. Nonetheless we can begin to see that, qualitatively, there are some basic
distinctions to be drawn. Further, it is plain that, at the level at which we are now
considering thinking quality, we are not merely dealing with purely intellectual or
cognitive capacities, but broad ways of relating to the world which include attitudes,
dispositions and emotions. We are dealing, not with sets of neutral procedures or
processes, but with stances to life that are highly value-laden. Such stances both inform
and reflect, reinforce and are reinforced by, different social and institutional
arrangements and relations with the environment. The pluralism which they represent is
at the heart of a great many of the value tensions and conflicts endemic to western society
and its globalization.
In the remainder of this chapter I will sketch some ramifications of the three modes of
thinking and the diversity of outlook they engender for the following issues:
(a) what it is to develop children’s thinking and how we should judge quality of
understanding;
(b) teacher-pupil relationships and the culture of the school;
(c) attitudes towards the environment;
(d) the ‘good life’ and the ‘good society’;
(e) multicultural education.
Developing children’s thinking and quality of understanding
It does no harm to remind ourselves in general terms just how significant an issue the
development of thinking and understanding is. How we think about things—how we
reveal them to ourselves—either individually or as a culture conditions in the most
fundamental way our relationship with them. Thus to characterize how we think is in a
very important sense to characterize what we are, for we exist as conscious beings in the
way we relate to the world—how we reveal it and in what manner.
Now it is clear that the three modes of thinking described above represent sets of
significantly different possible emphases in the development of children’s thinking which
will seriously affect both their own views on what counts as good thinking and how they
themselves will perceive the world around them. It is important to note, also, that while,
previously, I gave a preliminary characterization of rational-calculative thinking as
finding expression in science, mathematics and technology, clearly there is more to it
than this. Depending upon how they are thought and taught, these subjects can have
strong authentic and poetic elements, and, equally importantly, the arts can be set up in
highly rational-calculative terms.
In science, for example, clearly there are extensive opportunities for engendering
feelings of respect, wonder and mystery, and such feelings are acknowledged by some of
our greatest scientists. Yet there lingers a competing—and highly influential—view

which sees the universe in mechanistic terms and as there to be harnessed in just the way
that rational-calculative thinking advocates. Furthermore, in the way that science is
taught, little or no space may be made to develop the qualities of personal engagement
and reflection that authentic thinking demands. This raises fundamental questions about
what will count as quality and depth of thinking in the science curriculum. At the heart of
these questions are competing values concerning both the purposes of science itself and
the way in which it should be assimilated into our outlook on the world. Some aspects of
this central issue will be taken further in the discussion of attitudes towards the
environment, below.
With regard to the arts, there is a considerable danger of adopting a rather technical
and rationalistic stance towards them. There have been those such as Paul Hirst (1973)
and David Best (1985, 1992) who have characterized the arts as forms of rationality;
moreover, if in art appreciation the work is seen basically as a representation (at whatever
degree of abstraction), this seems to require that its subject has in some way been fixed
beforehand, i.e. objectivized, in order that it can indeed be represented. This contrasts
with a poetic interpretation of the artwork which sees it as having the potential to create
an open space in which a subject can presence afresh, freed from our normal
objectivizing and manipulative aspirations towards it. Here, in a certain sense, we are
invited to see with a naïve eye and the underlying value is a more direct and celebratory
participation in, and dwelling in, things themselves. Thus, on occasion, the arts can put
the intrinsic qualities of things up for decision (is it lofty or flighty, earthy or base, pious
or hypocritical?) by inviting us to engage with the interplay of creative powers which
constitute them. Through such involvement fundamental cultural values can be re-
experienced, reinterpreted or reaffirmed and culture is thereby renewed. From the point
of view of the poetic, in the modern age we are in increasingly large part too caught up in
an intellectual and commercial processing and possessing of things to appreciate them in
their individual richness and uniqueness. The great value of the work of art is that it
can—insofar as it works, and through our participation in it—bring us to an awareness of
things that is not dominated by this ordering, through invoking an experience in which
both commerce and connoisseurship are put out of place.
In such participation in the work, then, the thing is not represented, not defined, and
thus is not set at a distance convenient for a rational inspection of it. It is just there,
actively and engagingly, such that we may respond to it—receive it and sustain it—as it
is, in its own world. From this perspective the artwork conceived as a statement or
judgement is a rationalization of art which subverts its vital aspect. In essence, on this
account, art appreciation is a form of thinking but not a form of reasoning. Its
achievement is disclosure. Its truth is more fundamental and purer than ‘truth as
correctness’ (which statements make possible) for it does not seek to impose an analytic
order on things, but rather receives and reveals them in their spontaneous wholeness and
oneness with a dwelt-in world. Through somehow invoking the world in which things
have their being the artwork has the power to give us a direct entrance into that world.
Furthermore, it would be claimed that because rational-calculative thinking inhibits such
genuine receptivity, it removes the possibility of genuine inspiration. Its initiatives and
ingenuity are ultimately too self-centred and thus ‘constipated’. The price of its drive to
organize and control is an increasing insulation from the spontaneous and the sense of the
unknown which illuminate and draw thought onwards (Bonnett, 1995).
Finally, the modes of thinking I have outlined can be seen as offering differing
perspectives on the ‘teaching critical thinking’ and ‘thinking skills’ movements. At base
these latter see effective thinking as a matter of processing data through pre-specified
strategies or preformed skills. This essentially calculative subordination of content to
technique runs in stark contrast to a view of thinking which is concerned to listen to the
‘call’ of what is there, a sensitivity to the as yet unknown which draws thinking on in its
own unique way. On this latter view content is not perceived as merely ‘brute data’ which
needs to be brought to order—formulated and problematized according to generalizable
strategies and techniques. Rather content is felt as having its own life and logic in which
the thinker has to learn to participate and to be held in the sway of. Understanding is
indeed a form of ‘standing under’. Here again the tension between the basic values of
mastery and harmony is brought into relief.
Teacher-pupil relationships and the culture of the school
Perhaps the epitome of rational-calculative thinking is that of the marketplace, and the
effects on the teacher-pupil relationship of increasing attempts to understand education
on the market model provide graphic illustration of some of the value possibilities which
the different modes of thinking can set in train. Central to the market model is an attempt
to pre-specify in considerable detail what children are to learn—the ‘product’—and to set
up schools as efficient deliverers of this product by placing them in competition with
each other in a market situation, in which those who are de facto largely external to the
more intimate interactive processes of formal education—such as employers and many
parents—are viewed as the ‘customers’. Such an approach has many supporters and has
been justified in terms of its apparent clarity of purpose and clear mechanisms of
accountability: published test results and degree of success in the market. These in turn
are taken to lead to greater productivity, characterized as raised educational standards and
improved cost-effectiveness. From a simple consumerist perspective such values are hard
to refute.
But let us now look at this from another, less calculative, perspective. With such an
emphasis on pre-specification, tangibility and control, the teacher-pupil relationship takes
on a very particular complexion. On the logic of such a model the teacher-pupil
relationship is set up as an instrument for the achievement of a set of pre-specified ends
and is thus pervaded by a pretty severe kind of rational-calculative thinking which
necessarily inhibits a full engagement of the participants as persons. On this logic pupils
become objects (defined for example, by ‘base-line’ tests) to be processed, and teachers
become operatives whose function is to ‘deliver’ knowledge which, too, is ordered up
into a standardized form through being mapped in a national curriculum. In this way it
can be delivered relatively unambiguously and progress can be periodically checked
against standard measures. Here, what is valued is essentially conformity to a blueprint
which is itself the product of a highly analytic and objectifying stance towards education.
Only that which can be made tangible and demonstrated publicly comes to be regarded as
valid and ironically, as a consequence, the public image of learning can stand as a
substitute for what is actually involved in the learning process.
What from one perspective is viewed as a means to raise standards from another is
seen as not only transforming learning into a charade, but as having the inevitable effect
of enervating those most intimately involved in the process, de-skilling and devaluing
them. High degrees of pre-specification inhibit teachers and learners from contributing
their own life to the relationship and thus from making it vital and personally fulfilling.
Teachers are increasingly expected to improve their productivity while having less and
less opportunity to influence or evaluate the product in personally valid terms, while
pupils are increasingly to become modified in ways which set them up as so much
material rather than persons with individual aspirations and concerns which their
education might have explored and refined. The question of the nature of the standards
that education is to seek is thus raised.
So how would the values which motivate the poetic approach affect one’s view of the
teacher-pupil relationship? Centrally the attempt to be receptive/responsive would require
that those intimately involved in the process of education are trusted to create their own
framework for learning and interaction. The emphasis is not on pre-specification but
relations of reciprocal receptiveness and response between teacher, pupil, and that which
is there to be learnt. This is the only way to integrity when the central concern of
education is not to meet the demands of the market, but to meet the demands of the
personal growth of pupils—when the standards to be achieved are not set in accordance
with certain tangible pre-specifiable outcomes, but in accordance with the requirements
of authentic understanding.
On this model teaching in the full sense involves an engagement of the personhood of
the teacher with the personhood of the child. Both must be free to respond to the felt
needs of the learning situation, to the ‘call’ of what is at issue in the child’s engagement
with the material that is occupying him or her. A relationship which pivots around a quest
for authentic understanding takes its start from a listening and is a matter of co-
responsibility of teacher and learner. Such a relationship constantly takes its cue from the
actuality of a particular child or group of children attempting to find or construct
meaning. Clearly a view of understanding which sees it as something not preformed and
thus ‘deliverable’ in any straightforward sense makes heavy demands on both teachers
and pupils because of the level of personal engagement involved; on this view there is an
awareness of the sense in which understanding is ultimately less an acquisition and more
a way of being. It becomes a set of capacities, beliefs, sensitivities, participations, affects,
empathies, responses which constitutes one’s very being in the world. We exist
understandingly and learning which leaves this untouched is of little educational value.
It follows, too, on this view, that one should no more attempt to predefine teachers in
terms of a set of ‘free-floating’ universalizable competencies than one should attempt to
predefine the detailed outcomes of education for pupils. To do so again would be to
introduce a static element in the midst of a relationship which is highly context-
dependent and which needs to be experienced as a responsive interplay, free to follow its
own demands. Issues of the relative value of control and surveillance versus trust in the
integrity of authentic learning are brought into stark relief- as is the value framework in
terms of which effectiveness and accountability are to be interpreted: whose welfare and
flourishing is education to promote and in what sense(s)? From the point of view of the
poetic, any detailed answer to the latter can only result from the cues which emerge from
the ongoing interaction between teacher and pupil. This in turn will need to be sustained
by those sorts of institutional arrangements which allow the insights which arise from this
interaction to find effective voice in the ‘higher order’ decision—and policy-making
which might bear upon it. It is evident that this requirement carries extensive implications
for the authority and management structures of, as well as the general ethos of, the school
as a social institution (see Bonnett, 1996).
Attitudes towards the environment and nature
Many of the points raised in the previous section have resonances when it comes to
considering attitudes towards the environment. A number of these are exemplified in the
debate between ‘anthropocentrism’ and ‘biocentrism’ which underlies a wide range of
current environmental policy issues. On the anthropocentric view the worth of the
environment is measured ultimately in terms of its actual and potential usefulness to
humankind. Thus its value is assessed in calculative terms and actions are shaped in the
light of this. As Kant once put it with regard to sentient nature: ‘Our duties towards
animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity’. On the biocentric view nature is
seen as having some sort of intrinsic value and thus is due a respect in its own right. This
reflects a more poetic relationship in which nature is seen as capable of ‘giving’ rather
than as constantly challenged to meet human demands, and in which our basic stance is
one of attendance upon nature and a working in harmony with it.
Carolyn Merchant (1992), amongst others, has argued that the modern highly
instrumental stance towards nature was given impetus by the way it was conceptualized
at the inception of modern science: namely as a machine. Seen as consisting of inert
atomic parts propelled by external forces, nature is portrayed as essentially ‘soul-less’
and thus as not morally protected from highly interventionist and invasive experimental
procedures. With the ascendence of this model the Renaissance view of nature as a living
organism—of which the world of humankind was an integral part—collapsed, and indeed
Capra (1982) argues that the gendering of nature as feminine, itself legitimized motives
of penetration, exploitation and bringing to order by ‘masculine’ culture. He observes
that: ‘The terms in which Bacon advocated his new empirical method of investigation
were not only passionate, but downright vicious. Nature, in his view, had to be “hounded
in her wanderings”, “bound into service” and made a “slave”. She was to be put in
“constraint”, and the aim of the scientist was “to torture Nature’s secrets from her”.’
Clearly this is a stark description, but it is one entirely compatible with calculative
values and it provokes us to confront the underlying attitudes which we may be
reinforcing in the ways in which we conceptualize and teach environmental issues. And
while it would be false to give the impression that anthropocentrism as currently
defended would endorse quite such an aggressive attitude towards nature, it remains clear
on this view that nature is essentially regarded as a resource to be drawn on to meet
human needs and that it is to be experienced as valuable or frustrating depending upon
what it can ‘deliver’.
Thus the distinction between rational-calculative and poetic thinking raises some
salient value issues in this area and leads us to examine, for example, the metaphors that
we use for nature and the methods of enquiry that they legitimate. It provokes
fundamental questions concerning what counts as a right relationship with nature and the
criteria in terms of which, for example, we are to understand notions such as
‘conservation’ and ‘sustainable’. It also raises questions concerning the values implicit in
the kinds of knowledge frameworks we use to describe and investigate nature and to
understand our place in it. It may be that the works of such as Gerard Manley Hopkins
and Van Gogh have at least as much to say to us on these topics as the science and
geography which have been the traditional vehicles for environmental education.
The ‘good life’ and the ‘good society’
A view of education implies a view of the good life and of the good society, i.e. a view of
what is to count as human flourishing. It would be odd, indeed, if the differing values
embodied in rational-calculative, authentic and poetic ways of thinking did not lead to
differing interpretations of these notions. Clearly each mode has extensive ramifications
for the quality of relationships—both towards others and the world in general—which are
invited and underwritten. Thus they condition in a very profound way what will be meant
by ‘community’, including the extent of its membership (e.g. whether it includes nature).
It is evident, too, that a society on the road of ever-increasing mastery and control will be
imbued with a very different spirit to one which seeks to celebrate individuality and/or an
intuitive harmony in interrelationships based on trust and openness. This ethos will be
expressed in myriad ways through its specific goals and the details of its social
arrangements. However, as previously emphasized, the fact that one can give a formal
analysis of the three modes of thinking which reveals their distinctive features should not
be taken to imply that they operate separately in real life. Here, as ever, the issue is one of
degree of emphasis and priority, and thus the intention in this section will be to describe
some of the tensions that a society which is hybrid in its aspirations contains, and some of
the value dimensions to the decisions that lie before it.
Described in stark terms, rational-calculative thinking may be seen as tending towards
a culture of totalitarianism of people and things, personal authenticity as tending towards
a culture of unhealthy self-absorption, and the poetic as tending to a culture of unhealthy
quietism. Perhaps the values that quicken each need somehow to be brought into a
complementary relationship. Thus the question of how they might be brought into
balance is an important one, the balance struck defining a culture in a very profound way.
It seems clear that rational-calculative thinking sets the tone for many aspects of
western culture. I have previously referred to its expression in those quintessentially
western phenomena: modern (i.e. ‘classical’) science and technology. Then there is the
ascendance of global capitalism and the ‘free market’ in which everything is priced and
thus turned into a commodity—as it would have been, albeit through different
mechanisms, had global Marxism survived. But central to the ethos of a ‘calculative
society’ is the ever-increasing mobilization of people and resources to instrumental ends
and a relentless drive for efficiency which requires constant monitoring of progress and
cost-effectiveness. This in turn tends to lead to a sharp distinction between work and
leisure, business and personal ethics—the one becoming viewed as an escape from the
other.
However, while on the calculative model production has to be highly visible (and thus
focuses on that which is tangible enough to be measured in some publicly demonstrable
way), the values that motivate it remain largely invisible, with those most integral to the
process not invited to question them. In addition, the whole enterprise requires high
degrees of pre-specification of product and process and an underlying challenging and
demanding attitude which perceives anything which is uncompliant as an obstacle to be
surmounted or dissolved. Wherever possible materials (and labour) are designed and
engineered to meet the demands of the manufacturing process and success is a function of
degree of manipulation of these resources. While human comfort and convenience are
catered for at one level, essentially operatives are required to adapt to the demands of the
process and the technology.
Here we are presented with a picture of life which at its kernel is shaped by the desire
for economic success. Efficiency in this regard means mass production which in turn
requires mass consumption with all that this brings in terms of the averaging off of
products and taste. The authentic needs of individuals and local communities are in
danger of becoming lost in broad market trends and the personal responsibility of the
individual is in danger of being subverted by constantly re-created market segments and
the smooth running of the processes of production and consumption. The creation of
mass personal and public ‘needs’ through advertising, etc. is too familiar to rehearse here
as is the importance of ‘image’ over reality.
These and the requirement to fit with the standardizing tendencies and institutions of
such calculative thinking do little to encourage authenticity—as when, for example,
‘traditional values’ become modulated in calculative terms (such as the values of
citizenship becoming assimilated to those of the consumer). In addition, there is the
danger that the pace of innovation and change which arises from the market’s
preoccupation with the ‘new’ will make democratic decision-making appear slow and
thus outmoded. And the need for standardization and modularization (of everything from
window frames and vegetables to education courses) will disrupt that in life which
derives from a freer more spontaneous order which yet is deeply rooted through a more
direct involvement with things.
By contrast, and as we have previously noted, at the heart of the poetic lies an
encouragement to take the risk of being open to the unknown, to being inspired and
sustained by that which is beyond our capacity to fully grasp (physically or intellectually)
and to control. In a culture which reflects this, ‘productivity’ will be judged as much in
terms of spiritual and artistic activity as in terms of market production/consumption, and
the notion of subsistence living would rise from the pejorative to become a spiritual and
practical aspiration. Ends and means would be less clearly distinguished, for quality of
experience would be sought as much in ongoing relationships as with any ‘products’
arising from those relationships, and certainly the notion that things in general should be
seen as serving some further end would cease to be a basic assumption.
Furthermore, a prime motive in such a culture would be to enhance a certain ‘fullness
of contact’ with things themselves, a contact which properly acknowledges their own
qualities and power. Such a culture would attempt to live closer to its own environment
by, for example, reducing the degree of exploitation of other environments in order to
meet its needs, by reducing the distance that long chains of processing and distribution
put between things and their consumption, and by changing the balance of values within
‘commonsense’ which increasingly insulate us from nature—such as those which lead to

expectations of readily switchable sources of energy and a comprehensive range of
insurance policies, which transform once elemental aspects of life into mere items to be
calculated and dealt with according to a scale of human convenience. It suggests a society
which operates on the basis of trust and natural harmony as much as accountability in the
form of surveillance.
Here then are the poles of some of the tensions that face educators in terms of the
basic social values and attitudes which education is to convey. As previously emphasized
it is all a matter of redressing the balance rather than totally eradicating any one set of
values. But it is important to realize that this should not be viewed as simply a matter of
adjusting the proportions in a ‘mix’, but rather as a matter of needing to decide priorities
relative to particular situations and of examining ways in which it might be beneficial for
one mode of thinking to infuse another. For example, it might be argued that in general
the tendency to aggressive instrumentalism expressed by rational-calculative thinking
could be ameliorated by relocating it within a more authentic or poetic outlook. In this
way it might help to refine the possibilities for response of these latter forms of thinking
while at the same time itself being radically changed in spirit by taking its inspiration
from what these forms themselves intuit. In this way a certain definition of the good
society would be created.
Multicultural education
Developing children’s understanding in relation to cultures other than their own is clearly
an area in which value diversity will sometimes appear in sharp relief. It is also an area in
which highly significant values can be so implicit as to be invisible to those that hold
them. I believe that the three fundamental modes of thinking that I have described in this
paper raise a number of important issues for multicultural education in terms of the
definitions and orientations they invite.
To begin with—and at a very basic level—the tendency of rational-calculative
thinking to ‘level-off’ the particular in the interests of making things more manageable
has significant implications for our primary understanding of notions of ‘pluralist society’
and ‘multicultural education’. If we take a pluralist society to be one which is not only
culturally plural in the descriptive sense, but to be a society which values this plurality
(and perhaps seeks to celebrate it), then clearly to the extent that rational-calculative
thinking comes to dominate, there is the risk that it will submerge alternative cultural
orientations and re-create ‘diversity’ in forms restricted to those that are congenial to it. I
have previously alluded to the growing subordination of all values to those of a consumer
culture and the reconstruction of ‘diversity’ in the population in terms of market
segments which may bear little relationship to the internal structures of actual
communities. However the substantive point here is a broader one: the danger of
portraying diversity and conflict from the aspect of a very particular—and unexamined—
underlying view of what counts as harmony (or even economic harmony). This in turn
brings with it the risk of simply assuming that there is only one kind of underlying
harmony to be accorded with and discounts the possible need to acknowledge deeper
cultural difference.
The institution of a common currency for evaluations provided by, for example, some
one version of ‘economic health’, while highly convenient for instrumental purposes, is
both deeply imperialistic and an anathema to authentic pluralism. And even though
rational-calculative thinking cannot be simply equated with this particular modulation of
it, there remains here an echo of what Solomon (1980) once aptly dubbed the
‘transcendental pretense’: the Enlightenment attempt to project one (in this case
bourgeois) version of European rationality as the universal standard for humanity. The
dimensions of authentic and poetic thinking suggest rather different orientations towards
pluralism and multicultural education—the former focusing on the perspective of
individuals and the felt validity of their experiences in terms of their own existence, the
latter striving for an openness to the unfamiliar and that which cannot be rationally
reckoned up. Both authentic and poetic thinking, in their different ways, provide
approaches for exploring meanings outside those habitual ones provided by an
individual’s primary culture.
From these latter points of view there are numerous ways in which the general
preoccupation with abstractions and categories of rational-calculative thinking is
potentially antipathetic to authentic pluralism. To begin with, it threatens to result in
seriously oversimplified characterizations of other cultures through indulging a form of
what has been termed ‘essentialism’ (Rattansi, 1992). In its need intellectually to possess
and sum up, rational-calculative thinking will seek to impose a rational consistency
which veils the ambivalences and ‘contradictions’ which are present in any living culture.
Further, this sort of reductionism will be combined with a tendency to reify what it is to
be a member of a culture, and thus to remain blind to the possibilities of the play of
constantly shifting identities and alignments, social contexts and intersections of forces
(e.g. more generalized anxieties and desires arising from gender, class, perceived
economic prospects, etc.) which in part constitute the subjectivities of individual
members. From the standpoint of authenticity, this is illustrative of a more general
concern about the risk of the subordination of the individual to cultural stereotypes.
In such ways, then, rational-calculative thinking distracts from the essential
‘particularity’ of cultural diversity, its complexity and the need to properly ‘listen’ to
what is there and to what is happening—both within cultures and within individuals in
varying circumstances. Furthermore, it is implausible simply to assume that rational
consideration alone will impinge effectively on elements of outlook and behaviour, some
of which are notoriously and deeply irrational. The ubiquity of the language of
‘prejudice’ attests to the frequency of instances where rationality is regarded as having
lapsed in people’s attitudes. But just as importantly, some domains of human experience
such as art and religion which are highly relevant to understanding another culture are,
arguably, intrinsically non-rational. They are not instances of failure or inadequate
exercise of the rational faculties; they are areas of understanding which are in part the
product of—and can only be fully accessed by—other kinds of thinking. Poetic thinking
attends to an important sense in which we need to be open to the truth of the immanent in
experience and to respect its integrity if genuine empathy and understanding is to be
achieved. (And even then, because of the many structural factors which are known to
influence it, we should not simply assume that this will translate into behaviour.)
In sum, educational policies founded on the rational-calculative attitude, apart from
being potentially deeply hegemonic in the ways described, are likely to remain frustrated
by the poverty of its understanding of the issues it purports to comprehend. In order to be

successful, multicultural education—which needs both to respect the requirements and
sensitivities of minority groups and to encourage pupils to respect those whose beliefs
differ from their own and to see diversity as a source of enrichment (Halstead, 1988)—
will need to avail itself of a more poetic apprehension of the issues at stake. What basis
there might be for a reconciliation of, say, the values of liberalism centred on rationality
and personal autonomy with minority groups whose ways of life are based on a sacred
order of authority can only be explored through respecting the authenticity of those
involved. And certainly if multicultural education is to have any enduring positive effect,
it would seem to require the sort of poetic quality in learning and between teacher and
pupil sketched earlier in this paper. There can no more be short cuts here than in the
achievement of authentic understanding in any other sphere.
Conclusion
The values embodied in the different modes of thinking and understanding with which
we habitually operate are some of the most pervasive and powerful in terms of their
influence on us. Precisely because they are so thoroughly insinuated in our thinking, they
remain for the most part quietly out of focus and can thus, so to speak, operate with a
‘free hand’. In this paper I have tried to provide an analysis of certain very fundamental
modes of thinking and their embedded values and I have suggested that one—the
rational-calculative—holds sway across broad tracts of current thinking both in modern
society at large and education in particular. I have suggested that this should be a matter
of considerable concern and that a balance has to be redressed with other potentially more
humane and open kinds of thinking. This might involve a relocation of the calculative
within the ambience of the authentic and the poetic so as to enable it to serve purposes
which are greater and more generous than its own and thus restore a deeper sense of
meaning and inspiration. Whatever the possibilities here, if, as I have argued, how we
think fundamentally characterizes our relationships with all around us, the potential
diversity of values embedded in developing children’s thinking presents the educator
with a set of issues which need to be more fully acknowledged than is often the case.
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2
Cooperative Learning, Values, and
Culturally Plural Classrooms
DAVID W.JOHNSON AND ROGER T.JOHNSON
Diversity: promise or problem?
In the story, Beauty and the Beast, Beauty, to save her father’s life, agrees to live in an
enchanted castle with the Beast. While very fearful of the Beast, and horrified by his
appearance, she is able to look beyond his monstrous appearance into his heart.
Considering his kindness and generosity, her perception of his appearance changes. She
is no longer repelled by the way he looks but is drawn instead to his loving nature. The
better she gets to know him, the less monstrous he seems. Finally, finding him dying of a
broken heart, she reveals her love for him, which transforms the beast into a handsome
prince. They not only live happily ever after, but all those who stumble in despair into
their domain are changed, finding on departure that their hearts are now filled with
goodness and beauty.
This is a frequently repeated story. We are often repelled by those we do not know.
Yet after they have become our friends, we do not understand how once they seemed
monstrous to us. Nowhere is Beauty and the Beast more apparent than in schools. For it is
in schools that diversity among individuals is most often faced and eventually valued.
The diversity of students is increasing in most schools every year. The increased ease in
transportation systems, the increased migration, and the dynamics of the world economy
is resulting in many nations facing increased diversity in their society. Changes in the
world economy, transportation, and communication are resulting in increased levels of
interdependence among individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and societies.
Students can be from many cultures, ethnic groups, language groups, and religions as
well as from different economic social classes and ability levels.
Pluralism and diversity among individuals creates an opportunity, but like all
opportunities, there are potentially either positive or negative outcomes. Diversity among
students can result in increased achievement and productivity, creative problem solving,
growth in cognitive and moral reasoning, increased perspective-taking ability, improved
relationships, and general sophistication in interacting and working with peers from a
variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). Or, diversity
among students can lead to negative outcomes. Diversity can result in lower achievement,
closed-minded rejection of new information, increased egocentrism, and negative
relationships characterized by hostility, rejection, divisiveness, scapegoating, bullying,
stereotyping, prejudice, and racism. Once diverse students are brought together in the
same school, whether the diversity results in positive or negative outcomes depends
largely on whether learning situations are structured competitively, individualistically, or
Coperative learning, value, and culturally plural classrooms 19
cooperatively: each of these structures teaches values and creates patterns of interaction
that will result in diversity being valued or rejected.
This chapter focuses on the use of cooperative learning to promote a culturally plural
society within the school. The topics discussed are:
(a) The nature of each type of interdependence and the values implicit in each.
(b) The types of cooperative learning.
(c) The basic elements essential for effective cooperation.
(d) The research supporting the use of cooperative learning and verifying its positive
influences on diversity.
(e) The implications of the theorizing and research on cooperation for diversity.
Interdependence and values
The value systems underlying competitive, individualistic, and cooperative situations

exist as a hidden curriculum beneath the surface of school life. This hidden values
curriculum permeates the social and cognitive development of children, adolescents, and
young adults. Each type of interdependence has a set of values inherently built into it and
those values determine whether diversity is viewed as positive or negative.
The values resulting from competition

When a situation is structured competitively, individuals work against each other to
achieve a goal that only one or a few can attain (Johnson and Johnson, 1989).
Individuals’ goal achievements are negatively correlated; each individual perceives that
when one person achieves his or her goal, all others with whom he or she is competitively
linked fail to achieve their goals. Thus, individuals seek an outcome that is personally
beneficial but detrimental to all others in the situation. Inherent in competition is a set of
values that is taught and retaught whenever a person engages in competition. The values
are:
1 Commitment to getting more than others. There is a built-in concern that one is smarter,
faster, stronger, more competent, and more successful than others so that one will win
and others will lose.
2 Success depends on beating, defeating, and getting more than other people. What is
valued is triumphing over others and being Number One. Winning has little to do with
excellence and may actually be opposed to excellence. Competition does not teach the
value of excellence. Competition teaches the value of winning—doing better and
getting more than other participants.
3 Opposing, obstructing, and sabotaging the success of others is a natural way of life.
Winning depends on a good offense (doing better than others) and a good defense (not
letting anyone do better than you). There are two ways to win—doing better and
obstructing others’ efforts. A smart competitor will always find ways to oppose,
obstruct, and sabotage the work of others in order to win.
4 The pleasure of winning is associated with others’ disappointment with losing. Winners
feel great about winning and they automatically feel great about other people losing.
When someone loses, it is a source of pleasure and happiness because it means that
one has a better chance of winning.
5 Other people are a threat to one’s success. Because smart competitors will obstruct and
sabotage the work of others, competitors are to be distrusted and watched closely
because their efforts to win and their efforts to sabotage one’s work are threats.
Competition casts schoolmates as rivals and threats to one’s success.
6 Other people’s worth is contingent on their “wins.” When a person wins, he or she has
value. When a person loses, he or she has no value. The worth of a person is never
fixed. It all depends on the latest victory. When a person stops winning he or she no
longer has value as an individual. Competition places value on a limited number of
qualities that facilitate winning. Thus, since only a very few people can win, most
people have no value. In school, for example, if a person did not score in the top 5 or
10 per cent in math or reading on the last test, they have no or limited value
academically. The other 95 to 90 per cent of students are losers and have no value.
7 Self-worth is conditional and contingent on one’s “wins.” Competition teaches that
self-worth is contingent on victories. When a person stops winning he or she stops
having value as a person. Far from helping students to believe in themselves,
competition creates perpetual insecurity.
8 Competitors value extrinsic motivation based on striving to win rather than striving to
learn. Winning is the goal, not the learning or the practice or the development. The
inducement of trying to beat people, like other extrinsic motivators, has been shown to
reduce students’ interest in the task itself.
9 People who are different from one are to be either feared or held in contempt. Other
people are perceived to be potential obstacles to one’s success. If they are different in
a way that gives them an advantage, the difference is feared. If they are different in a
way that gives one an advantage over them, they are to be discounted. High
performing students are often feared because they can win and low performing
students are often held in contempt as losers who are no competition.
The values resulting from individualistic efforts

When a situation is structured individualistically, there is no correlation among
participants’ goal attainments (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). Each individual perceives
that he or she can reach his or her goal regardless of whether other individuals attain or
do not attain their goals. Thus, individuals seek an outcome that is personally beneficial
without concern for the outcomes of others. The values that individualistic experiences
teach are:
1 Commitment to one’s own self-interest. One’s own success is viewed as important.
Others’ success is considered to be irrelevant. There is a solitary calculation of
personal self-interest. There is a built-in self-centeredness while ignoring the plight of
others.
2 Success depends on one’s own efforts. What is valued is reaching some standard for
success. Individualistic work teaches the value of independent efforts to succeed.
3 Other people’s success or failure is irrelevant and of no consequence.
4 The pleasure of succeeding is personal and isolated.
5 Other people are irrelevant to one’s success. Because their success or failure has no
impact on oneself, others are avoided and seen as unrelated to one’s success.
6 Other people’s worth is nonexistent because they are seen as irrelevant and no value to
one’s efforts to succeed. When others are evaluated, there is a unidimensional focus on
the quality that most affects the success on a task (such as reading or math ability).
7 Self-worth is based on a unidimensional view of oneself. Only the characteristics that
help the person succeed are valued. In school, that is primarily reading and math
ability.
8 Individualistic experiences result in valuing extrinsic motivation based on achieving
criteria and receiving rewards rather than striving to learn. Achieving up to a criterion
is the goal, not the learning, practice, or development. The rewards received for
success is the underlying motivator of learning.
9 People who are perceived to be different are disliked while people who are perceived to
be similar are liked. Other people are perceived to be unnecessary and not relevant to
one’s success.
The values resulting from cooperation

Cooperation is working together to accomplish shared goals (Johnson and Johnson,
1989). Within cooperative activities individuals seek outcomes that are beneficial to
themselves and beneficial to all other group members. Cooperative learning is the
instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own
and each other’s learning (Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec, 1993). Within cooperative
learning groups students are given two responsibilities: To learn the assigned material
and make sure that all other members of their group do likewise. In cooperative learning
situations, students perceive that they can reach their learning goals only if the other
students in the learning group also do so. The values inherent in cooperative efforts are:
1 Commitment to the common good. In cooperative situations, individuals’ work
contributes not only to their own well-being, but also to the well being of all other
collaborators. There is a built-in concern for the common good and the success of
others, as the efforts of others also contribute to one’s own well-being.
2 Success depends on the joint efforts of everyone to achieve mutual goals. Since
cooperators “sink or swim together,” an “all for one and one for all” mentality is
appropriate. What is valued is team-work and civic responsibility. Succeeding depends
on everyone doing his or her part. Cooperation teaches the value of working together
to achieve mutual goals.
3 Facilitating, promoting, and encouraging the success of others is a natural way of life.
Succeeding depends on everyone doing well. There are two ways to succeed—
contributing all one can to the joint effort and promoting other cooperators’ efforts to
contribute. A smart cooperator will always find ways to promote, facilitate, and
encourage the efforts of others.
4 The pleasure of succeeding is associated with others’ happiness in their success.
Cooperators feel great about succeeding and they automatically feel great about other
people succeeding. When someone succeeds, it is a source of pleasure and happiness
because it means that one’s help and assistance has paid off.
5 Other people are potential contributors to one’s success. Because smart cooperators will
promote and facilitate the work of others, cooperators are to be trusted because their
efforts to succeed will promote one’s own success. Cooperation casts schoolmates as
allies, colleagues, and friends who will contribute to one’s success.
6 Other people’s worth is unconditional. Because there are so many diverse ways that a
person may contribute to a joint effort, everyone has value all the time. This inherent
value is reaffirmed by working for the success of all. Cooperation places value on a
wide range of diverse qualities that facilitate joint success. Thus, everyone has value.
7 Self-worth is unconditional. Cooperation teaches that self-worth results from
contributing whatever resources one has to the joint effort and common good. A
person never loses value. Cooperative experiences result in individuals believing in
themselves and their worth.
8 Cooperators value intrinsic motivation based on striving to learn, grow, develop, and
succeed. Learning is the goal, not winning. The inducement of trying to contribute to
the common good, like other intrinsic motivators, increases students’ interest in the
task itself.
9 People who are different from oneself are to be valued. Other people are perceived to
be potential resources for and contributors to one’s success. If they are different that
means more diverse resources are available for the joint effort and, therefore, the
difference is valued. The diverse contributions of members results in the realization
that, in the long run, everyone is of equal value and equally deserving, regardless of
their gender, ethnic membership, culture, social class, or ability.
Summary
There are three types of social interdependence: Positive (cooperation), negative
(competition), and none (individualistic efforts). Each type of interdependence teaches an
inherent set of values. These values influence whether diversity results in positive or
negative outcomes. This does not mean, however, that competitive and individualistic
efforts should be banned in schools. Students should learn how to compete appropriately
for fun and enjoyment, work individualistically on their own, and work cooperatively as
part of teams. Cooperative learning, however, should be used the majority of the school
day, as it is cooperative experiences that promote the most desirable values for the future
well-being of students and the future well-being of society.
Nature of cooperative learning
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward
for toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe
to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to
lift him up… And though a man might prevail against one
who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is
not quickly broken. (Ecclesiastes 4:9–12)
History of cooperative learning

Cooperative learning is an old idea. The Talmud clearly states that in order to learn you
must have a learning partner. In the first century, Quintilian argued that students could
benefit from teaching one another. The Roman philosopher, Seneca advocated
cooperative learning through such statements as, “Qui Docet Discet” (when you teach,
you learn twice). Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1679) believed that students would
benefit both by teaching and being taught by other students. In the late 1700s Joseph
Lancaster and Andrew Bell made extensive use of cooperative learning groups in
England, and the idea was brought to America when a Lancastrian school was opened in
New York City in 1806. Within the Common School Movement in the United States in
the early 1800s there was a strong emphasis on cooperative learning. In the last three
decades of the nineteenth century, Colonel Francis Parker brought to his advocacy of
cooperative learning enthusiasm, idealism, practicality, and an intense devotion to
freedom, democracy, and individuality in the public schools. His fame and success rested
on his power to create a classroom atmosphere that was truly cooperative and democratic.
Parker’s advocacy of cooperation among students dominated American education
through the turn of the century. Following Parker, John Dewey promoted the use of
cooperative learning groups as part of his famous project method in instruction. In the
late 1930s, however, interpersonal competition began to be emphasized in schools and in
the late 1960s, individualistic learning began to be used extensively. In the 1980s, schools
once again began to use cooperative learning.
Types of cooperative learning

Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work
together to maximize their own and each other’s learning (Johnson, Johnson, and
Holubec, 1993). Within cooperative learning groups students discuss the material to be
learned with each other, help and assist each other to understand it, and encourage each
other to work hard. Cooperative learning groups may be used to teach specific content
(formal cooperative learning groups), to ensure active cognitive processing of
information during a lecture or demonstration (informal cooperative learning groups),
and to provide long-term support and assistance for academic progress (cooperative base
groups) (Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec, 1993). Any assignment in any curriculum for
any age student can be done cooperatively.
Formal cooperative learning is students working together, for one class period to
several weeks, to achieve shared learning goals and complete jointly specific tasks and
assignments (such as decision making or problem solving, completing a curriculum unit,
writing a report, conducting a survey or experiment, or reading a chapter or reference
book, learning vocabulary, or answering questions at the end of the chapter) (Johnson,
Johnson, and Holubec, 1993). Any course requirement or assignment may be
reformulated to be cooperative. In formal cooperative learning groups teachers:
1 Specify the objectives for the lesson. In every lesson there should be an academic
objective specifying the concepts and strategies to be learned and a social skills
objective specifying the interpersonal or small group skill to be used and mastered
during the lesson.
2 Make a number of pre-instructional decisions. A teacher has to decide on the size of

groups, the method of assigning students to groups, the roles students will be assigned,
the materials needed to conduct the lesson, and the way the room will be arranged.
3 Explain the task and the positive interdependence. A teacher clearly defines the
assignment, teaches the required concepts and strategies, specifies the positive
interdependence and individual accountability, gives the criteria for success, and
explains the expected social skills to be engaged in.
4 Monitor students’ learning and intervene within the groups to provide task assistance
or to increase students’ interpersonal and group skills. A teacher systematically
observes and collects data on each group as it works. When it is needed, the teacher
intervenes to assist students in completing the task accurately and in working together
effectively.
5 Assess students’ learning and helping students process how well their groups
functioned. Students’ learning is carefully assessed and their performances are
evaluated. Members of the learning groups then process how effectively they have
been working together.
Informal cooperative learning consists of having students work together to achieve a
joint learning goal in temporary, ad-hoc groups that last from a few minutes to one class
period (Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec, 1998; Johnson, Johnson, and Smith, 1998).
During a lecture, demonstration, or film, informal cooperative learning can be used to
(a) focus student attention on the material to be learned,
(b) set a mood conducive to learning,
(c) help set expectations as to what will be covered in a class session,
(d) ensure that students cognitively process the material being taught,
(e) provide closure to an instructional session.
During direct teaching the instructional challenge for the teacher is to ensure that students
do the intellectual work of organizing material, explaining it, summarizing it, and
integrating it into existing conceptual structures. Informal cooperative learning groups are
often organized so that students engage in 3–5 minute focused discussions before and
after a lecture and 2–3 minute turn-to-your-partner discussions interspersed throughout a
lecture.
Cooperative base groups are long-term, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups
with stable membership (Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec, 1998; Johnson, Johnson, and
Smith, 1998). The purposes of the base group are to give the support, help,
encouragement, and assistance each member needs to make academic progress (attend
class, complete all assignments, learn) and develop cognitively and socially in healthy
ways. Base groups meet daily in elementary school and twice a week in secondary school
(or whenever the class meets). They are permanent (lasting from one to several years)
and provide the long-term caring peer relationships necessary to influence members
consistently to work hard in school. They formally meet to discuss the academic progress
of each member, provide help and assistance to each other, and verify that each member
is completing assignments and progressing satisfactorily through the academic program.
Base groups may also be responsible for letting absent group members know what went
on in class when they miss a session. Informally, members interact every day within and
between classes, discussing assignments, and helping each other with homework. The use
of base groups tends to improve attendance, personalize the work required and the school
experience, and improve the quality and quantity of learning. The larger the class or
school and the more complex and difficult the subject matter, the more important it is to
have base groups. Base groups are also helpful in structuring homerooms and when a
teacher meets with a number of advisers.
The cooperative school

In addition to structuring classroom work cooperatively, school administrators may
structure teachers into cooperative teams. There are three types of cooperative teams
within a school (Johnson and Johnson, 1994). Collegial teaching teams are formed to
increase teachers’ instructional expertise and success. They consist of two to five teachers
who meet weekly and discuss how better to implement cooperative learning within their
classrooms. Teachers are assigned to task forces to plan and implement solutions to
school-wide issues and problems such as curriculum adoptions and lunchroom behavior.
Ad hoc decision-making groups are used during faculty meetings to involve all staff
members in important school decisions. The use of cooperative teams at the building
level ensures that there is a congruent cooperative team-based organizational structure
within both classrooms and the school. Finally, the superintendent uses the same types of
cooperative teams to maximize the productivity of district administrators.
Basic elements of cooperation
Many teachers believe that they are implementing cooperative learning when in fact they
are missing its essence. Putting students into groups to learn is not the same thing as
structuring cooperation among students. Cooperation is not:
1 Having students sit side by side at the same table and talk with each other as they do
their individual assignments.
2 Having students do a task individually with instructions that the ones who finish first
are to help the slower students.
3 Assigning a report to a group where one student does all the work and others put their
name on it.
Cooperation is much more than being physically near other students, discussing material
with other students, helping other students, or sharing materials with other students,
although each of these is important in cooperative learning.
In order for a lesson to be cooperative, five basic elements are essential and need to be
included (Johnson and Johnson, 1989; Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec, 1993). The five
essential elements are as follows.
1 Positive Interdependence: Positive interdependence is the perception that you are
linked with others in a way so that you cannot succeed unless they do (and vice versa),
that is, their work benefits you and your work benefits them. It promotes a situation in
which students work together in small groups to maximize the learning of all members,
sharing their resources, providing mutual support, and celebrating their joint success.
Positive interdependence is the heart of cooperative learning. Students must believe that
they sink or swim together. Within every cooperative lesson positive goal
interdependence must be established through mutual learning goals (learn the assigned
material and make sure that all members of your group learn the assigned material). In
order to strengthen positive interdependence, joint rewards (if all members of your group
score 90 per cent correct or better on the test, each will receive 5 bonus points), divided
resources (giving each group member a part of the total information required to complete
an assignment), and complementary roles (reader, checker, encourager, elaborator) may
also be used. For a learning situation to be cooperative, students must perceive that they
are positively interdependent with other members of their learning group. It is positive
interdependence that creates the overall superordinate goals that unite diverse students
into a common effort. It is also positive interdepend ence that results in a joint
superordinate identity. Students need to develop a unique identity as an individual, a
social identity based among other things on their ethnic, historical, and cultural
background, and a superordinate identity that unites them with all the other members of
their society. At the same time they need to understand the social identity of classmates
and respect them as collaborators and friends. It is positive interdependence, furthermore,
that underlies a common culture that defines the values and nature of the society in which
the students live.
2 Individual Accountability: Individual accountability exists when the performance
of each individual student is assessed and the results are given back to the group and the
individual. It is important that the group knows who needs more assistance, support, and
encouragement in completing the assignment. It is also important that group members
know that they cannot “hitch-hike” on the work of others. The purpose of cooperative
learning groups is to make each member a stronger individual in his or her right. Students
learn together so that they can subsequently perform higher as individuals. To ensure that
each member is strengthened, students are held individually accountable to do their share
of the work. Common ways to structure individual accountability include
(a) giving an individual test to each student,
(b) randomly selecting one student’s product to represent the entire group,
(c) having each student explain what they have learned to a classmate.
3 Face-To-Face Promotive Interaction: Once teachers establish positive
interdependence, they need to maximize the opportunity for students to promote each
other’s success by helping, assisting, supporting, encouraging, and praising each other’s
efforts to learn. There are cognitive activities and interpersonal dynamics that only occur
when students get involved in promoting each other’s learning. This includes orally
explaining how to solve problems, discussing the nature of the concepts being learned,
teaching one’s knowledge to classmates, and connecting present with past learning.
Accountability to peers, ability to influence each other’s reasoning and conclusions,
social modeling, social support, and interpersonal rewards all increase as the face-to-face
interaction among group members increase. In addition, the verbal and nonverbal
responses of other group members provide important information concerning a student’s
performance. Silent students are uninvolved students who are not contributing to the
learning of others as well as themselves. Promoting each other’s success results in both
higher achievement and in getting to know each other on a personal as well as a
professional level. To obtain meaningful face-to-face interaction the size of groups needs
to be small (2 to 4 members). Finally, while positive interdependence creates the

conditions for working together, it is in the actual face-to-face interaction in which
students work together and promote each other’s success that the personal relationships
are formed that are essential for developing pluralistic values.
4 Social Skills: Contributing to the success of a cooperative effort requires
interpersonal and small group skills. Placing socially unskilled individuals in a group and
telling them to cooperate does not guarantee that they will be able to do so effectively.
Persons must be taught the social skills for high quality cooperation and be motivated to
use them. Leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-
management skills have to be taught just as purposefully and precisely as academic skills.
Procedures and strategies for teaching students social skills may be found in Johnson
(1991, 2000) and Johnson and F.Johnson (2000). Finally, social skills are required for
interacting effectively with peers from other cultures and ethnic groups.
5 Group Processing: Group processing exists when group members discuss how well
they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships. Groups
need to describe what member actions are helpful and unhelpful and make decisions
about what behaviors to continue or change. Students must also be given the time and
procedures for analyzing how well their learning groups are functioning and the extent to
which students are employing their social skills to help all group members to achieve and
to maintain effective working relationships within the group. Such processing
(a) enables learning groups to focus on group maintenance,
(b) facilitates the learning of social skills,
(c) ensures that members receive feedback on their participation,
(d) reminds students to practice collaborative skills consistently.
Some of the keys to successful processing are allowing sufficient time for it to take place,
making it specific rather than vague, maintaining student involvement in processing,
reminding students to use their social skills while they process, and ensuring that clear
expectations as to the purpose of processing have been communicated. Finally, when
difficulties in relating to each other arise, students must engage in group processing and
identity, define, and solve the problems they are having working together effectively.
In order to use cooperative learning effectively teachers must understand the nature of
cooperation and the essential components of a well-structured cooperative lesson.
Understanding what positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual
accountability, social skills and group processing are, and developing skills in structuring
them, allow teachers both to adapt cooperative learning to their unique circumstances,
needs, and students and to fine-tune their use of cooperative learning to solve problems
students are having in working together.
What do we know about cooperative efforts?
Everyone has to work together; if we can’t get everybody

working toward common goals, nothing is going to
happen. (Harold K.Sperlich, President, Chrysler
Corporation)
Learning together to complete assignments can have profound effects on students. A

great deal of research has been conducted comparing the relative effects of cooperative,
competitive, and individualistic efforts on instructional outcomes. These research studies
began in the late 1800s but the field did not gain momentum until the 1940s when Morton
Deutsch, building on the theorizing of Kurt Lewin, proposed a theory of cooperation and
competition. His theory has served as the primary foundation on which subsequent
research and discussion of cooperative learning has been based. During the past ninety
years over 550 experimental and 100 correlational studies have been conducted by a wide
variety of researchers in different decades with different age subjects, in different subject
areas, and in different settings (see Johnson and Johnson, 1989 for a complete listing and
review of these studies).
Building on the theorizing of Kurt Lewin and Morton Deutsch, the premise may be
made that the type of interdependence structured among students determines how they
interact with each other which, in turn largely determines instructional outcomes.
Structuring situations cooperatively results in students interacting in ways that promote
each other’s success, structuring situations competitively results in students interacting in
ways that oppose each other’s success, and structuring situations individualistically
results in no interaction among students. Students can help, assist, support, and encourage
each other’s efforts to learn. Students can obstruct and block each other’s efforts to learn.
Or students can ignore each other and work alone. These interaction patterns affect
numerous variables, which may be subsumed within the three broad and interrelated
outcomes of effort exerted to achieve, quality of relationships among participants, and
participants’ psychological adjustment and social competence (see Figure 2.1) (Johnson
and Johnson, 1989).
Achievement
Over 375 studies have been conducted over the past ninety years to give an answer to the
question of how successful competitive, individualistic, and cooperative efforts are in
promoting productivity and achievement (see Table 2.1) (Johnson and Johnson, 1989).
Working together to achieve a common goal produces higher achievement and greater
productivity than does working alone. This is so well confirmed by so much research that
it stands as one of the strongest principles of social and organizational psychology.
Cooperative learning, furthermore, resulted in more higher-level reasoning, more
frequent generation of new ideas and solutions (i.e., process gain), and greater transfer of
what is learned within one situation to another (i.e., group to individual transfer) than
did competitive or individualistic learning. The more conceptual the task, the more
problem solving required, the more desirable higher-level reasoning and critical thinking,
the more creativity required, and the greater the application required of what is being
learned to the real world, the greater the superiority of cooperative over competitive and
individualistic efforts.
Table 2.1 Social interdependence theory
Process Cooperative Competitive Individualistic
Interdependence Positive Negative None
Interaction Pattern Promotive Oppositional None

Outcome 1 High effort to achieve Low effort to achieve Low effort to achieve
Outcome 2 Positive relationships Negative relationships No relationships
Outcome 3 Psychological health Psychological illness Psychological pathology
Figure 2.1 Outcomes of cooperative

learning. Source: Johnson and Johnson
(1989).
Some cooperative learning procedures contained a mixture of cooperative,
competitive, and individualistic efforts while others were “pure.” The original jigsaw
procedure (Aronson, 1978), for example, is a combination of resource interdependence
(cooperative) and individual reward structure (individualistic). Teams-Games-
Tournaments (DeVries and Edwards, 1974) and Student-Teams-Achievement-Divisions
(Slavin, 1986) are mixtures of cooperation and intergroup competition. Team-Assisted-
Instruction (Slavin, 1986) is a mixture of individualistic and cooperative learning. When
the results of “pure” and “mixed” operationalizations of cooperative learning were
compared, the “pure” operationalizations produced higher achievement.
Differences among individuals in personality, sex, attitudes, background, social class,
reasoning strategies, cognitive perspectives, information, ability levels, and skills have
been found to promote achievement and productivity (see Johnson and Johnson, 1989).
Interpersonal relationships
A faithful friend is a strong defense, and he that hath found

him, hath found a treasure. (Ecclesiastes 6:14)
Individuals care more about each other and are more committed to each other’s success
and well-being when they work together to get the job done than when they compete to
see who is best or work independently from each other. This is true when individuals are
homogeneous and it is also true when individuals differ in intellectual ability,
handicapping conditions, ethnic membership, social class, and gender. When individuals
are heterogeneous, cooperating on a task results in more realistic and positive views of
each other. As relationships become more positive, there are corresponding increases in
productivity, feelings of personal commitment and responsibility to do the assigned work,
willingness to take on and persist in completing difficult tasks, morale, and commitment
to peer’s success and growth. Absenteeism and turnover of membership decreases.
There are 180 studies that have been conducted since the 1940s on the relative impact
of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic experiences on interpersonal attraction
(Johnson and Johnson, 1989). The data indicate that cooperative experiences promote
greater interpersonal attraction than do competitive or individualistic ones (effect sizes=
0.66 and 0.62 respectively). The higher the quality of the study and the more pure the
operationalization of cooperation, the stronger the impact of cooperation on interpersonal
attraction. The positive relationships formed transfer to voluntary choice situations. Even
when individuals initially dislike each other, cooperative experiences have been found to
promote liking.
Much of the research on interpersonal relationships has been conducted on
relationships between white and minority students and between nonhandicapped and
handicapped students (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). There have been over forty
experimental studies comparing some combination of cooperative, competitive, and
individualistic experiences on cross-ethnic relationships and over forty similar studies on
mainstreaming of handicapped students (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). Their results are
consistent. Working cooperatively creates far more positive relationships among diverse
and heterogeneous students than does learning competitively or individualistically.
Once the relationship is established, the next question becomes “why?” The social
judgments individuals make about each other increase or decrease the liking they feel
towards each other. Such social judgments are the result of either a process of acceptance
or a process of rejection (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). The process of acceptance is
based on the individuals promoting mutual goal accomplishment as a result of their
perceived positive interdependence. The promotive interaction tends to result in frequent,
accurate, and open communication; accurate understanding of each other’s perspective;
inducibility; differentiated, dynamic, and realistic views of each other; high self-esteem;
success and productivity; and expectations for positive and productive future interaction.
The process of rejection results from oppositional or no interaction based on perceptions
of negative or no interdependence. Both lead to no or inaccurate communication;
egocentrism; resistance to influence; monopolistic, stereotyped, and
Table 2.2 Mean effect sizes for impact of social

interdependence on dependent variables
Conditions Achievement Interpersonal attraction Social support Self-esteem
Total studies
Coop vs. Comp 0.67 0.67 0.62 0.58
Coop vs. Ind 0.64 0.60 0.70 0.44
Comp vs. Ind 0.30 0.08 −0.13 −0.23
High quality studies
Coop vs. Comp 0.88 0.82 0.83 0.67
Coop vs. Ind 0.61 0.62 0.72 0.45
Comp vs. Ind 0.07 0.27 −0.13 −0.25
Mixed operationalizations
Coop vs. Comp 0.40 0.46 0.45 0.33
Coop vs. Ind 0.42 0.36 0.02 0.22
Pure operationalizations
Coop vs. Comp 0.71 0.79 0.73 0.74
Coop vs. Ind 0.65 0.66 0.77 0.51
Note: Coop=Cooperation, Comp=Competition, Ind=Individualistic
Source: Johnson and Johnson (1989).
Table 2.3 Processes of acceptance and rejection

Process of acceptance Process of rejection
Positive interdependence Negative interdependence
Promotive interaction Oppositional or no interaction
Frequent and open communication No or inaccurate communication
Understanding of other perspectives Egocentricism
Inducibility Resistance to influence
Differentiated views of each other Monopolistic views of each other
High self-esteem Low self-esteem
Successful achievement, productivity Failure, lack of productivity
Expectations of positive and productive future Expectations of negative and unproductive future
interaction with others interaction with others
static views of others; low self-esteem; failure; and expectations of distasteful and
unpleasant interaction with others. The processes of acceptance and rejection are self-
perpetuating. Any part of the process tends to elicit all the other parts of the process.
Psychological health and social competence

Working cooperatively with peers, and valuing cooperation, results in greater
psychological health and higher self-esteem than does competing with peers or working
independently. Personal ego-strength, self-confidence, independence, and autonomy are
all promoted by being involved in cooperative efforts with caring people, who are
committed to each other’s success and well-being, and who respect each other as separate
and unique individuals. When individuals work together to complete assignments, they
interact (mastering social skills and competencies), they promote each other’s success
(gaining self-worth), and they form personal as well as professional relationships
(creating the basis for healthy social development). Individuals’ psychological adjustment
and health tend to increase when schools are dominated by cooperative efforts. The more
individuals work cooperatively with others, the more they see themselves as worthwhile
and as having value, the greater their productivity, the greater their acceptance and
support of others, and the more autonomous and independent they tend to be. A positive
self-identity is developed basically within supportive, caring, cooperative relationships
while a negative self-identity is developed within competitive, rejecting, or uncaring
relationships. Children who are isolated usually develop the most self-rejecting identities.
Cooperative experiences are not a luxury. They are an absolute necessity for the healthy
social and psychological development of individuals who can function independently.
Reciprocal relationships among outcomes

There are bidirectional relationships among efforts to achieve, quality of relationships,
and psychological health (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). Each influences the others. First,
caring and committed friendships come from a sense of mutual accomplishment, mutual
pride in joint work, and the bonding that results from joint efforts. The more students care
about each other, on the other hand, the harder they will work to achieve mutual learning
goals. Second, joint efforts to achieve mutual goals promote higher self-esteem, self-
efficacy, personal control, and confidence in their competencies. The healthier
psychologically individuals are, on the other hand, the better able they are to work with
others to achieve mutual goals. Third, psychological health is built on the internalization
of the caring and respect received from loved-ones. Friendships are developmental
advantages that promote self-esteem, self-efficacy, and general psychological adjustment.
The healthier people are psychologically (i.e., free of psychological pathology such as
depression, paranoia, anxiety, fear of failure, repressed anger, hopelessness, and
meaninglessness), on the other hand, the more caring and committed their relationships.
Since each outcome can induce the others, they are likely to be found together. They are a
package with each outcome a door into all three. And together they induce positive
interdependence and promotive interaction.
Making diversity among students a strength
The current research indicates that cooperative learning promotes greater efforts to
achieve, more positive relationships, and greater psychological health than do
competitive and individualistic learning. These outcomes indicate that when cooperative
learning is used the majority of the school day, diversity among students can be a
potential source of creativity and productivity. Following four guidelines will help
students capitalize on their diversity (Johnson and F.Johnson, 1997).
1 Students must work together cooperatively with a high level of positive
interdependence and the other five basic elements carefully structured. Students must
believe that they “sink or swim together” in striving to achieve important mutual goals.
The discords of diversity are not automatically transformed into a symphony when people
are brought face-to-face. Prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination often increase with
proximity. What largely determines whether interaction results in positive or negative
relationships is the context within which the interaction takes place. Group members
must work together to achieve mutual goals, rather than be required to compete to see
who is best or work individualistically on their own. When people cooperate, they tend to
like each other more, trust each other more, are more candid with each other, and are
more willing to listen to and be influenced by each other (Johnson and Johnson, 1989).
When people compete or work individualistically, then liking, trust, influence, and
candor tend to decrease. There is considerable evidence that cooperative experiences,
compared with competitive and individualistic ones, promote more positive, committed,
and caring relationships regardless of differences in ethnic, cultural, language, social
class, gender, ability, or other differences (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). The impact of
positive interdependence will be enhanced when members have equal status and social
norms and authorities promote positive relationships and friendship formation (Watson,
1947; Williams, 1948; Allport, 1954).
2 Students must have a superordinate identity that (a) unites the diverse personal
identities of students and (b) is based on a pluralistic set of values. Recognizing diversity
and valuing and respecting differences is done in four steps. First, students need to
develop an appreciation for their own gender, religious, ethnic, or cultural background. A
personal identity is a consistent set of attitudes that defines “who you are” (see Johnson
[2000] for a full discussion on developing a personal identity). A personal identity
consists of multiple sub-identities that are organized into a coherent, stable, and
integrated whole. The sub-identities include a gender identity (fundamental sense of
maleness or femaleness), an ethnic identity (sense of belonging to one particular ethnic
group), a religious identity (sense of belonging to one particular religious group), and so
forth. Second, students need to develop an appreciation for the gender, religious, ethnic,
and cultural backgrounds of other members. Students can develop an identity that does
not lead to the rejection of other members who are different. Third, students need to
develop a strong superordinate identity that transcends their differences. Being the
member of a learning group or society needs to be creedal rather than racial or ancestral.
In essence, learning groups have their own culture that supersedes the individual cultures
of members. Fourth, students need to learn a pluralistic set of values concerning
democracy, freedom, liberty, equality, justice, the rights of individuals, and the
responsibilities of citizenship. All members have equal value. Most learning groups,
schools, and societies will become a multicultural unit knitted together by a common set
of values.
3 Gain sophistication about the differences among students through personal
relationships that allow for candid discussions. Only through knowing, working with, and
personally interacting with members of diverse groups can individuals really learn to
value diversity, utilize diversity for creative problem solving, and work effectively with
diverse peers. Candid conversations with a friend about inadvertent misunderstandings
can often teach more than numerous books. To gain the sophistication and skills you need
to relate to, work with, and become friends with diverse peers, you need actual
interaction, trust, and candor.
4 Clarify miscommunications among students from different cultures, ethnic and
historical backgrounds, social classes, genders, age-cohorts, and so forth. If students from
different gender, social class, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds are to communicate
effectively, they must continually increase their language sensitivity by knowing the
words and expressions that are appropriate and inappropriate in communicating with
diverse groupmates and being aware of the key elements of communication style and
how diverse cultures use these elements to communicate. Without awareness of nuances
in language and differences in style, the potential for garbled communication is enormous
when interacting with diverse peers.
Summary
Diversity among students will increase in most schools in most countries. Such diversity
is an opportunity that can have positive or negative consequences. Which one results
partly depends on the type of interdependence structured among students. There are three
types of interdependence: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic. Each has an
implicit value structure that is taught as a hidden curriculum. Competition teaches the
values of beating and getting more than other people to be successful, obstructing the
work of others, feeling happy when other people fail, seeing others as a threat to one’s
success, viewing worth as contingent on wins, and viewing those who are different in
negative ways. Individualistic efforts teaches the values of viewing success as dependent
on one’s own efforts, seeing others as irrelevant to one’s success, and viewing diverse
others in negative ways. Cooperation teaches the values of committing oneself to the
common good, seeing success as depending on the efforts of all collaborators, feeling
happy when others succeed, seeing others as resources to help one succeed, viewing
worth as unconditional, and viewing diverse others in positive ways.
While competitive, individualistic, and cooperative efforts should all three be part of
schooling, cooperation is by far the most necessary if diversity is to result in positive
outcomes. Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students
work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning. Cooperative learning
experiences are based on students’ perceiving that they sink or swim together and that
they must provide face-to-face help and support, do their fair share of the work, provide
leadership and resolve conflicts constructively, and periodically process how to improve
the effectiveness of the group. There is considerable evidence that students will learn
more, use higher level reasoning strategies more frequently, build more complete and
complex conceptual structures, and retain information learned more accurately when they
learn within cooperative groups than when they study competitively or
individualistically.
Much of the information about different cultural and ethnic heritages cannot be
attained through reading books. Only through knowing, working with, and personal
interactions with members of diverse groups can students really learn to value diversity,
utilize it for creative problem solving, and develop an ability to work effectively with
diverse peers. While information alone helps, it is only through direct and personal
interaction among diverse individuals who develop personal as well as professional
relationships with each other that such outcomes are realized. Understanding the
perspective of others from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds requires more than
information. It requires the personal sharing of viewpoints and mutual processing of
situations. In addition, in order to identify with and internalize the values inherent in the
society as a whole, students must work cooperatively with others, build personal and
committed relationships with peers who are committed to a superordinate identity as
members of the same society. There is considerable evidence that cooperative
experiences, compared with competitive and individualistic ones, promote more positive,
committed, and caring relationships regardless of differences in ethnic, cultural,
language, social class, gender, ability, or other differences.
Finally, if the discords of diverse students meeting in the school are to be transformed
into a symphony, students need a positive self-view, the psychological health to face
conflict and challenge, and the social competencies required to work effectively with
diverse peers. Personal and super-ordinate identities are developed through group
processes. It takes membership in cooperative groups to develop a personal identity, an
ethnic identity, an identity as a citizen of a society, and an identity as a world citizen.
There is considerable evidence that working cooperatively increases students’ self-esteem
and psychological health, their ability to act independently and exert their autonomy,
their interpersonal and small-group skills, and their understanding of interdependence and
cooperative efforts.
Diversity can fulfill its promise rather than be a problem when learning situations and
schools are structured cooperatively. This begins with diverse students being brought
together in the same classroom, the teacher using cooperative learning procedures the
majority of the time, the principal organizing teachers into colleagial support groups
aimed at increasing their expertise in using cooperative learning and working together as
a team, and the superintendent organizing administrators into colleagial support groups
aimed at increasing their expertise in leading a cooperative school and working together
as a team. Such a cooperative organizational structure will result in diversity enhancing
learning and in creating a shared super-ordinate identity as American, and at an even
higher level, world citizen.
References
Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

Aronson, E. (1978). The Jigsaw Classroom. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Deutsch, M. (1949). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations 2, 129–52.
Deutsch, M. (1962). Cooperation and trust: Some theoretical notes. In M.Jones (ed.), Nebraska
Symposium on Motivation (pp. 275–319). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
DeVries, D., and Edwards, K. (1974). Cooperation in the classroom: Towards a theory of
alternative reward-task classroom structures. Paper presented at the meeting of the American
Educational Research Association, Chicago, April.
Johnson, D.W. (1991). Human Relations and Your Career (3rd edn.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Johnson, D.W. (2000). Reaching Out: Interpersonal Effectiveness and Self-Actualization (7th edn.).
Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Johnson, D.W., and Johnson, F. (2000). Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills (7th
edn.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Johnson, D.W., and Johnson, R. (1989). Cooperation and Competition: Theory and Research.
Edina, Minn.: Interaction Book Company.
Johnson, D.W., and Johnson, R. (1994). Leading the Cooperative School (2nd edn.). Edina Minn.:
Interaction Book Company.
Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R., and Holubec, E. (1998). Advanced Cooperative Learning (3rd edn.).
Edina, Minn.: Interaction Book Company.
Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R., and Holubec, E. (1993). Circles of Learning (4th edn.). Edina, Minn.:
Interaction Book Company.
Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R., and Smith, K. (1998). Active Learning: Cooperation in the College
Classroom (2nd edn.). Edina, Minn.: Interaction Book Company.
Slavin, R. (1986). Using Student Team Learning. Baltimore: Center for Research on Elementary
and Middle Schools, Johns Hopkins University.
Watson, G. (1947). Action for Unity. New York: Harper.
Williams, D. (1948). The effects of an interracial project upon the attitudes of Negro and white
girls within the YWCA. In A.Rose (ed.), Studies in the Reduction of Prejudice. Chicago:
American Council of Race Relations.
3
Explicit Values in the Classroom: Is it
Possible?
KAREN CAPLE
Introduction
The National Professional Development Program (NPDP) Values Review Project in

Western Australia (WA) has been proactively investigating the extent to which values
can be explicitly integrated into the schooling curriculum, in particular one framed within
an outcome-based context. The NPDP Values Review Project was one of eighteen
projects undertaken in Western Australia over a three-year period through government
funding, all under the coordination of the WA Cross-sectoral Consortium (1994–6). This
Consortium comprised representatives from each of the WA Government, Independent,
Anglican and Catholic school authorities, the government and non-government teachers’
unions, representatives from professional and subject associations and the WA Council of
Deans of Education.
The NPDP was a Commonwealth initiative where funds were made available to the
States and Territories over a three-year period, for teacher Professional Development
(PD) activities. These funds supported national initiatives in education, by recognizing
the importance of ongoing teacher renewal to improve educational outcomes for students.
The activities undertaken were to address the following goals:
• facilitate the use of curriculum statements and profiles for Australian schools, key
competencies and the teaching of accredited vocational education courses in schools;
• assist the renewal of teacher’s discipline knowledge and teaching skills and help
teachers to improve work organization practices and teaching competencies within
schools;
• enhance the professional culture of teachers and encourage teacher organizations to take
a higher profile in promoting professional development;
• promote partnerships between educational authorities, teacher organizations, principals’
associations and universities in the provision of professional development
opportunities for teachers.
Background
A perceived lack of an explicit values dimension in the national statements and profiles
being developed for Australian National Curriculum in 1993, motivated a group of
individuals from the non-government schooling sector1 in western Australia, to initiate
the present project. Prior to this, the Education Department of WA had commenced
working on Student Outcome Statements (SOS), a set of desired outcomes in eight

learning areas for monitoring student achievement. Both of these initiatives signalled a
concern, as to the lack of an explicit values dimension.
At this time the Revd. Dr Tom Wallace, Chaplain and Education Consultant for the
Anglican Schools Commission in WA, convened a meeting to discuss this apparent lack
of values within the proposed outcomes being developed at both national and state levels.
A number of questions were raised and discussed at this meeting:
• Could SOS be modified to include a more specific reference to values?
• What values should be identified in each of the learning areas?
• Were values able to be integrated into a student outcomes framework that was
sequentially developed into eight levels?
• How could both teachers and schools integrate values more effectively and explicitly
into classroom practice and school life?
Thus the NPDP Values Review Project was born with the general aim of determining
the extent to which values can be explicitly integrated into a curriculum that may be
framed by Student Outcome Statements and current curriculum practices.
After funding was granted by the Commonwealth and directed to the WA Cross-
sectoral Consortium for distribution, the project was initiated and managed by a group,
reflecting the partners represented in the Consortium. This management group was
initially termed a ‘Reference Committee’ and has helped guide and advise on the work
and direction of the project since 1994.2
Stages in the project

• 1994 Initial planning and development of a values framework
• 1995 Publication of the Agreed Minimum Values Framework, a framework, established through
a consensus approach, of core shared values
Values Audit of Student Outcome Statement (WA version)
School Trials 1995
Exploration of writing Values Outcome Statements
• 1996 School Trialing in two phases
One day Conference
Exploration of placing values explicitly into Student Outcome Statements (WA version)
This chapter documents the process and results of the 1996 Classroom Practice Trial of
the NPDP Values Review Project.
Explicit values in the classroom 39
The Agreed Minimum Values Framework
The Agreed Minimum Values Framework document developed by the NPDP Values
Review Project and released in May 1995, is a framework of values that represents a
baseline agreement of values for a group of consultants who were contracted to undertake
this task, late in 1994. Despite this document representing a consensus position on values
within the non-government schooling sector in Western Australia, it has proved to be a
valuable document or tool for individual schools, systems or sectors, communities or
religious groups to create or refine their own values framework, to suit their own needs
and purpose.
The document contains sixty values listed under three levels (Ultimate, Democratic
and Educational) and within four themes. These value words are listed in Table 3.1 under
these four themes. Each value within the document is defined or expanded to give a
context for its existence.
Table 3.1 Agreed Minimum Values Framework
NPDP Values Review Project
Life perspectives Individual Society Natural world
After-life Access Authority Conservation of the
environment
Family Caring Benefits of research Development
Freedom of Citizenship Community Diversity of species
worship
God as Creator Compassion Conflict resolution Domains of knowledge
God as Self- Empowerment Contribution Environmental responsibility
revealer
Knowledge Equality Critical reflection Exploitation
Personal meaning Imperfection Diversity Nature is good
Religion Individual differences Family Quest for truth
Religious freedom Individual uniqueness Morality Rehabilitation
Religious quest Learning climate Multiculturalism Science and values
Search for Open to learn Participation Stewardship
knowledge
Spirituality Opportunity Reconciliation Sustainable development
Study of world Responsibility School as
views community
Value systems Responsibility and Social justice
freedom
Social nature The common good
Tolerance Value dimension

Welfare
For example, equality, is defined as ‘We affirm the equal worth and basic rights of all
persons, regardless of differences in race, gender, ability, and religious belief.’ Schools
within the trial were encouraged to define their chosen core values in a similar manner, as
part of their School Values Statement.
Overview of 1996 trialing
The 1996 trialing within the NPDP Values Project was in two main areas, having been
identified as needed from previous project work:
• Classroom Practice: this trial involved 45 teachers, government (24) and non-
government (21) teachers from both primary (31) and secondary (14) backgrounds.
The trial investigated and documented how values could be explicitly integrated into
the curriculum within the context of the individual school and its community.
• School Planning: this component involved 20 schools,2 10 government and 10 non-
government, who developed a School Values Statement, as part of their School Ethos
or Development Plan. This Values Statement clearly identified those values that were
important to the school and each trial school explored ways of integrating these values
into the life of the school (e.g. School Policies, Pastoral Care and School Priorities).
Aim of the Classroom Practice Trial
The overall aim of the project was to investigate the extent to which values could be
explicitly integrated into the schooling curriculum, in particular one framed within an
outcome based context.
The specific aims of the Classroom Practice Trial were to help teachers:
1 explore the role of values in teaching
2 take part in the development of a School Values Statement3
3 be able to articulate the explicit inclusion of values in the general curriculum
4 adapt a program or unit of work to include explicitly chosen values from the Agreed
Minimum Values Framework and school plan
5 demonstrate the outcomes of the implementation of a School Values Statement
The Classroom Practice Trial was based on an action inquiry model, where teachers used
a combination of reflective practice and action research throughout the trial period:
Reflective Practice=plan act recall experience and reflect

evaluate re-plan
Action Research=plan act informally monitor recall and reflect
on experience review and evaluate action re-plan
The important feature of this trial was that each teacher was able to create their own
inquiry or case study, to suit the needs of their own students and school. The reflective
practice undertaken enabled the teachers to consciously evaluate the process presented
within the draft curriculum package used during the trial, and to document the outcomes
they experienced. The stages of the trial were constructed to support this notion of an
inquiry model.
In addition, some of the supporting and underlying principles of the trial were
identified from a study conducted in western Australia on principles of best practice
related to professional development (Louden 1994). These principles included:
• voluntary participation
• self-reflective practice
• spaced learning
• workplace learning
• innovative teaching practice
• collegial support and critique
• provision of teacher relief
• provision of high quality “user friendly” materials and resources
• support of the school executive
• builds knowledge and ownership through action research
• professional review
Timeline for the trial

March Expressions of Interest sent to all metropolitan schools and country schools (non-
government only)
April Selection and Confirmation of Involvement
May Workshop 1: Background and introduction to the trial, including the Draft Curriculum
Package. A session on practical classroom skills in the area of values was also included for
trial participants.
June Network Cluster Meetings: Four half-day meetings were held for teachers to network
and share ideas on their classroom practice, in addition to seeking guidance from the
project co-ordinator.
August Workshop 2: This workshop provided a “higher order of values integration” within the
classroom. Guest speakers and workshop presenters challenged those present to a more
in-depth view on values, in addition to teachers being able to share their current
experiences within the classroom.
September Network Cluster Meetings: These four half-day workshops gave each teacher an
opportunity to collaborate with their curriculum network and share classroom
experiences. This final workshop also formed part of the Final Reporting associated
with the trial.
October Reporting and Evaluation of the Trial and Process: A report on the trial (case study)
and process undertaken submitted.
Stages within the Classroom Practice Trial
Stage 1: Awareness raising

The NPDP Values Project had been undertaking some trialing during 1995, however on a
much smaller scale and centered predominantly within the non-government schooling
sector. A series of classroom trials were conducted by eleven teachers and these formed
the foundation to the extensive trialing in 1996. In addition to the trialing and other
associated work, an important milestone of the project was the release of the Agreed
Minimum-Values Framework in May 1995. This document was distributed widely to
individual schools and groups and was the genesis of an explicit values dimension in
educational initiatives in Western Australia.
In November 1995, a series of three half-day workshops were held for Principals and
interested teachers to gain an insight into the work of the project and to direct the project
forward into 1996. The feedback and enthusiasm displayed by the 140 who attended,
from ninety different schools, was affirming for this explicit values dimension within
education. The feedback gained from the workshops revolved around the following
questions:
• In what ways is the current work of the NPDP Values Review Project potentially
useful or of value to schools?
• Are there any important issues that need to be addressed?
• What are the needs of schools?
• What are the needs of Administrators?
• Any other suggestions and ideas?
The feedback received from the group at this point was overwhelming, as from those
in attendance, forty-three schools indicated some degree of commitment to trialing in this
area of values in 1996. All feedback gained from those who attended was annotated and
used as a foundation to the work undertaken throughout 1996. From this gathering, a
network was formed and twenty-four schools subsequently engaged the Project
Coordinator to give presentations to staff either late in 1995 or early 1996. It is of special
note that this series of presentations was independent of the classroom practice trialing
phase conducted during 1996. The following comments received from participants
highlighted some of the important issues to be considered:
• If values are to be incorporated into all learning areas, how will teacher bias,
indifference or personal values be addressed?
• My school needs to establish what are the values that it wants to impart to its students.
• Dealing with students in the classroom from different cultural backgrounds who/whose
parents do not value democracy or personal freedom, raises the question of PD for
teachers, new skills are needed.
• Agreed values—minimum values—need to be determined by all sectors of society, not

just the educationalists.
• Values do not arise in isolation—issues in schools often involve conflicting values.
One of the major outcomes of the workshops was for schools to indicate their level of
future involvement in the project, by addressing the following questions:
• Would your school be interested in being kept informed of the NPDP Values Review
initiatives?
• Are you interested in having a school visit by the Project Coordinator to give a short
presentation to staff on the NPDP Values Review Project?
• Would your school be interested in the curriculum initiatives planned for 1996?
School Planning Trial
Classroom Practice Trial
• Would your school be able to assist in the collection of resources and examples of
best practice methods that currently exist?
Early in 1996, at the commencement of the school year, a further half-day workshop
was held for interested school personnel. This workshop again outlined the progress of
the NPDP Values Review Project and focused specifically on the trialing to be
undertaken during the year. Teachers involved within the initial trialing during 1995,
presented some of their findings and experiences to those present. The whole concept,
expectations and time frame of the 1996 trialing was presented and individuals and
schools were asked to submit a form detailing their expression of interest in the trialing,
in either of the two main focus areas.
In February 1996, following this initial workshop, the project had a major dilemma in
relation to accommodating the interest expressed, as funding was limited to engaging
thirty teachers for funded placements. The level of interest expressed at the time was
shown by the fact that forty-five schools sought involvement in the trial and seventy-four
teachers nominated to be included in it.
As a result of this overwhelming interest, a set of criteria were used to prioritize
individual schools, as well as offering places to those schools and teachers who could self
fund their involvement. The criteria used were:
1 Expression of interest and commitment from attendees at the workshop held late in
1995
2 Schools committed to both aspects of the trialing (School Planning and Classroom
Practice)
3 Order of reply
4 Balance of school sectors and Primary/ Secondary components
This process of selection created the final position for trialing, forty-five teachers from
twenty-six schools commenced the 1996 Classroom Practice Trial.
Stage 2: Writing of a draft process package

This stage involved researching and writing a draft process that teachers could use as a
guide within their own schools. One of the outcomes was to trial and modify this process
in order for it to be published and made available to others as a model or framework. This
publication would contain both the trialed process and all the case studies from the NPDP
Values Review Project Classroom Practice Trial.
The appointed writer4 consulted widely and devised a process to undertake throughout
the trial, matching the vision and guidelines provided by the Project Coordinator and the
cross-sectoral management committee of the project. The package aligned itself to
support the action research format of the trial, and to complement the workshops
conducted throughout the trial. An overview of the content of this Draft Classroom
Practice Package is detailed below, however the content as listed, does not reflect the
decision to create a package that was short, precise, effective and ‘user friendly’ for the
participants to use. The package was considered an excellent resource by the external
Evaluator of the NPDP Values Review, and has been available for purchase since 1997
with all the case studies from the trialing included in the package.
The Draft Curriculum Package was designed to be a step-by-step guide for teachers to
identify and integrate key values into programs and classroom practice. The package was
built around the small number of trials completed in 1995, as part of the initial work of
the project, and was implemented through the workshops conducted in association with
the trial.
Stage 3: Introductory workshop

This one-day workshop for the forty-five teachers involved both an introduction to values
in education and the Draft Curriculum Package developed for the trial. Professor Brian
Hill, from Murdoch University and a consultant to the project, delivered a thought-
provoking session on “Values, what are they, and the importance of them.” This was
followed by a session on outcomes in education, in addition to the launch and exploration
of the Draft Curriculum Package. This workshop provided a worthwhile springboard for
the trial, as reflected in these comments:
Box 3.1 Contents of Draft Curriculum Package

1 Introduction
Organization of this package
The 1996 School Trials
Aims of the 1996 Classroom Practice Trial
Outcomes-based learning in WA Schools
Terminology
2 Getting started
Integrated values into teaching
Articulating values and creating your own School Values Statement
Examples of School Values Statements
3 The Classroom Environment
The worlds of the teacher

In the classroom
What is your own values stance as a teacher?
How can you establish an appropriate classroom environment to promote values development?
How do children best learn?
What kind of language do you use as a teacher?
4 Programming
10 steps to creating your own program/unit of work
5 Sample Units of Work
6 Assessment and Reporting
7 Reflection and Collaboration
Being a reflective teacher
Creativity, intuition and a journal
Teaching as conversation
Reflection and contemplation
Collaboration with colleagues
Collaboration with parents/community
8 Resources
• I now know my role and requirements within the project and I feel that support is
available to meet concerns.
• I thought the order of presentations today was most effective—ideas and focus areas all
became interrelated and into perspective. Congratulations on the trial package—the
background reading will become more and more relevant as the process is put into
place by teachers.
• The Draft Package is very well put together; it is encouraging to have a document so
clearly arranged. I feel enthused and now well informed about the expectations of me
and the outcomes expected from the group.
The teachers at the workshop were provided with the following brief for the trial:
1 Explore what a value is and explicitly identify those appropriate to your school
community.
2 Select a unit of work with which you are very comfortable, and feel values are
inherently a part of, and explicitly place your chosen key values of the school into the
program of work.
3 Teach the unit.
4 Reflect during and after the unit, as to how the values integration went, including
reflections from staff and students, where possible.
This simple process is demonstrated in Figure 3.1.
A focus within the workshop was to explore what a value is, enabling each teacher to
have the same starting point in terms of identifying or determining those specific values
suited to their own school community. This common definition was taken from Values
Strategies for Classroom Teachers (Lemin et al. 1994):
Values are determined by the beliefs we hold. They are the ideas about
what someone or a group thinks is important in life and they play a very
important part in decision making. We express our values in the way we
think and act.
The distinction between values, beliefs and attitudes5 was also important to clarify for the
trial teachers, so the following was presented as demonstrating each, as well as their
interaction:
Figure 3.1 The process of developing

a new values program (NB: Values
relate to ethical issues rather than to
religious instruction which has it own
particular content, i.e. subject in itself.)
Value: one’s judgment of what is important or worthwhile in life…values

are articulated, developed, agreed, settled and acted upon, at the level of
the culture of the community.
Belief: acceptance of thing, fact or statement as true or existing…‘beliefs’
implies our acceptance, tenure and emotional commitment to a particular
set of propositions about the world…reality.
Attitude: settled behavior or mode of thinking… strong feelings or
convictions towards or away from something…
Stage 4: Network cluster meetings

A series of four half-day workshops were held for participants, arranged specifically in
like curriculum areas to facilitate networking. The aim and desired outcomes of these half
days were:
• To reflect upon values in the classroom, and the practical implications occurring within
the classroom
• To share with colleagues, the progress and steps undertaken by each participant, along
with any difficulties being experienced
• To assist participants with the trialing, reflecting upon the expectations and guidelines
provided within the Draft Curriculum Package
These four workshops were an essential component of the action research trial process, as
it proved to be a critical point for all participants. Individual teachers provided inspiration
and guidance to their peers, despite the different socio-economic backgrounds of schools,
teachers and students involved within the trial.
Stage 5: Workshop 2
This second one-day workshop provided a range of different opportunities for the trial
participants. A higher order, more intense presentation was given on values within the
classroom and the relationship of the teacher to his or her class,6 followed by an informal
session of the issue of assessment of values.7 This was supported by a workshop session
on practical strategies to use within the classroom, followed by further networking of
teachers across all sectors and spheres of education.
Stage 6: Network cluster meetings

The second series of half-day workshops were modeled on the first round, however an
additional focus was placed on the Final Report and expectations of the project. An
external evaluation8 undertaken by the NPDP Values Review Project, clearly documented
the success of these half-day workshops, reporting the following teacher comments:
• In addition to reassurance the workshops afforded opportunity to share ideas, consider
different approaches to implementation and to hear about the difficulties others were
experiencing.
• The workshops…allowed time to interact with other teachers and to appreciate their
problems and solutions. They gave me time to reflect on the project away from the
classroom and the busy atmosphere of school They gave me inspiration from
specialists in different fields, as well as encouragement
Stage 7: Final report

At the commencement of the trial, each teacher was provided with an outline of the
expectations required when submitting the Final Report and case study. This format was
developed in order to collate standard information from all schools within the trial, into
an easily identifiable package at the conclusion of the trialing. The final Curriculum
Package developed by the NPDP Values Review Project has been available since 1997.
The Final Report consisted of:
Process
(a) How did you derive your values statement?
(b) Identify and list the outcome strands and statements (WA version) that you used in
your trialing.
(c) How did you undertake the task of explicitly integrating values into your lessons?
(d) What were the results of your attempts to integrate values into your:
1 Programming
2 Teaching and learning strategies
3 Student understanding and response
4 Selection of content
Reflections
(a) Using your journal, share some of your:

1 Highlights of the trial
2 Difficulties incorporating values
3 Difficulties working with outcomes
(b) Do you have any feedback or suggestions working on:
1 The Draft Process Package
2 Identifying and forming your School Values Statement
3 Integrating values into your teaching
4 Working with Student Outcome Statements
Reflections on the trial
The findings and data collected from the forty-five teachers involved in the 1996 trialing,
was undertaken in many different curriculum areas9 across the full range of years of
schooling.10 The reflections below are grouped for ease of summary, and not always
placed according to the sections in which the respondents originally placed their answers.
Each teacher involved in the trial derived a set of core shared values from documents
that existed in the school at the time, from publications from their schooling sectors and
from the Agreed Minimum Values Framework to create their own school values
statement:
• I presented a suggested list of values from the Agreed Minimum Values Framework,
together with a copy of the Framework to my colleagues at a staff meeting. The
selection of values was a challenging task but I was guided by the School Aims and
Objectives booklet, our Pastoral Care Policy and the curriculum initiatives we had put
into practice in the Junior School. (Year 5 Teacher)
• I worked alone and began by going to our School Code of Ethics and highlighting all of
the words that I felt held a value. I then circled the values from The Agreed Minimum
Values Framework that interested me. From these I created a priority of values that I
felt were the most fundamental. (Year 7 Teacher)
• The statement was created through a consultative process involving the values trial
teachers, who presented a draft statement to the school staff for endorsement. Parents
were also consulted through a Parents and Citizens Association meeting and endorsed
the statement. The values incorporated within the statement were selected from the
school performance indicators, school behavior management policy and the Agreed
Minimum Values Framework. (Year 1–7 Teachers)
• Selection of “Trial Values” was quite a difficult task so I can see that a School Values
Statement really must be in place first before teachers can be expected to introduce
values as a matter of course… Creating a School Values Statement is a big task and
needs the full commitment of a coordinated and supportive committee. (Year 6
Teacher)
Most teachers were surprised how easy it was for them to integrate values. Rather than
making vast changes to their programs and teaching styles, they added the extra
dimension of values through carefully chosen questions or activities:
• I had already planned my program in Society and Environment for the Term, so I had to
decide which values I wanted to cover ‘post programming’. I broke down each lesson
to find out where values would fit best, and then altered the focus of the lesson. (Year
3 Teacher)
• Integrating values into my teaching was not difficult. It involved some thought at the
planning stage of programming merely because it was different. It involved teaching
in a different way—therefore different activities needed to be arranged. This was
refreshing for both my class and me. Many useful classroom activities would not have
been undertaken if values teaching had not occurred. (Year 3 Teacher)
• Keep the usual programs and add values questions to the usual discussion, project or
work based exercises. Carefully chosen literature can be an easy way to begin
discussions about chosen values. (Year 3 Teacher)
Some teachers commented that values integration would become easier for them with
practice and with a continued focus on values:
• As this becomes accepted practice, teachers will find it easy as putting in that “value”
question or adding a thought-provoking suggestion to elicit discussions on important
values in life. It is more a matter of conscious effort than one of great difficulty. (Year
6 Teacher)
• There were learning curves for all of us on this first program, but it was evident that the
students responded well to the oral work and appreciated the extra group activities.
(Year 6 Teacher)
• My class policy has always echoed the belief that the classroom itself has to become a
place where the student is comfortable and is able to believe that s/he has values, so it
was relatively simple for me to continue working with my students without the need
for dramatic changes in behavior or planning. (Year 4 Teacher)
While others stressed that they had always programmed with values in mind but that this
trial allowed them to make these values explicit:
• I appreciated the opportunity to make more explicit something I had been doing
anyway. I think it is really important that we make our own values overt and that we
give the students opportunities to explore and formulate theirs. (Year 9 Teacher)
• I have no difficulty in programming values into my lessons. It is something I have
always done in the past. It is inherent in the very ‘social’ nature of the subject, but in
the present context I find the highlighting of ‘values in education’ certainly makes
more conscious of the need for closer correlation with student outcomes. (Year 2
Teacher)
The classroom atmosphere was considered vital by many, particularly as fostered by the
teacher’s own attitudes, value stance and relationship with the students:
• The area of difficulty in integrating values was in the actual presentation and facilitation
of lessons and learning experiences. It involved the presentation of information and
experiences according to my value stance of “committed impartiality.” (Pre-primary
Teacher)
• The development of a positive classroom climate does not happen immediately but over
a period of time and as a result of the consistent promotion and demonstration of
positive values and behaviors. Its development is fundamental to the success of any
values based program and the most powerful determinant is the teacher—being
genuine and sincere will not solve all the problems but will help you to develop the
trust which will allow a student to at least explore different values and the notion of
choice. (Year 4 Teacher)
• I consciously avoided standing in front of the children and informing them of the values
that we were “going to learn.” The aim was for the children to experience the activity
first and then draw their own conclusions from the following discussions. I tried to
alter my normal lesson as little as possible and not make the value teaching too
obvious. It was hoped that the message would be better absorbed with a subtle
approach. (Year 6–7 Teacher)
Several teachers commented that they were still in the process of developing a new
approach to class activities, which they found exciting but challenging:
• It is taking me some time to become used to my new role in discussions. I even have to
watch my body language. I’m so pleased I decided to incorporate the values into my
philosophy program because philosophy lessons see me as the facilitator, modeling
procedures of inquiry but also taking a stance of committed impartiality—this has
been emphasized during the trial. (Year 5 Teacher)
• I avoided directly teaching a particular value. Instead, I used activities which helped
students to consider and reflect on a variety of points of view which enabled them to
develop an opinion and belief. Sometimes I found this difficult because I held a
particular belief very strongly. (Year 6 Teacher)
A large number of teachers reported that students were strongly involved and interested
in the trialing, even groups of students who tended to be negative towards school:
• There was more involvement by all students in the lessons. It was noticeable that there
was a keener response from those students who are normally reluctant to participate in
discussions. Although there was an improvement in the oral discussion level, this
improvement did not flow through to the student’s written work. (Year 6 teacher)
• I believe that more students were on task and producing worthwhile work while
working on these projects than one might usually expect. (Year 9 Teacher)
• The language that they used when discussing inter-personal issues changed noticeably.
Their reflective writing also demonstrated their increased understanding. (Year 9
Teacher)
Teachers generally felt positive about the experience of being required to be explicit
about values in programs. Comments included that the values made the program more
real or focused, and that it was good to be explicit about something that had always been
present under the surface:
• To explicitly state the values that this program would be teaching, had a very positive
psychological effect upon my teaching. I felt that the entire program was based on a
very firm and worthwhile foundation. (Year 3 Teacher)
• Incorporating values was not really a problem. In fact, it enabled me to give a more
clearly defined focus to my teaching program. (Year 10 Teacher)
In fact, the programming process was seen as one of identifying and highlighting issues
and ideas that were relevant to an explicit values dimension:
• During the planning process I identified relevant issues that could be a focus for values
exploration. I then selected specific strategies for exploring values. I found that I did
not make major changes to planning and many strategies were part of my normal day-
to-day teaching. (K-7 Teacher)
Conclusion
The National Professional Development Program in Australia has provided a valuable

pathway for the Values Review Project to undertake major developments in the field of
values in education. The establishment of the Agreed Minimum Values Framework has
been recognized as a first, and its usage in two aspects of trailing has been unmatched.
This trial in Classroom Practice has provided an excellent tool for any group or individual
committed to identifying values and integrating them explicitly into practice.
Both the process trialed and case studies submitted as a part of the NPDP Values
Review Project trial, and soon to be published in the Final Curriculum Package, will be
an asset to any educational or community group throughout the world, recognizing
multicultural diversity in all facets.
Notes
1 Non-government schools refers to schools that are church based, including Catholic schools,
and other independent or private schools, i.e. not government systemic schools
2 The total number of schools involved in both aspects of the trialing was 26, as overlap did
occur between the two aspects.
3 A School Values Statement as defined by the NPDP Values Review Project, is a simple
collection of values to affirm and exists as a subset of a school’s development plan or
vision/mission statement.
4 The curriculum writer contracted to undertake the formation of the process package was Ms
Jane Grellier, from Jane Munroe and Associates.
5 The distinction between values, beliefs and attitudes is from a paper by Professor David Aspin
for the NPDP Values Review Project, and is contained within the Final Classroom Practice
Curriculum Package.
6 Chapter 4 of the Final Curriculum Package contains a very valuable section exploring the
notion of “What is your own values stance as a teacher?”
7 Chapter 6 of the Final Curriculum Package contains a relevant and thought-provoking focus
on “Assessment, Evaluation and Communication.”
8 An external evaluation was carried out by Dr Graham B. Dellar, Curtin University, on the
NPDP Values Review Project in October 1996.
9 In Western Australia the curriculum has been categorized into eight key learning areas,
derived in part from investigations into a national curriculum. These are: The Arts, English,
Health & Physical Education, Languages other than English (LOTE), Mathematics, Science,
Studies of Society and Environment, and Technology and Enterprise.
10 In Western Australia, the years of schooling are from pre-primary (age 5) to Year 12 (age
17). The term K-12 refers to this age span of schooling.
References
Lemin, M., Potts, H. and Welsford, P. (eds.) (1994) Values Strategies for Classroom Teachers:
Hawthorn, Victoria: ACER
Louden, William (1994) What Counts as Best Practice in Teachers’ Professional Development.
Report No 1, prepared for the WA Cross-sectoral Steering Committee for the NPDP in Western
Australia.
NPDP Values Review Project. Agreed Minimum Values Framework.
NPDP Values Review Project (1997) Values in Education: Classroom Curriculum Package.
NPDP Values Review Project (1997) Values In Education: School Planning Package.
4
Growing up Today: Children Talking
about Social Issues
CATHIE HOLDEN
I would like the world to be kind and friendly. Like if you

walk into town and people have a push-chair and they
accidentally bump into someone they would say ‘Oh, I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean to’. The other person would say
‘That’s OK’. I would like it if everyone thought about
violence. I hate the violence.
Girl, aged 11
The rapid social and economic change witnessed by society in the 1990s has led to
intense debate about the values of young people and the role of educators in equipping
them to become responsible adults in a culturally diverse society. The church has entered
the debate with Carey (1996) recognizing the ‘strong moral concern’ of children but
questioning the part currently being played by schools in fostering this concern. The
National Forum for Values in Education has drawn up guidelines for schools
emphasizing the family, relationships, the self and the environment. Central to this debate
is a concern that children should become active citizens in the future, with a moral
framework to guide them. The media report that young people are not interested in voting
and that they have no desire to be actively involved in creating a better society (TES,
1996). As a result there is a fear that young people are apathetic, devoid of interest in
current issues and cynical about the part they can play in society. What is missing from
this debate is the perspectives of children themselves. It is this that this chapter seeks to
redress.
Pollard, Thiessen and Filer (1997) argue that children have the right to express their
opinions about the relevance of their schooling to their own lives and culture. Those
concerned with education should, they say, take these views seriously and ensure that the
curriculum meets children’s needs, thereby decreasing alienation and allowing for a
subsequent rise in learning or ‘standards’:
Listening to pupil voices should not be seen as a sentimental or romantic

option, but as a serious contribution to educational thinking and
development (p. 5).
This chapter takes the rights of children to be heard as central: it is through listening to
children that we can understanding their values, their hopes, their motivation and their
misunderstandings and can thus plan an appropriate curriculum. Values and morality
cannot be taught in a vacuum: they must be placed within an appropriate context, and this
context must be relevant to pupils. This chapter looks at specific social, moral and
economic issues, and argues that these are areas of national (and international) concern
and ought to be more widely debated in schools. Listening to children talk about these
issues indicates that they are also of concern to children and that they are an appropriate
forum for values education. The work reported here arises from a recent major research
project which focused on children’s hopes and fears for the future (both for themselves
and for the wider world) and their visions of the kind of future society they would like.
While the overall findings have been reported elsewhere (Hicks and Holden, 1995), this
chapter reports specifically on children’s views on social and economic issues.
Social issues: a rationale
Poverty, unemployment, violence, racism and gender inequality have been identified as
major concerns for the twenty-first century by educators, politicians and policy-makers.
Most recently Brighouse (1996) called for ‘the key problems of the next century—
population growth, unemployment, ozone depletion, drought, famine and poverty’ to be
addressed in schools. More specifically, the International Labour Organization report
(ILO, 1996) states that world unemployment has reached one billion and that almost one-
third of the global work force is out of work or underemployed. Unemployment in
European Union (EU) countries is now 11.3 per cent. The report emphasizes that the
growing number of working poor will aggravate economic problems and social unrest
and as a result argues that unemployment is the most important challenge facing
industrialized and developing countries equally. Poverty, whilst recognized as a problem
for many third world countries, is now a major issue in the United Kingdom, with almost
one in three children living below the poverty line (TES, 1997). Violence was included in
our research as a key issue as it was evident from our pilot survey that children were
concerned about this and linked it with poverty and unemployment. Recent debate in the
media has also depicted increasing violence as a major concern for the 1990s, with
incidents such as the murders of toddler Jamie Bulger and headteacher Philip Lawrence
fuelling the debate.
In addition racism and the position of women were chosen as key issues. Whilst these
relate more to attitudes and beliefs than to socio-economic factors, we considered them
important as a measure of the values and beliefs currently held by young people.
The position of women continues to be a focus for debate. Feminist writers maintain
that girls are still disadvantaged by the educational system because, despite their better
performance in many examinations, they are still earning less and sharing fewer of the
top jobs. The National Curriculum may have ensured access to all for the taught
curriculum, but gender bias is still evident in schools (Arnot, 1993; Weiner, 1994). In
addition the work of Mac an Ghaill (1994), amongst others, shows how gender
expectations can work to the detriment of boys, with pressure put on them to conform to
certain ‘macho roles’.
Discussion of racism and anti-racist teaching has been discouraged in schools since
the 1980s and further sublimated by the National Curriculum. Griffiths and Troyna
(1995) detail the ‘persistent and invidious demonisation of and racist education as part of
Growing today 55
a more general attack on equal opportunities issues’. However, a Department for

Education and Employment (DFEE) press release (1996) indicates that racism is once
again being recognized as contributing to underachievement. The release details
measures to raise standards for ethnic minority pupils, and asks the Office for Standards
in Education (Ofsted) to ‘review its accumulating inspection evidence on racial
harassment and stereotyping and the action schools are taking to tackle this’. Evidence of
such continuing racial discrimination comes from Gilborn and Gipps (1996) who indicate
that while some ethnic minority groups are making good progress, Afro-Caribbean boys
still underachieve, and still suffer from discrimination when applying to older
universities. The report also notes widespread racial harassment of ethnic minority pupils
which is not always recognized by teachers.
Children and the future
Children’s concern for the future was taken as the central focus of our research as images
of the future play a crucial role in social and cultural change both at personal and societal
levels. People’s hopes and fears for the future influence what they are prepared to do in
the present and what they are prepared to work towards. Boulding (1988) and others have
suggested that images of the future are a critical measure of a society’s inner well-being,
acting as a mirror of the times. Ascertaining the views of children towards the future
seems particularly important as the attitudes they hold now may determine the part they
are prepared to play in maintaining our democratic society into the next century.
The data were obtained by questionnaire and indepth interviews with nearly 400
pupils from the south-west of England. Eight schools were chosen to ensure a balance of
urban and rural catchment areas and different socio-economic classes. Ethnic minority
children were also represented. Pupils were drawn from four age groups: 6–7, 10–11, 13–
14, and 17–18, with an equal number of boys and girls, but the complexity of the issues
discussed in this chapter mean that 7-year-olds are excluded from this particular focus.
The main findings, reported in Hicks and Holden (1995), conclude that:
British young people in the 1990s appear optimistic about their own
future. They are committed to the responsibilities of adult life and wish
for a good job, a good education and secure relationships with partners
and children. They are less optimistic about the future for other people,
both in their local community and globally… Whilst they often hope for a
more just and sustainable future, school provides little opportunity for
discussions on such issues. They feel responsible as citizens of the future
for what may happen, but lack a clear vision of what their own part in this
might be… Their visions thus remain fragmented and essentially
conservative in a time of radical change.
What pupils said
In order to investigate pupils’ opinions and understanding of social issues, they were first
of all given questionnaires which addressed each issue in relation to the future. Would
unemployment, for example, increase, stay the same, or decrease? A sample were then
asked in interview to elaborate on their answers and explain their thinking. This enabled
the researchers to gain access to the complexity of children’s thinking, including an
understanding of how misconceptions varied with age and factors which determined a
positive or negative outlook.
Each issue was addressed from a local and global perspective, with children being
asked for their opinions on both. This was done because of our long-standing belief that
both perspectives are important in this age of cultural diversity and global
communication. Children may feel more immediate affinity with their local area but, as
Brighouse (1996) says, we would be working within ‘an artificial framework’ if we just
tried to understand issues of equal opportunity or injustice in relation to the local
community. In addition what children perceive as happening in their own area may be
very different to what they expect for the rest of the world. Previous work on children’s
expectations for the future (L.Johnson, 1987) shows that they tend to be less optimistic
about the possible future for people outside their own community. More problems exist
‘out there’ than ‘back here’.
Children’s opinions on each issue are reported below, with discussion on these
reserved for the final section of the chapter.
Unemployment
Children were asked if they thought that in the future, there would be more
unemployment, less
Table 4.1 Unemployment in the local area (%)
(n=284)
Age 11 Age 14 Age 18 Total
More unemployment 51 37 46 45
About the same 28 39 46 36
Less unemployment 21 25 7 19
Table 4.2 Unemployment in the world (%) (n=284)

More unemployment 48 53 62 53
Less unemployment 27 14 13 19
Growing today 57
unemployment or if levels would stay the same. Discussion in follow-up interviews

allowed them to elaborate on the reasons for their choice and their understanding of this
issue.
The data indicate that half the children questioned thought that levels of
unemployment would worsen, with the other half divided over whether it would improve
or stay the same. They were slightly more pessimistic about the situation globally than
locally. With a further breakdown by gender, boys were slightly more optimistic than
girls as in each case two-thirds of those saying there would be less unemployment were
boys.
Children’s understanding of unemployment naturally varied with age. Eleven-year-
olds who thought levels of unemployment would increase used as evidence what they
saw around them or their own family situations:
When you go down the High Street there’s people saying they’re
hungry…
My mum’s unemployed… She’d like to go out to work.
Other 11-year-olds showed an ability to hypothesize about the job situation, and we see at
this age the beginnings of what was to become a recurrent theme: a fascination with new
technology at the same time as a realization that it may bring job losses.
There won’t be any more jobs in the future because there’s

electronics…like JCB trucks. They just have to sit in them and move the
controls. There are robots now.
There’ll be robots…robots will take over people’s jobs.
Those who thought unemployment would decrease gave as reasons evidence from
personal experience or thought that the government could provide jobs:
My Dad was unemployed but he’s got a job now.

If there was a good government they could pay people to collect
litter…at least it’s a job.
In one instance this led to debate about the power of governments to change the
economic situation and illustrates the different levels of economic awareness among 11-
year-olds:
I think countries might change things…like whoever wants a job you can
just have it.
People might invent more jobs.
No, you can’t do that, you can’t, you can’t…
Fourteen-year-olds were more optimistic than younger pupils about improved economic
prospects in their local area, but less so for the global situation. Those that thought there
would be more unemployment shared the 11-year-olds’ fear that ‘machines will take
over’. One pupil explained:
There’ll probably be more (unemployment) because machines at the

moment are taking over jobs. As technology progresses there’ll be more
people out of jobs.
A new cause for unemployment emerged within the 14-year-old group, that of
overpopulation coupled with immigration. Some children stated that the increased
population ‘will mean more unemployment’ while others added that this was made worse
by people coming into the UK:
There’s not going to be enough space.

It’s pretty easy to get into England—for immigrants to get our jobs.
In addition one pupil added that unemployment could be voluntary:
A lot of people are purposely unemployed to cheat the system and try to
get more money.
The oldest pupils were the least optimistic about employment conditions worldwide with
nearly two-thirds expecting more unemployment. Like the 14-year-olds they cited
increased technology and overpopulation as key reasons. Their information sources were
‘television and talking to people’: few mentioned having discussed unemployment and its
causes at school.
It seems, then, that there is cause for concern. The older pupils get, the less optimistic
they are about the job market which will directly affect them, and yet their understanding
of issues relating to employment are not grounded in accurate information. They have
misconceptions about immigration, are confused about the role of technology and appear
to have had little chance to discuss these issues in school.
Poverty
Pupils were much more optimistic for the future economic prosperity of their local
community than for the world. Just over a quarter thought there would be more poverty
locally whereas nearly a half expected more poverty on a global scale.
It is interesting to compare pupils’ perspectives on unemployment and poverty. Whilst
in each case a worse scenario was expected globally than locally, children seemed much
less optimistic about employment prospects increasing than they did about the alleviation
of poverty, despite the fact that most linked unemployment with poverty, as illustrated by
this 11-year-old:
There’ll be more poor people because there won’t be so many jobs

because of robots and they won’t be able to have a home and there’ll be
more tramps.
Some 14-year-olds made the same links, and as with unemployment, cited immigration as
a cause:
Growing today 59
I think it (poverty) will be just the same—it won’t get any better or worse
There are always people from other countries coming over getting jobs
and people in our country aren’t getting the jobs. If people are still coming
to Britain there’ll still be the same number of poor people.
Table 4.3 Poverty in the local area (%) (n=284)
More poverty 36 25 25 29
Less poverty 31 22 16 24
Table 4.4 Poverty in the world (%) (n=284)

More poverty 48 42 51 47
Less poverty 18 18 19 18
A group discussion by 14-year-olds shed further light on their understanding:
Poverty here, it’s because of the government. There’s a recession.

And it’s because of modernization…
Technology’s too far ahead for its own good—there’s not much for us
to do.
Yes, some people will get very rich and others will be very very poor.
It (poverty) is going to go up… We’re going to run out of things—gas
and oil.
While comments on ‘modernization’ and ‘technology’ indicate that pupils assumed that
these could cause unemployment, the first comment points to a realization that
government policy can influence socio-economic conditions with the last pupil believing
that poverty is an inevitable consequence of depletion of resources.
One might have expected the 18-year-olds to have a more sophisticated understanding
of the causes of poverty, but some continued to deliver simplistic arguments indicating an
inadequate knowledge base. Once again immigration and overpopulation were given as
reasons for a rise in poverty, with a belief that governments could influence the situation,
especially in the global context.
Well there’s not much contraception in the third world and that’s where
the poverty is…
I think the Northern countries will realize the Southern countries need
help.
One girl pondered the meaning of poverty:
I watched a debate on TV about poverty today and in Victorian times—

they say there’s more poverty today…depending on your definition.
There’s a different meaning of the poor… So even if there is more poverty
if won’t be as much as today.
Another simply said that there would be more poor people because of drugs ‘which made
people ill and poor’.
What seems evident is that whilst some older pupils are more aware of the complexity
of the issues, pupils of all ages lack information about the causes of poverty. Within
Britain, continued immigration was consistently cited as a reason for poverty and
unemployment, with similar misunderstandings surrounding overpopulation in relation to
the third world. Those who thought that governments had it in their power to influence
economic conditions were unable to say how this might come about: ‘government’
seemed to be a ruling group who could choose to influence people’s lives at will. There
was very little understanding of economic systems or economic interdependence.
Violence
Children did not appear optimistic about the chances of a more peaceful society. Whilst
both 11-and 14-year-olds seemed divided about whether violence would increase or not,
the 18-year-olds were far less optimistic. As with pupils’ reactions to poverty and
unemployment, again there was a feeling that the situation would be worse globally than
locally.
The arguments given by 11-year-olds seemed to fall into three main categories. First,
there were those children who saw crime and violence as being linked to employment
prospects:
If there’s more unemployment there’ll be more violence—they’re dead

bored and they have no jobs.
If people lose their job it forces them to get more violent.
Second, there was an assumption (repeated often) that what happens in other countries
may happen here. Attitudes in the US in particular were seen as influencing behaviour in
Britain:
In America police carry guns and it encourages people to have guns so

there’s more fighting.
Some children mentioned that they had heard about refugees or seen war-torn countries
on television and that this might be a cause of increased violence:
Table 4.5 Violence in the local area (%) (n=284)
Growing today 61
More violent 41 45 67 49
Less violent 15 10 9 12
Table 4.6 Violence in the world (%) (n=284)

More violent 64 59 61 61
Less violent 21 8 14 14
I think other people from other countries will come over and there’ll be
like lots of fighting.
This reflects findings from the main survey (Hicks and Holden, 1995) where children of
7 and 11 worried about ‘the IRA coming to my town’ and a situation like Bosnia being
re-enacted in their local community.
Finally some children saw an increase in material goods and ‘electronic things’ as
being likely to cause more violence, as people would be tempted to ‘steal things’ which
they could not buy.
Violence, especially in their local community, was one of the areas 11-year-olds felt
most strongly about and talked about at length. One child said plaintively that she knew
there would be more ‘because nobody’s taking any action on violence …nobody’s doing
any thing about it’. Both she and her friend agreed that ‘if somebody did take action it
might get better’.
Fourteen-year-olds seemed to take a more prosaic view. Many accepted a rise in
violence as inevitable, although some pointed out that it was ‘not as bad here as in other
places’. There was a feeling that violence and crime were a part of society that was here
to stay and which you learnt to deal with.
It’s not so bad… There are places you don’t go at night and the weekend.
As with 11-year-olds, pupils in this age group saw violence as being linked to crime and
unemployment and once again mentioned the influence of the US.
I think there’ll be more (violence) because especially from America—it

seems to come over to Britain ten years later and everyone there is
carrying guns.
There was no mention in this age group of refugees arriving or of potential terrorist
action, but instead a new perception: that the home background might be influential.
Violence to children in the home was mentioned as was violence on TV:
There’ll be more violence because people learn it from their parents, they
see them getting beaten up.
And there’s a lot more influence on TV and small kids pick it up.
Children get confused—like fact and fiction—they don’t know the
difference. You see someone get hit and get up and kids think they can do
it…young children—7 and 8.
None of the 14-year-olds interviewed saw themselves as in any way lacking a moral code
or contributing to violent behaviour. In another conversation the 14-year-olds referred to
‘teenagers’ in the abstract, as though they themselves were not in this age bracket:
Shoplifting’s going up.

Yes because teenagers don’t get the understanding they need—you see
it on TV—crime’s going up, the suicide rate’s going up.
There’s a gang of teenagers who hang around us and my dad’s car’s
been broken into three times.
Teenagers now—if they want something they just steal it.
There’s no police here—they take at least half an hour to get here from
Bath.
These pupils did not appear to listen to each other; instead they stated their viewpoints as
individuals. One thought teenagers needed more understanding; another seemed to write
off his peers as selfish materialists with no moral code. The final statement suggests that
inadequate policing may be to blame.
Although when responding to the questionnaire 14-year-olds were equally divided
about whether violence would increase or stay the same, in interview the assumption was
that it would increase. Pupils cited many examples of crime and violence in their
community and only a minority reiterated their belief that the level of violence would
stay the same (or decrease):
In the future there’s bound to be more weapons but the police will have
better ways of controlling criminals, so it’ll balance itself out.
Fourteen-year-olds had less to say about violence in the world, even though they were
ostensibly more pessimistic. Most comments related to the danger of war, rather than
violence amongst peoples living in distant localities.
There’s just like one button…if all the countries disagree they could blow
up England with one button—that’s quite scary.
Possibly nuclear war could break out—if we run out of resources.
The oldest pupils were the least passionate about this issue. The 18-year-olds seemed to
accept that there was ‘a trend towards more violence’ and that this was a fact of life
which one had to deal with. When questioned about the causes of violence, they echoed
the 14-year-olds, citing unemployment, poverty and the approach of parents. For one 18-
year-old it all ‘depends on parental attitudes—what they let children watch on TV’.
Growing today 63
Again it appears that pupils have half the truth, although it is more difficult to make
judgements about levels of knowledge when dealing with social rather than economic
issues. Pupils were making links, were trying to understand the reasons for violent
behaviour, but were likely to make simplistic assumptions. Little time was given in
schools for discussion of such behaviour.
Position of women
What is interesting here is the significant difference of opinion according to age: younger
pupils expected today’s status quo to be maintained whilst older pupils anticipated that
women would have more power. Further analysis showed a gender difference with more
girls than boys expecting women to be more powerful.
The 11-year-olds, in interview, were not nearly as concerned about this issue as they
were about violence or poverty. Some thought women would be more powerful but many
thought the situation would be the same, either because there was no need to change or
because change was unlikely. One said change was not possible ‘because most of the
government are men’, and another added: ‘I think it should change but it won’t.’
By contrast 14-year-olds were very interested in this issue and in interview based their
perception of women in the future either on their own experiences or what they saw
happening around them. The girls were much more outspoken than the boys
Table 4.7 Women in the local area (%) (n=284)
More powerful 36 58 65 51
Less powerful 19 3 3 10
Table 4.8 Women in the world (%) (n=284)

More powerful 30 59 77 52
Less powerful 19 6 1 10
in these discussions. One girl thought things would be the same in the future because
school preserved gender inequalities:
We’re not allowed to play basketball or rugby.
But many girls were optimistic that things would be better for women:
I think they will be, definitely. There will be better jobs. They’ll be more
independent.
Women are coming up in the world.

They’ll be totally equal in the future
A boy of 14 agreed, albeit cautiously:
They have been getting more equal and I suppose it will continue to
happen. They are well not totally equal, but fairly equal now.
Whilst most thought the global situation would be similar to that in their own community,
some pupils felt that people in other countries were less concerned about equal
opportunities, citing India as an example: ‘because they haven’t got the same
understanding (of women) as we have over here.’
As with the 14-year-olds, this subject engendered fierce debate amongst those aged
18. There were those who maintained that more power for women and greater equality
were inevitable, and those who thought that the status quo would be maintained either
because it ought to be, or because the process of change was so slow.
In the former category boys (b) and girls (g) were often in agreement:
I think it will be different…there’s been a great change of girls doing

exams men used to do. (g)
Already people’s attitudes are changing immensely. (b)
Women have the qualifications but a lot of people giving them the jobs
have been men, but now women are in those positions—it’s going to be
easier, (g)
By contrast, those who thought that the status quo would be maintained because of
inherent gender differences were usually boys:
There will always be a place for men doing dirty jobs and women doing
other jobs. The physical differences will always mean they do different
jobs, (b)
Men are stronger than women. (b)
One girl argued fiercely against these boys:
What about the high-powered jobs where women get 2 per cent of the jobs
and get only 74 per cent of the pay of men?
Another girl thought that women ought to have more equality but pointed out that
It takes a long time for people to change…
This issue which engendered the most discussion amongst the older pupils was also the
one where they were best able to argue their case. Although once again this area had not
Growing today 65
been much debated in school in its own right, it was obviously an issue which they talked
about amongst themselves, read about and had heard discussed by the media.
Racial prejudice
Both in the local community and globally, 41 per cent of pupils expected the same levels
of prejudice in the future. However, of those who predicted that there would be less
prejudice, it was older pupils who were the most convinced of this. A third of 18-years-
olds expected a more tolerant society (globally and locally) as opposed to under a fifth of
11-year-olds. It is notable how the expectation for a more tolerant world increases with
age, in contrast to the 18-year-olds’ pessimism about economic issues.
The 11-year-olds were divided in their views and the influence of the school was
found here in a way which was not evident in the other responses. In one school, the
children had followed a programme on racism as part of their Religious Education. These
children were convinced that racism would decrease because (they thought) other
children would have followed this RE programme and would have learnt the things they
had learnt and so
Table 4.9 Prejudice in the local area (%) (n=284)
More prejudice 48 18 25 32
Less prejudice 20 31 35 28
Table 4.10 Prejudice in the world (%) (n=284)

More prejudice 54 29 25 38
Less prejudice 18 17 32 21
would be more tolerant in the future. They had learnt about Martin Luther King, Gandhi
and racism in Britain and now knew, they said, that:
Even though people may have different religions they are still just as
good.
In other schools, however, the response was much more mixed and revealed a degree of
ignorance and uncertainty about the future.
You get all these protests and that sometimes makes it worse…you can
only call those dolls golly now.
If more people are born there might be more prejudice against

them…like Catholics.
Others linked better employment prospects to a decrease in prejudice, saying that there
would be less racism if there were more jobs as then ‘they wouldn’t pick on other
people’.
A sharp contrast to the views of the white children talking above was provided by the
black 11-year-olds. Many of the latter felt that racism would get worse, citing what they
had seen or heard:
There’s white people and they’re driving any Muslim people out of the
area.
Some tried to find reasons for this:
I think some people do that (are racist) because they don’t get houses.
They don’t make no laws…there’s no laws (to do with racism).
Only one child tried to explain that things could change:
It depends on the people who make the rules… like the president and that.
Although half of the 14-year-olds had said that levels of racism would stay the same, in
interview the overwhelming view of the 14-year-olds was that prejudice would decrease
because ‘people are being taught about it’ and ‘people are mixing together more and
becoming friends’. But pupils readily identified forces at work against this, citing ‘films
that are racist’ and the police:
Yeah—and if there was a black man in a nice car and the police saw him
they’d stop him but if it was a white man they wouldn’t—police shouldn’t
be allowed to be racist.
As with violence, pupils thought that racism was worse ‘in other places’, citing London
and other big cities or other countries:
Germany—that’s a racist country—they set Jews alight in concentration

camps.
None of the pupils in this group discussion challenged this remark.

Eighteen-year-olds were the most convinced that there would be less racial prejudice.
They felt that racism, in common with sexism, was more talked about now and that there
was more awareness of the similarities between races and the damaging effects of
prejudice. Less prejudice was accepted as a fact of life but it was also recognised that
change was a long-term process.
Growing today 67
There will be less—people have changed from how they used to be.
People are more accepting now than they used to be… It’ll change over
time, with generations.
Although many pupils were optimistic that racism would decrease, their attitudes towards
racial prejudice reveal a mixture of ignorance and stereotyping. The comments about
police behaviour and German racism are worrying and again indicate a lack of discussion
about these issues in most schools. The school where race had been incorporated into the
curriculum is the exception. Black children were understandably concerned about racism,
in the same way as many 11-year-olds were concerned about violence, but again there
appeared to be little forum for discussion in school. Whilst the attitudes of the older
pupils are encouraging, their expectation that people will become more tolerant seems at
odds with their previously stated belief that continuing immigration might cause further
unemployment, violence and poverty. It also does not fit with the lived experiences of the
black children. Again it appears that many pupils have a superficial and fragmented
understanding of the issues, based on conversations with friends and information from
the media, unchallenged by informed debate in school.
Discussion
Our survey reveals that pupils in the 1990s feel that the world will be a more tolerant
place in the future and yet also accept that more violence is inevitable, along with
increased unemployment and poverty. Underpinning their thinking is a strong sense of
justice and fairness, exhibited in their indignation at acts of racism, teenagers who steal or
parents who allow young children to watch violence on TV. However, many beliefs are
not founded on sound knowledge but are based on stereotypical assumptions,
fragmentary evidence or emotional response and are thus often confused and ill-
informed.
This is particularly true in those areas which relate to socio-economic issues. Most
children had very limited knowledge of the reasons for unemployment. It was accepted as
a situation which would get worse, with new technology, immigration and
overpopulation cited as reasons. If, as the International Labour Organization says (ILO,
1996), unemployment is the most important challenge facing the industrial and
developing world, our children are ill-prepared for this, although they will be the most
directly affected. Likewise, poverty was thought to be either a state of being which could
be influenced by governments or again a result of immigration, overpopulation and
unemployment. If one-third of our children now live in poverty (TES, 1997) and if many
suspect immigration may be a cause of this, this does not bode well for the improved race
relations which the same pupils foresee.
Increased violence greatly concerned the 11-year-olds whilst older pupils accepted this
as inevitable and a part of life. Again, pupils had not had much chance for informed
debate on this issue: their opinions appeared to be based on what they had seen on
television or heard discussed at home. There was much moral indignation about the
behaviour of ‘teenagers’ and some parents but little sense of what could or should be
done. One is left with a picture of anxious and bewildered 11-year-olds who realize that
the world is a rather frightening place, turning into cynical 14- and 18-year-olds who
accept that this is the way things are, and that you learn to look out for yourself, acquiring
information about the places and people to avoid. Such attitudes do not bode well if we
wish to work towards a more peaceful society.
This then supports the case for informed discussion on violence and conflict resolution
at both primary and secondary level. First, the anxiety and concern of the 11-year-olds
needs to be harnessed and allayed, with discussion and opportunities for action in school
so that they do not accept increased violence as inevitable. Second, older pupils need
informed debate to challenge many of the misconceptions surrounding the roots of
violence. In particular, pupils often thought that violence in the US would automatically
transfer here and that increased poverty and unemployment would lead to more violence.
There was no evidence of children welcoming increased violence (indeed it was the
opposite for the 11-year-olds) but rather of young people feeling powerless in the face of
inevitable social changes.
Children’s perspectives on race revealed many parallels, although this was a more
complex area. As noted, there were many misconceptions with some children thinking
the police per se were racist and one citing Germany as a racist country. Pupils who hold
that that racism will inevitably decline need to have this complacency challenged. The
black children talking indicated that this was not their perspective and indeed the latest
information from the Commission for Racial Equality (1996) indicates that black people
still suffer high levels of discrimination. The emotive response of many children that
‘immigrants are taking our jobs’ needs to be explored. Hatcher (1995) points out that
ideas about race may co-exist contradictorily in white discourse. In other words, children
may make statements about being anti-racist (and mean it genuinely) but may hold racist
views about immigration and poverty. P.Johnson (1996) points to the importance of the
emotions in shaping children’s reactions to dealing with prejudice. We need, he says, to
develop children’s metacognitive skills in reflection if we are to succeed in promoting
increased tolerance and respect:
This self-consciousness involves self-awareness, self questioning…even

measures of self confidence and self-doubt: a capacity to systematically
work through important elements of one’s approach to a values situation.
That must then lead to…self control and conscience.
Alongside this there must be the provision of up-to-date information on race, so that
children can form their personal responses and value systems from an accurate
knowledge base.
Pupils seemed best able to argue coherently on gender issues. This area seemed to be
one where many were aware of the current debates, although there was inevitably some
disagreement between boys and girls. Younger children were less interested in this area,
but by secondary school it was evidently a much-discussed subject. As with race, this is
an area where the emotions affect one’s rationale, and pupils need to be encouraged to
examine their own feelings and values, realizing where they stand and why. In order to
do this they need accurate information and an introduction to the controversial nature of
the debate on gender equality. Children should be introduced to these issues whilst still in
Growing today 69
primary school so that they can start to think through the arguments before the ground is
muddied by the sexual emotions of adolescence.
Apparent in all the responses was a lack of knowledge of global issues. Pupils
consistently thought that socio-economic conditions would be worse globally (as opposed
to locally) but had very little evidence upon which to base their statements. In fact the
comments about violence, war, immigration and gender indicate the beginnings of
xenophobic insular attitudes, where Britain might be bad but other places are worse, with
people from other countries influencing or threatening our well-being.
Ways forward
Whilst it is heartening to see a sense of justice and optimism in our young people, there is
clear evidence of the need for a programme of social, moral, cultural and economic
education. Children need time and space to discuss social issues and they need accurate
information to inform their judgements. This points to the need for what Richardson
(1990) calls transformative education; that is an approach which allows children to
explore, debate and act upon current social issues. Such an approach is endorsed by Lister
(1987). He reminds us of the ‘vanguard educators’ of the 1980s who advocated that the
curriculum should contain ‘major issues; war and peace, poverty and development,
human rights and the challenges of multicultural societies and an interdependent world’
so that children could be prepared for the changing world in which they live.
The introduction of the National Curriculum marginalized teaching of these issues,
whilst paying lip service to educating children as future consumers and citizens with the
cross-curricular ‘Education for Citizenship’ and ‘Economic and Industrial
Understanding’, established in 1996/7. These themes are rarely found in schools,
however (Hannan and Merryfield, 1995), and in any case it is doubtful if they ever really
addressed pupils’ concerns about social and economic issues (Davies, 1991; Hyland,
1991). Despite this marginalization, many materials have been produced to support
teachers who wish to enhance their teaching with a global dimension or who wish to
explore social issues with pupils. The Development Education Centres have produced
many teaching packs which help to explain the causes of global poverty (e.g. Traidcraft,
1994; Unicef, 1988) and there are also materials available on multicultural education and
anti-racism to support teaching in primary and secondary schools (e.g. Institute of Race
Relations, 1988). Myers’s work (1992) on gender provides starting points for both staff
and pupils. Work on conflict resolution in schools and human rights can inform debates
on violence and peace.
If we harness young people’s optimism, their sense of justice and fairness, and
encourage them to discuss and debate the social issues pertinent to our time we will be
following Richardson’s transforming stance. This is where ‘energy is not directed into
smashing and burning, but into confronting, opposing, arguing, campaigning, and into
building, caring, loving, sharing, making’. Essentially this is concerned with education
for justice, an education ‘concerned with feelings and consciousness as well as
structures’. Such an approach educates children about the structures of our society as well
as enabling them to explore their values and emotions. It is this that will foster active
citizenship, that will enable children to feel informed and empowered to work towards a
better society and it is this that the young people in our survey so evidently need.
References
Arnot, M. (1993) A crisis in patriarchy? British feminist educational politics and state regulation of
gender. In M. Arnot and K.Weiler (eds), Feminism and Social Justice in Education. London:
Falmer Press.
Boulding, E. (1988) Building a Global Civic Culture; Education for an Interdependent World.
London; Teachers College Press.
Brighouse, T. (1996) Foreword in M.Steiner (ed.), Developing the Global Teacher. Stoke on Trent:
Trentham.
Carey, G. (1996) Speech to House of Lords, 5 July, 1996.
Commission for Racial Equality (1996) Roots of the Future: Ethnic Diversity in the making of
Britain. London: CRE.
Davies, I. (1991) Citizenship: What Is It? Pastoral Care in Education 9(2), 9–11.
DFEE (1996) Action to raise standards for ethnic minority pupils. Press release DFEE, 5 Sept.
1996.
Gilborn, D. and Gipps, C. (1996) Recent Research on the Achievement of Ethnic Minority Pupils.
Ofsted, HMSO.
Griffiths, M. and Troyna, B. (eds) (1995) Anti racism, Culture and Social Justice. Stoke on Trent:
Trentham.
Hannan, A. and Merryfield, A. (1995) Whatever happened to education for all? Unpublished paper,
University of Plymouth.
Hatcher, R. (1995) Racism and children’s cultures. In M. Griffiths and B.Troyna (eds), Anti racism,
Culture and Social Justice. Stoke on Trent: Trentham.
Hicks, D. and Holden, C. (1995) Visions of the Future: Why we need to teach for Tomorrow. Stoke
on Trent: Trentham.
Hyland, T. (1991) Citizenship education and the Enterprise Culture. Forum. 33(3), 86–8.
Institute of Race Relations (1988) Roots of Racism.
ILO (1996) World Employment 1996–7: National Policies in a Global Context, Geneva:
International Labour Organization.
Johnson, L. (1987) Children’s visions of the future, The Futurist 21(3), 36–40.
Johnson P. (1996) Metacognition and the emotions in race relations education. Unpublished paper
for the conference of the Journal for Moral Education, Lancaster.
Lister, I. (1987) Global and International Approaches to Education, in C.Harber (ed.), Political
Education in Britain. London: Falmer Press.
Mac an Ghaill, M. (1994) The Making of Men. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Myers, K. (1992) Genderwatch: After the ERA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
National Curriculum Council (1991) Curriculum Guidance Eight: Education for Citizenship. York,
HMSO.
National Curriculum Council (1991) Curriculum Guidance Four: Education for Economic and
Industrial Understanding. York: HMSO.
Pollard, A., Thiessen, D. and Filer, A. (1997) Children and Their Curriculum. London: Falmer
Press.
Richardson, R. (1990) Daring to be a Teacher. Stoke on Trent: Trentham.
TES (1996) MPs act on sinking interest in citizenship. Times Educational Supplement, 7 June 1996.
TES (1997) The gap is growing all the time. Times Educational Supplement, 31 Jan. 1997.
Traidcraft (1994) International Trade Game. Traidcraft: Gateshead.
Growing today 71
Unicef (1988) We Are what we Eat: But who Controls our Choice’? An Active Learning Project on
Food and ‘Nutrition. London: Unicef.
Weiner, G. (1994) Feminisms in Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.
5
Discussion of Values and the Value of
Discussion
GRAHAM HAYDON
Sophie’s parents were threatening to remove her from the

school because Tracey was threatening her. When I sat
down with them, Tracey, in her blue jeans and black
leather jacket, said she did not like Sophie’s clothes.
Sophie was wearing a Laura Ashley floral dress and a
straw hat. ‘Anything else?’ I asked. ‘Yes. She talks funny.
She uses stupid words.’ Sophie: ‘Oh, don’t be so
preposterous.’ Tracey. ‘There. See what I mean?’
Clarke, 1997, p. 158
The idea of discussion in the classroom is not unfamiliar to teachers, at least in Britain
(though the practice may be less familiar than the idea). There is no subject in the
curriculum in which a teacher may not on occasion initiate discussion between students
either across the whole class or in smaller groups. Yet it is probably the case that most
teachers have had little training specifically directed at this aspect of classroom activity.1
Since most teachers also will have had little systematic introduction to dealing with
values in their teaching, discussion about values is likely to be an area in which teachers’
practice is informed more by whatever preconceptions they bring to their task than by any
considered view of why there should be discussion of values and of what can come out of
it.
Philosophers of education have looked at the topic of discussion before. Indeed, in the
1970s David Bridges (1979) treated the educational role of discussion at length.2 I have
learned a lot from his account, and there is much of value in it which there is no need or
space to repeat here. But while many of his examples involved values, he was not
focusing especially on values as the subject of discussion.
My intention in this chapter is to give something of an overview of the role of
discussion in matters concerning values. I shall assume a context of diversity of values, in
all its inherent complexity. I shall not here attempt to give practical guidelines for the
conduct of discussion; my concern is that any such guidelines might be misapplied if
teachers do not have an understanding of the variety of possible forms and aims of
discussion about values, so that, drawing on that understanding, they can be clearer about
what to expect or not to expect from discussion.
One way to see if there is something distinctive about discussion of values, as opposed
to discussion of anything else, is to see whether there is something about the nature of
values in particular that makes a difference. An important point here is the extent to
Discussion of values and the value of discussion 73
which values have their existence, or at least their effective existence, within the realm of
human thought and language. Since language is a social phenomenon, I shall refer to this
realm as that of ‘discourse’; for although individuals can talk to themselves, they can
only learn language in interaction with others. We can say, then, that some things in the
world have an existence which is independent of discourse; others are discourse-
dependent. The first would exist even if no persons had ever existed who were capable of
thinking or talking about them; I take this to be true, for instance, of stars and planets
(though, of course, if no persons existed there would be no one to call them ‘stars’ and
‘planets’). Things of the second kind exist only in so far as there are people who think
and talk in certain ways. The movements of the planets around the sun are of the first
kind; movements on the stock exchange are of the second kind. Without people acting in
certain ways on the basis of certain understandings, there would be no such thing as
stocks and shares; in that sense, stocks and shares exist only in the world of human
discourse.
Should we class values among things of the first kind or of the second? Some people
who think of values—or at least some values—as absolutes will talk as if values existed
quite independently of human talking and thinking. It is actually difficult to see in what
sense this could be true (could the value of respect for persons exist if there had never
been any persons?).3 But even if values could somehow exist independently of discourse,
they could not make a difference to our lives except through thought and language.
Values do not literally push or pull us: only our conceptions of values can move us.
Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV (Part 1) was in a sense right when he said ‘What is
honour? a word’, though we should expand this to say that honour is a concept which can
only exist because there are language-using beings whose form of life has a place for
such concepts. This is in no way to deny the force that a value such as honour (or justice,
or respect for life, or recognition of human rights) can have in the world. As Falstaff was
well aware beneath his cynicism, values can move people to act in ways which the
biologically-given motivations which we share with other animals never could.4
So, values have their effective existence within the realm of human discourse. This
means that there is a sense in which the continued existence of a value depends on its
continuing to feature in discourse. A notion such as ‘human rights’ has a history; it is
actually quite a recent and geographically local invention (going back only a few
centuries, and coming from western Europe), but by now it seems to be pretty firmly
established in moral and political discourse. On the other hand, in certain cultures the
concept of honour has ceased to have an effective existence. Much the same perhaps
applies to chastity.
What all this is leading to is that talk about values is not incidental to their existence; it
is their life-blood. This is worth remembering when we wonder how important it is that
people engage in discussion of values. Unfortunately, however, the existence of values
within human discourse, in the sense I have used the term here,5 does not guarantee that
values will be discussed, since values can figure in the kind of human talk which can’t be
dignified by the name ‘discussion’. Even the sort of ‘debate’, sometimes seen on
television and no doubt often happening in private, in which people shout at each other,
can be a form of discourse in which values feature (think of an argument about abortion
in which terms such as ‘right to choose’ and ‘murder’ are used as sticks to beat the other
party with). If nothing else, the more careful kind of discourse which we call discussion
can allow values to be operative in a more reflective and reasoned way.
Before going further I had better say something more of what I am taking ‘discussion
of values’ to be (I shall use ‘discussion of values’ and ‘discussion about values’ without
any deliberate distinction). First, we need some minimal notion of what picks out
discussion within the broader field of human talk—a field broad enough to include both
‘passing the time of day’ in casual conversation, and a ‘shouting match’ which is only
just short of physical violence and may lead to it. Discussion must be about something,
where the ‘something’ is consciously recognized as being in question. This may not be a
clear-cut matter; sometimes part of the discussion will be concerned with getting clear on
exactly what the discussion is about. But there has to be on the part of the participants a
conscious sense that there is some issue which needs to be sorted out. What counts as
‘sorting out’ may depend on the nature of the issue, and may include: coming to a correct
perception of something, understanding each other, coming to an agreement about an
issue, coming to a practical resolution on what is to be done. In any case, we can only
sensibly describe the talking as discussion if the parties display a willingness to listen to
each other, to take each others’ contributions seriously, and potentially to have their own
minds altered by what another says (see Bridges (1979) for a more extended account).
If discussion is characterized by such features as these, then I do not want to restrict
‘discussion of values’ to discussion in which certain values, or even values in general, are
explicitly taken as the subject matter. Certainly this sometimes happens, perhaps
especially in educational contexts, where the participants may explicitly set out to explore
some question about values. But I want to use ‘discussion of values’ broadly enough to
encompass such diverse cases as academic discussion about the causes of the downfall of
communist regimes in Eastern Europe, where understanding the values that moved some
of the original participants may be essential to historical understanding, and practical
discussion about educational policy, such as the desirability or otherwise of selection by
ability. In a discussion of the later sort there is likely to be constant reference to values—
equality, achievement, co-operation, competition, efficiency, fairness, and so on—and
although values such as these are not the focus of the discussion in their own right, it may
well be helpful in coming to a conclusion if explicit attention is paid to what the
participants understand by these values.
If this suggests to the reader that most serious discussion is going to need attention to
values at some point and therefore is going to count as ‘discussion of values’, I would
accept the suggestion. (It will not however apply to quite all discussion; discussion
between physicists about the best theoretical account of some observed phenomenon, for
instance, may not require explicit attention to values, though even there some sense of
what counts as a good explanation will be operative.) The fact that discussion of values
will be an aspect of most serious discussion is one reason why it so important. But apart
from cases where values happen to become problematic within a discussion of something
else, there will be times when there is point in deliberately having a discussion about
values. Such occasions are perhaps most likely to arise in educational contexts.
But before turning to education, and at the risk of going over ground that is obvious, I
want to stress that discussion about values is important throughout people’s lives,
because the diversity of values often brings people into situations of perplexity and
potential conflict, where different values can pull in different ways, and it can be quite
unclear what is best to be done; discussion will often be the best, and sometimes the only,
way of reaching a resolution. This is true even where the diversity in question is simply
the plurality of values recognized by one person. If I am in a situation where professional
responsibilities, family loyalties, and considerations of kindness and fairness create a
dilemma, then even if this is my problem and no one else’s, discussion with someone else
may help me to see my way through the difficulty.
Where it is the values cherished by two different persons that create a dilemma for
both of them, then again discussion may help both of them towards a resolution; and here
in addition it will sometimes be that reaching a resolution through discussion will be the
only alternative to unresolved stand-off or thoroughgoing conflict. Again, that situation is
not dependent on cultural differences; partners or married couples, even if they come
from very similar cultural backgrounds, are likely to face many situations in their life
together when discussion of values is needed. But if they come into the relationship from
more widely divergent backgrounds, the need for discussion of values may be all the
greater. And in complex plural societies, there are a great many less intimate contexts—
in working life, and in both small-scale and national political matters—which bring
together people who subscribe in some degree to different values. In such a society, then,
there are likely to be frequent occasions for discussion of values for individuals both in
their personal lives and as citizens.
We cannot, however, assume that people will know how to engage in discussion about
values. Worthwhile and productive discussion needs attitudes and skills that have to be
developed. Here, I suggest, is the most important function of discussion about values
within education—to enable people to acquire and practise the attitudes and skills which
will predispose and enable them to engage in discussion of values whenever appropriate
throughout their lives.
Of course, educational contexts cannot be separated off from ‘people’s lives’;
increasing numbers of people spend significant parts of their lives, after childhood as well
as during it, in educational contexts. And such contexts—schools, colleges, and
professional training—are almost guaranteed to bring together people who do not share
all of the same values, so that these contexts contain the potential for conflict between
persons because of their different values. So there will be many occasions when
discussion of values within education is immediately required in order to resolve or avoid
conflict; discussion of this kind, not undertaken for the sake of practice, may actually be
better practice for later life than discussions which are artificially engendered. The
example of Tracey and Sophie at the head of this chapter, trivial though it may seem, is
just such a case. As the writer (headteacher of an urban comprehensive school) says,
‘Two worlds within two miles of each other had collided’ (Clarke, 1997, p. 158).
These are two ways in which discussion of values can have an immediate practical
aim, or a longer-term practical spin-off. We can distinguish from these the use of
discussion purely as an educational means to an end which is conceived in intellectual
rather than practical terms. Traditionally (and rightly) one of the main aims of education
has been taken to be the development of knowledge and understanding, and discussion
can be used (here the word is appropriate) as a means to this end. Thus Bridges devotes a
good deal of space to the ways in which discussion can be conducive to ‘the development
of knowledge and understanding about the subject under discussion’. For a variety of
reasons—because children may be less passive if they have the opportunity to engage in
discussion; because it gives them the chance to try expressing their grasp of a topic in
their own words; because it lets them hear different interpretations from theirs, or even
just because it breaks up the monotony of a talk-and-chalk lesson—teachers may use
discussion as one more device in their battery of methods for promoting learning. There
is nothing wrong with this, but where the subject in question itself involves values,
teachers should remember that the importance of discussion is not purely instrumental.
Otherwise there is a danger of the teacher manipulating the discussion so that it leads to
the children arriving at just the conclusion the teacher wants them to arrive at; this may
serve as a means to an immediate end, but it is likely to be counterproductive to the
broader and perhaps more important aims that I have mentioned (cf. Bridges, 1997, pp.
97–101, 113–16).
In Haydon 1997 (pp. 142–6) I looked at a number of aims that might be achieved
through discussion of values. Briefly, but not exhaustively, these were:
1 That discussion may show students that even within a classroom (and even if it is
culturally fairly homogeneous) there may be considerable variety of views. (This by
itself would be a very limited aim.)
2 It may help them to understand another’s point of view. (This, while important, is still a
limited aim, since it does not guarantee that the other’s point of view is taken seriously
in any practical sense, and it is even compatible with the determination in advance to
establish the superiority of one’s own point of view, as in set-piece debates. But often,
lying behind the aim of understanding, there will be the aim that people should come
to be more tolerant of the different views of others.)
3 Discussion may help people to clarify their own views, through the effort of having to
get these views across to others; and
4 It may enable people to test their own views, by bringing them up against questions and
objections from others. Then—
5 It may enable people to come to an agreement on an issue. This is an important aim—
or rather a whole class of aims—which is worth special attention. Agreement is not
necessarily an aim of discussion in educational contexts. A discussion which raises
many disagreements, and is left unresolved, may contribute a lot to learning, and
might achieve all of the aims mentioned above. Indeed sometimes a teacher may count
a discussion that generated a good deal of controversy as a better discussion than one
in which it turned out that everyone quickly came to an agreement. Nevertheless, in
many contexts in which discussion is not solely a means to educational ends, people
will enter discussion in the hope of reaching some kind of agreement. Above I treated
the development of the skills and attitudes needed for ‘real-life’ discussion (which
may happen inside or outside educational institutions), as the most important function
of discussion about values in educational contexts. So it is important, that on at least
some occasions pupils and students should have practice in the kind of discussion that
seeks seriously to reach agreement.
At this point the present discussion (of the one-person, written rather than oral, kind6)
needs to change tack. I have been talking about the aim with which teachers may get
pupils or students to engage in discussion; but what about the aims of the pupil or
students themselves? Does it matter what aims they have when they engage in
discussion? (The idea of discussion as just one of a battery of methods which a teacher
may use tends to neglect this question.) If one important function of discussion within
educational contexts is to develop the attitudes and skills needed for discussion
throughout life, then among the relevant attitudes will be the aims which participants
bring to discussion; so this is something that should matter to the teacher.
What aims, then, should a teacher wish to see in the participants in discussion (apart
from the aims of the teacher, who may herself be a participant)? Sometimes it is
suggested that anyone seriously taking part in discussion must be aiming at the truth
about the matter under discussion. Certainly this is a possible aim; I said above that
discussion may help people to clarify and to test their own views; realizing this someone
may enter into discussion with the aim of getting free of errors and confusions and thus of
coming to a view which they can be confident is right. Notice that in this way an
individual could be aiming to get at the truth without being concerned about getting
agreement; I could end up thinking that I have now got a correct view, and be grateful to
the other participants who have helped me to get to that correct view, even though they
have not been convinced by me and are stubbornly sticking to their errors.
So in terms of the participants’ own aims, truth and agreement are not necessarily the
same thing. Does this still apply where the subject of discussion is values? One problem
here may be uncertainty about what kind of truth if any, is possible about values. Some
extreme kinds of subjectivism about values (where values are purely personal
commitment) have no room for the idea of truth about values. But what is actually more
important is that they have no room for the idea that reasons can be given in questions
about values, and hence that some views may be more reasonable than others. The fact
that people sometimes do succeed in having a reasoned discussion about matters
concerning values casts doubt on this kind of subjectivist view. A person seriously
engaging in discussion does have to recognize that some positions may be better
supported by reasons than others, and must be aiming at some kind of understanding or
judgement that is well supported; he or she does not necessarily (so far as I can see) have
to take a position on whether there can be such a thing as ‘truth’ in matters of values
(which now sounds a rather metaphysical kind of question).
But where, now, does the possible aim of agreement come into the picture? If the
participant has to be aiming at a position which is reasonably supported, and if he or she
is also aiming at agreement, then the agreement aimed at must be an agreement supported
by reasons. That is to say, the mere fact of agreement will not itself be a sufficient aim.
For a simplified example, think of a two-person disagreement in which there are two
alternative points of view. If agreement were all that mattered, the disputants could toss a
coin to decide the issue. There may in fact be situations where, because a practical issue
needs a resolution urgently, this is a reasonable thing to do, but nevertheless it cannot
count as discussion. Discussion involves the attempt to come to an agreement that one
point of view is better supported by reasons than the other.
If the participants achieve this, do they have to see themselves as having come to the
right answer? Not necessarily. In fact in most contexts a less confident attitude will be
more appropriate. Actual discussions are unlikely to bring up all the factors that might
possibly be relevant, or to incorporate all the points of view that could be put forward on
a particular issue. So agreement, even on the basis of good reasons which have been
brought forward, does not guarantee that the answer arrived at is the best possible.
At this point it is worth distinguishing different kinds of case. First, there are cases
where the participants involved in the discussion are the only parties affected by the
outcome of the discussion. Then there are cases where other people are affected, who
could in principle have been party to the discussion, but have not been so in fact. And
then there are cases where the discussion has effects beyond anyone who could even in
principle have been party to the discussion. I shall explain these distinctions.
The first kind of case is the simplest. Suppose that a group—who might well be the
children in a school class and their teacher—have to make a decision—say, where to go
on a school outing. This is the kind of matter where discussion will not be directly
focused on values but will have to take values into account. Sheer enjoyment may be one
factor to be taken into account, but also educational outcomes—it would be unduly
cynical to assume that only the teacher cares about these; then there will be consideration
for the needs and interests of particular individuals within the class. One place which the
class might visit may be inaccessible to a disabled child; a visit to a distant place on
Friday might mean that the class arrives back too late for a Jewish child to get home
before the Sabbath; and so on.
The class discussion could be aimed at achieving the best outcome, all things
considered. Here we can recognize a theoretical ideal, which is that everyone has their
say, so that all points of view, all preferences, all needs and interests are brought into the
discussion. Suppose too that any information that is relevant to the decision is available,
and that in this ideal situation a decision is arrived at which everyone in the class is happy
with. Here we can say that the decision arrived at is the right decision.7
In practice, of course, no situation of discussion will be ideal. It will not always
happen that all information is available, that every point of view is considered, that all
interests are taken into account; but at least when the parties to the discussion are the very
people who will be affected by the agreement, it makes sense to aim to get as close as
possible to the ideal. At the same time, it makes sense to be willing to compromise for the
sake of resolving the issue, so that a willingness to compromise will itself be one of the
desirable attitudes which engagement in discussion can promote (see Haydon (1997, ch.
5) for more on compromise, and when it is or is not desirable).
Now think of the many cases where people are discussing an issue in which they
themselves are not the only parties affected. The issue mentioned above of selective
schooling could be an example. Many people are affected by this: employers, parents,
and by no means least the children who will go through any process of selection which is
arrived at. If primary pupils in a particular area are discussing this issue, they may
themselves be among those directly affected; when the issue is one for general public
debate, many people may express a view who will not be directly affected by the
outcome. In a situation like this, we can still imagine the theoretical ideal of all parties
who have a view or who are affected being involved in the discussion (this, after all, is
the classical democratic ideal); but it will be quite clear that any particular episode of
discussion (this discussion here and now, between these particular people) will involve
only a very few of the people who will in total be affected.
By the nature of discussions in educational contexts, many of them will be of this sort.
What, in such cases, can we say about the aims of the participants? Can we even make
sense of the idea that they are aiming at the right decision? One way in which the
participants could make sense of what they are doing, is to think of themselves as aiming
to make the decision that would be made if it were possible for all parties affected to be
directly involved in the discussion. This puts a burden on the participants which they
would do well to recognize explicitly: that they have to take account of points of view
and interests which may not be directly represented among those in the classroom. They
have to exercise their understanding and imagination to see what other parties, outside of
this particular context of discussion, would say if they were party to the discussion. This
is just the sort of thing that may happen when a teacher sets up a role play. In geography,
for, instance, the teacher might ask the class to enact a discussion which could be part of
a public enquiry into the building of a new road. The aim here is that representative views
of, say, commuters, industrialists and local residents should come into the discussion. So
the participants in the actual discussion can still have in mind that they are trying to arrive
at a decision that would be a reasonable one to arrive at if all the parties affected were
actually involved in the discussion.
Educationally, this kind of case is very important because it represents a model of
what moral reasoning is all about. Moral thinking, on any plausible model, cannot neglect
the point of view and interests of others. To some degree, it is possible for individuals to
take the point of view and interests of others into account even when doing their own
thinking by themselves (monological thinking). Often, though, a better way of taking
other people’s points of view and interests into account is to get the others involved
directly in discussion (dialogical thinking).8 And if that is not possible, then a discussion
even among a limited number of people may get closer to representing those who are not
directly involved than an individual relying on her own imagination could manage.
I mentioned above that there are cases where the discussion has effects beyond anyone
who could even in principle have been party to the discussion. Actually, the example of
the road-building enquiry could be interpreted in this way, because not all of the interests
affected are those of human beings. Many animals are likely to have their habitats
disturbed by a road-building scheme and participants in discussion may well take this
into account. Also many people would want to bring into consideration the destruction of
natural beauty, even apart from any pleasure which people get from surveying the
scenery. But it is significant here that I have to say ‘many people would want to bring this
into consideration’, because that is the only way that such considerations can enter into
decision-making at all. That is what I meant by saying that the discussion can have
effects beyond anyone who could even in principle have been party to the discussion. The
existence of beautiful landscapes, or the existence of rare species, may have value in
itself; but it will still be just as true of such values as of any others that they can only have
effective existence through human discourse. The model of discussion between persons
who bring their own values into the discussion should not lead us to think that the
interests of persons are the only values which count. If it was only what people wanted or
needed for themselves that could come into discussion, the effect of engagement in
discussion could be a narrowing of moral horizons. But teachers are in a position to try to
see that this doesn’t happen.
Persons who are capable of engaging in discussion can to a degree represent in the
discussion that is, speak for, those who are unable to speak for themselves. Exactly how
far this is possible is a moot point (i.e. very much open to discussion). It seems to me that
speaking for the interests of animals may make sense; and perhaps speaking for the
unborn foetus does; I doubt whether persons can speak for trees or mountains. But
certainly people can care about trees and mountains, and there is no reason why this
caring voice should not come into the discussion. Even though discussion can only be
between persons, it can be a means of extending people’s moral horizons, not narrowing
them.
I said at the beginning that most teachers will have had little systematic training in
discussion, let alone discussion that is specifically about values. The end of this chapter is
not the place to attempt to make good that deficiency, but two remarks may be helpful.
First, teachers may have little experience even amongst themselves of discussion which
focuses explicitly on values. Within teacher training (especially in those aspects of it
which still happen in institutions of higher education) there is ample scope for student
teachers to discuss amongst themselves their own values, and in doing this they can be
helped to become aware of the full range of diversity (cf. Haydon (1996) and (1997a, ch.
13). It would be unfortunate if this opportunity were missed.
Second, there is the question of how far the teacher should lay down ground rules for
discussion. In the belief that ‘the teacher is still in control of a discussion’ (Capel, Leask
and Turner, p. 86) the teacher may be advised that ‘young people can be taught the
protocols of discussion’ (ibid. 195). It is certainly true that, in comparison with various
other forms of talk, discussion requires a degree of structure. It does not follow that the
teacher has to lay down the structure in advance. A more productive learning experience
may come from pupils themselves realizing as they go along that they actually need some
structure to their talk, in which case they may well be able to formulate for themselves
the kind of ground rules they need (such as the basic ‘only one person to talk at a time’).
What may be particularly valuable, and should be possible even with young children,
is a discussion that is followed by reflective discussion about the discussion. ‘What did
we learn from that discussion? Did we achieve what we wanted to? If we didn’t, what
prevented that? How could we do better in our next discussion?’ and so on. This, of
course, is not very likely to happen spontaneously; there is certainly an important role
here for the teacher as more than just facilitator. But it is, of course, one of the advantages
of schooling that people can get experience in a relatively systematic and structured way
of activities and practices which in later life they will have to engage in in a less
structured environment. Nowhere does this apply more than to discussion about values.
Like any other topic concerning diversity of values, the educational role of discussion
of values is a complex matter. There are different kinds of discussion, and different
beneficial outcomes which may result from them. But if I had to put in a sentence what is
perhaps the most important reason for discussion of values in educational contexts, I
would leave the last word to the headteacher and his staff who engaged the two girls in
discussion: ‘We worked with Sophie and Tracey so that, even if they did not become best
friends, they could at least coexist and respect each other’s right to be themselves’
(Clarke, 1997, p. 158)
Notes
1 The index of a recent textbook of 450 pages, Learning to Teach in the Secondary School
(Capel, Leask and Turner 1995), contains six references to discussion, yielding a total of
about two pages of text directly on this topic (see pp. 86, 195, 197–8). These take a
predominantly instrumental view of the role of discussion ‘For the teacher, discussion is one
of the more difficult strategies. Perhaps that’s why it is not often used’ (p. 195).
2 Bridges’ account, read about twenty years later, shows something of the strength of the
methods of careful distinction-drawing which were predominant in the philosophy of
education of that time. Probably without having then read the authors in question (they are
nowhere mentioned) Bridges anticipated some of the themes which others have since
brought into philosophical work on education from a reading of Gadamer’s hermeneutics
and of Habermas’s communicative ethics.
3 One way, by no means defunct within a plural society, of interpreting values as absolutes is to
see them as divine commands; but if the God is a personal God who has delivered the
commandments in a language which human beings can understand, then these values still are
not shown to be independent of discourse.
4 If the philosophical position underlying this paragraph were spelt out it would be a broadly
Wittgensteinian one. I have said more about a sense of moral obligation, as a conceptual,
language-dependent, understanding which can motivate people in a distinctive way, in
Haydon (1999).
5 This is not the sense in which Habermas used the term ‘discourse’ in his communicative
ethics; there, ‘discourse’ refers to a particular kind of discussion which people only enter
when normally taken-for-granted assumptions are called into question. See Habermas
(1990).
6 See Bridges (1979, pp. 12–20) on this distinction.
7 Many readers will recognize that I have been influenced here by Habermas’s notion of the
ideal speech situation; see Haydon (1997a, pp. 143–4).
8 The terms ‘monological’ and ‘dialogical’ are borrowed from Habermas’s case for
communicative ethics.
References
Bridges, D. (1997) Education, Democracy and Discussion. Slough: NFER Publishing Company.
Capel, S., Leask, M. and Turner, T. (1995) Learning to Teach in the Secondary School. London:
Routledge.
Clarke, B. (1997) What comprehensive schools do better. In R.Pring and G.Walford (eds),
Affirming the Comprehensive Ideal. London: Falmer.
Habermas, J. (1990) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Haydon, G. (1996) Values in the education of teachers: the importance of recognising diversity. In
C.Selmes (ed.), Values Education and Teacher Education. Aberdeen: Centre for the Alleviation
of Social Problems through Values Education, for National Association of Values in Education
and Training.
Haydon, G. (1997) Teaching about Values: A New Approach. London: Cassell.
Haydon, G. (1999) ‘Behaving morally as a point of principle’: a suitable aim for moral education?
In M.Halstead and T.McLaughlin (eds), Education in Morality. London: Routledge.
Part Two
Pedagogy
6
The Way Tests Teach: Children’s Theories of How
Much Testing is Fair in School
THERESA A.THORKILDSEN
To make classrooms safe places in which to take intellectual risks and engage in ethical
inquiry, it seems important to know more about how children construe the institutional
goals associated with schooling and whether children accept those goals as fair. Toward
this end, I have conducted a series of interview studies on children’s conceptions and
theories of fair and effective ways to conduct the business of schooling. Here, knowledge
of children’s critiques of the testing process will be used to justify the need for
discussions among students and teachers about the purposes behind various classroom
practices. Such discussions could serve to help students and teachers create communities
of scholars wherein conflicts arise over content-related issues such as whether an
argument is logical or a position is ethical rather than over power-related issues such as
whose educational goals are most important.
This work largely evolved from an attempt to test empirically the usefulness of
Michael Walzer’s (1983) argument that the fairness of institutional practices will always
depend on the way particular situations are defined by particular groups at particular
times. Schools are fair institutions when they promote equal educational opportunities for
all learners. Promoting equal educational opportunities, in my view, does not mean
establishing identical practices for all students. Instead, everyone should be allowed to
engage in meaningful work and make contributions that are valued by others. To attain
this vision, students need to learn in a place where they feel free to reveal their
vulnerabilities, seek help, challenge those who disagree with them, and negotiate a
solution to conflicts.
Classroom practices would be unfair, in this view, if they undermined equal
educational opportunities by promoting unjust monopoly, unjust dominance, or unjust
patterns of monopoly and dominance. In the general area of educational testing, for
example, Walzer’s theory might lead us to judge as unfair practices that selectively
assessed only one type of skill, consistently served to ridicule the test taker, or
permanently excluded some groups from demonstrating competence and/or gaining a
sense of accomplishment. Certainly these possibilities have fueled debates about the
ethics of testing held within the educational research community.
Nevertheless, my concern was not with the debates fostered among adults. I explored
whether children understood such issues well enough for that knowledge to serve as an
index of their achievement motivation and moral reasoning. I began conservatively by
determining whether students distinguished tests, contests, and learning situations when
evaluating particular classroom practices (Thorkildsen, 1989b). Children aged 6–11 were
told about three types of educational situations: learning to read, taking a standardized
test, and holding a spelling contest. Then, for each type of situation, children were asked
to evaluate the fairness of three common teaching practices: peer tutoring, solitary work,
and interpersonal competition.
None of the children had trouble discriminating among these situations and practices.
Furthermore, there was a high degree of consensus among the students that peer tutoring
would be fair and effective for a learning situation, but not for a test or a contest. Solitary
work was judged fair and effective for most situations, but was seen as fairest for a test
situation. And, interpersonal competition was seen as fair only for the contest situation.
An interesting artifact in that study led to the design of a more in-depth interview
study on children’s conceptions of how testing should be organized (Thorkildsen, 1991).
Most of the 6-year-olds argued that peer tutoring would be a fair way to have a test, but
could not really justify their position. To further explore this reasoning, therefore, a new
group of children (aged 6–12) was asked to think about a standardized test situation
similar to one they had recently experienced. The children compared two classes. In one
class, the teacher used the practice of peer tutoring during a test, and in the other, the
teacher used solitary work. The children evaluated the effectiveness and fairness of each
practice for different patterns of test scores before deciding which practice was fairest.
The findings obtained in those more in-depth interviews suggest that the high degree
of consensus obtained in the first study is misleading and that, at least at the elementary
level, students and teachers should have regular conversations about the nature and
purposes of testing. The youngest children said that peer tutoring would be fairer than
solitary work during a test and seemed preoccupied with making sure that faster and
slower learners all finished and obtained the same test scores. Slightly older children said
that solitary work would be most fair but that peer tutoring would also be fair. None of
these children seemed to understand that if peer tutoring were allowed, test scores would
not accurately reflect individual differences in students’ abilities.1 These interviews
suggest that teachers should not presume that children fully understand the rationale for
solitary work until about age 11. Practically speaking, therefore, when younger children
are seen copying from one another during a test, it is problematic to assume that they
fully understand why their behavior is wrong.
Although this developmental work suggests a potential for miscommunication over
how tests should be administered, even young children will comply when teachers tell
them to engage in solitary work during a test (e.g., Nicholls and Hazzard, 1993; Nolen,
Haladyna, and Haas 1992; and Wodtke, Harper, Schommer, and Brunelli, 1989).
Teachers must simply remember to speak to children in concrete terms about the nature
of their expectations. When expectations are clear, the question of how testing should be
organized is not likely to lead to power struggles among classmates or between students
and their teachers.
Power struggles are likely when students are left to invent their own interpretations of
a seemingly ambiguous situation. Children in primary grades, for example, have been
observed fighting over whether a situation should take on the norms of a test or an
opportunity to learn (e.g., Nicholls and Hazzard, 1993; Thorkildsen and Jordan, 1995).
Teachers (and often researchers as well) rarely take time to be explicit about the
definition of a particular situation and it is assumed that students will accommodate to
teacher’s expectations or face disciplinary action (e.g., Ames, 1992; Bear and Fink, 1991;
Pintrich and De Groot, 1990; Wigfield, 1994). This confusion can be exacerbated by the
many kinds of activities and practices, such as worksheets and direct instruction (e.g.,
Rosenshine, 1986), that are intended to foster learning, but also hold test-like qualities.
The way tests teach 85
Specifically, children who argue that peer tutoring is the most fair way to help students
learn (e.g., Thorkildsen, 1989a, 1993; Thorkildsen and Schmahl, 1997) can also be seen
hiding their work from peers even when everyone knows that collaboration is permitted.
This behavior suggests that at least some children value a test-like situation over a
learning situation. The conflicts that arise from such differences in interpretation can lead
to power struggles that distract learners from attending to content-related issues. (Busch,
1995, Colsant, 1995, and Thorkildsen and Jordan, 1995 offer concrete examples of such
classroom events.) Such power struggles are further exacerbated when cultural diversity
is used to explain conflicts among students and teachers.
This conflict-potential parallels assumptions tested in research on motivation. In that
work, some of us have argued that children can have many definitions of success that
would drive their cognition and beliefs about school. (See, e.g., Austin and Vancouver,
1996; Dennett, 1978; Nicholls et al., 1989; Thorkildsen and Nicholls, 1991, 1998;
Thorkildsen, Nolen, and Fournier, 1994.) Children’s criteria for success are related to
their beliefs about the causes of success and teachers’ expectations. Researchers have
developed many varied iterations of this position and speculated about which variable is
most important in predicting children’s achievement (e.g., Anderman and Maehr, 1994;
Duda and Nicholls, 1992; Schunk, 1996; Stipek and Gralinski, 1996). Yet, all of these
positions presume that we understand how children prioritize learning and testing and
that their definition of the type of situation under consideration is incidental.
My discomfort with the assumption that situations will be defined as researchers
intended them to be defined led me to seek additional empirical support for my hunch
that it is worthwhile to recast motivational research similar to Dennett’s (1978)
intentional perspective to more broadly include children’s ethical development.2 In this
chapter I report the detailed results of an interview in which American children with a
range of cultural backgrounds explored how much testing is fair in school by prioritizing
testing and learning. Children prioritized testing and learning by coordinating their
conceptions of how learning and testing should be organized, of current ability, of the
long-term stability of intelligence, and of the perspectives of different types of learners
(Thorkildsen, 1994).
I also speculate about how power struggles might be supported when teachers and
students from diverse backgrounds fail to discuss the nature and purposes of particular
classroom activities. These speculations are linked to research on the effectiveness of
promoting discussions of ethical dilemmas.
Assessing children’s theories
Whose critiques?
A total of 119 children in grades 2–5 were interviewed about how much testing would be
fair in school.3 The mean ages of the children included here were M=7.85 (sd=0.73) for
second graders, M=8.90 (sd=0.60) for third graders, M=9.90 (sd=0.64) for fourth graders,
and M=10.73 (sd =0.58) for fifth graders. There were 49 boys and 70 girls all of whom
obtained parental consent and gave their own consent. Everyone lived in similar urban
neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Children attended one of three schools. The first school was a public, Montessori
school that adhered primarily to the official Montessori curriculum (e.g., Montessori,
1964). The school housed children with a range of ethnic backgrounds, yet about half the
children in each class were African American and there were relatively few Latin
American children in the school. (Here, of the 42 children interviewed, 22 were African
American, 17 were Caucasian, I was Latin American, and 2 had dual-ethnicity.) Most of
the children came from low-income families, but a few came from middleclass families.
The children in the Montessori school spent their day engaged in active inquiry and
spent little time in direct instruction activities. These children did not receive textbooks or
workbooks and did not usually complete teacher-designed worksheets. Furthermore,
these children rarely experienced tests, taking only those mandated by the state for grades
2, 3, and 5.
The second school housed only African American children (n=39), and the third
school housed Latin American children (n=38) enrolled in a segregated bilingual
education program (most of these children were Puerto Rican, the balance were Mexican
American or had one parent from each Latin American group). In these two schools,
because the majority of the children participated in free breakfast and lunch programs,
school personnel did not collect money for meals and encouraged all children to
participate in the morning meal.
Spanish rather than English was the dominant language of the Latin American
children. These children were proficient enough in English to be able to complete the
interview, but occasionally a child would justify a decision in Spanish. Spanish
justifications were translated from audio-taped recordings of the interviews and included
in the analyses.
The families of children in the second and third schools voluntarily sent the children to
public schools adhering to Milwaukee’s “neighborhood school policy”—a policy that
enabled the schools to remain racially segregated on the condition that educational
practices and policies be carefully governed by the state. (See Stolee (1993) for details on
this court-ordered decision.) As required by the state, direct instruction was
systematically implemented daily in these schools. During specific parts of each school
day, all interruptions ceased and children engaged in this ritualized form of learning
(Rosenshine, 1986). Lessons began with a review of previously covered material.
Teachers then presented new material, and children engaged in guided practice. This
practice was followed by immediate feedback and corrections. The cycle was repeated
until everyone seemed to master the material. Then, when ready, children engaged in
independent practice. These daily lessons emphasized the attainment of correct answers
rather than self-expression, and worksheets and textbooks were used often. The children
distinguished this ritual from the rest of their school activities by referring to it as
“learning time.”
The topic of conversation

In 20-minute interviews, children were questioned individually by a female examiner
about the fairness of five common testing practices. The interview began with: “I’m
going to ask you some questions about how much testing you think is fair in school. I
work at the university to help people learn how to be good teachers and we think it would
help if adults knew more about what students think about school. We know a lot about
what teachers, parents, and principals think, but not very much about what children think.
I can try to remember back to when I was in [the child’s] grade, but it’s been a long time
since I was in [the child’s] grade and things have changed since then. So, I think the very
best way to learn about what students think is to come to schools and ask experts like you
to tell me what you think. Is that OK? [everyone agreed]
“All the questions I will ask you are about opinions. This is not a test. There are no
right or wrong answers. Your ideas might be different from others in your class. We think
that is OK. I have a tape-recorder here because I want to remember everything you say
and I write very slowly. Is that OK?” (These audio-taped interviews were later
transcribed for analysis.)
After the children gave their verbal consent, they were told about a hypothetical class
that consisted of faster learners who work fast and usually get all the answers right and
slower learners who usually work slow, sometimes don’t finish, and usually make a lot of
mistakes. To make the stories concrete, cartoon drawings of one boy and one girl for each
type of learner matched the ethnicity of the child being interviewed. These cartoon
students were shown with the quantity of tests that would accumulate at various points
during a year. Furthermore, children saw sample tests that would be used for each
practice.
When presented to children, the characteristics of slower and faster learners were
counterbalanced. Children were asked if they knew of such slower and faster learners in
their own classes. (Everyone said they did.) Children were then told: “Teachers like to
find out how much each of these students know. One way they find out what students
know is to give them tests. Some teachers give lots of tests and others give only a few
tests. I’m going to show you some different kinds of tests and I want you to tell me if you
think these are fair.”
Next, the children heard stories about five different classrooms. Practices were
presented in two counterbalanced orders. Furthermore, when practices were introduced,
half the time the slower learner’s position was presented first and half the time it was
presented second.
Children first judged the fairness of each practice. Then, each practice was paired with
every other practice, and children were asked to say which practice was more fair and
why. The five stories, illustrated with cartoon drawings and sample tests, were:
Daily quizzes. In this class, the teacher gives each student a short test
every day. The teacher might give them a math test on Monday, a science
tests on Tuesday, a reading test on Wednesday, a social studies test on
Thursday, and so on—all year long. So, by Christmas time, they have this
many tests [small piles were depicted for each student in the drawings].
And, by the end of the school year, when the teacher thinks about whether
the students are ready for the next grade, they have this many tests [large
piles were shown for each student].
Bi-weekly unit tests. In this class, the teacher gives students a test about
every two or three weeks. Each test is a bit longer though. See? They have
three pages and lots more problems. So, on one Monday, after they study
a unit on science, these students might take a science test. Two Mondays
later, they might have a reading test. A couple Mondays later they might
have a social studies test, and so on. The students spend a little time
studying each subject. Then, they take a test. So, by Christmas time, they
have this many tests [again pictures are used] and by the end of the year
when the teacher thinks about whether they are ready for the next grade,
they have this many tests.
A yearly standardized test. In this class, the teacher gives the students
only one test for the whole school year. Students do projects and
homework, and write stories and reports, but they don’t do any other tests.
This test comes in a book like this [The California Achievement Tests is
shown]. It has all the different subjects—reading, math, social studies, and
science—in it. Students take a whole week to finish this test. In the last
week of school, students work on this test every morning. So, at the end of
the year, when the teacher decides who is ready for the next grade, she has
only one test to look at. She looks at the stories and projects the students
did, but she has just one test to look at.
All the above tests. In this class, the teacher gives students all these
different tests. Students do these short tests every day and the longer tests
every two to three weeks. By Christmas time, they have this many tests.
Then, in the last week of school, students do this real long test. So, at the
end of the year, when the teacher thinks about who is ready for the next
grade, she has all these different tests to look at.
Class discussions. In this class, the teacher doesn’t give students any
written tests at all. Instead, when she wants to know what students can do,
she gets them all in a group and asks them questions. Students raise their
hands and say the answers out loud. This teacher said, “Tell me what you
know about the sun.” These fast learners know something so they raise
their hands. This slow learner knows something, but she [the other slower
learner] can’t think of anything to say. The next time the teacher asks a
question, the fast learners know the answer and she [a slower learner]
knows the answer but he [the other slower learner] can’t think of anything
to say. This happens all year long. At the end of the year, when the teacher
wants to think about who is ready for the next grade, she has no tests to
look at, only students’ stories and projects.
After each story, students responded to the following questions: “Would this be fair?
Why? Would the faster learners think it was fair? Why? Would the slower learners think
it was fair? Why? If a teacher wanted to find out who was ready for the next grade and
who was not, would this be a fair thing for her to do? Why?” After all the practices were
introduced, each practice was paired with every other practice and students were asked,
“Which is more fair? Why? Which would the fast learners think is more fair? Why?
Which would the slow learners think is more fair? Why?” These questions about slow
and fast learners were counterbalanced across students. Also, subsequent analyses for
possible order effects proved nonsignificant.
At the conclusion of the interviews, children were asked, “When you do tests, which
are you more like, the fast learners, the slow learners or are you sort of in between?” and
“What kinds of tests do you usually take in school?” (The latter question served as a
validity check on the reports we obtained from teachers. In the public direct instruction
schools, children typically reported that they either took all the different tests or that they
took a combination of daily quizzes and biweekly unit tests. In the public Montessori
school, the children usually reported that they either took one standardized test per year
or no tests.)
Methods of analysis
Structural analysis
Analysis involving the coordination of children’s choices of fair practices and their
justifications is the most comprehensive way to determine whether shared meaning exists
within and among samples. Previous interviews (Thorkildsen, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1993;
Thorkildsen, Nolen, and Fournier, 1994) made it possible to discern some of the possible
issues that children would have to coordinate when addressing this question and the
difficulties they might have doing so. Nevertheless, the interview style and methods of
analysis meant that children could also surprise me. Structural analysis conducted in the
tradition of Piaget’s (1951) original clinical method (rather than of his revised clinical
method, e.g., Piaget, 1971) reveals children’s intentions, and how they prioritize the
particular educational goods they value, but relies heavily on children’s ability to explain
their decisions.
This interview was constructed so that children must coordinate the quantity and
format of tests, the interference of tests with other learning opportunities, and the
perspectives of hypothetical high and low ability students. The amount of schoolwork to
be completed was controlled both verbally and in the drawings, and sample tests were
used to make this dilemma as concrete as possible. None of the options allowed children
to avoid considering schoolwork or evaluation.
I used the same methods of analysis from previous studies to determine the range of
theories evident in this study. Generally speaking, each response was treated as a
symptom rather than a reality, and I looked for trends of thought over the entire content
of children’s interviews (Inhelder, Sinclair, and Bovet, 1974; Larsen, 1977; Piaget, 1951).
Then, I outlined the ways in which children’s responses formed qualitatively different
rationalities.
Specifically, I grouped the transcribed protocols (excluding references to age, grade,
ethnicity, and gender and standardizing the order in which responses were presented)
according to the practice that children chose as most fair. Then, I read each protocol and
looked for consistencies in children’s stated purposes for completing tests, and their
definitions of the problem. Separate piles were created for each approach to determining
fairness. If children’s justifications were inconsistent with their fairness decisions, their
justifications were used as the basis for placement. Once children’s protocols were sorted
into homogeneous piles, I wrote descriptions of these positions in as concrete a manner as
possible and invented a label for these various theories.
Psychometric analyses
I also looked for sociocultural variation in two additional types of data. First, the way
children ranked each practice was examined for possible school and grade differences in
their choices. Children’s ranking of each practice provided a richer sense of their
reasoning than did their initial judgments of the fairness of each practice. Children could,
for example, argue that all practices are unfair and still rank the practices in terms of their
relative levels of unfairness.
Next, children’s justifications were content analyzed to identify the range of issues or
educational goods they considered. I adopted Walzer’s (1983) notion that educational
goods are social constructions that affect the kinds of identities people take on and the
meanings they make of their world. “People conceive and create (educational) goods,
which they then distribute among themselves… All distributions are just or unjust
relative to the social meaning of the goods at stake” (Walzer, 1983, pp. 6–9). Content
analysis, therefore, permitted me to determine which aspects of the situation children
defined as important. This content analysis of children’s justifications revealed eleven
categories of educational goods incorporated in their reasoning (Table 6.1).
For all three types of data (theories, choices, and justifications), traditional statistical
methods were used to look for possible differences across grade, gender, and perceived
academic identity. Gender and perceived academic identity were dropped from the
analyses reported here because no differences were found when data distributions and
exploratory t-tests were examined.4
Race/ethnic differences were not evident in this study. Within the Montessori sample,
I looked for possible ethnic differences between the African American and Caucasian
groups, but found none. I also looked for homogeneity in views among the African
American children attending the Montessori and direction instruction schools. I found the
same significant school differences among African American children’s theories,
decisions, and justifications as were obtained with the larger sample. No other race/ethnic
group comparisons could be made with this sample.
The nature of children’s theories
Preliminary analyses
The practice of having unit tests every 2–3 weeks was judged fair by most of the children
(81 per
Table 6.1 Educational goods children raised when

justifing their choices
Educational Examples
goods
Tests make Students can’t learn without tests; like to do the work. Test make students
students learn learn more; work hard.
Need a break When will students study? They need time to learn; time to do other things; a
between tests break; time to think.
Learn from Students can learn from others in discussions; don’t worry about mistakes;
discussions can be corrected on the spot; don’t have to talk if they don’t know the work.
Keep track of Teachers need help keeping track of student progress. Students practice what
progress they know; show what they know (or details about work quantity).
Minimize effort Students want quick success; less pressure; to rest their minds; or less work.
Worry about Tests make students nervous, feel stupid, worried, or distracted. Fair if
competence students know the work; are fast, competent, etc.
Gain rewards Students want good grades; to pass; to make mom proud; to go to the next
grade.
Avoid punishment Students feel punished; don’t want to flunk; won’t be ready for the next
grade.
Social comparison Slow learners want to catch up with fast learners. Fast learners think they are
superior; show off.
Preserve student Keep grades private; mistakes confidential; scores or corrections between
privacy student and teacher.
Seek intellectual Students will know more; are ready for hard things; keep busy learning; like
challenge to do more work.
cent). Having short quizzes every day was seen as fair by 65 per cent of the children and
one standardized test per year was judged fair by 62 per cent of the children. Fifty-four
per cent of the children said all the tests would be a fair practice whereas only 26 per cent
of the children said that having class discussions rather than tests would be fair.
I counted the number of times each child chose a practice as fair in order to determine
how each child ranked the various practices. Then, the mean number of times each
practice was rated as fair was used in a grade by school by practice repeated measures
ANOVA (with practice repeated). This analysis revealed only the logically necessary
practice main effect, F(4,428)=32.78, p<0.000, and the predicted school by practice
interaction, F(8,428)=15.08, p<0.000. No other findings were significant.
Children attending the inquiry-focused Montessori school were more likely than
children in the direct instruction schools to choose one standardized test per year or class
discussions as fair, and were less likely to select daily quizzes as fair (Table 6.2). The
children enrolled in the inquiry-focused Montessori program were also the least likely of
the three groups to select all the different tests as fairer. Children in the bilingual, direct
instruction program were the most likely to say all the different tests was fairest and this
was significantly different from the views of African American children enrolled in the
other direct instruction program. The variability among fairness decisions suggests that it
would be legitimate to conduct more elaborate structural analysis and not to rely simply
on the more easily quantifiable forms of analysis.
Structural analysis
Four theories were clearly identifiable in structural analysis of children’s decisions and
justifications. (See Table 6.3.) Children endorsing the Testing is Learning theory equated
learning and testing. Typically, these children confounded worksheets and tests. They
focused on correct answers and assumed that anyone advocating fewer tests must be lazy
or worried about appearing incompetent.
Most of the children holding the Testing is Learning theory said that having all the
different tests would be fairest, but a few said that daily quizzes would also suffice. These
children typically justified their responses with statements like:
They’ll learn something before they go to the next grade. When…the

teacher asks them a question, they’ll know [the answer]. (age 11)
They learn more better. (age 8)
These children did not see that students might need time to study material before taking a
test. Like children who argued that fair testing practices should enable everyone to obtain
the same test score (Thorkildsen, 1991), Testing is Learning theorists presumed that
students learn simply by writing out answers.
Testing is Learning theorists said that having all the different tests was more fair than
having one standardized test per year for reasons like:
[If you do tests], you’re learning it. Every subject they got, they probably
learn it better than they have been doing. (age 11)
So that they can learn different kinds of things,
Table 6.2 Mean number of times each practice was
chosen as fair by school
Curriculum Type
Inquiry Direct Instruction
Practice School 1 School 2 School 3
bc
Quiz everyday 1.57(0.83) 2.26(0.99) 2.26(0.89)
Unit tests every 2–3 weeks 2.55(0.86) 2.67(0.98) 2.37(0.94)
Standardized test once 2.79(1.20)bc 2.26(1.02) 1.97(1.05)
bc ac
All the different tests 1.17(1.61) 2.41 (1.48) 3.13(1.23)
bc
Class discussions 1.98(1.52) 0.41(0.85) 0.26(0.76)
Number of students 42 39 38
Note: Letters indicate that this mean is significantly different from the mean of indicated school at
the p<0.001 level, a=School 1, b=School 2, and c=School 3. The possible range of scores is from 0
(never selected as more fair) to 4 (always selected as more fair than other practices).
Table 6.3 Theories of how much testing is fair in

school
Title Description
Testing is Students learn by taking tests, and the more tests students take the more they learn.
learning Tests and worksheets are confounded. Obtaining correct answers, appearing
competent and obtaining the extrinsic rewards associated with achievement are the
dominant concerns.
Tests inform Tests should not dominate classroom life, and the most expedient forms of testing
learning are fairest. Tests help students discover what they need to work on and otherwise
monitor their progress, but students should have separate oportunities to learn.
Tests interfere Tests serve primarily as a paper trail to remind students of their mistakes. Students
with learning should be preoccupied with the process of learning, not be made to feel self-
conscious about their abilities, and enjoy the thrill of discovering new ideas.
Achievement should be monitored orally or, if necessary, with one end-of-year test.
Avoid Tests serve only to remind students of the ways in which they are incompetent, and
evaluation offer opportunities for painful teasing and other forms of social comparison among
one’s peers. Therefore, tests should be eliminated or made easy whenever possible.
[and then] they’ll be having different kinds of places and different

kinds of jobs, and different kinds of attitudes. (age 10)
When choosing short quizzes over biweekly unit tests Testing is Learning theorists gave
reasons like: “Because maybe they don’t wanna be laughed at, and they wanna be a smart
kids in the whole world, and then when they’re big and they want to be teachers, well
then they could teach” (age 9).
Having one standardized test per year was judged unfair for reasons like, “They need
more than one test to pass through to the next grade” (age 11); and “Because in school if
you only get one test you won’t learn that much” (age 10).
Children holding the Testing is Learning theory also asserted that having class
discussions instead of tests would be unfair for reasons like:
[With discussions,] you don’t do a paper and you have to give other
people the answers. It’s good to know how to do work in test books. (age
10)
They can experience their feelings out on a piece of paper so they
know if it’s wrong or right, (age 10)
You’ll probably just keep saying things, and then, when you get done
saying them, you probably won’t rememberize anything, (age 9)
In other words, Testing is Learning theorists argued that if students take frequent tests
and do their own work, they will learn. Otherwise, they will not.
A second theory addressed the idea that testing informs, but remains separate from
learning. The Tests Inform Learning theorists typically assumed that tests can help
students discover what they need to work on and monitor their progress, but that students
need time to study. These children also considered the quantity of material included on
the tests in a more explicit and detailed way than did any of the other children
interviewed. Tests Inform Learning theorists did not want tests to dominate classroom
life, but differed from one another in their vision for how teachers might avoid needless
repetition and still prepare everyone for the next grade.
Children asserting that Tests Inform Learning typically chose daily quizzes and/or unit
tests every 2–3 weeks as most fair. They gave reasons like:
Because they wouldn’t want to do it over and over. (age 7)

They’ll have enough time to do the other stuff that they want, (age 10)
Because if they don’t study for the quiz, they might not know it. (age
11)
Like children who equated testing and learning, children with the Tests Inform Learning
theory said that teachers should use tests for reasons like: “If they get all of them right
then they could pass the whole semester” (age 11); and “The teacher can just pull out the
paper and see what they got on it, and then she can average it and see if they can pass or
not” (age 11).
The Tests Inform Learning theorists did not agree with one another about whether
having one standardized test per year was fairer than all the different tests. Some children
said that one standardized test per year would be fairer for reasons like: “You can
probably learn more than (is on) a test, and that’s probably all review [across all the differ
ent tests]” (age 9); and “They can study and then they would know everything that will be
in the [standardized test] book, and they wouldn’t have no trouble with it” (age 11). Other
children said the opposite for reasons like: “If they just take one long test, they won’t
learn a lot of things” (age 9); and “They could get really, really, really ready for this long
old test. And then the fast and slow workers, they could maybe catch on a little bit and be
ready for this test” (age 11). Overall, however, the Tests Inform Learning theorists
advocated a balanced approach to testing.
The third theory focused on the idea that Tests Interfere with Learning. Children
endorsing this theory argued that tests primarily provide an unnecessary paper trail of all
the times that students made mistakes. Many of the Tests Interfere with Learning
theorists said that feedback should be oral, but some claimed that one standardized test
per year would be unobtrusive from a student’s perspective and helpful for teachers who
must struggle to keep track of student progress.
When choosing class discussions as fairest, Tests Interfere with Learning theorists
commonly said things like:
With tests, you’re writing them down and stuff. And when you raise your
hand, you’re just saying them out loud, so it’s almost the same thing, (age
7)
By raising their hand, the teacher could just call on them and then if
they get it wrong, they can change their answer but if you get it wrong on
a test, you can’t change it. (age 11)
They’re going to be learning from the fast learners, the other slow
learners, and the teacher, (age 8)
When Tests Interfere with Learning theorists endorsed one standardized test per year over
having class discussions, they gave reasons like:
When they just talk, the teacher can’t keep track of what everyone says,
(age 9)
Kids might make fun of their reasons or something. It could get so wild
and stuff, and the teacher would get frustrated’ cause everybody was
talking at one time, (age 7)
Yet, everyone said that having all the different tests was less fair than one standardized
test for reasons like:
You don’t have to fiddle around and [all] those tests would be hard for the
slow workers. The fast workers wouldn’t feel like [doing all the tests]
’cause there are so many tests, (age 7)
They don’t really have to be worried about getting lots and lots of
answers wrong…. They wouldn’t have to be worried so much because
they’d have lots and lots of time to study, (age 10)
The Tests Interfere with Learning theorists were not trying to avoid evaluation altogether.
They seemed to make clear distinctions between testing and learning and saw testing as
of lower priority than other experiences that might foster learning.
At some point in the interview, all the children, regardless of their theoretical bias,
mentioned that students probably would not want to take tests. (See Table 6.5 under
minimizing effort.) Nevertheless, five children attending the public Montessori school
focused on the idea that all forms of evaluation should be avoided. These Avoid
Evaluation theorists talked about how tired students would get, the desire to get through
school with little effort, and the hope for easy schoolwork. These children did not always
say that tests were unfair, but justified their decisions in terms of how easy the tests
would seem to students.
One 9-year-old, for example, said that one standardized test per year would be more
fair than daily quizzes because with quizzes “you have to do a lot more work and you
would have to do it everyday.” Another 9-year-old said that quizzes would be more fair
than one standardized test because “They wouldn’t have to do a long test, and they
wouldn’t have to write a lot…and it wouldn’t have to take them a long time to do the
tests.”
The idea of having all the different tests was rejected by all of the Avoid Evaluation
theorists. They most often said things like: “They’re doing too many tests” (age 7); “The
teacher’s just giving them way too much work” (age 9); and “The slow workers aren’t
ready for all these tests” (age 7). Nevertheless, the remaining four practices were chosen
as fair by at least some of these students and justifications focused on how relatively easy
such options would be for students.
The five children who endorsed the Avoid Evaluation theory made choices that were
consistent with those made by children who argued that Tests Interfere with Learning: It
was only through a careful reading of the entire protocol that their views seemed slightly
different from those of their peers. Furthermore, the age of these children did not
typically match the age of others at their grade level (three were younger and two were
older than their grade level peers). I could not rule out the possibility that this alternative
view arose because these children had little experience with tests and comparatively
limited vocabularies for expressing themselves. Therefore, I decided to distinguish the
two theories here, yet combine this group with students who argued that Tests Interfere
with Learning for the psychometric analyses. Future studies would have to be done to
empirically distinguish these two positions with any strength.
Table 6.3 shows the percentage of children endorsing each theory. When a second
coder (unaware of children’s school, grade, gender, and age) rated the protocols, we
obtained a Spearman correlation of 0.98 and a kappa coefficient of 0.94. Discussion
among scorers determined the final placement of the five protocols that were difficult to
score. Two of the protocols involved the distinction between the Tests Inform Learning
and Tests Interfere with Learning theories. Two protocols involved the distinction
between the Testing is Learning and Tests Inform Learning theories. The final protocol
involved the distinction between the Tests Interfere with Learning and Avoid Evaluation
theories.
Logit analysis of school by grade by theory did not result in a model that fitted well
with the data. However, chi square analysis of school by theory was significant, χ2(4,
N=119)=27.73, p<0.000. Planned comparisons revealed that children in the public
Montessori school were more likely to endorse the Tests Interfere with Learning and
Avoid Evaluation theories than were children in the public direct instruction schools.
Furthermore, children in the public Montessori school were less likely than were children
in the other schools to endorse the Testing is Learning theory. Children in the two direct
instructions schools were not significantly different from one another in the theories they
endorsed.
Validating the theories

Content analysis of the educational goods evident in children’s justifications can serve
two purposes. First, such analysis can serve as a validity check to verify that children’s
reasoning across theories actually differs. Second, such analysis can serve to highlight the
range of issues that children considered when responding to the interview questions. To
address these two purposes, I conducted a school by theory by educational goods
repeated measures ANOVA with educational goods repeated. The logically necessary
main effect for educational goods was obtained, F(10,1100)=374.07, p<0.000. Furthermore,
there was a significant theory by goods interaction, F(20,1100)=21.34, p<0.000, and school
by goods interaction, F(20,1100)=4.39, p<0.000. There was not, however, a significant
theory by school by goods interaction.
The repeated measures analysis supported my decision to conduct post-hoc theory by

educational goods analyses to validate the structural analysis. Of the eleven categories,
seven had significant differences across theories.
References to the idea that tests make students learn proved to be the most powerful
discriminator across theories in that the means obtained for each theory were significantly
different from every other mean and F(2,1100)=176.61, p<0.000. Children holding the
Testing is Learning theory were less likely than children holding the other less test-driven
visions of education, to talk about students’ need for time to study between tests,
F(2,1100)=32.01, p<0.000. Testing is Learning
Table 6.4 Percent of children endorsing each theory
by school
Curriculum Type
Theory School 1 School 2 School 3
bc
Testing is learning 14 41 63
Testing informs learning 19 31 18
bc
Testing interferes with learning 55 28 18
bc
Avoid evaluation 12 0 0
Note: Letters indicate that this frequency is significantly different from the frequency obtained for
the indicated school at the p<0.05 level, a=School 1, b=School 2, and c=School 3.
Table 6.5 Mean (and Standard Deviations) percent

of educational goods discussed by theory
Theories*
Educational goods 1 2 3 4
bc ac
Tests make students learn 26(0.07) 17(0.07) 7(0.07) 1(0.01)
Need a break between tests 5(0.04)bc 13(0.07) 13(0.06) 11(0.04)
c c
Learn from discussions 1(0.02) 2(0.02) 4(0.04) 6(0.04)
c
Keep track of progress 3(0.03) 5(0.03) 6(0.05) 6(0.05)
bc
Minimize effort 9(0.05) 11(0.06) 20(0.10) 32(0.15)
c c
Worry about competence 39(0.05) 37(0.06) 33(0.06) 27(0.02)
c
Gain rewards 7(0.05) 7(0.05) 4(0.04) 3(0.06)
Avoid punishment 1(0.02) 1(0.01) 2(0.04) >1(0.01)
Social comparison 5(0.05) 5(0.04) 5(0.04) 8(0.09)
Preserve student privacy 1(0.02) 3(0.03) 2(0.03) >1(0.01)
Seek intellectual challenge 2(0.03) 2(0.05) 5(0.04) 4(0.02)

Note: *1=Testing is Learning, 2=Tests Inform Learning, 3=Tests Interfere with Learning, 4=Avoid
Evaluation. Letters indicate that this proportion was significantly different from the proportions
obtained for the noted theory: a=Theory 1, b=Theory 2, c=Theories 3 and 4. p<0.01.
theorists were also the least likely to discuss minimizing effort, F(2,1100)=77.82, p<0.000.
Children holding the Tests Interfere with Learning or Avoid Evaluation theories were
the most likely to say that students could learn from discussions, F(2,1100)=5.62, p<0.000.
Children with these theories were also less likely to talk about students’ worries about
competence than were children holding other theories, F(2,1100)=25.00, p<0.000. Keeping
track of progress was more often discussed among the Tests Interfere with Learning and
Avoid Evaluation theorists, F(2,1100)=4.22, p<0.01, than among the Testing is Learning
theorists. Furthermore, Tests Interfere with Learning and Avoid Evaluation theorists were
the least likely to talk about the extrinsic rewards associated with learning, F(2,1100)=4.85,
p<0.01.
Defining educational goods

The school by educational goods analysis will be used to explore similarities and
differences in the range of educational goods children introduced. Differences across
schools were evident among four of the eleven categories. In all four cases, children
attending the public Montessori school held significantly different views from children
attending the two public direct instruction schools.
Children attending the Montessori school were significantly more likely to talk about
the need for a break between tests, F(2,1100)=17.63, p<0.000, than were children attending
the direct instruction schools. The Montessori children were also more likely to talk about
the ways in which students can learn from class discussions, F(2,1100)=9.00, p<0.001.
Children attending the direct instruction schools were significantly more likely than
were children attending the Montessori school to talk about the idea that tests make
students learn, F(2,1100)= 94.25, p<0.000. They were also more likely to talk about the
importance of extrinsic rewards for learning (e.g., grades, passing, presents), F(2,1100)=
8.07, p<0.001.
Although not every child talked about every one of the educational goods listed in
Table 6.1, children in every school mentioned each of the eleven categories at some point
in their interview. The most frequently used category concerned students’ worries about
appearing competent: This is consistent with theories of achievement motivation
suggesting that the need for competence comes as close as any to a sovereign motive of
life (e.g., Allport, 1961; Nicholls, 1989; White, 1959). The desire to minimize effort was
also discussed by most of the children, a finding predicted by research showing that as
children begin to differentiate ability and effort, they also come to value low effort
(Nicholls, 1978).
The remaining five categories of educational goods were not frequently used when
children justified their choices. Furthermore, they did not serve to discriminate among
theories or schools.
Table 6.6 Mean (and Standard Deviations) percent

of educational goods discussed by school
Curriculum Type
Educational goods School 1 School 2 School 3
bc
Tests make students learn 8(0.09) 20(0.09) 22(0.10)
bc
Need a break between tests 14 (0.07) 8(0.07) 7(0.05)
bc
Learn from discussions 6(0.04) 1(0.02) 1(0.02)
Keep track of progress 6(0.05) 4(0.04) 3(0.03)
Minimize effort 16(0.11) 13(0.09) 13(0.09)
Worry about competence 35(0.06) 36(0.07) 37(0.07)
bc
Gain rewards 3(0.05) 8(0.05) 7(0.05)
Avoid punishment 1(0.03) 1(0.01) 2(0.03)
Social comparison 5(0.05) 6(0.05) 4(0.04)
Preserve student privacy 3(0.03) 2(0.02) 1(0.02)
Seek intellectual challenge 4(0.04) 2(0.03) 4(0.05)
Note: Letters indicate that this frequency is significantly different from the frequency obtained for
the indicated school at the p<0.05 level, a=School 1, b=School 2, and c=School 3.
Respecting students as competent critics
These interviews clearly suggest that students are competent critics of their educational
experiences who recognize that an ideal classroom should house students who hold
compatible, but not necessarily identical goals. The wide range of educational goods
children introduced when justifying their decisions suggest that they hold expansive
vocabularies for evaluating testing practices that do not always come from their direct
experiences with tests. The views of children attending the public Montessori school
offer particularly robust support for this position because those children had almost no
experience with formal testing and could not mimic the relevant vocabularies of their
guardians.
Within each school, children held a range of theories about how much testing is fair.
This variability calls into question the views of some sociocultural theorists who argue
that children adopt the position of their elders and later construct an explanation for those
values (e.g., Delpit, 1995; Nisan, 1987; Shweder, 1991; Stigler, Shweder, and Herdt,
1990). The extreme version of this position presumes that children would be relatively
inarticulate about their reasons for complying with the edicts of adults, limited in their
ability to consider the perspectives of various types of learners, and unable to coordinate
the various aspects of the dilemma. The interviews discussed here, however, suggest that
although children might hold rationalities that are similar to those held by adults, those
rationalities hardly reflect blind mimicry or uninformed clichés about the nature of
schooling.
Nevertheless, findings from these interviews do support less extreme social-
interactionist explanations for the causes of development. They parallel, for example,
findings from research on political socialization (e.g., Haste and Torney-Purta, 1992;
Ichilov, 1990; Renshon, 1977; Torney-Purta, 1983, 1989) that allows for a cognitive-
developmental explanation for the causes of development while simultaneously
presuming that some forms of knowledge come about via imitation. Here, the differences
across schools in the frequency of various theories, and the fact that children’s theories
often reflect the practices used in their schools suggest that children are looking for ways
to accommodate to the edicts of their teachers. The extreme relativistic vision of
constructivism, rarely held by researchers but common in our polemical discourse about
children’s competencies, is not supported: children are not socially isolated individualists
who are busy inventing a world that no one else shares.
Discourse questioning children’s ability to be competent critics of their own
educational experiences undermines much of what we value about the process of
education. We cannot help children become productive citizens and life-long learners if
we continually undermine their sense of competence as they struggle to acquire difficult
skills. (See Nicholls (1989) and Nicholls and Thorkildsen (1995) for other more elaborate
versions of this argument.) Yet, the pattern of results obtained here suggests that, when
we rely heavily on tests, we rely on authoritarian forms of discourse that effectively
socialize children into accepting their incompetence and limiting their own potential for
development in ways their adult guardians might not anticipate. This is particularly
dangerous when it is the children of color from low-income families who receive such an
education while children from privileged families are encouraged to exhibit high degrees
of self-determination in school (e.g., Busch, 1995; Jagers, 1992; Nicholls, Nelson, and
Gleaves, 1995; Woodson, 1919, 1990). As Walzer (1983) suggested, to mix goods from
economics, politics, and education will result in unjust practices.
It seems more useful, therefore, to question our teaching practices and their usefulness
for helping children grow. What do we teach, for example, when we rely so heavily on
testing and other authoritarian modes of discourse? The children endorsing the Testing is
Learning theory tell us that we teach them to view the intellectual world in terms of
discrete right and wrong answers. They do not see the discussion of controversial matters
as relevant to schooling. Instead, they presume their role in school is to remain passive
listeners while other “more important” people tell them what is worthwhile to know and
experience. At the very least, such a vision calls to mind the lessons we should have
learned from the Milgram (1969) experiments about the evil that can be done in the name
of obedience. More generally, students learn not to accept the validity of their intuitions
or common sense: they learn to define themselves as incompetent and others as experts.
Educators who take time to ask their students about fair testing practices might be
surprised by what they discover. The range of theories evident among children in each
school suggest that not all children are easily socialized into accepting the status quo. It is
not often prudent for children to openly critique the practices their teachers select for
them. Yet, like adults, children can continue to wrestle with their critiques “in the safety
of the world behind [their] eyes, where the inspector shade cannot see” (Ashton-Warner,
1963, p. 14, 1958, p. 41). Caged resentment (Willis, 1977) replaces active engagement in
meaningful learning. Anecdotally speaking, such resentment was certainly evident in the
direct instruction schools wherein power struggles among students and teachers were
daily occurrences. In our roles as visitors in the school, we met many of the children
whom teachers called “hall-walkers”—children who always found ways to skip class.
Those children asked us to share with our readers the fact that they really wanted to learn,
but that the pace of the class or the punitive style of their teachers (e.g., yelling was
common) made it impossible for the children to connect with the material at hand.
Adherence to ethical procedures for conducting this research meant that we could not
link children’s names with their interview protocols. Furthermore, teachers did not invite
most of the “hall-walkers” to participate in our interviews. (After their interviews, two
children told us that they found a way to obtain a permission slip, obtained parent
consent, and participated anyway.) Nevertheless, it would be interesting to know if
children who endorsed theories that deviated from the school’s norms were also more
likely to be among the disenfranchised learners.
On the other hand, power struggles could also emerge when teachers advocate
practices that children do not understand or that deviate from children’s definitions of
what should occur (e.g., Busch, 1995; Colsant, 1995; Nicholls and Hazzard, 1993). For
example, Busch (1995) found that some African American children actively resisted their
math teacher’s efforts to avoid using worksheets. As any seasoned teacher knows and
preservice teachers fear, it is very difficult for teachers singlehandedly to alter the mind
set of a particular cohort of students.
Yet, my experiences are not consistent with public arguments asserting that children
who attend racially segregated schools are more likely to have higher levels of
achievement and less conflictridden educational experiences. My colleagues and I, for
example, saw far more power struggles among African American students and their
teachers in schools housing only African American children (e.g., Busch, 1995; Colsant,
1995; Nelson, Nicholls, and Gleaves, 1996; Thorkildsen, and Schmahl, 1997) than we
saw among African American children learning in multicultural contexts (e.g., Nicholls
and Hazzard, 1993; Thorkildsen and Jordan, 1995; Thorkildsen, Nolen, and Fournier,
1994).5
Our experiences were consistent with research in the area of moral development (as
well as other areas) suggesting that discussions among teachers and students can serve to
break down power struggles, regardless of their origin (e.g., Berkowitz, Gibbs, and
Broughton, 1980; Berkowitz and Gibbs, 1983; Walker, 1980, 1983; Walker, deVries, and
Trevethan, 1987; Walker and Taylor, 1991). When considering education from this
perspective, the variability among children’s theories of how much testing is fair and not
variability in ethnicity suggests that it would be worthwhile for teachers and students to
negotiate a rationale for particular school activities. Such negotiations would reveal a
range of opinions about the nature of schooling, ensure that everyone is focused on the
same question, and simultaneously allow students and teachers to build richer
vocabularies for constructing ethical lives.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Juli Lynch, Algis Sodonis, and Beth Topliff for their assistance in data
transcription and coding, to Lawrence Walker for editorial assistance, and to the students
and staff of Milwaukee Public Schools for their willingness to teach us about methods of
testing used in their schools. This work was supported by the Department of Educational
Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Center for Urban
Educational Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For more information on
this chapter please contact Theresa Thorkildsen, Educational Psychology, College of
Education, MC-147, 1040 West Harrison, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL
60607–7133. Electronic mail may be sent to thork@uic.edu.
Notes
1 Work by Nicholls (1976, 1978; Nicholls, Patashnick, and Mettetal, 1986) shows that at these
ages, children also have difficulty differentiating ability, effort, and task difficulty. Such
confusion could easily account for my findings.
2 Dweck and Leggett (1988) attempted to foreclose such inquiry by asserting, without empirical
support, that children’s moral and motivational orientations would be parallel to one another.
I have not been able to find evidence to support their description of such parallels.
Nevertheless, when children are considering learning situations rather than tests, their
conceptions of fairness and motivation seem to be driven by their conceptions of
intelligence.
3 First graders from each school were interviewed, but were dropped because they had trouble
coordinating both the quantity and types of tests. (Thorkildsen (1991) offers other clues as to
why this interview might be confusing to children.) Six interviews with third graders in the
African American school were also dropped because the interviewer did not conduct the
interview according to the design. I stopped at grade 5 because in that school district,
children left self-contained classrooms to move into middle school and it became impossible
to compare curriculum types. Nevertheless, pilot work with high school students showed that
they generated the same types of theories generated by the children in elementary grades.
4 The sample size is too small to permit the inclusion of all these variables in a multivariate
analysis, yet easily large enough for exploratory t-tests. If differences were obtained, t-tests
would be likely to result in more significant findings than would be evident in multivariate
analysis (e.g., Stevens, 1992). Therefore, it was possible to use these results and an
examination of data distributions to conclude that it would not be worthwhile to obtain the
larger samples necessary for more complex analyses.
5 Yet, there is a striking confound here: Children attending segregated schools also experienced
highly authoritarian practices. Perhaps if, as Jagers (1992) suggested, we permitted African
American children to learn in environments that support an interactionist approach to
education, we might find the improvements in test scores and conflict-reduction that we
seek.
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7
Cultural Diversity: Concept and Ideology
as a Pedagogical Resource?
KARSTEN DOUGLAS
Cultural diversity may bring us great values, a richness of

life, unexpected views and perspectives, an encounter with
other lifestyles, and in the best case also a better
understanding of our own culture, and a respect for other
people’s cultures and religions.
But cultural diversity may also confront us with a
dilemma, a matter of great concern to politicians, political
parties and governments, to the majority population and
first of all to the minorities in a society.
Hammar, 1995, p. 1
A 13-year-old boy of non-European origin starts to dye his dark hair in a desperate effort
to seek acceptance from his Swedish school and class friends, the result being that he
starts to lose his own hair, without attaining the desired fairness. His actions were a shock
to his parents and to the teachers, who were unaware of his feelings of peer-rejection and
his desire for acceptance from the majority group. He just wanted to fit in with the other
kids at school, but his actions only increased his sense of alienation and harassment from
the other children. He also felt (rightly or wrongly) that he was unfairly judged and
marked in tests by the teachers because he was a foreigner, in spite of his proficiency in
Swedish. This resulted in the boy becoming an under-achiever in his schoolwork. The
teachers suspected that he purposely degraded his test answers in an attempt not to have
better results in comparison to the majority of the other Swedish children in the class.
In a Danish TV report, we find reports of language problems for some second and
third generation Turkish immigrant children (or perhaps they should be called first and
second generation Danish children, cf. Alsmark, 1996). These children, coming to start
their first year in the Danish school system, have no knowledge of the Danish language at
all, but only speak their mother tongue. With these two examples in mind, the question
arises as to how we should handle diversity in an educational setting. I hope to show the
complexity of this matter by exploring political, social and cultural concepts, on
comparative macro and micro levels, viewing diversity both as a problem and as a
resource.
Demystifying diversity
These examples do point to a pedagogical problem that many teachers and schools meet
and have to respond to on an everyday basis, a response that many experienced teachers
handle with confidence (Rothermel, 1996). The problem, that is, of how to interpret and
Cultural Diversity 107
handle cultural diversity, and what that diversity means in an educational situation. These
questions are worthy of critical and comparative discussion:
Discussions over cultural identity, over its relation to nationalism,

multiculturalism and diversity, will, thus, benefit from both local and
global studies. International exchanges that consider both similarities and
differences in the historical and present conceptions of and responses to
multiculturalism will help us to demystify, and not to remystify, our
understandings of what diversity means for the United States, as well as
for nations abroad. (Rothermel, 1996, p. 11)
Although the educational problems of diversity are on a much smaller scale in Sweden
compared to the United Kingdom, France, US or Australia, current immigration debates
and policies often become educational problems. We will here limit ourselves to two
journalistic examples focusing on immigration, from the US and Australia. There are of
course many more examples of the relationship between diversity and immigration
policies on the global arena.
Comparative international policies and debates
Looking at an aspect of US policy regarding immigration, we find in California (1994),

Proposition 187, depriving all illegal aliens the right to publicly funded services, such as
education and health care, and limiting future immigrant quotas. Strong civil rights
initiatives were mounted in opposition to the proposition. The situation for minorities in
US society, particularly within the segregated and underfunded education system, reflects
the fact that many of the problems that are called ethnic are in reality social problems,
with or without policies such as ‘affirmative action’.
In Australia, the current debate rages about the threat of an Asian immigration
invasion, when the country is ‘flooded by [hordes] of Asians’, reminding us of the ‘White
Australia Policy’ from the early 1950s. A heated debate, fuelled by the Independent MP
Pauline Hanson, and her statements, in Queensland, about multiculturalism having being
imposed by political elites on an unknowing public. Her ‘racist’ call for strict
immigration policies in Australia has led to national governmental and civil rights
initiatives to oppose discriminatory actions in the would be ‘mongrel nation’. Many
Australians are ashamed of Hanson-inspired events, like Singaporeans being spat on in
Queensland, and the outbreak in an Adelaide school of open abuse of Aboriginal and
Asian children, leading to the immediate implementation of an anti-racism programme by
teachers. The Australian Prime Minister, Mr Howard, does intend to go through with
immigration cuts in the future and underlines the wide concern for present immigration
levels. The Labour Party has ruled out cutting immigration when in power, and has said it
would set immigration levels with a long-term population target in mind (Sydney
Morning Herald 1996, 1997).
On the European front, we see similar tendencies towards policy debates and
restrictions for immigration and refugees. Diversity is a politically correct word these
days and very fashionable in current research projects, national curriculum and political
debates. The education system has a central role in the development of cultural tolerance
and the manifestation of diversity, both in the national and in the European arena.
However, the education system is also dependent on, and influenced by, national and
transnational immigration policies, practice and European Union (EU) recommendations.
EU recommendations, policy and reality
The Council of Europe and the Council for Cultural Co-operation (CDCC) recommend
(under Project No. 12, 1988) member states to favour actively the development of a
unified educational system and teacher-training programmes in Europe, a system that
would enhance the development of multilingual and multicultural understanding and
tolerance among the European population, through an awareness of their cultural identity
and history:
that the rich heritage of diverse languages and cultures in Europe is a

valuable common resource to be protected and developed and that a major
educational effort is needed to convert that diversity from a barrier to
communication into a source of mutual enrichment and understanding. To
facilitate communication and interaction among Europeans of different
mother tongues in order to promote European mobility, mutual
understanding and co-operation, and overcome prejudice and
discrimination. (CDCC recommendations 1988)
The European situation for refugees is commented on by Castles (Castles, Booth and
Wallace, 1983; Castles and Miller, 1993), who sees the asylum seekers and refugee
problems for Europe as ‘insoluble’, and points out the reluctance of EU-countries to
accept further non-European refugees. One interesting point in his later discussions are
the paradoxes resulting from different national policies: the adoption of explicit
assimilation policies and differential exclusion policies results in the creation of ethnic
minorities. However, those countries that implement pluralistic policies attain stable and
recognized ethnic communities within their borders. Such communities are offered a
much higher degree of economic, social and political integration, when the needs of a
culturally diverse population are recognized. (Castles, 1995, p. 306)
Ålund (1996), in reference to the refugee situation and growing ethnic identity in
Europe, takes a more critical view. She points to the establishment of ‘Festung Europa’
and ‘The Mediterranean Wall’, effectively to keep out non-Europeans; an open attempt to
draw demarcation lines between the ‘civilized’ Europe and the ‘barbarians’ outside,
where fleeing people, more often than not, knock on already closed doors. Those few
refugees that do get past the national borders are ‘subjected to ethnical segmentation, a
discriminatory labour market and purposeful political marginalization’ (Ålund and
Schierup 1992:12).
I question the ‘fortress’ concept (cf. Delanty, 1996), given Western Europe’s
willingness to accept millions of refugees during the recent conflict in former Yugoslavia
and the complicated East-West migration arena. The unfounded fears of a migrant and
refugee invasion (Thränhardt, 1996; Banton, 1996; Salt and Clarke, 1996) have only led
to a polarization of the European debate and in particular the Swedish debate. The
debates may well be compared to the same ethnic ‘Other’, out-group or ‘enemy imagery’.
There are also complicated socio-cultural aspects that point to assumed and coherent
beliefs to differentiate between the in-group’s and the out-group’s unifying norms,
values, cultural codes, language and religion. Delanty (1996) stresses the importance of
understanding today’s European integration and neo-nationalism, from the viewpoint that
‘the new politics of nationalism is a politics of cultural contestation articulated around
social issues’. Furthermore, Delanty points out that the ‘new cultural nationalism’ in
Europe, with roots in the decline of the welfare state, is based on social insecurity and
widespread discontent. Cultural nationalism ‘is not about cultural superiority, but is about
preserving differences’. Social issues and the welfare state are a central focus when
discussing cultural diversity in Sweden. Swedish immigration and refugee policies have
been changed, becoming more restrictive, and well in line with similar policies in other
EU countries.
The people’s home of Sweden
Sweden is in no way excluded from these global movements, especially when the
national and municipal financial deficit incurs massive cuts to the education system and
to the welfare state or folkhemmet (the People’s Home) as a whole (Svensson, 1992); a
‘home’ that for the first time is having to come to terms with its own recognition of the
problems with multiculturalism and diversity. Sweden is a country with growing social
tension and the same forces of nationalism, segregation, xenophobia, nostalgic and
idealistic views of the past and declining status for the middle classes, in the aftermath of
high unemployment, as seen in many other parts of the world today (Lange and Westin,
1993; Ålund and Schierup, 1991).
However, these social tendencies should not be exaggerated and given
disproportionate importance in any society, although they exist to a certain extent in
every society. It is never a healthy idea to kindle the embers of ‘tribalism’!
Fryklund (1996) underlines the growing gap between politicians and the electorate in
Sweden. In studies of the 1991 and 1994 elections he points to an extensive mistrust
towards politicians, fuelled by the increasing number of reports of political and ethical
misconduct, abuse of authority, exuberant spending and fraud among national and
municipal elected delegates.
There are warning signs that the fundamental backbone of the political democracy in
Sweden is in decline, and thereby the very foundations of ‘the people’s home’ are
beginning to crumble. This in turn leaves the political arena wide open, due to mistrust
and disinterest from the younger generations, and to infiltration and take-over by people
with dubious motives or lack of qualifications.
Fryklund warns that Sweden seems to be going ‘backwards into the future’ and that
unfavourable research reports are condemned to being silenced by politicians and
authorities.
Romanticized cultural identity

The European Council’s recommendations and guidelines, that we have already

mentioned, are apparent in the Swedish national curriculum (Lpf-94) and earlier national
educational proposals (1991). These proposals stress that knowledge and competence of
the Swedish language, culture and historical heritage are the basis for understanding other
cultures and people. However, as Rothermel (1996) correctly stresses, the
internationalization and diversity of Swedish society is in focus without giving clear
definitions of complex and debated terms like diversity, national identity, cultural identity
and multiculturalism. This leaves these terms wide open for individual interpretation and
definition, but also to the influence of power structures (Persson, 1994), control, misuse
and institutionalized discrimination (Douglas, 1995, 1996b). In addition, there is, as
Rothermel correctly points out, ‘the faulty assumption that cultural diversity is something
new to Sweden’ (1996, p. 90).
A strong advocate of a separation between politics and culture is Hylland Eriksen
(1996), who warns of the current rewriting of history, and how cultural nationalism and
historical myths are easily accepted by some and used in political ambitions and
propaganda. Such myths strongly influence the development of old and new nationalist
movements and are based on the conception of a homogenic and romanticized cultural
identity (cf. Feather-stone, 1995). The central problem within the current discourse and
practice surrounding cultural diversity is the tendency to romanticize the cultural
enrichment without questioning political and ideological motives. The culture of the
majority group reinforces its own cultural identity by emphasizing immigrant cultures as
exotic and foreign.
This problem is addressed by Alsmark (1994, 1996, 1997), who critiques the outdated
view, with roots from the turn of the century, of a ‘pure’ ethnic and cultural Sweden,
pointing to the fact that today’s society must be viewed as consisting of many different
types of Swedishness with everyday border-crossings between peoples, traditions and
cultures of diversified origin. By focusing research on the negative sides of immigration
one tends to forget all the people with foreign backgrounds who have positive
experiences, and are well integrated into Swedish society. He also calls for a more
reflective, analytical approach to research on migration and ethnic relations, an approach
showing both sides of the complicated and dynamic picture. A similar critical
pedagogical view of cultural diversity from the US underlines that culture cannot be seen
as unchanging or homogenic with clearly defined and marked borderlines:
[Culture]…as a shifting sphere of multiple and heterogeneous borders

where different historical backgrounds, languages, experiences and voices
intermingle amid diverse relations of power and privilege. (Giroux, 1992,
p. 32)
The approaches to cultural diversity in education are no less complex than such
approaches in society as a whole. With this in mind, it is necessary to look at all levels of
education in a socio-political context and not as an isolated phenomena outside all social,
cultural and political tension. Giroux (1992, p. 118) identifies that the socio-cultural
tension includes power, race and gender politics.
I would argue that approaches to diversity within the education system reflect
common and entrenched approaches to cultural diversity within the social system of a
nation. ‘Cultural romanticism’ has been the predominant orientation in Sweden for a long
time, which undermines and effectively hinders the establishment and acceptance of
cultural diversity and pluralism in Swedish society. Furthermore, we do not see how
concepts like culture, power and politics can be separated from one another (cf. Hylland
Eriksen, 1996). Surely, there are always individual or collective ideologies behind all
debatable concepts, and especially these controversial concepts.
With reference to current Swedish educational policies and national curriculum,
Rothermel correctly underlines the ambiguity of open interpretations of concepts:
while leaving room for interpretation, the policy still steers away from
encouraging teachers and students to engage in critical reflection. As one
teacher remarked, current policy reflects the Swedish passion for being
‘lagom’ (moderate). While the contributions of other cultures to Swedish
society are valued, so are the contributions of Swedish culture and
tradition. But the possible disagreements over culture as a concept, and
over the ideologies that buttress that concept, remain unexplored.
(Rothermel, 1996, p. 28)
These informed comments are central to the problem we have been trying to address,
with critical reflection perhaps the key word (cf. Alsmark, 1996). Rothermel’s excellent
study, calling for a pedagogy of the trans-cultural, found ‘contradictory patterns’: i.e. that
many Swedish language and civics teachers, who claim to be progressive and practising
multiculturalism in their classrooms, had a definite tendency to romanticize both their
own Swedish culture, and students’ ‘foreign culture’:
all the teachers responded positively to the term multiculturalism. They

also agreed that both Swedish cultural heritage and the cultural heritage of
other groups living in Sweden are important. But they approach the idea
of cultural heritage in different ways, some of them working from a
romanticized view, where culture is natural, transferable, and apolitical,
and others from a constructionist view, where culture is unclear, dynamic,
and potentially conflict laden. (Rothermel, 1996, p. 302)
Before returning to the two examples, from the schooling system in Sweden and
Denmark that I started this chapter with, I would like to summarize the different
approaches to cultural diversity, on global and national levels, that have been discussed
here. As I suggested earlier, it is by comparing their current immigration policies and
debates that we find similarities as to the restrictions, facilitation and implementation of
cultural diversity in different countries. By comparing these debates in countries like the
United States, Australia and Sweden, we find obvious parallelism in the construction of
an outside threat from immigration. The United States and Australia, most would agree,
are countries built on a common nationhood and having well-established ethnic
communities.
However, in Sweden we see the segmentation and manifestations of new ethnic
minorities, and not communities (cf. Castles, 1995). Although Sweden has a history of
established ethnic and language communities like the Finns, Sami and Rom, due to
housing segregation in Sweden we find the establishment of immigrant local

communities, with the only common ‘ethnic’ characteristic of being non-Swedish and/or
refugee. Their Swedish-born children are officially considered and registered as second
generation immigrants, and these ‘new Swedes’ are thereby given a complicated public
recognition and acceptance into Swedish society. These children are also expected, in the
most varying circumstances, to be representative of their different cultural heritage for
many generations to come. These first generation Swedes with immigrant or refugee
background, often identify themselves as being Swedish. I can only see this form of
forced-upon cultural identity by the majority group, as a way of underlining differences
from the majority culture. By this, we do not mean cultural superiority, but we do mean a
new romanticizing of cultural difference. This romanticizing of culture is predominant in
Swedish society as a whole and in the educational system. Research is needed to study
the strategies that are used by minorities to navigate their way through the archipelago of
cultural diversity and cultural difference. We may find one day that it is the minorities
who are the ones that can truly negotiate and live with the complexities of diversity and
pluralism in Sweden. After all, most immigrant and refugee families and their children do
make a reasonable life for themselves in their new country and their new communities,
with or without social networks with the majority group. The richness of cultural
diversity can often be seen in art and music from these ‘non’-Swedish communities.
Communities that are very good examples of the establishment of diversity in Sweden,
and therefore by definition are Swedish and not a negation of Swedishness. But it would
seem to be the case that the only way for complete acceptance from the majority of
Swedes is through excellence in sports or music, in parallel with the minorities in the
United States and elsewhere.
One example of a rather successful integration into Sweden (at least officially), is the
influx of refugees from former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, a large refugee group,
predominantly Bosnian, that was right from the beginning subjected to extraordinary
official policies and ‘affirmative action’, in an effort to enable a smooth introduction and
integration into Swedish society (Douglas, 1995). This has been successful in many
cases. But there would seem to be paradoxes in recent official claims that a successful
integration is necessary to enable and facilitate repatriation of refugees to their countries
of origin. Surely, there must be a contradiction here between integration and repatriation,
especially when we consider the fact that most of the refugees from former Yugoslavia
were given permanent residence permits to Sweden. However, it has been stressed that all
repatriation will be on a voluntary basis.
Perhaps one interpretation of integration could be that it is useful for refugees to
experience the limitations of a declining western economy in the ‘people’s home’ of
Sweden. This experience may incite the refugees to return to the massive destruction of a
war-stricken homeland with material and economic destruction that will take many
generations to rebuild.
On the other hand, another interpretation may point to the advantages for the majority
of Swedes to be confronted and forced to refocus their own assumptions about their own
culture, history and society, without falling into the pitfalls of an overidealization of
Swedish cultural and historical heritage.
The bottom line in all immigration policies, especially for countries with limited
populations, are questions relating to the declining welfare state, high unemployment, the
environment, demographics and population control. We know that fertility rates are
falling in the western countries. We also know that one of the main questions for the next
century is the growing aged population and its care. Questions on the care of the elderly,
pensions and underfunded schooling are already becoming very controversial in Sweden.
A dismantling of the Swedish welfare state (as in other countries) due to insufficient
funding has resulted in sectors like care of the elderly, health care and education being
under a state of siege, and in many tragic personal consequences, especially for the
elderly.
Without going further into these complicated questions, we would like to suggest that
they are all of relevance when endeavouring to discuss the even more complicated
concept of cultural diversity in a country like Sweden. Many of the questionable
problems that are stamped with ‘the cultural or ethnic label’ are in fact social problems,
and they should be addressed from that point of view. We would strongly stress that
questions of cultural diversity cannot be broached without being set in the context of
relevant social policies, ideologies and practice, both at global and national levels. This,
of course, is the basis for critical postmodern reflection and deconstruction when
analysing the decentring of cultural complexity and fragmentation of society. A global
process that is making us all, especially within education, more conscious of new and
uncharted levels of diversity (Featherstone, 1995, pp. 13 f.). However, as some scholars
point out, this kind of critical research and reporting may not always be received with
good grace by the powers that be.
This critical reflection is valid and important for the exploration and demystification
of pedagogical questions, such as cultural diversity, and how to use the concept and the
ideologies behind that concept, as a resource in education and teaching practice. Only
then can we begin the long, difficult and challenging task of acknowledging, through
teaching practice, the diverse voices, identities, experiences, ideologies, histories and
cultural traditions of students and teachers, that will hopefully always be present and
recognized in today’s and tomorrow’s classrooms (cf. Rothermel, 1996, p. 328).
Diversity as an educational resource
Returning now to the two examples we started with; first, the young boy who identified
himself with the majority group, by unsuccessfully trying to dye his dark hair. Second,
the young (first and second generation) children, who started school with no knowledge
of the majority language at all, but only spoke their mother tongue from their home
environment. I will attempt to summarize our conclusions, by drawing upon these two
examples from educational settings.
I acknowledge the fact that there are many different influences and psychological
development aspects for a young teenage boy in his formative years, with reference to his
maturity, development stages and his sense of identity. However, looking at this example
of his willingness to deny his own cultural heritage and attempt to become an accepted
member of the majority peer-group, by not distinguishing himself from the majority, does
point to extensive (if not open) in-group pressure on a single member in the class. A
pressure to assimilate into the majority group that may very well be unspoken, but
nonetheless present, at least in the mind of this boy. Another interpretation may be that
his course of action is a completely normal thing, given the circumstances. Children and
youths always want to retain acceptance, group recognition and identity, in one form or
another. We all need to have a few, or preferably many friends at that age, and the
majority of school children do. Dress codes and music are of course, in their own right,
other factors that contribute to young people’s establishment and consolidation of group
identity. It would be unfortunate if the teachers in the boy’s class decided to make
ethnicity an issue by asking the boy to be a representative of his cultural heritage. Stand
up and be ethnic! This would perhaps only make an already inflamed situation worse and
be counter productive. This could indicate some teachers’ lack of understanding of the
dynamics of cultural diversity in the classroom. The boy’s feelings of differentiated
treatment by the teachers points to an unawareness, on the teachers’ behalf, of the signals
conveyed to the student. Signals of majority cultural superiority or difference,
assimilation pressure and perhaps a lack of class discussion about cultural diversity and
tolerance. Furthermore, it points to the importance of cultural studies and studies in
migration and ethnic relations in teacher-training programmes. These subjects are now
standard syllabus within all teacher-training programmes at the Malmö School of
Education in Sweden.
I find it hard to believe that professional teachers would knowingly mark down test
results because the test was written by a student with immigrant or refugee background.
However, perhaps we are too hasty in drawing upon such a confident belief in some
teachers’ professionalism in overcoming common social prejudice and stereotyping.
In the cases of first and second generation children starting school with no knowledge
of the majority language, we believe some of these cases to be based in a socio-cultural
problem with the parents. After all, the children, although they have such a language
handicap, will learn the national language and often become bilingual at that age, through
the efforts of normal schooling, and irrespective of their parents’ wishes. We see this as a
rejection of the majority culture and language from the parents’ side. A rejection based
on social factors, and perhaps bitter experiences in the new country, which in turn lead to
a romanticization and reinforcement of their own ethnic cultural identity. The difficulties
for adult immigrants of reaching language and cultural competence (Douglas, 1996b,
1996c), not to mention the destructive implications of becoming dependent on social
welfare and organized pseudo-employment programmes and sometimes meaningless
retraining programmes, supports the parents’ rejection of the national majority’s
language, culture, norms and values (cf. Tingbjörn, 1985, p. 17). However, this ‘cultural’
rejection of the majority group, or social cohesion to a minority group, by the parents, is
very often not shared by the children once they reach a certain age and sense of
independence from their families. This in turn can lead to very severe conflicts within
many immigrant and refugee families. There have been recent tragic cases of beatings
within families with an immigrant or refugee background, and even the murder of a
young teenage girl by her brother.
Cultural diversity can be a pedagogical resource through mutual tolerance,
understanding, respect and acceptance of ideologies in education and society; a resource
that must acknowledge and openly discuss the differing ideologies behind cultural
concepts and their multitude of definitions.
Furthermore, it must be left up to the individual, teacher or student, to affiliate and
recognize his or her own cultural identity. This personal choice cannot be made or
imposed by others. At the same time, we should be aware of the hidden implications and
political motives that are sometimes used, both by majority and minority groups in the
name of history, ethnicity, culture, identity, and diversity on the dangerous road to neo-
cultural nationalism. Teachers and administrators would do well in understanding the
global movements of nationalism, and perhaps worldwide Internet communications will
facilitate co-operation, insight and understanding. After all, we all have to coexist in
declining welfare states and the fragmentation of postmodern society. This diversified
coexistence can hopefully be maintained without the prevailing heavy stamp of cultural
or ethnic ‘difference’, but rather by pedagogues respectfully addressing the complexity
and resourceful richness of ideological difference, and by their recognizing the
possibilities and potential resources, of openly confronting the issues behind cultural
diversity in their classrooms, without the help of toxic hair-dye.
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8
Motivating Students to Succeed: The Work
of Birmingham Compact 1988–94
STEPHEN BIGGER
Concern over the underachievement of inner-city pupils, and in particular youngsters

from ethnic minority communities, became apparent in the 1980s after the interim report
of the Committee of Inquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups
(the ‘Rampton Report’, DES, 1981) which focused on Afro-Caribbean pupils. The
investigation was broadened in the final report Education for All (the ‘Swann Report’,
DES, 1985). This put firmly on the national agenda the attainment, achievement and
aspirations of innercity youngsters, and in particular those from ethnic minorities. The
reports had pointed not only to deprivation (for example through unemployment and
housing conditions) but also to racism as important factors. Coard (1971) had previously
drawn attention to stereotyped teacher expectations that stigmatized ethnic minority
pupils as educationally sub-normal. Attitudes, particularly of teachers, play a crucial role
both in the problem of ethnic minority underachievement and in possible solutions. Lord
Swann’s own views did not always square with the consensus of his committee so his
personal summary of the highlights of the Swann Report was hugely controversial,
criticized even by committee members (Gill et al., 1992). Solutions to some issues raised
followed a cultural pluralism model. Religious education, for example, was
recommended to devise a curriculum which is inclusive of the major religions and would
inform all pupils of the diversity of religious beliefs, assumptions and attitudes (see
Bigger, 1995b). Racism however demands anti-racist solutions: these are hinted at but do
not predominate.
Multicultural education had been much discussed throughout the 1970s and 1980s and
was a major focus of the work of the Schools Council (see e.g. Little and Willey, 1981).
Ideological responses shifted from an emphasis on assimilation into western society to a
celebration of cultural pluralism, with the curriculum being ‘enriched’ with multicultural
examples in the hope that this would slowly begin to change attitudes (Mullard, 1982).
Racism became highlighted as a key issue to be faced; responses to this became known as
‘anti-racism’. The national body NAME changed its title from the National Association
for Multicultural Education to The National Anti-Racist Movement in Education to mark
and publicize this ideological change. This recognized that racism is a real influence on
the lives of ethnic minorities and especially black communities (CRE 1988a and 1988b;
Troyna and Hatcher, 1992). Government policy came under scrutiny in various
directions. Anti-racist policies by left-wing councils were vilified both by the press and
central government (Troyna and Williams, 1986; Gill et al., 1992) after which the Inner
London Education Authority was dismantled. There were devastating attacks on the
policies of councils such as Brent, whose own policy document on equality (Equality and
Excellence 1991) contained much of common sense. Research into inner-city schooling is
often controversial, as it uncovers stereotypes and attitudes. For example, a study of an
American inner-city school (MacDonald et al., 1982) raised more problems than it
offered solutions.
The process of educational ‘reform’ stemming from the Education Reform Act in
1988 stressed the continued importance of multicultural perspectives as a curriculum
theme to permeate National Curriculum subjects and religious education. This has further
been maintained as a substantial item on Ofsted’s (Office for Standards in Education)
school inspection checklist. Troyna and Carrington (1990) explore aspects of and issues
relating to national policy. Anti-racism suggests a particular analysis of social trends of
relevance not only to education (Klein, 1993; Gill et al., 1992) but to society and
employment also (Braham, Rattansi and Skellington, 1992; Donald and Rattansi, 1992).
Among the initiatives that arose in the attempt to find solutions to this situation were
some created by the Employment Department. One attempted to influence the school
curriculum in ways that might better help pupils prepare for the world of work by
developing a range of practical skills (such as in information technology) and being
offered vocational courses (such as the Diploma of Vocational Education). This was
called TVEI, the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative, which was in financial
terms a very substantial staff development programme focusing on the 14–18 age range
in schools and colleges. This initiative attempted to build bridges into employment for all
young people and enable schools to develop a clearer understanding of what employers
expect of the young people they employ. The early problems were substantial: many
teachers were reluctant to make room in the curriculum for what they viewed as
‘training’. School, they argued, should have a broad educational agenda to open up young
minds rather than the narrower task of preparing young people to become obedient
employees. TVEI philosophy itself developed as this issue was resolved, and so lasting
benefits have been achieved.
Another Employment Department initiative took its inspiration from the United States,
and in particular from the ‘Boston Compact’ which started in 1982. Here, schools and
colleges in downtown Boston, Massachusetts made a deal with local employers to reward
pupils who developed self reliance, self discipline and work-related education with the
promise of a job. This job ‘guarantee’ was seen as a way of motivating disaffected
students who do not find academic studies rewarding. The guarantee was less than a legal
contract to provide employment (that would make it hard to recruit employers) so the
agreement was described by the word ‘compact’. The formal agreements underpinning
Compact were expected of all parties—employers, students, education departments,
schools and colleges. Each promised to support students to raise the level of their
personal motivation, attainment and aspirations. By 1986 ‘Compact’ was adopted as an
appropriate strategy for inner-city developments by the Employment Department, first in
London and then nationally (BITC, 1991).
Inner-city Compacts began with an early pilot in London, the ‘London Compact’, in
Hackney and Tower Hamlets. It was quickly realized that, to create a climate in school in
which students could make progress and develop skills, existing school practice had to be
changed and shaped, allowing the different and separate strategies and initiatives to be
made more coherent. The agenda was to build a lasting partnership between employers
and education that could expect students to achieve goals identified by employers, and be
guaranteed and receive a ‘Compact job’ or period of training in return. The potential
benefits were great: demographic trends suggested that by the 1990s there would be too
Motivating students to succeed 119
few young people available to fill current job vacancies. Companies felt that they might
have problems in recruiting school leavers and wished to attract the available youngsters
to their companies. They also wanted to encourage schools to develop skills and personal
qualities that would make the youngsters good and reliable employees. Many ‘Compact
job guarantees’ were made in these early days. Teachers were not satisfied with a narrow
view of education, and issues about the quality of jobs were seriously raised.
Guaranteeing a job should lay upon employers the responsibility of providing quality
employment with training and progression built in, and ensure that young people are not
tied into dead-end jobs. These discussions influenced employers; and the job guarantee
was hit by recession. Pupils often preferred to continue their education and training.
Widening Compact out to other urban areas, bids were invited for Compact
development in March 1988. As the idea proved popular, funding for an anticipated
fifteen projects was increased to enable thirty to commence. Twenty-one further areas
received development funding in 1989 and 1990 by which time Compact was operating
in most inner-city areas countrywide. If the aim was for Compacts to create jobs as well
as prepare young people for them, then too little money was allocated: in fact, when
compared to such initiatives as TVEI, the Compact budgets were tiny—£50K for a whole
city was not untypical. Yet Compacts did manage to bring together partnerships of
schools, colleges, careers services and employers to begin to sort out many issues of
transition and progression. Many of the people involved were educationalists who
focused sharply on student motivation and achievement, hoping that students would be
better prepared for adult life and future careers if schools made this a central concern in
their planning and provision.
As this programme appeared to be making good progress (Saunders et al., 1993a,
1993b), the idea was extended to help tackle deprivation elsewhere, including rural
deprivation: these ‘Compact Extensions’ began to run countrywide (Bigger, 1995a,
1996b). For the most part, Compact became embedded in local ‘Education Business
Partnerships’ (EBPs) within the local Training and Enterprise Council (TEC). These do
not have to give the same emphasis to guarantees of job and training opportunities but are
committed still to developing partnership arrangements with employers and training
providers. These potentially can have an effect on students from ethnic minorities if local
arrangements give this any priority.
Compact’s central vision was to place student motivation at the head of the quality
agenda. All questions about school and curriculum management were approached
through the question, how can we use this to help to motivate students better? The aim of
Compact was
to encourage schools and colleges to raise the motivation of students by

celebrating the achievement of goals which encourage personal
development, empowering students to take responsibility for their own
learning. (Birmingham Compact, 1994a, p. 1)
The achievement of these goals was marked by the award of a Compact certificate which
provided ‘an externally validated demonstration and celebration of individual
achievement and capability which complements academic assessment’ (ibid).
The idea of student incentives has raised thorny issues: the original idea was to match
goal achievers into earmarked jobs. The recession changed all that, and very few jobs
were available for 16 year olds. Compacts however still negotiated (as they were required
to by the terms of their bid and performance indicators) ‘Compact job opportunities’ with
companies for students who achieved the Compact goals, but rarely guaranteed actual
jobs to particular individual students. Schools, colleges and Compacts felt it important
not to constrain students choice in any way, so that they provided opportunities without
reducing options.
Birmingham Heartlands Compact was formed in 1988 (one of the thirty bids approved
and funded by the Employment Department in that year) to create a partnership between
education and industry (in its broadest sense) in order to enhance educational provision
through a phased programme. The bid and the project was managed within the
Birmingham Heartlands Corporation which was funded to provide inner-city
restructuring: they saw in Compact a boost for young people in a very deprived
development area in which 40 per cent adult employment was not unusual. The three
comprehensive schools which pupils from this area attended became phase 1 schools.
Each school is ethnically mixed; and in one school only a handful of pupils are not
Pakistani. In all three schools there were considerable language issues, with students
either learning English as a second language or requiring support in written English. In
the years of Compact development, academic results improved. One in particular was
outstanding: by 1994 the percentage of students leaving with no GCSEs reduced from 37
to 4 per cent; the numbers obtaining five or more GCSEs improved from one-third to
two-thirds (see further Birmingham Compact, 1994a) over the four-year period. Compact
proved most effective over the general range of school attainment without greatly
influencing the percentage of A-C passes. Progress was also made in two other areas,
enhancing progression to post-16 opportunities, and encouraging participation in work
experience (not always easy for Muslim girls). In other ways also the schools had each
created a supportive and positive ethos with a great sense of partnership with the
community they served, including local companies.
Phase 2 Heartlands schools came into the scheme one year later. The process provided
three years of funding, to cover a development year and taking the first cohort of year 10
students through to the end of year 11. The strategy having then been established, the
funding was transferred to new schools joining at later phases. In phase 2 also, Compact
was extended in Birmingham to three of the TVEI local partnerships. Although many of
these new schools are not in the inner ring, most have a multi-ethnic intake. Compact was
renamed Birmingham Compact to recognize this wider catchment. Compact offered
students a positive affirmation of capabilities at the end of a process of goal achievement
which targets relevant skills, personal qualities and experience of the adult world and
world of work. Compact certificates were awarded to year 11 students from three inner-
city schools in 1991, 10 schools in 1992, 22 schools in 1993, 30 schools in 1994 and 37
schools in 1995. Others then began Compact development. By 1993, the operation
became integrated into the Birmingham Education Business Partnership (BEBP) under
the leadership of Peter Lambert, the first director of the Heartlands Compact. The author
was director of Birmingham Compact through this transitional period, 1992–4.
Post 16 Compact began in 1990 with a pilot for sixth-form and college students. The
first cohort of goal achievers received their post-16 certificates in 1993. Twenty-one
advanced level achievers took up the 49 offers made to achievers by the University of
Central England and began their courses in October 1993. By 1993, all five of
Birmingham’s higher education institutions (three universities and two higher education
colleges) agreed to support Post 16 Compact students, and publicly signed declarations of
commitment on 24 March 1994.
Compact’s partnership philosophy is reflected in funding. National funding came from
the Employment Department, through Birmingham TEC. The local education authority
and local companies seconded staff to Compact to support work in schools and
colleges—advisory teachers to be involved with school development and strategic
planning; company secondees to head up marketing to other companies. The National
Development Agenda of the Employment Department (ED, 1994, pp. 21–6), under the
heading ‘Maximizing Young People’s Potential’ highlights as current and future
strategies TVEI, careers advice, education-business links, Compacts, EBPs, teacher
placements, and youth credits. It particularly focused on Compacts as a vehicle for
delivering equal opportunities, and for supporting students at risk (p. 25). This concern
for relevant education, well funded through initiatives, was a consideration leading to the
eventual merger of the Employment Department with the Department for Education.
The principles of partnership
Compact set realistic goals for students to achieve, goals designed to help them develop
the sort of qualities, skills and experiences that will help them to understand the
workplace and their future roles as adults. The goals were set in the early days after wide
consultations around the question, What kind of youngsters should education be
producing? The list of criteria was organized under four central goals for ease of recall:
• to complete coursework satisfactorily and on time
• to achieve a high standard of attendance and punctuality
• to develop personal skills and qualities
• to take part in work-related activities.
The basic principle behind Compact was the concept of partnership: that those involved
with the education of young people (for example schools, parents, the community,
employers) should work together to plan strategically for enhancing the opportunities
available to school and college leavers. This might include occasions when members for
local businesses and the community, such as the police, youth service, medical practices
and recreational departments, support the pupils in various ways. Compact goals became
widely known, with new Compacts adopting established goals. In Birmingham, the goals
were created from a blank sheet by bringing together representatives of the ‘partners’ (the
student voice was unfortunately less well represented than in retrospect it ideally should
have been) to discuss and record on a flipchart the kind of achievements and qualities that
students should have reached by the age of 16. The total list came to twenty-two items, a
challenging list of targets which were grouped into the four main goals. Of course, goals
established by partnership have to be imposed on later cohorts, since it is not time well
spent to renegotiate goals every year. In reviews over the years, there was however no
pressure to change or even refine any goals since the initial decision-making process was
sound.
Raising aspirations
The economic realities were that there were few jobs available for school-leavers at 16,
including a significant collapse in the job market for the unskilled. For the teachers
involved with Compact development, its main value was to prepare pupils better for adult
life in employment by encouraging them to persevere, to be motivated, and to aspire to
meaningful careers. Motivation should enable students to achieve higher qualifications
and open up a wider range of careers. This tended to encourage further education and
training as young people sought to escape from the ‘unskilled’ trap and avoid jobs
without clear progression.
Whole school strategic planning and staff development
The Compact motivational agenda cannot successfully be done at the margins but
requires centralized strategic planning. The principle that all aspects of school or college
work should contribute to motivation needs to permeate every aspect of the life and work
of the institution as an explicit quality standard. Its aim and expectation is that pupils
wish to attend regularly and be punctual because they value education; that they complete
coursework because they see it as personally meaningful; that they develop skills and
qualities because they feel responsible for their own learning; and that they participate
willingly in work-related activities because they realise that these will give them
experience which will help them to identify which direction is right for them personally.
The Compact agenda therefore requires students to be directly involved in their own
learning.
This cannot happen by accident. Strategic planning involves all staff members (and
not only academic staff) and needs to impact on all relationships and interactions in
school, developing a sense of self-reliance and trust. In Birmingham, schools new to
Compact (schools were added in phases) were funded for a development year to put
strategies and structures in place so that when year 10 students were introduced to
Compact in a high profile ‘launch’, everything was ready for the initiative (and the
students) to succeed. Strategic planning starts with senior management who should stay
close to all decisions made because the Compact agenda becomes integrated with whole
school issues and school ethos. The school also has goals—to support students through
quality provision.
Mentoring: Compact Tutors
There were some experiments with industrial tutor programmes in the 1980s, but
Compact’s insistence that every student is entitled to regular meetings with a Compact
Tutor is additional to normal school requirements. It was the cutting edge of commitment
to Compact—a commitment to the added value of mentoring. The title ‘Compact Tutor’
was chosen because these ‘adults other than teachers’ could be drawn from companies,
local government, trade unions—and from many walks of life. The title needed to be all
encompassing, not restrictive. The task of the Compact Tutor was simple and clear: to
support students so as to encourage them to achieve goals (Bigger, 1994a). Normally
tutors came into school monthly to work with a group of around six students on a
programme which they helped to plan. The activities might focus on skills and
qualities—encouraging team-work or problem solving for example. They might equally
help with work experience preparation, applications and careers education.
Recruiting tutors was the school’s task, helped by Compact and the EBP. Particular
help was needed in the early stages of development, to get schools started. A central team
sought new contacts and helped to maintain links with current partners. The school had a
vital role liaising with, supporting and maintaining links with their tutors, welcoming
them as part of the school community. The school’s Compact Co-ordinator was the key
player: industrial partners appointed a co-ordinator to act as the link with all Compact
Tutors in the company. Experience has shown that not all schools are good at maintaining
thriving Compact Tutor links. Retaining mentors is difficult when they move jobs or their
company closes down. Motivating mentors to want to come is not always given sufficient
attention. They are often nervous and inexperienced in teaching skills, and need
reassurance and support, to be briefed and debriefed, to share their issues, concerns and
successes. This demands a degree of prioritization in a busy school day. Compact brought
together more than sixty mentors to explore ideas for activities with their students. These
formed the core of the booklet, New Ideas for Compact Tutors (Birmingham Compact,
1993a).
Students gain a great deal from regular sessions with mentors. They can build a
relationship, feel ownership, develop social and personal skills, benefit from advice and
support, and visit the tutor’s workplace. It was the students’ enthusiasm which guaranteed
the future of the Compact Tutor programme. Mentors also act as role models, giving
students a clearer idea of career paths which might be possible for them. The mentors
also benefit. The experience of dealing with young people is often new to them; they can
develop supervisory and managerial skills in ways that their company often cannot
duplicate—experience essential to their achievement of qualifications such as NVQ level
3. They widen their perspective about education, the community and the needs of young
people. They may have close dealings with ethnic minority youngsters, perhaps for the
first time. The programme built bridges between students and companies which opened
minds and developed positive attitudes on both sides.
Integrating work-related activities
Compact schools provided opportunities for students to participate in a full programme of

work-related activities in years 10 and 11. Students took part in: a workplace visit; work
experience (2 weeks); a practical project related to work; an industry conference with
employers; a careers education programme; regular sessions with a Compact Tutor; and a
practice interview. These activities are not in themselves novel: Compact sought to shape
current best practice into a coherent whole designed to motivate students. The whole
Compact agenda worked towards this coherence with respect to all school systems,
involving every form teacher and class teacher. Subject teachers were encouraged to
involve careers as a cross-curricular theme through a work-based project. The result
should be a work-related curriculum integrated with and enhancing all other school
responsibilities and demands (see e.g. Bigger, 1992a, 1992b), and not a series of
additional activities bolted on to an already busy Key Stage 4 agenda. Developing
Compact therefore means interfacing with the school development plan and putting into
place whatever infrastructure is required (a Compact Coordinator and a Compact
management team for example). The commitment of both governors and senior
management is therefore vital. The whole should be planned in the light of equal
opportunities commitments, seeking good role models for ethnic minority pupils which
develop and affirm their potential and aspirations.
Work experience
By 1988 it could not be said that every school student in Birmingham had the opportunity
for a period of work experience. It was identified as a TVE ‘student entitlement’ which
both supported and was supported by Compact’s demand for this as a criterion for quality
school provision. In addition Compact encouraged schools and employers to consider
how the experience could become more effective, appropriate and motivational. After
broad consultation the booklet Improving Practice in Work Related Activities: Quality
Prompts was produced (Birmingham Compact, 1992)—quality questions that schools and
employers should ask when planning work experience. Central support for schools
finding work experience placements was provided by Project Trident, within BEBP. The
emphasis was on widening experience, offering students something different to extend
their horizons and offer an escape from short-term casual employment. The most
challenging group to place were Muslim girls.
Industry days
Schools spend a day off timetable to focus on employment, supported by a group of

industrialists. The day is planned to be a time of activity and involvement, in which
students work in teams on tasks which actively engage them on a work-related issue. One
project developed in a number of schools was Dombey and Co: a simulation about an
old-fashioned family business which seeks to make itself more contemporary and more
commercially competitive. Students were involved in planning, market research,
relocation, design, advertising and marketing. Sometimes such days help to launch
Compact to year 10 students, by explicitly bringing out the qualities and skills developed
and encouraging students to target the Compact goals. The emphasis on team building
was strong, and gave ethnically diverse groups of students the opportunity to work
closely together.
Careers education programme
Over the last decade, careers education has been developed in secondary schools with
particular input from Compact, the careers service, and TVE. Generous funding came
from Birmingham TEC and the Inner City Partnership (ICP). All schools developed or
refreshed their careers education programmes. In Compact schools this would have a
close link with goal achievement and the Compact Tutor programme. In particular, work
on job application and practice interviews clearly benefit from partner industrialists.
Compact has given a high profile to equal opportunities in work with teachers, students
and employers. Careful attention was given to finding suitable role models, trying to give
a balanced picture in terms of gender, ethnicity and disability. Detailed aims and
strategies were developed in Equal Opportunities Policy (Birmingham Compact, 1991).
Recording achievement
The National Record of Achievement (NRA) is, in Compact schools, carefully integrated
into whole school provision. By setting and monitoring goals, Compact helped a school
to develop action planning and the formative process of recording achievement. The
Compact goals provided a sharp focus to the NRA by requiring evidence for attendance,
punctuality, work completion rates, the development of skills and qualities and
participation rates in work-related activities. By providing a certificate which is valued
city-wide, Compact helps to motivate youngsters into taking the NRA seriously; and by
linking it with the Compact Tutor programme it helps youngsters to see the relevance of
the Record of Achievement process in terms of employability. The NRA has gained in
profile over the past few years, and Compact was helpful in providing quality monitoring
and recording processes. It is particularly important for inner-city pupils to have means of
demonstrating their qualities and achievements in ways which supplement academic
results. Having English as a second language may lower academic grades and hide a
student’s real potential.
Compact encouraged schools to review student progress regularly, organizing a formal
review interview, at least twice yearly, to examine the students’ portfolios or folders of
evidence. In Birmingham a number of schools involved students in detailed self-
monitoring through a Compact monitoring and action planning booklet. The first,
produced by Hamstead Hall School and called My Future (year 10) and Back to My
Future (year 11), has served as a model for many other schools, even outside
Birmingham. The NRA outcomes focus on employability factors, whether destinations
are into work, or training, or further education. In providing opportunities for self-
monitoring, students are encouraged to be more aware and responsible for their own
actions and progress.
Celebrating achievement
The question of incentive is important. If ‘job guarantees’ were ever an incentive (and
students showed no enthusiasm in Birmingham for jobs that were offered) they did not
last into the period of Compact implementation. Schools which placed too great emphasis
upon this aspect in the early stages regretted it later. An important development,
introduced particularly by educationalists, was to emphasize the intrinsic motivation
without attaching it to extrinsic rewards. Teachers and school staff could find many ways,
small and large, to enhance motivation: praise, celebration and the ‘feel good factor’
played no little part. Students began to see the value of developing self-confidence and
skills for their own prospects—and as their aspirations grew, they focused on progression
and questioned those jobs which appeared to have little prospect of advancement or
training.
Two aspects of this are worthy of comment. The certificate emerged as the summative
statement, a form of extrinsic recognition. This was presented to goal achievers at the end
of year 11 after two years of study. It certified that the student had achieved the specified
goals of attendance and punctuality, coursework completion to time, demonstrating and
developing skills and qualities, and participating in work-related activities. It was signed
by the Compact Director and Headteacher and was designed to be placed in the National
Record of Achievement. The certificate demonstrated non-academic achievement and
could be attained by a high academic achiever or a special needs student. A student with
high GCSE grades could (and occasionally did) miss out on the breadth of development
that Compact expected. It enabled those with middle of the range grades to demonstrate
other types of ability. The percentage of students who obtained certificates varied
enormously from 40 to 80 per cent, depending often on catchment area.
The second issue is the value of celebration. The first two cohorts of Compact goal
achievers in the city were given their certificates in high-profile city-wide events, first in
the Birmingham International Conference Centre (1991) and in the following year in
Symphony Hall, sponsored by TSB. This was a helpful public relations exercise both for
schools and for companies involved with schools; the high cost was met by sponsorship
which could not be guaranteed in the longer term. The long-term intention was for
schools to arrange their own celebrations, either in school or in a convenient public place.
Birmingham’s Town Hall, Centennial Centre, Repertory Theatre, and a leisure centre all
made interesting and varied venues. Such occasions underlined the status of the Compact
certificate as something worthwhile, both to goal achievers and to younger pupils
working towards their goals. Public figures also became involved, both politicians and
celebrities (for example TV personalities, and sporting figures). Every effort was made to
ensure that celebrations were as inclusive as possible both in terms of ethnic background
(translations were provided for parents) and special needs. It was particularly effective
when a Pakistani signer for the deaf was able to sign the Urdu translation as well as the
English version.
Compact Plus
Compact assumes and requires good attendance. Eighty-five per cent total across the year
was the target selected in Birmingham and proved to be a realistic one. Students who fell
beneath this could not gain an overall certificate, but may have achieved some of the
goals and been awarded lesser certificates by their school. There is however a wider
question of how poor attenders can be helped. One answer is to adopt a Compact strategy
much earlier, even in the primary school to establish good study habits. Another, to meet
the current need of helping a handful of ‘at-risk’ students was funded separately as a
‘Compact Plus’ initiative. This placed students in groups or teams with a specific project.
A mentor would be recruited from a local company or institution to give them some
external support. The idea was to encourage motivation through a worthwhile project in
which all the students played a part. National Compact Plus conventions brought together
Compact Plus teams from all over to share their activities. This is particularly targeted at
reluctant school attenders and had some spectacular if uneven results, encouraging a few
students to turn themselves round and make a fresh start.
Post 16 Compact
Post 16 Compact provides progression to the next stage, working alongside whichever
level of qualification (foundation, intermediate or advanced) students are taking. For
advanced level students, this includes consideration of higher education courses. Pilot
developments began in 1990 with those Compact schools which had sixth-forms, and
three local colleges. The goals were set to show progression from pre-16 goals, with a
similar agenda of qualities, skills and experience, requiring satisfactory work for
qualifications, core skills (as defined by NCVQ) and career planning to link careers
education with action planning. Work-related experience is developed through the fourth
goal, ‘to undertake a work-based assignment’ in collaboration with the company or
institution of the work placement. The provision of work placements for post-16 students
generally is an important but neglected quality feature, with GNVQs no less than with A
levels. For applicants to higher education (HE), there is a parallel ‘higher education
experience’, usually a day visit to a local university. The pilot broadened in 1993 and
every HE institution in Birmingham agreed at the highest level to be involved.
The work-based assignment is flexible and can have many forms—so long as it is
based on a placement, raises issues relating to that experience; and is supported,
monitored and validated by both school (or college) and the placement company (or
institution). For an engineering or manufacturing student, the assignment might be based
on a placement to a factory: a particularly interesting example placed a group of students
alongside Rover trainees in a project to redesign a gearbox. Business students might go to
an office or bank: Lloyds Bank produced a useful scheme of structured activities. A
future teacher might go to a local primary school with a structured programme.
Post 16 Compact was designed to augment and enhance A-level teaching and is still
challenging in that context. GNVQ later built in much of the same philosophy: core
skills, action planning, portfolio building, work placements. As a result it is much easier
for a GNVQ student (and teacher) to embrace Post 16 Compact as less extra work was
demanded. Post 16 Compact has had, ironically, to create a new role for itself vis-à-vis
GNVQ: as a quality standard which sharpens the GNVQ forma-tive process and ensures
that GNVQ programmes relate appropriately to the workplace.
Post 16 Compact has drawn higher education into the partnership as it has expanded
(Bigger, 1994b; Birmingham Compact, 1993b; Birmingham Compact, 1994b).
Birmingham Polytechnic signed a Compact guarantee in 1991 and have, as University of
Central England (UCE), been centrally involved in developments (Rogers and Bigger,
1994). By 1993 Birmingham’s other two universities and two HE colleges had agreed to
work in partnership also. Links were also made with the University of Wolverhampton,
Staffordshire University, Westminster College Oxford and Worcester College. The
contribution of this partnership to enhancing inner-city opportunities has been researched
by Bird and Yee (1994). Many of the HE courses involved are vocational and Post 16
Compact is proving to be a particular support for GNVQ students. HE also supports
schools in other ways—student tutors from many university departments provide
youngsters with excellent role models.
Compact in Birmingham enjoyed the support of all political parties, of the LEA and of
Birmingham TEC. Although the schools have a mix of needs and styles, and the normal
problems of inner-city schools, it enjoyed the support of enthusiastic Heads and school
staff. Raising students’ motivation through a curriculum recognized as relevant to their
needs brought about major improvements in academic performance: phase 1 schools who
brought three cohorts through GCSE doubled or trebled the proportion of students
gaining GCSEs and cut the proportion not achieving any GCSEs. The same statistics are
evident from phase 2 schools (Birmingham Compact 1994a, pp. 10 f.). But in addition to
academic results, students have all gained much clearer insights into work, industry and
the local economy through local partnership.
Nevertheless, quality does not come without pain. Ofsted reports of Compact schools
praise effective monitoring strategies which can both check progress and motivate
students. These took some years to set up and need maintaining with vigilance: schools
have not found this easy with so many competing pressures; and their monitoring has
itself been scrutinized and reviewed centrally through six-monthly Compact ‘Goal
Achievement Review’ reports. Recruiting Compact Tutors, and indeed work experience
placements, has not been straightforward in the recession. Nevertheless Compact,
designed in the booming 1980s flourished in the recession at a time when opportunities
for employment were pitifully few. It flourished for educational reasons, as the
mechanism for working towards a Key Stage 4 curriculum that motivates through its
relevance to the concerns of students, and by celebrating and rewarding the development
of qualities, skills and experience that are likely to contribute to the economic future of
the students, the city and the nation.
Affirmative action, targeting, equal opportunities
Inner-city Compacts began with an agenda of affirmative action: to help deprived

youngsters gain jobs they might otherwise not achieve. Deprivation has economic and
class dimensions—these were people who for financial or other reasons had not tended to
aspire to education, training or skilled employment. Like all affirmative action
programmes (these are for example regularly tested by USA law courts on the basis that
discrimination, even if positive, is illegal) this has proved to be problematic (see the
Economist vol. 335 no. 7910, April 1995:21–3). How can decisions be made that one
student qualifies for opportunities when another, equally able, does not? HiPACT, for
example, a network of universities encouraging deprived pupils to aspire to higher
education with quotas of special places, operates a disadvantage test to cut down the
numbers involved. In a school where some pupils are included and some excluded, this
could be divisive and create the impression that entry to HE has not been through merit.
Race may be one of our criteria, as so often in affirmative action programmes in the
USA; but although race can certainly form one type of disadvantage (based on racism and
discrimination for example, or from the effect of using English as a second language),
there may be members of ethnic minorities not so disadvantaged; and there are other
forms of serious disadvantage, such as poverty in unemployed working-class families.
Young people in such families tend not to enter further or higher education but enter a
cycle of further poverty and disadvantage as unskilled jobs dry up. Inner-city Compacts
targeted working-class youngsters whatever their ethnic background. Nevertheless,
because of the locations of the schools, many of the pupils were from ethnic minority
backgrounds.
Compact in Birmingham had to work through some equal opportunities issues. The
pressure from government was to secure ‘Compact jobs’. There were close links with the
Careers service who had a carefully thought-out equal opportunities policy which meant
that if a job is available, anyone can apply. Special jobs only for Compact students were
out of the question. The thrust of Compact therefore was to enhance the Compact goal
achievement certificate to become a form of certification which was recognized and
valued, but which lay outside of academic qualifications such as GCSEs and A levels.
Thus a Compact goal achiever demonstrates skills and qualities that a non-achiever does
not. Students who have not had the opportunity to be involved in Compact can still
demonstrate similar aptitude through a Record of Achievement and reference.
Setting up the certificate as a major qualification brings serious responsibilities such as
the need for moderation. It is important that it is equally challenging to gain the
qualification in each school, that the same criteria and standards apply. This was achieved
in Birmingham by means of a key Compact Monitoring Group which received
submissions from schools by way of review documentation, and which scrutinized
recommendations for goal achievers. This paved the way for city-wide certification—
Compact certificates issued not by schools but by Compact as an awarding body.
The effect on race issues is therefore indirect. Compact provided a means of students
demonstrating personal quality separately from academic achievement (that is through
examination results). This compensated for disadvantage which could have resulted in
lower grades. In particular it effectively compensated for lower achievement caused by
English being a second language. It enabled students from ethnic minorities to get to
university when otherwise they might have found it difficult to make the grades. Equally,
it also helped white youngsters overcome their disadvantages.
The Compact initiative encouraged informal ‘compact agreements’ between schools
and higher education institutions (reported in Bird and Yee, 1994). In one negotiated by
the author, the purpose was to encourage Muslim girls to aspire to higher education from
a community which is protective to their daughters. It was felt that places in a nearby
institution which allowed them to remain at home might have proved more acceptable
than going away. The ‘compact’ was taken up by one white and four Asian girls: they
were offered both support, a reception for their parents and two weeks work experience
in the college; the goals were monitored by the school. In due time, only the white girl
joined the college as a student (and succeeded in getting a good degree). The Asian girls
went elsewhere to university and were allowed to leave home. Thus the aim of the
compact was met even though the Asian girls did not become recruits. Since then, and
not unconnected with the decision to create the compact, the college increased its black
and Asian intake and is beginning to adapt to their needs.
Inner-city Compacts have not targeted ethnic minority students but have raised general
awareness to equal opportunities issues with regard to education and employment. Since
they have operated in areas of high ethnic minority school intakes, they have had an
effect on issues of racism and ethnicity. They have in particular sought to develop
motivation, self-esteem, personal skills and confidence in students over the 14–18 age
range. They have required that teacher attitudes and school strategies place motivation at
the heart of their agenda. They have involved employers in schools to help to break down
stereotypes and prejudices that might be lurking through ignorance. These are particularly
potent with regard to students with special needs, whether with physical disabilities or
with learning difficulties. Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972) showed the
influence of education in fighting injustice and inequality. Compact was not a magic
cure, however and its funding was at low levels and insecure. The basic principle, that
everyone works together to motivate students to achieve their full potential, deserves to
continue to be the cornerstone of quality developments and provision throughout
education into the future.
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9
Mapping Schooling Types and Pedagogies
within Different Values Frameworks
JAN CURRIE
Introduction
Education has often served a role in social movements and in collective efforts to remove
injustices. Evidence of this role is illustrated by such examples as Labor Colleges in the
United States, ANC education camps in South Africa, feminist consciousness-raising
groups in many western countries and literacy-raising groups with political orientations
in Cuba and Brazil. Often the intention embedded in the educational role is not simply to
change for the sake of progress but to revitalize and defend values different from the
dominant ones. In some societies, there is a greater emphasis on the continuation of the
culture and a desire for very little change; whereas in others there is a greater emphasis
on transforming the culture and improving it. In most western industrial societies there
has tended to be an emphasis on change, on questioning the status quo. Yet, within these
societies, there are particular groups that would prefer to see little change to the status
quo. This chapter examines the different orientations that communities have to social and
technological change and the values they would like to keep and how they have
attempted to do that in a world that is nevertheless changing at such a rapid pace.
This chapter uses social cartography to map ways in which schools and pedagogies
operate within different value frameworks. Social cartography is described by Paulston
(1996) as the art and science of mapping ways of seeing. Liebman (1994) argues that
social mapping is a project of the postmodern era which allows us to identify changing
perceptions of values and to illustrate our profusion of narratives. The mapping done in
this chapter aligns itself with ‘resistance’ mapping which Mohanty (1991) describes as
seeking to avoid capture in established power grids. By presenting alternative world
views, it seeks to establish a tradition of counter mapping. This chapter will attempt to
construct dynamic maps rather than static maps which reflect particular fixed values.
Paulston (1996) argues in Social Cartography for a constant search for new ideas and
concepts that introduce dissensus into consensus, that render the familiar strange, and that
reveal possibilities for new knowledge and better understanding of our socially
constructed world.
The world today is beset by marked differences in lifestyles among groups that have to
interact with each other in their daily living. This pluralism often gives rise to many sorts
of confrontations between groups. Hirst (1994) suggests that such tendencies towards a
divergence in values and lifestyles are almost inevitable in societies which allow a range
of social and personal choices accompanied by a decline in prescriptive community
standards. In a country like the United States this is played out when groups such as
Christian fundamentalists clash with Gays and pro- and anti-choice campaigners argue
about abortion issues. In Australia, Aborigines are seen trying to maintain their native
Mapping schooling types and pedagogies 133
lands, their spiritual homelands, confronting miners and developers who want to dig up
their land and destroy the unique heritage that Aborigines have created.
In multicultural societies there are many values contending with each other for
dominance in the public arena. Hirst notes that ‘the centralised state does not prevent and
cannot check this process of pluralisation’ (1994, p. 66). His solution is associationalism
which would allow groups to be self-regulating. ‘No group could impose its vision on all’
(p. 67). He builds certain common core standards into his model so that paedophiles
would not enjoy rights of self-regulation. However, most groups would be allowed to
determine their own value systems and as a result Hirst suggests that a tolerance for
different values would develop in the society at large.
This chapter unfortunately does not offer a solution to the problems of a clash of
cultures but cautiously suggests that Hirst’s new form of economic and social governance
may keep our thinking open in the search for solutions for these dilemmas. It recognizes
that in the multicultural societies of today many vehement clashes over values occur in
school settings and these have to be resolved. Hirst offers suggestions that may create
greater tolerance of differences.
Often the clash is most felt in policies which try to impose national standards or
curriculum guidelines that implicitly assume certain ideological orientations. Hill (1995)
observes that the Australian ‘National Curriculum’ published in 1993 has an underlying
view of learning which is behaviouristic and atomistic, rather than holistic or
personalistic. He argues that the development of a National Curriculum was primarily
driven by economic rationalist motivations which were most clearly evident in its
commitment to itemizing ‘student outcome statements’. Hill’s chapter in volume one of
this series (‘Seeking a value consensus for education’) discusses these outcome
statements and suggests that the focus was on cognitive content and skills with very little
attention to values outcomes. In essence, these national curriculum guidelines were
developed from a ‘modernist’ perspective in a ‘postmodern’ era when many individuals
would like to resurrect values from ‘pre-modern’ traditions.
Overview
First, this chapter examines the range of values which can be identified with social
settings that have been termed ‘pre-modern’, ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. It looks at the
differences between these three by identifying values that are similar in concept between
the pre- and postmodern but different from the modern. This discussion will not attempt
to exhaust all different values which exist in these societal ‘types’ but rather it will
examine a few to illustrate how schools representing these different paradigms would not
agree on one common value framework. These ‘types’ are not to be thought of as
chronological because they are all in existence today. They are also not to be thought of
in any sort of continuum or as one superior to another. Rather they are used to illustrate
the ways in which values can be overlapping or, for example, the postmodern often
revisits the values of the pre-modern. They are mapped in arches and circles to
demonstrate their non-linearity.
Second, this chapter classifies different types of schooling into whether they are
mainly modern or pre-modern in orientation. This is done by the use of overlapping
circles to demonstrate how some of their values are modern and others are pre-modern.
This mapping argues that ‘western’ schooling or mainstream schooling for the majority
of children is set in a modern values framework. In contrast, many alternative schools and
indigenous, independent schools operate in a mixture of pre-modern and modern values
framework. It would be valuable to tease out, for example, where different
ethnic/religious/cultural schools sit within these values frameworks. One of the
differentiating values is whether the school community is basically wanting to teach
individualistic or collectivistic goals or some combination of the two.
Third, this chapter identifies the pedagogies that many teacher educators introduce to
their students, such as post-structuralism and critical pedagogy, and where they are
situated on a modern to post-modern values framework. Student teachers who have not
had an introduction to the different frameworks are likely to become confused if these are
not explained explicitly. By examining the similarities and differences in these value
orientations, a greater degree of understanding of value frameworks may be developed
which could assist teachers in determining which kind of teaching approach may be
appropriate in different community schools. It may also give them greater understanding
of the inevitable clash of values that occurs in mainstream schools when parents from
different cultural backgrounds debate curriculum issues, and children from different
communities raise issues in the classroom or exhibit different values on the playground.
The chapter concludes with thoughts about whether the world is becoming more
homogenized through the forces of globalization or whether there will always be local
reactions against these forces. There is evidence that many countries want to maintain
their own value systems and have reacted strongly against the influence of the West, such
as in the case of Iran. Within western countries, the homogenization process raises the
question of whether the movement towards national frameworks and single curriculum
models is fundamentally another practice which is leading toward greater
homogenization of values within these countries which has its origins in the neoliberal
agenda.
Differences in values
Figure 9.1 illustrates the values in rather simplistic fashion to contrast the differences
among the three types: pre-modern, modern and postmodern communities. Five facets are
identified as different: order versus disorder, economic base, cosmology/ values base,
social structure and sex/identity roles. Even these facets overlap with each other and there
are not entirely ‘pure’ types in any one community.
Pre-modern
There is considerable order and certainty in most pre-modern communities. A couple of
examples of pre-modern communities existing in the 1990s are outstation Aboriginal
communities in Australia, Hutterites and Amish in North America, Lapps (known as
Sābme or Same) in Scandinavia and Russia, and the !Kung (or Bushmen) in Africa.
Paulston (1976) discusses the ethnic revival of the Lapps and theoretical models which
try to understand the position of minority ethnic groups and their efforts to seek
alternative educational programs to sustain their collective identities. For the most part,
these pre-modern communities have existed and continue to exist on an agricultural or a
nomadic or a semi-nomadic base. (Australian Aborigines have diverged the most from
the nomadic base and have relied more on the cash economy in a welfare state but
continue to have some lifestyle patterns derived from their not too distant, nomadic past.
They are also, among the above groups, the most likely to live in greater disorder and
chaos on the surface.) The traditions of pre-modern communities centre around tribal,
ethnic or religious values. The social structure is hierarchical in most pre-modern
communities as illustrated in the caste system operating in larger, agrarian societies like
India or power residing in the elders as in Aboriginal and Hutterite communities. There
are exceptions to this hierarchical social structure in some nomadic and tribal groups
which are more acephalous (no head) and are fairly egalitarian as in the case of the !Kung
in southern Africa. In most pre-modern communities there are fixed roles and identities
for different individuals and fairly set roles for males and females. A person’s genetic
origin or family origin determines their future role in the community to a considerable
extent.
Modern
Change is an ongoing phenomenon in modern societies where there is considerable
uncertainty about the future. Modern values permeate most societies which have an
industrial base. Their values orientation is secular rather than religious and their
Figure 9.1 Differences in values

traditions are built up around the nation state. The social structure of modern nation states
is based on classes or occupational groupings where individuals can change their position
during their lives through their own individual achievement. Their roles in society change
over time and to a large extent there are no fixed roles for men and women.
Postmodern
Chaos theory emerged in the postmodern era where there is greater emphasis on the fact
that there is little certainty in the world. And there is considerable confusion as to the
direction in which various societies are moving because of the speed at which their
economies, increasingly based on post-industrial information technology, are changing.
Due to communications technology and the deregulation of the world economic system,
the nation state, in many ways, is becoming less important and global and regional
alliances are becoming more dominant. Concerns are expressed based on global
considerations rather than national or religious ones. Class is still significant but many
people are beginning to identify more with social movements than with their class
origins. As a way of understanding the social forces in society, sociologists are turning to
social movements which often are global in organization, such as Green Peace and
Amnesty International. There is emerging a fluidity of roles in the postmodern world
where sex roles are seen to exist on a continuum and there are no fixed roles for anyone
in society.
Similarities and differences in values
Figure 9.2 compares the three types (pre-modern, modern, postmodern) on their
approaches to technology and development and the kind of economic system that they
desire.
Technology
Pre-modern communities do not generally develop a high level of technology and often
desire only a minimal level of technology or reject certain types of technology altogether.
For example, the Amish reject machinery such as automobiles and tractors and zippers on
their clothes. Yet the Hutterites (similar in some religious goals to the Amish) accept
automobiles and tractors but reject technology that will bring with it certain cultural
values, such as radio and television. Interestingly Aborigines are happy to use trucks and
computers and other technology. They have not been able to control the kind of
technology that enters their homes in the way that the Hutterites have. For example, even
though they may not like their children watching some of the violent videos that they
borrow from the video shops, they have not as a group analysed the long-term effects
videos and movies may have on their culture.
The postmodern era is filled with technology but critics of modernity question whether
technological solutions are always going to be able to solve the world’s problems. In
contrast, modern societies are likely to desire as much technology as possible and
Figure 9.2 Similarities/differences in

values
see technological solutions as providing many of the answers to the world’s problems.
Development
In general both pre-modern communities and postmodern individuals question the notion
that there should be development at any cost. Groups such as the Amish are more willing
to live in communities where development is not considered a goal. They could be called
anti-development, preferring the status-quo and living within their means in an agrarian
community that feels no need to change. The ideology of modern societies is for
development or progress at any cost. The economy is based on having continual growth.
Subsistence versus market economies

The pre- and postmodern come together on desiring a sustainable economy. The means of
arriving at a sustainable economy have not been developed by postmodern individuals
but those living in some pre-modern communities have developed subsistence economies
based on a barter system which some postmodern individuals would like to emulate,
especially the sense of community emanating from a personal exchange of services. This
contrasts with the market economy where international trade dominates and the countries
that do well in the new international order are those that are competitive in their exports.
Modern societies see trade on an international scale as their goal whereas pre- and
postmodern societies see local bartering and subsisting on the community’s efforts as
desirable goals.
Cash versus cashless economy

The colonial era saw cash crops replace subsistence agriculture in most parts of the
world. The post-modern era is seeing the emergence of a so-called cashless economy that
paradoxically would in some way resemble pre-modern societies which existed in a pre-
cash era although the emerging cashless economy differs substantially from the pre-cash
economy in so far as at the end of the line there is still a recording of a cash transfer
rather than a barter of goods. (In Figure 9.2, the arrow between a cashless economy and a
cash economy recognizes the ties that still remain between the modern and the
postmodern on this factor.)
Schooling types within pre-modern and modern frameworks
Figure 9.3 maps where the schooling types would predominantly locate themselves,
either in the modern or the postmodern framework. The modern is located within the
large inner circle where you find government mainstream schools, elite private schools
and Catholic systemic schools. The pre-modern is located on the outside of the circle. On
either side of the circle are the collectivistic and individualistic thrusts. The modern is
more individualistic and the pre-modern more collectivistic. But even within the modern
there are some schools that would have a more collectivistic orientation, such as the
Catholic schools which are mapped on the side of the circle closer to the collectivistic
side. In contrast the elite private schools are mapped as closest to the individualistic side
and the government schools as somewhere in between those two but still on the
individualistic side. Each of the other schools either straddling the circle or outside of it
and just touching the modern will be dealt with individually to explain why it was
mapped in a particular position.
Amish communities and their schooling

Amish (Old Order) communities want their children to learn basic numeracy and literacy
but little more (Hosteller and Huntington, 1970). They want their children to be able to
read the Bible and have the skills to earn a living but not to desire so much education that
they may want to practice an occupation that would take them away from the community.
They leave school before high school and begin working on the farm. Some Amish
parents have gone to jail rather than be compelled to send their children to high school.
They have also gone to jail as conscience objectors to conscription into the army. Both
the Amish and Hutterites are Anabaptists which means that their children are not baptized
at birth, but as young adults over the age of 16 they have to decide to commit themselves
to their religion and then are baptized into it. Once they are baptized they take on the
prescribed roles of men and women. The men wear broadbrimmed
Figure 9.3 Schooling types within pre-

modern and modern frameworks
black hats, beards and homemade plain clothes fastened with hooks and eyes instead of
buttons. The women wear bonnets, long full dresses with capes over the shoulders,
shawls and black shoes and stockings. No jewellery of any kind is worn. They shun
telephones, electric lights and drive horses and buggies rather than automobiles. They are
generally considered excellent farmers, but they often refuse to use modern farm
machinery. Out of all the schools plotted on Figure 9.3, the Amish communities have
been located just touching the circle of modernity (because their children are sent to
public elementary schools) but almost entirely in the pre-modern framework. Even
though they live in individual houses, they are very community-oriented and would,
along with the Hutterites and indigenous groups, be the most collectivistic in orientation.
Hutterite schools
The Hutterites have been described as having the most successful communes in the world
and have, for over 200 years, maintained continuous communal living (Hostetler, 1975).
In groups of 60–150, they operate collective farms (mainly in Western United States and
Canada) and educate their children inside the colony until the age of 14. They have
teachers come in from the outside community but ask that they teach in ways that are
congruent with the Hutterite beliefs. They do not allow any pictures on the walls of the
classrooms and they allow no music or videos from the outside world to invade the
schools. In contrast to the Amish, they have taken on certain aspects of technology that
they think will be beneficial for the community and for their farming (such as tractors and
gas ovens) but they do not allow any television, radio or record players that would bring
in cultural values from outside of the colony. They are the most collectivistic of the
communities analysed in this chapter, working together in groups, depriving themselves
of individual ambition and working for the community good. Each individual owns very
little but the colony often thrives and buys the best farmland surrounding the colony. The
Hutterite schools have been plotted on Figure 9.3 as mainly pre-modern with a little more
of the modern in them than the Amish because they have accepted some modern
technology.
Indigenous bi-cultural outstation schools

Between 400 and 500 homelands or outstations have been created in Australia by over
10,000 Aborigines to maintain their culture and values, their languages and life styles.
They are communities of closely related individuals with a strong traditional orientation.
The movement to outstations is an attempt by Aborigines to moderate the rate of cultural
change caused by contact with European ways and to re-establish a physical, social and
spiritual environment in which traditional components are more dominant and the
influence of the alien culture more marginal. Like Hutterite and Amish communities, they
want to isolate themselves from the dominant society and choose to move away from
other communities. Their schools are often bi-cultural and bilingual with both Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal teachers. Many have established independent schools in which
Aborigines decide who should be hired and what should be taught. Bucknall (1982) in
describing one Aboriginal Independent School and why the community founded it said
that ‘the community reaffirmed their determination that their school is to be viewed as a
vehicle for social cohesion and economic independence and not as a vehicle for outward
social mobility’ (p. 82). He said that he heard one of the older men in the community say
to a visiting Canberra educationist, ‘our kids go away to a government school and they
don’t return to us. And if they do, they are broken people’ (p. 83). Because most of these
schools have only recently been developed, they have not all worked out the ways to
survive in the often hostile larger Australian society. They have not had the years to
determine what it is best to resist in the wider culture and what it is best to retain in their
own culture that groups such as the Amish and Hutterites have done over the past 200
years. That is why these Aboriginal outstation schools have been mapped as mainly pre-
modern but a little more into the main modern circle.
Steiner/Waldorf schools
There are more than 600 Steiner schools in 32 countries, mainly in Europe, North
America and Oceania (see Harwood, 1971; Steiner, 1972 and Storhaug, 1991). The
educational movement is based on the practical philosophy of Dr Rudolf Steiner (1861–
1925), the Austrian educator, architect, scientist and philosopher. The schools are named
Waldorf schools, after the first such school established in 1919 by an industrialist for the
children of the workers in his factory (the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory) in Germany.
The underlying philosophy of these schools is based on the principle that education
should support the unfolding development of the child in its physical, social and spiritual
growth towards becoming a free and responsible adult. Learning in a Waldorf school is a
non-competitive activity. The use of electronic media, particularly television and
computer, by the primary school children is discouraged. Consistent with his philosophy
called anthroposophy, Steiner designed a curriculum responsive to the developmental
phases in childhood and nurturing of children’s imaginations. There is a strong effort to
protect children from harmful influences from the broader society. The parents, teachers
and children form a strong community and work together in building the learning
environments for Waldorf schools. These schools have been mapped as half in the pre-
modern and half in the modern circle because they have retained an emphasis on the
spiritual and the sense of community but they are also not totally separate from the larger
society. The children graduate from Waldorf schools with every intention of attending
university and gaining an occupation in the wider society which is different from the
goals of Amish, Hutterite or Aboriginal community schools.
Fundamentalist religious schools

Fundamentalist religious groups are present in almost all major religions (e.g. Muslim,
Christian, Jewish and Hindu). They tend to assert the literal interpretation of the written
texts and to resist the reform or modernization of their religions. There has been a growth
in fundamentalist sects in most religions. Here we will focus on Christian fundamentalist
schools which have grown in strength, particularly in the United States but have also
become more widespread throughout the world. Most fundamentalists do not smoke or
drink alcoholic beverages and usually do not dance or attend movies and plays. Certain
Baptist sects, the Plymouth Brethren and Evangelical churches are examples of the
fundamentalist movement which called for the exorcism of Modernism and concepts like
evolution. They founded Bible institutes and colleges to develop their own knowledge
base. Many adherents wanted to isolate their children from what they saw as the evils of a
degenerating society. Many of the communities are very close and sometimes develop
their own clothing styles, fixed roles for men and women and remain fairly isolated from
mainstream society. Like the Steiner schools, they have been mapped as being half in the
pre-modern and half in the modern circle because they have not removed themselves
entirely from the wider society as the Hutterites or Amish have. There is greater diversity
in how removed from society they want to be but there is no doubt they want to resist
what they consider the worst aspects of modern society, which to them represents the
anti-Christ or satanic elements.
Indigenous urban schools

Aboriginal groups which live in the urban areas in Australia and have become
considerably distanced from their tribal homelands are more often establishing their own
schools to continue what they consider to be some of the essential values of their
Aboriginal culture. It is a chance for urban Aboriginal children to rediscover their roots,
learn their Aboriginal languages and their own history. Unlike the Amish and the
Hutterites, the communities have not developed a total sense of the extent to which they
want to isolate themselves from the wider society and develop a different curriculum in
their schools. At the same time, they want to establish a sense of their own identity and a
better chance for their children to become proud of their Aboriginal heritage and compete
in the Australian society. Their schools have been mapped as belonging only partly in the
pre-modern framework and mostly in the modern.
Montessori schools
Montessori schools are found in many countries around the world, most often for pre-
school children. However, there are also many primary and a number of secondary
Montessori schools in existence. The first ‘Children’s House’ was opened in 1907 in the
slums of Rome under the direction of Maria Montessori (see Kramer, 1976; Montessori,
1946 and 1948). She observed the development of children and created materials to
match their developmental stages. The aim is for children to use the materials
spontaneously and educate themselves through their own efforts. Even though the
intellectual development of each child was seen as the primary goal of Montessori’s
education, she was also very interested in the spiritual development of children. In her
construction of the classroom, she only allowed one piece of equipment for each activity
so that there was a sense of community created in children taking their turns, helping
each other and working together in solving the educational puzzles. In this way,
Montessori wanted to develop human beings who would work towards a more peaceful
world. Another important aspect of Montessori’s philosophy was a belief in the child’s
right to be treated as an individual but importantly she brought together different age
groups (3–6, 6–9, 9–12) so that older children could help younger children and a natural
coming together of children to work with the materials was encouraged in her
classrooms. The circle in Figure 9.3 for Montessori schools has been mapped to straddle
the individualistic and collectivistic sides of the circle because even though Montessori
schools are seen as providing a system of self-education for the individual, there are
important aspects of collectivism in these schools. The circle has been mapped mostly in
the modern framework with some pre-modern tendencies in Montessori schools in their
attention to the spiritual development of the child.
Pedagogies taught in universities in the 1990s
Figure 9.4 shows a variety of pedagogies that are taught in universities in the 1990s. This
diagram is not exhaustive in trying to describe all the different types of pedagogies.
Rather it gives a sample of different types to illustrate the way in which they move across
the paradigms of modern and postmodern. Those in the centre of the circle have been
more identified with the modern and appear to be not as prevalent in most of the
universities in western countries today; however, they are still prevalent in
Figure 9.4 Pedagogies taught in

universities in the 1990s
many schools and have certainly not been completely abandoned in universities. Those
on the outside of the circle have been mapped as more postmodern and to be more
representative of the pedagogies that appear to be more prevalent in the 1990s.
Behaviourism/technical-rationalism
These approaches to teaching are grouped together to represent the modern framework of
pedagogy taught in universities, especially during the period 1950–80, although they each
have different origins and slightly different practices. Behaviourism and technical-
rationalism have converged from two different strands: the testing-measurement
approach to teaching and the vocational, more industrial approach which has also
included the language of efficiency from the economic rationalists. In essence, both
strands are founded on a reductionistic, scientific and technicist approach to teaching
which dictates that behavioural objectives should be identified and then teachers teach
toward those objectives to develop in students well-defined technical competencies.
Proponents of these approaches tend to see education in a more instrumental way as a
preparation for work and are not concerned with transforming society. They tend to be
realists and rely on their empirical observations of the world to determine their teaching
styles. These two have been mapped as clearly at the heart of the modern framework.
Critical pedagogy
Critical or radical pedagogy takes an avowedly activist stance towards education. It sides
with the mar-ginalized groups in society. McLaren (1989) states that ‘critical pedagogy is
founded on the conviction that schooling for self and social empowerment is ethically
prior to a mastery of technical skills which are primarily tied to the logic of the
marketplace’ (p. 162). It is neo-Marxist in its origins and draws its inspiration from the
Frankfurt School of critical theory in Germany, from the works of Henry Giroux in the
United States and Paulo Freire in Brazil. As McLaren asserts, it has gone beyond its
origins and adopted strands of postmodernism and therefore does not constitute a
homogeneous set of ideas but critical theorists are united in their objectives: ‘to empower
the powerless and transform existing social inequalities and injustices’ (p. 160). This
pedagogy has been mapped as lying halfway between the modern and the postmodern
because of its origins and its trajectory which combine elements of class analysis arising
in the modern framework and deconstructionism and post-structuralism arising in the
postmodern framework.
Post-structuralism/postmodernism
Post-structuralism and postmodernism (treated as interrelated here rather than totally
separate concepts) question the legitimacy of grand narratives, such as the Enlightenment
and Marxism, which suggest a steady progress of reason and freedom or a linear
conception of history that leads toward the improvement of humanity (Lyotard, 1984).
Individual identities are not constructed solely by their positions within the economic
structure but are complex, heterogeneous and shifting and therefore power is not situated
only in an elite, ruling class but is found everywhere. Agency and subjectivity become
key terms. Individuals have the agency to shape their own meanings and construct their
identities or subjectivities. At the same time it is recognized, as Davies (1996) argues,
that each individual should discover the ways in which their bodies and desires are
shaped through language and find ways to counteract that force. The notion of
‘deconstructing’ the way knowledge is produced and understanding the ‘discursive
practices’ (Foucault, 1972) through which social control and domination are exercised
form part of postmodernism and post-structuralism. These two approaches to pedagogy
have been mapped as mostly situated in the postmodern and still slightly connected to the
modern by the fact that they are rebelling against the modern but still embedded within a
prevailing modern society.
Eco-feminism
Eco-feminism seeks to connect deep ecology to female experience by including those
domains of human experience that have been relegated to women: namely the personal,
the emotional and the sexual (Hallen, 1988). It is a holistic orientation to the world that
emphasizes that we are not above nature but an intimate part of it. Hallen argues that
ecology, as a science, needs feminism to balance its mechanical world-view and reveal
how patriarchal thinking contributes to environmental destruction. Eco-feminism has
been mapped as residing largely in the pre-modern where there is more reverence for
nature and more cooperation with nature than in the modern where there is greater
destruction of the environment. It still draws on science and rational argument but blends
these with intuition and a relational approach to science.
Global development education

Global and or development education combines elements of eco-feminism and critical
pedagogy in its goals and in wanting to create education for responsible participation in
an inter-dependent world. Calder describes its goals as ‘survival of the world, its people
and its environment; social progress for all and worldwide justice; empowerment and
action’ (1993, p. 1). A brochure which describes the Development Education Centres in
Australia begins by saying that in the 1960s development education in the West was
concerned with raising awareness of poverty in the ‘Third World’. Today development
education cuts much deeper. It emphasizes the interdependence of our world—the links
that exist between environmental degradation, poverty, human rights and the economic
and political structures in Australia and internationally. Development education is
essentially global education that stresses the need for economic, political and social
change in all societies to create a just, peaceful and sustainable world. (For a more
detailed discussion, see John Fein’s 1991 article, ‘Critical Development Education’.) This
pedagogy has been mapped, like critical pedagogy, halfway between the modern and the
postmodern. It draws some of its inspiration from critical and radical pedagogy but does
not have a homogeneous set of ideas because its practitioners have developed the
pedagogy from a wide range of philosophies.
Discussion
It should be fairly clear from the figures and discussion of these different schooling types
and pedagogies that it would be difficult to develop one common framework from these
often conflicting value paradigms. It is important for teachers to recognize that their own
pedagogy is informed by different value frameworks and that the children they teach
often come from opposing ones. This is very poignantly obvious to white, urban, middle-
class teachers who go to teach in an Aboriginal community in outback Australia. How do
teachers bridge the gap that exists between themselves and their students? I argue that the
first step towards bridging the gap is for teachers to become aware that there is indeed a
gap and to identify the various ways in which different values affect their own behaviour
and that of the children. My first teaching experience was a cross-cultural one as an
American teaching in Africa and I was given the advice to treat the situation as an
anthropologist and try to discover as much as I could about the community, its lifestyle,
its values and its traditions. I think this is still very good advice for teachers going into
any teaching situation. There are very few schools that would match entirely a teacher’s
value framework, unless of course, they happened to grow up and continue to believe in
the same values as the community in which they teach.
The second step is to develop a tolerance for difference. This is where the postmodern
‘sensibility’ as a concept is useful. It challenges the notion of certainty and that there is
one correct way to think about the world. However, there is often the danger with
postmodernism of sliding into cultural relativism in adopting such a position. Many
would argue that it is important to avoid what has been termed the ‘void of
postmodernism’ and develop a clear stand on issues which harm individuals, such as
sexism, racism and issues of social justice.
The third step is to continue (as post-structuralists do) to deconstruct your everyday
practices and desires and question your individual framework and the regulations of the
institutional/ societal framework within which you live and work. This, of course, would
not be appropriate for some value frameworks, operating out of a pre-modern
fundamentalist perspective. For students coming from that background into a university
setting, it is particularly difficult to be confronted by academics asking them to confront
their value frameworks within a postmodern pedagogy. Teacher educators have to beware
that indigenous students and students coming from fundamentalist backgrounds will have
a different orientation to their university studies. This conflict of values is a challenge to
both groups within a university setting.
Conclusion
Samuel Huntington (1993) in an article titled ‘The clash of civilizations’ argues that the
fundamental source of conflict in the new post-Cold War world will not be primarily
ideological or economic, but cultural. He suggests that the most acrimonious clashes will
be between the West and other civilizations which feel that their fundamental character is
threatened by the impact of the West. These groups can lie within western countries, such
as the Aborigines in Australia or the First Nation peoples in North America or outside the
West in Iraq, Iran, India or China.
Another force which has been affecting the post-Cold War world is ‘globalization’
which is much harder to react against than against the West per se because it seeps into a
country’s culture through a myriad of ways. It can lead to a greater homogenization of
values and practices as seen in the spread of western media, clothing and language.
Globalization, however, is viewed in conflicting ways by different observers (see Waters,
1995; Brown and Lauder, 1996). Globalization can be used as an analytical tool to
understand the globalizing trends in the world today, originating mainly from information
technology. It can also be understood as having both ideological and material
components. Its ideological component comes from neoliberal theories which posit that
countries should embrace the marketplace, reduce a reliance on public institutions and
welfare policies and devolve responsibility to individuals for their well-being. Another
practice that is quite common is known as ‘steering from a distance’ which has been
described by Ball (1994) as devolving responsibility down the line but keeping control at
the centre by accountability measures and other mechanisms, such as national curriculum
frameworks for schools. These are seen as managerial practices that are lifted out of their
social settings and restructured across time and space. For example, Japanese
organizational practices are now considered globalized practices. Managers seek out
ideas from other companies and other countries and through global communications there
develops a homogenised view of ‘best practice’ models from different countries. This is
happening inside the corporate world as well as in the public sector.
The World Bank has been one of the principal proponents of globalization and the
neoliberal agenda which has been presented to many countries around the world through
its structural adjustment principles as the only model that is worth considering to improve
their economies. Mihevc describes the World Bank’s policies as:
an agenda and a discourse which is, at its core, a fundamentalist one

which not only denies the legitimacy of alternatives, but has actively
sought, over the past decade, to ensure that all of the options…have been
narrowed down to one. (1995, p. 16)
There is still much debate as to whether the world is leading towards greater homogeneity
of cultural values or towards a clash of cultures as countries react to the West and its
attempt to impose a monolithic, neoliberal agenda on them. It appears that there could be
a reaction against both western cultural values and the West’s economic agenda by some
non-western countries. What is clear, however, is the diversity of values that persists in
multicultural societies and the injustices that often occur because of the different value
orientations that emerge in the power dynamics of societies. The question remains: how
can the multitude of diverse and culturally rich societies create ways of thinking which
recognize a plurality of values—a process of thinking which does not lead down a single
path as if it were the only path available? This is the question that the education of all
teachers must address, and teachers must understand how their own values impact upon
the values of their students.
References
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Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (1996) Education, globalization and economic development. Journal of
Education Policy 11(1), 1–25.
Bucknall, J. (1982) Listening to Aboriginal voices: the school at Strelley. In J.Sherwood (ed.),
Aboriginal Education: Issues and Innovations. Perth: Creative Research, 81–94.
Calder, M. (1993) ‘On the seashore of endless worlds’: Literature, enquiry and global education.
Paper presented at the International Conference on Education for a Global Society, Perth, July.
Davies, B. (1996) Power Knowledge, Desire: Changing School Organisation and Management
Practices. Canberra: Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
Fein, J. (Winter 1991) Critical Development Education. Education Links 40, 4–9.
Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Random House.
Hallen, P. (1988) Ecofeminism as reconstruction: Making peace with nature. Canadian Woman
Studies (Spring) 9(1), 9–19.
Harwood, A.C. (1971) The Recovery of Man in Childhood: A Study in the Educational Work of
Rudolf Steiner. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Hill, B. (1995) What does the national curriculum value? In C.W.Collins (ed.), Curriculum
Stocktake: Evaluating School Curriculum Change, 32–45. Canberra: Australian College of
Education.
Hirst, P. (1994) Associative Democracy. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
Hostetler, J.A. and Huntington, G.E. (1970) Children in Amish Society: Socialization and
Community Education. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Hostetler, J.A. (1975) Hutterite Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Huntington, S. (Summer 1993) The Clash of Civilizations. Foreign Affairs 72(3), 22–49.
Kramer, R. (1976) Maria Montessori: A Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Liebman, M. (1994) The Social Mapping Rationale: A Method and Resource to Acknowledge
Postmodern Narrative Expression. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
Lyotard, J-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G.Bennington and
B.Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McLaren, P. (1989) Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Founds of
Education. New York and London: Longman.
Mihevc, J. (1995) The Market Tells Them So: The World Bank and Economic Fundamentalism in
Africa. London and New Jersey: Zed Books and Third World Network.
Mohanty, C.T. (1991). Cartographies of struggle. In C.T. Mohanty et al. (eds), Third World Women
and the Politics of Feminism, 1–49. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Montessori, M. (1946) Education for a New World. Adyar, Madras: Kalakshetra Press.
Montessori, M. (1948) To Educate the Human Potential. Adyar, Madras: Kalakshetra Press.
Paulston, R.G. (1976) Ethnic revival and educational conflict in Swedish Lapland. Comparative
Education Review (June) 20(2), 179–92.
Paulston, R.G. (ed.) (1996) Social Cartography: Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational
Change. New York and London: Garland Publishing.
Steiner, R.A. (1972) Modern Art of Education. London: Rudolf Steiner Press.
Storhaug, G. (1991) Hereford Waldorf School. Resurgence (Sept.–Oct.) 148, 28–9.
Waters, M. (1995) Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.
Part Three
Curriculum
10
The (Multicultural) Educational Value of the
Aesthetic Dimension of Experience
JANET FERGUSON
Introduction
In a scathing review of the divisive acrimony generated by the crossfire of the

multicultural wars in the United States of America, Nathan Glazer has wryly declared in
the title of his recent (1997) publication “We Are All Multiculturalist Now.” Glazer’s
concern about the failure of the adoption of multicultural perspectives to address the
racial divisions that sustain the rising levels of economic and social deprivation among
blacks in North America is clearly well intentioned. Yet by placing his explanation of the
politics of multiculturalism outside the framework of philosophical discourses about the
overall aims of education we are unable to assess properly the educational implications of
multiculturalism.
Glazer’s approach is not unusual, there is a general tendency to conceptualize
multiculturalism as an additional component of an already overcrowded educational
landscape. This construction of multiculturalism as an enrichment program sidesteps the
recognition of the democratic principles that have clearly inspired multiculturalism’s
fundamental concepts of plurality, diversity and respect for difference. In some ways
multiculturalism can be seen as a re-expression of the democratic ideals of education.
Hence its advancement provides the opportunity for educators to revisit and reaffirm the
broader aims of education.
Rather than becoming disillusioned by the politics of multiculturalism, educators
could seek to delineate and examine some of the philosophical and theoretical issues that
multiculturalism as a particular epistemological orientation has brought to the fore. The
first section of this chapter will concentrate on exploring the ways in which
multiculturalism provides an opportunity to consider the educational value of thinking
differently. The discussion will then move on to focus on the influential role of the
aesthetic dimension of experience on thinking and the importance of locating thinking in
a holistic delineation of experience that acknowledges the interactive dynamic of the
creative and rational structures. Finally, the radical aesthetic of Trinidad Carnival will be
explored as a working example of a facilitative and implicitly educational aesthetic.
Multiculturalism as thinking differently
The current debate about multiculturalism and its role in education raises serious
questions that problematize taken-for-granted assumptions about the ways in which
teachers teach and students learn. At the most basic level multiculturalism’s emphasis on
the promotion of conceptual frameworks that emphasize diversity, plurality and respect
The education value of the aesthetic dimension of experience 151
for difference are based on assumptions about our capacity to think of social reality in
creative and new ways.
The language and the text of “progressive” approaches to education abound with
references to the need to cultivate creativity across the curriculum and to generate in
students the capacity to use their imagination in diverse fields. It is generally agreed that
the sciences, the humanities and the emerging fields of applied technology require the
cultivation of the ability to imagine and make sense of a staggering range of possibilities
and options.
When as educators we seek to work within a multicultural perspective we are asking
our students to think about the world in ways that the previous generation rarely deemed
appropriate and certainly did not consider to be a fundamental aspect of a good
education.
In essence we are undertaking the task of encouraging students to think differently.
This presupposes that as educators we have some understanding of the process of
thinking and the faculties involved in learning how to think differently.
It is ironic that the advertising and marketing industries have clearly grasped the
significance of understanding and making sense of how we think. Of all the areas of
human activity in the modern world, advertising and its closely related companion
marketing appear to recognize the unique blend of cognitive, creative and rational
elements that constitute thinking. In many ways the presentation of consumer goods in
the many forms of media that are available to marketers is informed by an holistic
interpretation of the nature of experience. Appeals are simultaneously made to the
creative and rational aspects of thinking. It is clearly understood that aesthetics is an
important element of experience.
I am not for a moment suggesting here that multiculturalists or those who support
multicultural agendas must resort to advertising, but I am saying that both the marketing
and the advertising experts implicitly operate on the basis of an epistemology that blends
the creative and rational components of thinking. Advertisers appear to have an effective
grasp of how we think in so far as they seem to understand how to encourage us to think
differently. They do not simply supply us with additional information, they seek to
address both the cognitive and non-cognitive elements of thinking. This implies a holistic
apprehension of the nature and scope of experience and an intuitive grasp of the aesthetic
domain.
In education the traditional separation of the rational and the creative elements of
thinking is a legacy arising out of cognitivist epistemological orientations. While thinking
has been presented as logical and purposeful, creativity and its related functions has been
constructed as irrational or even uncontrollable. Consequently thinking is often explained
as a deliberate and purposeful form of engagement that is marginally supported by non-
cognitive functions like the emotions and the creative sensibilities. As Holder (1995)
indicates, there is no support in dominant epistemology for understanding thinking as
being simultaneously rational and creative in its scope.
Educators have given very little attention to the educational significance of the
aesthetic dimension of experience. Discourses about aesthetics and the role of the
creative sensibilities have remained locked in the language and landscape of the fine arts
and the arts in education. The ongoing debates about multiculturalism and its place in a
progressive curriculum should lead us to retrieve these discourses from their positions of
marginal isolation and relocate them in the mainstream of philosophical discourses about
education.
At the heart of all multicultural curriculum initiatives, irrespective of their political
orientation, is the desire to equip students with the perspectives required for thinking
about the world in ways that reflect a commitment to democratic principles. Regardless
of where people may locate themselves on the political continuum that delineates
multicultural discourses and presents it as a contentious terrain, all the proponents and
adherents of the various conflictual perspectives genuinely claim to be working towards
the realization of a more just and equitable form of social and economic relationships.
It is clear that most educators in line with the rest of the general population recognize
that discriminatory practices that are based on racial, ethnic or gender considerations are
unfair and unjust. The growing acceptance of human rights as a legitimate sphere of
political activism and action provides evidence of a larger popular will that is committed
to a broad acceptance of equality and justice for all. We need to locate the ongoing
multicultural initiatives within an understanding of education that stresses its
transformative capacity.
Much of the energy that has gone into defining the content and scope of the current
and emerging multicultural curricula in both the United Kingdom and the United States
of America has been informed by the belief that the acquisition of specific bodies of
knowledge, critical perspectives and analytical frameworks will contribute to the
emergence of greater levels of respect and tolerance for individuals and groups who have
historically been unfairly discriminated against (Giroux 1993, 1995; Leicester 1993;
Milliard 1985).
It is generally believed that if we extend the boundaries of students’ knowledge and
provide the opportunity for them to learn more, then their frame of reference will shift
and the likelihood of their maintaining or perpetuating unfair discriminatory practices is
reduced. This point of view is premised on the assumption that there is a balanced
correlation between the levels of people’s ignorance and their predisposition to think and
act in ways that are unfairly discriminatory. It is inferred that people simply do not know
better. Education—specifically multicultural approaches to education—is attributed a
corrective role. Multiculturalism is also defined as an agent of change. Hence in addition
to contributing to the enhancement of the self-image of historically under-represented
groups, the promotion of multiculturalism is meant to educate people out of and away
from positions of racial and ethnic prejudice and discrimination.
In promoting multiculturalism as a change agent we are presuming that by increasing
the nature and scope of available knowledge students will come to think differently about
areas of race and ethnicity. We are also implying that the intrinsic moral and ethical
validity of the additional knowledge will contribute to this anticipated change in thinking.
In summary, we are postulating that if we were to know more about the social reality of
groups and people who have been unfairly discriminated against then we can come to
recognize the injustice of that treatment and we will be able to represent those groups and
come to think about them differently.
I wish to argue that if teachers are to help and encourage their students to think
differently, then they need to be able to do more than provide additional information
about particular groups of people. They need to move beyond the mere presentation of
alternative perspectives, for while there are clearly good ethical and moral reasons for
supplying these hitherto neglected frameworks, the simplistic assimilation of more

information is very unlikely to encourage students to think differently. The plural reality
that presents the social landscape as a diverse configuration of equal but different peoples
clearly requires promotion of the capacity to think differently.
Reframing thinking (I)
Multiculturalism demands fundamental changes in our conceptual orientation. Not only

are we required to challenge and critically deconstruct the normality of traditional
structures of racial hierarchies that have characterized dominant narratives to date, we are
also required to replace these with alternatives. In the United Kingdom this may mean
questioning and reframing the imperial narratives that have dominated both history and
social studies, while in the United States of America the established premise of white
supremacy that has justified the conquest of the Americas is brought into question. The
accommodation of a pluralist perspective in many instances will rely on a reworking of
social reality as it is known, a virtual reimagining of the world (Morrison, 1992). We are
in essence asking our students to restructure the narratives that have constituted their
existence.
Dewey’s work in this area of aesthetics, democracy and experience speaks to a
number of the important issues raised by multiculturalism (Dewey, 1934, 1938). First and
foremost, Dewey’s notion of democracy goes beyond the popular understandings that
limit its operational scope to the public and collective terrain of politics. Rather, Dewey’s
concept of democracy incorporates the cultivation of a personal system of values that
challenges and displaces modern interpretations of “subjectivity” and individual
autonomy. Hence personal qualities like the expression and demonstration of empathy
with others, the care and consideration of the environment and the cultivation of
cooperative and reciprocal social relationships among groups and peoples are key
considerations. At the most basic level these are the values that inform and inspire
multiculturalism.
Second, Dewey’s elaboration o f the process of “deliberation” as “dramatic rehearsal”
enables us clearly to understand how various forms of critical engagement and reflective
practice that constitute thinking are in essence aesthetic undertakings. Consequently, if as
multicultural educators we are seeking to promote the capacity to think differently we
must understand how thinking is mediated by the non-cognitive elements of apprehension
and how an engagement in the consideration of the moral and ethical considerations that
inform multiculturalism is in effect a form of “moral artistry.”
Third, Dewey’s theory of “naturalistic experience” offers a way of thinking about
modes of experience that enables us to review and place the rational and creative
elements of thought within a single integrated framework (Holder, 1995). The idea of
image schemata arises out of Johnson’s (1987) work in the area of cognition; these are
essentially perceptual frameworks that are the product of our immediate and interactive
connection with the environment. “Image schemata” with their dual reliance on bodily
and mental modes of knowing provide an effective form of conceptual scaffolding that
help us to make sense of Dewey’s holistic framing of experience. In summary, “image
schemata” offer us a way of understanding how abstract forms of knowing and concrete
action are fully integrated and inextricably grounded in the aesthetic domains of
experience.
Multiculturalism with its emphasis on plurality, the acceptance and celebration of
diversity and the demonstration of respect for others and community, reflects the ideals
that underpin and sustain democracy as an ideology. It must be pointed out that the
practice of democratic ideals relies on the cultivation of specific qualities that are in turn
grounded in particular values. At the personal and interpersonal level this translates into
the ability to act in ways that reflect the recognition and acceptance of “community” as
the overarching framework within which human action is undertaken.
While this may be an overly general proposition that does not adequately speak to the
specifics of multiculturalism, it can serve as a defining framework within which we can
assess the educational implications of multiculturalism. Hence when we say that
multiculturalism should promote the capacity to think differently we are in reality
addressing the wider aims of education.
Considered in this larger context education aims to produce good and effective
citizens, who in addition to acquiring and mastering the skills and competencies required
to conduct the business of daily transactions in the modern world need to develop the art
of negotiating, charting appropriate courses of moral and ethical action. These are not
always straightforward choices and often require a process of sustained “deliberation.”
Although the ability to think for oneself is often promoted in educational circles we
rarely emphasize the facilities involved in the process of thinking. For Dewey
deliberation is central to the process of thinking and entails more than the simple forms of
reflective engagement that have been popularized by the development and spread of
experiential theories, principles and practices (Boud, Keogh and Walker, 1985; Kolb,
1984; Warner and McGill, 1989; Boud, Cohen and Walker, 1993). Deliberation suggests
a questioning engagement that is anchored in moral and ethical considerations and seeks
to put forward a range of imaginative possibilities.
Multicultural perspectives demand that we interrogate the present and project
alternative scenarios that suggest and advance the possibility of thinking and acting
differently. We are after all working towards the reduction and elimination of unfair
forms of discrimination that are based on race and ethnicity. Hence a critical engagement
with the dominant narratives that have shaped the emergence and maintenance of the
prevailing social reality must be a fundamental consideration.
For example, within the context of multiculturalism the widely accepted accounts of
western economic development can be revisited and represented. If we are to undertake a
genuine evaluation of the human cost of economic and technological progress it must
include an assessment of the legacy of the economic arrangements that gave rise to social
institutions like chattel slavery, indentureship and share-cropping. I would like to suggest
that the struggle to arrive at new understandings of these and interpretations of human
actions and past experience requires an engagement in careful analysis. The kind of
thinking that avoids the replacement of one form of polemic with another.
From this perspective “deliberation” involves a qualitative dimension, an engagement
of the senses that shares some of the qualities of creative flow experiences. In addition to
coming to know the truth through the use of reason, logic and the examination of
propositions, we need to use the critical imagination in order to generate and delineate
new and alternative possibilities. In the context of multiculturalism it is particularly

important to be able to ask if this is the way things are then how can they be made better?
Knowing that is grounded in “deliberation” is poetic in its scope. All the senses are
fully engaged in the very process of inquiry. Analytical activities like judgment,
assessment and evaluation are defined by imaginative frameworks that suggest the
bringing forward of new possibilities, new constellations and reworked framings of “the
truth.”
“Deliberation” suggests a questioning engagement that seeks to put forward a range of
imaginative possibilities. For Dewey, this inquiry, this active engagement in the pursuit
of truth, is firmly anchored in very specific moral and ethical frameworks. The principles
of democracy and the supporting qualities of fairness, love and kindness are the defining
values that focus and direct deliberative undertakings. In the case of multiculturalism this
means that adherents are specifically committed to the emergence of a fair and just world.
Education is consequently a form of “moral artistry,” an engagement with knowledge that
is transformative in a Freirian sense (Freire 1973).
“Dramatic rehearsal” is the metaphor used by Dewey to describe the qualitative scope
and the texture of his particular understanding of deliberation. One explores possibilities,
rearranges alternatives and outcomes and predicts and anticipates a variety of patterns
and configurations. It is a virtual acting out of future reality in the mind. Under these
conditions it is possible to weigh options and evaluate and select possible outcomes.
As a metaphor “dramatic rehearsal” conveys the critical role of the imagination and
the aesthetic sensibilities. The dynamics of “dramatic rehearsal” raises two very
important considerations. One is the role of the aesthetic dimension of experience and the
other is the closely related consideration of the contribution of the sensibilities to the
investigation and the pursuit of moral and ethical ideals. Taken together in the context of
multiculturalism these considerations demonstrate how the capacity to think differently is
a particular kind of “moral artistry.”
Reframing thinking (II)
All thinking to a greater or lesser extent relies on the “qualitative immediacy” of

experience (Dewey 1938). Contrary to popular perceptions the imagination, the feelings
and the sensibilities that are traditionally associated with the aesthetic domain are not the
undisciplined free-floating faculties we have come to associate with creativity. The
functions of the aesthetic domain operate within the structures of a multidimensional
delineation of experience.
Let us consider imagination as an example; by locating imagination in the broader and
more diffuse context of experience we can talk about and make sense of its capacity to
mediate how we think. We think through the lens of our previous apprehensions of the
world and our place in it. While the exercise of the imagination can enable us to
transcend immediate reality, our imaginative extrapolations are always grounded in a
previous experience of our engagement with the environment. In essence we cannot
entirely break free from the boundaries of apprehension. Hence in a way we are captives
of our experience despite the extrapolative capacities of our imagination. Yet the exercise
of the imagination can help us to elaborate on our everyday apprehensions of reality. For
educators who are involved with the delineation and promotion of multicultural
orientations and perspectives this is a very important consideration. If we are to
encourage students to think differently, about the prevailing social reality, in order to
cultivate the values required for the realization of the democratic ideals that promote
multiculturalism, then we must come to understand how the imagination mediates the
structures of experience.
I would like to suggest that, for the time being, we think of experience as being
multidimensional. Consequently we can conceive of abstract and concrete modes of
apprehension. We can impose meaning on our immediate interaction with the
environment and we can also on the basis of our previous experience bring to mind
frameworks of meaning that have been developed elsewhere. If we think of experience in
this way then we can recognize the mediative role of the imagination and its capacity to
energize the structures of experience.
In The Body in the Mind, Johnson (1987) theorizes about the nature of cognition and
explores the ways in which the imagination generates maps of meaning that are
ultimately grounded in our physiological encounters with the world. He suggests the
conceptual framework of “image schemata” and defines these as “the recurring dynamic
patterns of our perceptual inter actions and motor programs that give coherence and
structure to our experience” (p. 168). Hence image schemata determine our basic
orientations towards the world, and our place in it; they are the imaginative structures that
underpin cognition, integrate the structures of experience and inform and shape our
habits.
Johnson explains that while image schemata are flexible and consequently open to
adaptation, they are fairly stable as they provide us with our fix on the world and our
sense of our place in the general scheme of things. Johnson’s theory of the imagination
and its role in the dynamics of apprehension acknowledges the significance of the body
as the primary source of the meaning structures generated by the interactive engagement
of the imagination. Our knowledge of the world, our language and our capacity to reason
and make sense of experience are inextricably linked with our knowledge of ourselves as
physical bodies actively engaged in the environments in which we operate.
Educators need to come to appreciate that the everyday interpretations and
understandings that we have of the world and about the nature of social reality are deeply
grounded in established “image schemata” that have emerged out of the history of the
transactions we have had with our respective environments. Consequently “image
schemata” define the limits of our capacity to apprehend. In order to foster and cultivate
the ability to think differently we need to nurture the elaboration and extension of
established image schemata. This is the essence of education and speaks directly to its
general aims.
A striking feature of modernity is that feelings, the senses and creative sensibilities in
general are held up to be notoriously unreliable qualities that distort the exercise of good
judgment and sound thinking. Consequently thinking is generally defined as a primarily
rational and non-emotional working of the mind that relies on the sequential exercise of a
clearly delineated objective focus.
Dewey’s “theory of naturalistic experience” allows us to challenge this primarily
cognitivist interpretation of thinking (Holder, 1995) by locating thinking in the context of
experience and consequently acknowledging the significance of the aesthetic domain of
experience. Hence we can effectively reconceptualize dominant cognitivist explanations

and understandings of how we think and move towards the acknowledgment of the
pervasive influence of the aesthetic domain of experience.
For educators who are involved with the delineation and promotion of multicultural
orientations and perspectives this is a very important consideration. If we are to
encourage students to think differently about the prevailing social reality in order to
cultivate the values required for the realization of the democratic ideals that promote
multiculturalism, then we must come to understand the operational dynamics of the
structures of experience. Educators need to ask how we apprehend, make sense of, and
conduct transactions with our environments.
As previously indicated Dewey’s (1938) theory of naturalistic experience suggests a
configuration of experiential modes that provides experience with its multidimensional
structures. This formulation relies on a recognition of a matrix of background and
foreground structures that interactively mediate our apprehension of the world. The
previously defined “image schemata” can be seen as the integrative shaping mechanisms
that link and sustain the relationship between the foreground and the background
structures of experience.
The foreground structures of experience are primarily concerned with the functions
that are traditionally associated with the abstract workings of cognition, the exercise of
reason, judgment and logic. This is the mode of experience that is purposefully reflective
and is focused on the achievement of a specific outcome. On the other hand, the
background structures of experience are associated with the affective aspects of
apprehension like the emotions, the feelings, the sensibilities and our attitudes.
The foreground does not operate in isolation—it is continuously shaped and defined
by the background. When we experience the forms of emotional disquiet that prompt the
conduct of investigative inquiry, it is in response to the active engagement of the
background of experience. The experience of wrestling with knotty problems and feeling
the satisfaction of working through to the production of rational and logical solutions is a
good illustrative example of the interactive dynamic of the foreground and background
structures of experience. Our capacity to apprehend relies on the simultaneous operation
of these interdependent modes. In summary, while “image schemata” delineate the scope
of our thinking the foreground and background structures of experience determine its
nature.
An acknowledgment of the indispensable role of the imagination, the affective domain
and the aesthetic sensibilities in general would lead educators to pay more attention to the
cultivation of the aesthetic dimension of experience. I am not suggesting here that lessons
in aesthetics should become yet another element of an already overcrowded school
curriculum; rather, I am making the case for the development of pedagogical frameworks
that emerge from an understanding of the multidimensional nature of the process of
thinking.
Such approaches would seek to bring a Deweyan interpretation of “deliberation” to the
conduct of thinking; consequently students would be encouraged to become aware of the
ways in which the engagement in “dramatic rehearsals” speaks to the artist in us all.
Ideally education should foster a passionate form of engagement with the world (Freire,
1972; Hooks, 1994).
Students need to be able to appreciate their capacity to “feel” the urgency that inspires
a genuine spirit of inquiry and consequently to develop the ability to nurture the
“frustration” and the “wonder” that accompanies the process of acquiring new
knowledge. Here I wish to return to the concept of “moral artistry” that was suggested in
the previous section of this chapter and to emphasize that multiculturalism and its
particular conceptual framework challenges established orthodoxies and calls on
educators to recognize their obligation to cultivate in their students the dispositions
required for the practice of “moral artistry.” At best, this can provide the window of
opportunity for the promotion of change or, maybe even more realistically, the
development and application of critical frames of reference that are anchored in moral
and ethical considerations. If these frames of reference foster forms of critical
engagement that speak to the aesthetic dimension of experience then they may lead our
students to think about the world and their place in it differently.
Carnival as a radical aesthetic (I)
Trinidad Carnival is a practical example of a radical aesthetic in action. Here I would like
to define the carnivalesque as a mode of inquiry that relies primarily on the aesthetic
dimension of apprehension. This approach can allow us to revisit our understanding of
Dewey’s interpretation of “deliberation” and to comment on the way in which the
engagement with a radical aesthetic can foster forms of “dramatic rehearsal” that
encourage us to think differently, to exercise “moral artistry.” By exploring the
significance of the aesthetic mode of experience in the context of Trinidad Carnival it is
possible to demonstrate how the imagination performs the critical function of shaping and
refining thinking and can ultimately direct social action.
Carnival is a creative and expressive art form that engages and transforms the popular
imagination; in defining Trinidad Carnival, Gilbert and Tomkins maintain that:
Carnival is above all a popular theatre, a theatre of the streets and yards
where urban populations congregate to do their daily business. Through
particular uses of space/place, Carnival dissolves the usual demarcations
between the performer and audience, auditorium and outside street. It
claims a right to all public space and creates a theatre wherever there is a
confluence of people thus giving the marginalized access to the privilege
of self representation. (Gilbert and Tompkins, 1996, p. 84)
Carlson (1996) notes that the theorist most frequently associated with carnival and
carnivalization in modern literary and performance theory is Bakhtin (1965). Carlson
draws on Bakhtin’s explanation that during carnival “the laws, prohibitions, and
restrictions that determine the structure and order of the ordinary, that is non carnival life
are suspended.” Carnival in this context becomes a generative space that has the capacity
to facilitate the working out of new relations and formations. This collective suspension
of rules is important and underlines the liminal nature of the energy that is released by
festivals like carnival (Schechner, 1993).
Carnival tropes have been taken up and reworked for use in Caribbean theatre by a
number of the region’s writers. These include Walcott (1974), Lovelace (1986) and Hill
(1972, 1985). In most instances these writers have been seeking a way of representing
and reimaging the colonial experience and its post-colonial legacy. Their work also
reflects a desire to move away from realistic and naturalistic forms of expression and
communication and to experiment with alternative ways in which reality can be
reconceptualized (Gilbert and Tomkins, 1996). Carnival is clearly seen as an appropriate
paradigm that can inform the contemplation of the social and political possibilities in the
multicultural and heterogeneous societies of the region.
Although there are a number of carnivals throughout the new world, the origins,
historical development and social role of the Trinidad Carnival are idiosyncratic and
specific to the Trinidadian experience (Gilbert and Tomkins, 1996; Alleyne-Dettmers,
1995; Hill, 1972). In its present form this annual two-day post-Lenten festival is an
illustration of the way in which the cultural practices in a multi-ethnic society are
constantly negotiated and resolved. Dominant African and European traditions have
combined and merged with the more recent influences from India and North and South
America (Gilbert and Tomkins). The overall result is the continuing evolution of a
popular festival that celebrates the generation of a playfully disruptive and transgressive
sensibility (Alleyne-Dettmers, 1995).
In his award-winning novel, Salt, the Trinidadian Earl Lovelace explores the ways in
which the rituals of Trinidad Carnival offer the opportunity to explore creatively the
possibilities of cultivating a genuine and dynamic form of multiculturalism in a
multicultural post-colonial society. Through the eyes of some of the novel’s numerous
characters Lovelace (1997) appropriates the qualitative immediacy of Trinidad Carnival
and reveals the dynamics of its particular aesthetic. This is one of the major achievements
of the novel. By drawing attention to the nature and scope of the creative energy released
by Trinidad’s annual carnival festival, Lovelace offers us a practical example of a radical
aesthetic in action. Through Lovelace’s treatment of Trinidad Carnival we can come to
conceptualize the festival as the opportunity for a kind of popular form of “moral
artistry,” one that encourages the exploration of possibilities for emancipatory forms of
social action.
As previously indicated, Salt is set in the post-colonial multi-ethnic landscape of
Trinidad and Carnival. Like the real-life version, the carnival celebration represented in
the novel is central to the cultural, political and social life of the island.
Through the rituals of this annual celebration the poor and the dispossessed are able to
escape the oppressive realities of a cyclical and crippling economic dependency and
creatively signal a collective expression of oppositional insurgency (Alleyne-Dettmers,
1997; Schechner, 1993).
It is against this background that the aesthetic of the carnivalesque provides the
framework for thinking differently about “difference.” For example Alford, one of the
main characters who makes the transition from school teacher to popular and charismatic
politician, explores the possibility of creating a carnival band that challenges and subverts
the oppressive features of the island’s colonial past. In describing the series of images
that the band would represent Alford imagines that:
The band he will organize would involve parents, parents and children. It
would depict the beauty and the promise of the people of the island. It
would portray the Amerindians, the coming of Columbus, the
importations of Africans, the arrival of Indians, of Chinese, of Portuguese,
Syrians. In order for people to understand one another he wanted them to
take the role of the other; Africans were to be conquistadors, the
Buccaneers the pirates; Europeans were to be African warriors; Indians
were to be Amerindians; and the Syrians were to be enslaved on sugar
plantations. (Lovelace, 1997, p. 190)
Here the images of a bitter and conflictual colonial history are represented in a critical
framework that relies on the absurd inversion of images drawn from social reality.
Alford, through the exercise of a carnivalesque sensibility, virtually turns the historical
reality of coercive and oppressive social arrangements inside out, demonstrating a kind of
ludic deconstruction that is subversive yet playful in its revelation of possibilities.
Transgressive role-playing is fundamental to Trinidad Carnival, whether it is the
satirical presentation of local political events (Alleyne-Dettmers, 1995) or the
presentation of the masked or masquerading body in performance (Gilbert and Tomkins,
1996). The carnivalesque aesthetic essentially involves the playing and bodily
presentation of “other.” The rituals of carnival allow us to playfully be “the other” that
may be feared, loathed, envied or merely dreamt of. Through our imaginative and kinetic
involvement with these alternative persona and identities we can come to extend our
perceptual frames of reference. We can exercise a mode of knowing that depends on the
dynamics of a radical aesthetic.
In commiserating with Alford over his failure to enlist popular support required for the
formation and presentation of his band and the general antipathy the proposal generated,
Dr Kennos, an enlightened supporter of Alford’s ideas, explains that:
“Living as we are so close to one another any creation or practice by any

group in the island achieved its character because of the presence of the
others in their midst, that in a way we all share in the creations and
practices done by everyone in this island. Each of us needs to understand
that he runs the risk of denying his own self and presence when he looks
at the creations or practices produced in his presence, in his place and in
his time as if he had nothing to do with them.” (Lovelace, 1997, p. 92)
These comments go to the very heart of contemporary debates about the recognition of
plurality in the context of multiculturalism. The implicit tensions that characterize the
definition and exploration of social and cultural identity in the context of multiculturalism
are also raised.
On one hand, by proposing that the members of the band take on and “play mas” (i.e.
masquerade) within the confines of each other’s ethnic and cultural identity Lovelace
undercuts the established concepts of fixed and stable identity. He implies that in order to
confront and challenge the colonial inequities of the past we should all “play” at being
each other. This diffuses the historic power of “otherness” and provides the opportunity
for those who have been historically oppressed to challenge the positions history has
assigned them. It is only through the promotion of the capacity to think differently that
we can hope to question the established and often oppressive delineations of ethnicity and
race.
At the same time Lovelace draws attention to the significance of cultural identity and
the importance of cultivating recognition and respect for others through the
demonstration of empathetic engagement and genuine interest in others. There is a certain
level of correspondence between Dewey’s interpretation of democracy as the cultivation
of a civic sensibility and Lovelace’s recognition of the capacity of the carnivalesque to
promote a particular form of reciprocal empathy. Despite their difference in backgrounds
and spheres of activity, Dewey and Lovelace both appear to be committed to the
recognition of the significance of the aesthetic dimension of experience, particularly its
role in the promotion of thinking.
We can conclude that they both imply that only by entering dramatically into the space
and experience of those who are defined as other than ourselves can we build the
foundations of a more reciprocally cooperative society. By demonstrating how Carnival
can operate as a mode of inquiry that relies on a radical aesthetic Lovelace like Dewey
offers “art as a form of experience” (Dewey, 1934).
Carnival as a radical aesthetic (II)
We have seen that Carnival can be delineated as an aesthetic terrain that provides the
scope for an enactment of forms of radicalism that are absent in normative narratives and
articulations of everyday life. Within the performative text of Carnival characters can
practice the assertion of a sense of themselves that is regenerative, life-affirming, and
implicitly dangerous because of the transgressive possibilities. This is largely because
Carnival thrives on reversal, irreverence and disruption, it offers an experimental zone for
the concrete embodiment of the creative sensibilities required for the conduct of the
Deweyan concept of “dramatic rehearsal.”
Lovelace’s (1997) novel suggests that within the rituals of Trinidad Carnival we can
playfully extend the range and focus our “image schemata” (Johnson, 1987), our
perceptual frames of reference through which we present ourselves in the world as social
actors. As previously indicated, Carnival can provide the opportunity to engage in
oppositional representations of social reality. In essence this interpretation of Trinidad
Carnival suggests that the radicalism of this particular carnivalesque aesthetic can
activate forms of “deliberation” that raise questions about how we think of and present
ourselves as social beings in a multicultural environment. Within this critical framework
we can come to reconstruct the hidden and partially obliterated personas that may be
submerged within the established and traditional ideals of social and cultural identity.
This is what happens to Florence, one of the novel’s important characters. Through the
mediative framework of Carnival she is able to move towards a profound level of self-
knowledge and self-realization. Her first experience and the aftermath of playing mass in
the urban environment of the city in which she is a migrant and loner is described as
follows:
She had played a Nubian princess, with her hair cut short and ringed with
coloured beads and a tiara of gold. The sun had tanned her so that the rich
velvety blackness of her skin glistened and she had felt so much herself on
those days of Carnival, soaked so deeply with a sense of her own beauty,
that after the festival she continued to keep her hair in the same fashion
and to wear her skin with the same pride, the result being that men took
her for a foreign woman. (Lovelace, 1997, p. 96)
It is through this experience of playing the Queen in the context of Carnival that Florence
is able proudly to reclaim her African heritage, that part of her that is not reflected in the
dominant images that shape the perceptions of the society and culture in which she lives.
Here the ritual of Carnival performs a regenerative function that speaks to the formation
and grounding of an authentic identity. It is in the creative space of Carnival that she is
able to be and to practice being in ways that are denied her in the larger society. Florence
is actually “unmasked,” her strong and natural African features normally the source of
shame and embarrassment are represented afresh:
It was only when she looked up, looked again at the spectators that she
saw in their eyes their admiration, their acknowledgment and their
granting of a right that she claimed by the display of herself. (Lovelace,
1997, p. 96)
The experience of Carnival provides the opportunity for a performative representation of

the self that is affirmed by the spectator’s gaze. Florence’s journey to self-realization and
the ultimate acknowledgment of a self that needed to be drawn from her own creative
representation is conveyed as a kind of coming home that is supported by her own sense
of emotional achievement and satisfaction:
at last she felt herself herself, that self she had always suspected was
herself, that even she herself was only then seeing, (p. 96)
She is able to find her place in the city, she can move on to assert her sense of belonging.
She is no longer a migrant in the alien, urban multicultural landscape that had previously
overwhelmed and intimidated her.
She recognized then that this city was a place that granted you only what
you were willing to claim, (p. 96)
Florence’s successful claim was based on the exercise of the creative capacity to
imaginatively represent herself within what was formerly felt to be a hostile social
environment. Hence in the novel the Carnival festival is a symbolic rite of passage that
can nurture a generative recognition of an authentic social identity. Lovelace holds up for
exploration the emancipatory possibilities of Carnival. He draws specific attention to the
capacity of Trinidad Carnival to exercise a disruptive and consequently radical aesthetic.
Masquerading and masking are the main performative modes of Trinidad Carnival
(Gilbert and Tomkins, 1996). Masquerading is primarily concerned with the presentation
of the body in performance, the release and display of a subversive kinetic energy. Hence
masqueraders wear costumes and dance collectively in the street. The dancing and the
accompanying music frequently expresses and celebrates the ribald, licentious and the
comic elements of desire (Schechner, 1993).
In many ways the annual celebration of Carnival is a popular reassertion of the right to
parade and masquerade the body in ways that promote and flaunt the pleasures of the
flesh. Trinidad Carnival does more than invert everyday forms of behavior: it subverts
and disrupts. This play on the body out of control and beyond order is a dominant motif
of the Trinidad Carnival aesthetic, and must be subjected to a special reading in post-
colonial societies, like Trinidad, where the narratives of slavery, the ultimate form of
control one human body can exert over another, continue to shadow contemporary
events. Hence not only is Carnival a celebration of the freely gyrating body engaging in
forbidden pleasures, it is a symbolic representation of the body’s capacity to express and
represent forbidden pleasures.
Masking, the other performative mode of Trinidad Carnival, addresses the issues of
role-playing and de-roling, stepping in and out of alternative identities and modes of self-
presentation. This is an undertaking that invites the thinking about and the reworking of
the parameters that define the limits of our social knowledge. On Carnival day anyone
and everyone can be the King, the Fool, the Devil or the Midnight Robber. Within the
theatrical space of Carnival everybody can be anybody. By entertaining a creative
sensibility that facilitates the exploration of multiple persona and identities, the normal
categories of social privilege and status are rendered absurd.
At the most fundamental level Carnival playfully allows us to reposition ourselves in
the world and to experiment with new postures and social arrangements. Established
boundaries that support an oppressive and coercive status quo can be critically evaluated
and stripped of their claims to validity and authority. While this does not automatically
diffuse or reduce the power of established authority it does suggest a basis for a process
of critical deconstruction and representation. This is a fundamental consideration of
multiculturalism.
Hence Trinidad Carnival is an appropriate metaphor for conceptualizing and making
sense of the dynamics of Dewey’s representation of “deliberation” as “dramatic
rehearsal.” Cultivating the predisposition required to think creatively about ourselves as
social actors and agents in a multicultural society requires the capacity to look towards
the cultivation of a radical creativity that will foster the ability to think differently. In the
context of multiculturalism, this can help us to reimagine established perceptions of
social reality. Against this background we can work towards the development of
analytical frameworks that represent popular perceptions of social categories like race,
ethnicity and nationality.
Educators who seek to offer an interpretation of multiculturalism that is informed by a
radical aesthetic run the risk of promoting critical frameworks that turn the world inside
out and upside down. It should be noted that, when the critical qualities of the emotions,
the imagination and the creative sensibilities are openly brought into the service of
thinking about the way things are and the way things could be, we run risk of fostering a
passionate engagement with critical and deconstructive discourses about social reality.
If as educators we accept the proposition that learning how to be in the world is
fundamental to the conduct of education then we need to pay attention to the way in
which multiculturalism challenges us to think differently. In this article I have attempted

to demonstrate how the carnivalesque as conveyed by the radical aesthetic of the Trinidad
Carnival may be an appropriate illustration of the educational significance of the aesthetic
dimension of experience.
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11
Cultural Diversity in Art Education
HELEN CHARMAN
In a comment from the floor at a conference on African Art and Criticism hosted by the
Courtauld Institute in November 1996, artist and critic George Shire observed how in
today’s post-colonial, postmodern world, ‘nobody lives a culturally one-dimensional life
anymore’. Such an observation is particularly pertinent in the field of arts education, in
which there is an increasing need for policy and practice in which is embedded the richly
diverse ethnic backgrounds of Britain’s school-going community.
This chapter critiques the value of cultural diversity in arts education through a case-
study of the Schools Education Programme at the October Gallery, London. The term
‘cultural diversity’ can be understood in various ways. Jennifer Williams (1996) states
that culture consists of ‘people, objects and events that give meaning to life’. Taking this
as a broad working definition, culture includes not only religion, education, and social
mores, but also the more localized and personal self-expressions that people make in their
lives. What ‘culture’ is, and how it is valued, depends upon who is experiencing it and in
what situation. Likewise what is considered to be ‘art’ can vary enormously from one
culture and society to another. Visual images and forms which are unique and peculiar to
one culture and society will take on different meanings and resonances when viewed in
others. Broad definitions of culture—as opposed to a western-defined concept of ‘High
Art’ as ‘Culture’—are particularly important in this case-study in that they avoid the
‘ethnocentricism and elitism that the humanities-based definition falls prey to’ (Griswold,
1994, p. 111). In terms of the arts education activities at the October Gallery, cultural
diversity is taken to mean everything that informs the identity of the individual and which
finds expression through interaction with artforms from diverse cultures around the
world. It is an active, exciting, constituting force which is dynamic and perpetually in
flux.
Part 1 of this chapter gives a background to the October Gallery. Part 2 explores
debates around the position currently accorded to cultural diversity in arts education in
the National Curriculum for Art at Key Stages 1 and 2 (the majority of our visiting school
groups are at KS 1/2) based on research by Rachel Mason and Sudha Daniel. Part 3
details the gallery’s education department through a series of case-studies of practical
activities undertaken in 1996, with specific reference to three exhibitions by artists
indigenous to South Africa, Haiti and Western Australia. Attention is focused on how the
work of the department engages with issues of cultural diversity in arts education and the
value of such engagements. In conclusion the chapter will explore future potentialities for
cultural diversity in arts education at the October Gallery and place its findings in a wider
educational context.
Cultural diversity in art education 167
The October Gallery: background information
The October Gallery opened in February 1979. It is a charitable trust dedicated to the
advancement and appreciation of art from diverse cultures, particularly aiming to exhibit
and promote avant-garde work of artists from outside the European mainstream whose
practice actively engages in a dialogue with the West, in a form of artistic practice termed
the ‘transvanguard’ by the gallery’s founders.
The gallery was conceived in October 1978 by a creative group of artists, architects,
engineers, managers and scientists who were world travellers, adventurers and lovers of
the ‘new’. They had been working as a team since 1967 and had already participated in
several ongoing projects: the Theatre of All Possibilities, a repertory theatre ensemble;
Sarbid Corporation, an architectural firm; and the Institute of Ecotechnics, which was
involved in the development and application of innovative approaches to harmonizing the
worlds of technology and the global biosphere.
The founders wished to create a forum for cross-cultural debate and contact in the
visual arts. A meeting place for artists and their public, from the outset the gallery also
hosted talks, theatre, dance performances and music concerts. An inaugural exhibition of
the work of Gerald Wilde brought with it the support of allies in the western avant-garde;
artists William S.Burroughs and Brion Gysin, composer Ornette Coleman and writer
Lawrence Durrell. Subsequently the search for artists from the ‘transvanguard’ has
reaped a plentiful and rich harvest; from El Anatsui’s (Ghana) Erosion and its twisting
spiral spokes cut by chain saw strokes, to Sandile Zulu’s (South Africa) burnt paper
works Atomic, Birth of a New World, to Kenji Yoshida’s (Japan) gold leaf and mixed
media paintings and Laila Shawa’s (Gaza) photo-silkscreens. The gallery now holds up to
ten exhibitions a year and represents artists from every continent (except Antarctica!),
from countries which include: Armenia, Austria, Australia, Borneo, Brazil, Canada,
China, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, Gaza, Germany, Ghana, Guyana,
Haiti, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia,
Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Scotland,
Spain, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Tibet, Trinidad and Tobago, UK, USA,
Wales and Former Yugoslavia.
The national curriculum for art
The National Curriculum Final Report for Art (DES, 1991) stated that art education
should provide opportunities for pupils to recognize that ‘no one culture has a monopoly
of artistic development’. This belief informed the inception of the October Gallery’s
Education Department. With the growth of multicultural society—a result of increased
migration of peoples, of advances in communication technology and the opening of
previously closed borders—the need to recognize and validate cultural diversity is of
utmost relevance to all members of society, and especially for young people, who are our
future. How does the National Curriculum for Art at Key Stages 1 and 2 recognize and
make provision for the rich cultural mix in our classrooms? Is sufficient time and
attention given to cultural pluralism in the National Curriculum for Art or is too much
reference given to western European heritage?
In The Multicultural Dimension of the National Curriculum (King et al., 1993) Daniel
and Mason formulate answers to these questions. Within the context of an historical
overview of multicultural reform in art education within the statutory education sector,
they argue that despite reforms to the National Curriculum for Art, Eurocentric attitudes
and practices are still prevalent in art teaching in schools. Such attitudes and practices can
take a variety of forms—for example, wall displays which do not reflect the multi-racial
mix of contemporary British society, or scant attention being paid to art forms which fall
outside traditional western definitions of what constitutes ‘art’, or a failure to recognize
the different roles art plays in minority ethnic and community life. While it is not the
purpose of this chapter to examine these claims closely, an awareness of the debates
around the multicultural component of the National Curriculum for Art as outlined by
Daniel and Mason is useful in order to place and evaluate the October Gallery’s arts
education practice.
The National Curriculum Final Report for Art of 1991 sought to rectify the ways in
which schools were seen to be paying inadequate attention to looking at and thinking
about art. Two separate Attainment Targets (AT) were put forward by the working party:
AT1, Investigating and Making, and AT2, Knowledge and Understanding. AT2 is of
particular relevance to cultural diversity in arts education, in that it provides opportunities
for pupils to explore art, craft and design in a wide historical and cultural context. The
report contained a detailed policy statement which demonstrated a clear commitment to
cultural pluralism, paragraph 10.10 recommending that:
1 All pupils should be given some access to good art, crafts and design from a number of
cultures (my italics).
2 Teaching should be aimed at bringing non-western art into the mainstream.
3 Pupils should be encouraged to appreciate and value in its own right art, craft and
design from other cultures and should be introduced to the work of artists,
craftworkers and designers currently working in the United Kingdom.
Examples of arts from outside Europe were given in the suggested programme of study.
A conscious effort was made to reshape the ways art was to be taught in schools, moving
outside the dominant western paradigms which were seen to have shaped its
methodology. For example, a prevalent western conception of the artistic process is that
which affords a key role to drawing through observation, focusing on the formal
attributes of an artwork without putting it in a cultural and/or historical context, or
following through a problem-solving design process which is specifically Anglo-
European.
As Daniel and Mason point out how these issues bring a wider field of inquiry into
focus which sociologists such as Bourdieu have researched (Bourdieu, 1980, pp. 225–
54), i.e. how ‘cultivated’ western taste is characterized by an aesthetic disposition which
involves a distancing of art from everyday concerns. In this approach the art work is not
seen as an active cultural product, often made collaboratively, embedded in and
commenting upon (either directly or indirectly) the culture which informs it, but as an
autonomous, free-floating object, usually made by an individual, in which meaning is
located in the formal relationships of colour, line and volume. Such an approach
emphasizes an ‘art for art’s sake’ perspective and holds little relevance and value for
today’s schoolchildren, many of whom are from societies in which people rarely engage
in ‘art for art’s sake’. Indeed, many non-western societies often do not have a word for
‘art’ as there is no need for it, but nevertheless art is very much a part of their everyday
lives, for example through choices about self-expression through hair style or clothes, or
in the way homes are decorated. A National Curriculum for Art which challenges
western-centric paradigms would involve a restructuring and re-evaluation of attitudes
and practice in art teaching within schools. Daniel and Mason cite the following criteria
for good multicultural practice in art:
• contact with non-European artists
• displays of artwork from a variety of cultural traditions in the classroom and around
school
• recognition of a variety of functions for art and design
• efforts to extend the knowledge base of art forms derived from cultures and modern
developments outside Europe
• use of outside and community agencies to widen pupils’ expressive art experience
• encouragement for minority ethnic pupils to portray their own experience and those of
their communities in art
• examination of visual imagery for racism and prejudice in contemporary and historical
contexts
• study of interrelationships between art, music and dance forms in cultural traditions
outside Europe
• use of art for studying similarities, interconnections and differences between cultures in
a positive light
• curriculum development relevant to areas of concern such as race relations and
discrimination
• resources for teaching art and artistic conventions from within their cultural contexts.
It was with these issues and challenges at the front of my mind that I set up the Education
Department at the October Gallery in the summer of 1994, a time when I was involved in
a research project exploring the multicultural dimension of youth arts provision in
Britain. Consequently questions of multicultural practice in art education played an
important role in formulating departmental policy and practice.
The October Gallery education department
Both educationally and socially it is vital to involve

children with art from outside the western mainstream,
especially since the National Curriculum is becoming
increasingly Eurocentric and even Anglocentric—
categories to which a very small proportion of my
class/school belong. (Anna Menmuir, Year 6 class teacher
at Kingsgate Junior School, Camden. Nov. 1996)
The establishment of the education department at the October Gallery resulted from a
recognition of the enormous potential the gallery’s exhibition programme held to serve
local school communities with a culturally pluralistic approach to arts education. In the
context of the international scope of artists shown at the gallery lay the basis for
education work which could be a valuable local resource, providing arts education
services for primary schools in the London Borough of Camden in which the gallery is
situated. These schools have significant numbers of children from ethnic minority groups
with a wide range of cultural backgrounds and language groups. For example in 1996 the
rich multicultural make-up of visiting pupils to the gallery ran thus: 54 per cent Bengali,
21 per cent White, 12 per cent Black-African, 10 per cent Chinese and 3 per cent Other. It
is also important to note that Camden has a fast-growing refugee population whose
origins are worldwide. Education is generally highly valued by refugees and is often seen
as providing the only hope for the future when all else may seem lost. Refugee children
arrive with very different experiences of schooling—but whatever these may have been,
all will have suffered disruptions to their education. It is believed that through
implementing an integrated arts education programme at the gallery, which is informed
on every level by an awareness of cultural plurality, exposure to and interaction with the
work of contemporary artists from around the world can help visiting pupils to affirm
their diverse cultural identities and to learn from positive role models.
Operating on a part-time basis, the decision was taken at the inception of the
department to target primary schools (although secondary school groups are always
welcome to visit). This decision was as much theoretical as pragmatic. By introducing
young children (from reception class, age 4, up to Year 6, age 11) to a welcoming and
user-friendly gallery environment in which the education programme consistently strives
to make the experience accessible and relevant to the young participant, the department
can help to break down the ‘invisible barriers’ which often exist between young people
and art galleries. To put this statement in a wider context it is helpful to look briefly at
recent research which investigates the relationship between young people and museums
and galleries. Stuart Davis (1994) draws attention to the lack of adequate provision on the
part of the country’s museums and galleries for the needs of children, aged 7–11, as
informal visitors. Likewise Paul Willis (1990) suggests that young people have
recognized that they are out of place in cultural institutions which have little to offer
them. The way in which institutions contain art, define what’s valuable, and school and
train for its appreciation excludes current relevant art forms, projecting and protecting
traditional arts beyond their moments of living relevance. While Willis is not denying the
educational potential of some traditional art forms, he is stating the need to promote ‘arts
in life’ and not ‘the arts’. Only by giving young people a sense of agency and by making
the arts relevant to them—i.e. to the multicultural society in which they live—can a
valuable and productive dialectical relationship be nurtured between cultural institutions
and young people. If the seeds of such a relationship are sown when children are just
embarking on their school career, so much the better.1
Thus the Education Department at the October Gallery was formulated with the
following aims and objectives:
• to foreground the importance of cultural diversity in arts education
• to expose pupils to visual arts and practising artists from different cultures and peoples
which are both an inspiration for them and a validation of their cultural heritage
• to allow young people to see cultural resonances of themselves
• to fulfil and creatively build upon the requirements of the National Curriculum for Art
at Key Stage 1 and 2 in providing an opportunity for pupils to ‘begin to identify the
characteristics of art in a variety of genres from different periods, cultures and
traditions’.
The Schools Education programme is structured to work in tandem with the Exhibition
programme, offering:
• twice-termly Inset meetings for teachers to familiarize themselves with the current
exhibition, when possible to meet the artist whose work is currently showing and to
identify potential topic work before bringing a group to the gallery
• artist-led workshops
• guided gallery tours and study sessions
• a structured monitoring and assessment providing opportunities for feedback from
teachers and pupils
• follow-up visits to the school by the Education Co-ordinator
• an annual exhibition of artwork resulting from pupils’ visits to the gallery over the
school year.
To accompany each exhibition the department produces two levels of resource pack for
pupils (i.e. one for Key Stage 1 and another for Key Stage 2). At the Inset meeting
teachers are asked to look through the resource packs and make recommendations about
any alterations they consider appropriate (e.g. language level). I am always happy to
tailor the packs to individual needs; one of the advantages of working in a small gallery
in which there is only room for one group of up to 35 pupils to visit per morning is that a
more direct and intimate relationship between the Education Coordinator and programme
participants can be developed. The emphasis for group visits is on active looking,
discussion and practical work; the resource packs are an important way of accessing the
exhibition and as such consist of tasks and ‘puzzles’ which lead the pupil into a critical
and comparative investigation of the works.
Group visits
When groups come to the gallery a significant portion of the visit is devoted to situating
the work culturally. With a map of the world on view pupils are asked to locate the
artist’s home country or continent. Their perceptions of that place are then explored.
Depending on time restrictions, some teachers will already have done background
preparation prior to the visit. This gives pupils more confidence because they
immediately have a cultural framework within which to place the artwork. Alongside
situating art and artist geographically, a sense of the historical context is given, which is
crucial in working towards a ‘culturally embedded’ understanding of the art.
Case study 1: South Africa I—At the Forefront and II—Tradition in

Transition
In the summer of 1996 the gallery ran two residencies for artists from South Africa in
conjunction with two exhibitions South Africa I—At the Forefront (16 May–15 June
1996) and South Africa II—Tradition in Transition (20 June–27 July 1996). These
exhibitions were in collaboration with the London-based organization Music Village,
which was simultaneously hosting a cross-arts festival to celebrate post-apartheid South
Africa. The artists taking part in the residencies, Kagiso Pat Mautloa and Willie Bester,
were both resident in South Africa and had struggled to continue to produce art despite
the harsh conditions and heavy restrictions imposed upon them under the apartheid
system. The education programme at the gallery consisted of guided gallery visits and
practical creative workshops led by the artists, culminating in an exhibition of the works
produced by participating pupils. The programme included schools from four London
boroughs—Camden, Hackney, Wandsworth and Woolwich—and was targeted at KS1
and KS2.
Description/background of exhibitions
Before describing our education activities it is necessary to have some idea of what kind
of art was on show (although written text is a poor substitute for visual images of the
works) and the particular histories from which the works have been produced. I have
therefore prefixed each case study with a short description of the relevant exhibition
and/or some historical background information, which I hope will be of help to the
reader.
At the Forefront (16 May–15 June 1996)

This mixed-media exhibition offered a powerful insight into a post-apartheid South
African avantgarde. Without recourse to didactic narrative or open polemic, At the
Forefront articulated what life was like for the artists living under apartheid, while
gesturing towards their hopes and fears for the future. Using found objects and articles
that would normally be considered ‘rubbish’, the works displayed great sensitivity to
materials, and conceptual richness. Kagiso Pat Mautloa’s Corrugated Iron I suggested
township home was a prison in which personal space was suffocatingly circumscribed,
while Conversation, a discarded window frame randomly filled with wooden letters and
old nails, spoke of the possibility of communication between different racial groups in
post-apartheid society. Moshekwa Langa’s plastic bag sculptures embellished by coded
receipts candidly showed daily life under apartheid as a process of surveillance and
categorization, while Sandile Zulu’s burnt paper abstracts resembled damaged worlds.
Striking was the lack of bitterness evidenced in this work, and the hope for a new
democratic society. At the Forefront did not collude with the western construct of
a’primitive’ aesthetic, denying notions of Black South Africa as primeval, ethnic and
unchanging and emphasizing the hybridity and polysemic nature of its art and culture.
Education programme
The education programme for At the Forefront focused on the theme of recycling ‘found
objects’ into art. This was in keeping with the ‘environ-mental issues’ curriculum topic
which was being studied by participating pupils and with Kagiso’s work which involved
making collaged wood and glass wall sculptures from scraps of debris. As mentioned
above, all the artists in At the Forefront showed work which had discarded canvas and the
narrative mode to use instead a variety of either ‘found’ or inexpensive, local materials.
Prior to Kagiso flying to England I had liaised with him about potential approaches to the
workshops. Kagiso had also suggested the theme of ‘home’ alongside ‘recycling’ as
starting points for creative work, so the pupils were instructed to see what they could
gather from their homes and surrounding areas in the way of waste material which they
considered had ‘creative’ potential.
Kagiso’s presence was invaluable both to myself and the children because he was able
to contextualize the conceptual nature of the work in the exhibition within its cultural
parameters and explain why he had adopted an abstract approach to his materials. He
could speak from his position as a black South African artist and offer insight into the
troubled times his country was emerging from and the strategies he had adopted to
continue to practise art under a regime which denied black artists any formal training.
This first-hand cultural context gave pupils an alternative point of view from which to
look at and consider the art, in which the ‘meaning’ or resonances of the works were
embedded in the culture from which they were produced. For example, Kagiso’s abstract
wall collage made from overlapping sheets of corrugated iron bolted together was
explained as a reference to the suffocatingly close proximity black South Africans were
forced to live under in the densely populated townships. The more the children spoke to
Kagiso about his work the more they were able to comprehend the abstract pieces outside
a purely formalistic framework. Kagiso was keen to involve the children in a different
way of understanding what can constitute art, and how this category is contingent upon
the cultural situation which informs it. He talked about how under apartheid black artists
were denied access to artist materials. How then, Kagiso asked the pupils, could an artist
continue to work creatively? The pupils thought long and hard and looked around at the
work on the walls, which comprised old window frames, plastic bags, welded together
engine parts, scorched paper rescued from a rubbish bin, old pieces of string, rusty
nails… It wasn’t long before the connection was made between systems of environmental
recycling, about which the children were learning at school, to a system of artistic
recyling in which the unwanted and discarded detritus of everyday life, when seen with
an artist’s eye, could be fashioned anew into a work of art. This filled the children with
enthusiasm to get stuck into their own sacks of rubbish, and under the gentle guidance of
Kagiso they set to work making their own ‘recycled’ collages (TES, 1996).
Tradition in Transition (20 June–27 July 1996)

This exhibition sought to demonstrate how longstanding cultural traditions in South
Africa have adapted—and continue to adapt—to modern times, often creating fascinating
cultural hybrids en route. It included munzere wood sculptures by Jackson Hlungwani,
which derived in form and content from Christian and Tsonga contexts, painted
anthropomorphic sculptures by Johannes Maswanganye, in which Christian and Venda
symbolism were wittily combined, colourful geometric paintings by Thomas Kgope
which referenced his Ndebele heritage, and mixed media pieces by Willie Bester, our
second artist in residence. These pieces made strong reference to the apartheid system
and the appalling physical conditions of township life.
Education programme
For his workshops, Willie decided to focus on the use of geometric pattern as a
decorative scheme, taking the Ndbele wall murals featured in the work of Thomas Kgope
as a starting point. The children were asked where else they had come across similar
practices. For the Muslim children in the group this was an exciting opportunity for them
to compare the Ndebele designs with their experience of geometric pattern which is
fundamental to Islamic fine arts. They were encouraged to think about differences and
similarities between the designs and their uses, and to express some of their ideas in the
creative work which was to follow. However, the focus of these workshops was elided as
pupils became increasingly curious about Willie’s work, with its overtly political nature.
In particular the children were fascinated by a huge sculpture of an ‘ox’ Willie had
constructed from old car engine and motor bike parts, intricately welded together and
spray painted. The piece had been commissioned by the United Nations in Geneva, and
without the artist present it would have proved extremely difficult to get to grips with the
politically sensitive and difficult issues it referenced. The discussion in front of the ox
dominated the day and gave pupils plenty of food for thought, while providing Willie
with the challenge of having to frame his answers within the parameters of children aged
10–11 who (with the exception of one) had not experienced apartheid.
Feedback from the education programme for the South Africa exhibitions suggested
the value of the learning experience lay in the cross-cultural dynamics between pupils
and artists rather than in the actual practice of the artwork involved:
I have not worked with children before. These workshops gave me the
opportunity to meet with young people and talk a little about my work and
share some of my experiences of living under apartheid. I was amazed by
the level of their questions and their curiosity about my working methods.
(Willie Bester, South African artist)
I saw an interesting wall sculpture that Willie created. It was showing
about war, with guns and shoe soles. It was painted in primary colours. I
liked the way it was made. But it made me feel sad. (Kirandip Sagoo age
10, South Rise Primary School, Plumstead, London)
Willie’s comment after his first workshop puts forward some of the core objectives of the
gallery’s education department: to promote cultural plurality, interaction, exchange and
participation through the visual arts. Kirandip’s reflection shows that the path to meeting
such objectives is not necessarily an easy one to tread.
Without doubt the main value of the education programme for the South African
exhibitions lay in the living presence of the artists. In the words of a participating teacher:
Working in a different environment, in a different way was very exciting

and liberating for the children. Meeting living artists was very valuable as
they provide role models. (Michelle Rice, Shacklewell Primary School,
Hackney, London)
Not only did Kagiso and Willie offer pupils insight into a different way of artistic
practice, they provided a wider and first-hand cultural context for the art, without which
the children’s experience of it would have been less considered and certainly less
informed. From the point of view of the National Curriculum, the content of the
exhibitions and the workshops provided an excellent opportunity for the children to
‘recognize ways in which works of art, craft and design reflect the time and place in
which they are made’ (KS2, AT 2—Knowledge and Understanding). This also fitted
perfectly with the Education Department’s aim that children leave the gallery
understanding the art they have seen as culturally embedded rather than formally
autonomous.
Case study 2: Vodou flags and contemporary ironwork and painting from
Haiti (12 September–19 October 1996)
Haiti was colonized by the Spanish in 1492, and in 1503 the first cargo of slaves from
West Africa landed. The French gained a foothold there in the mid-seventeenth century.
Everything conspired to break down African culture—the slaves were given new names
and different ethnic groups were systematically mixed, so that they began to lose all
memory of family, lineage and origins. The only permissible religion was Catholicism. In
response to this violent deracination the slaves sought to resume their cultural and
religious traditions in an effort to create a communal bond. Runaway slaves formed new
communities. Dance, songs, mythology, rituals, medicinal treatments as well as the
development of the Creole language and a new family organization based on African
kinship structures combined to forge new ties in which the common aim was the
suppression of slavery.
Vodou and the sequinned tapestries

Vodou was first encountered in Africa among the Fon, the Yoruba and the Ewe in the
Gulf of Benin, an area that stretches from Ghana to Nigeria to Togo. In Vodou religion,
society is organized around the ethnic group, the village, the family and kinship, each
with its own ancestral and cultural deities.
Brightly sequined tapestries and flags honouring the ‘lwa’ (for an explanation of the
lwa please see below) are unique to Haiti, although sources for them include Yoruba
beadwork, Carnival art and images from the Catholic sainthood. A tapestry consists of a
lwa’s representational image rendered in sequins on a solid coloured background, with a
geometric border surrounding the image. The flags are made by stretching fabric across a
wood frame, upon which the artist draws the outline of the figure. Each 8 mm. sequin is
held in place by a glass bead. A typical flag will consist of between 18,000–20,000
sequins and beads, and takes approximately ten days to complete. The flags are made
collabora-tively with several Haitians working together under the guidance of the main
‘artist’.
Vodou flags have been used for hundreds of years to identify the Vodou family and
nation, mainly for religious and ceremonial use. They can be likened to Tibetan prayer
clothes or Christian statuary. Today a new generation of artists combine spiritual
devotion with artistic ambition—some works are made to honour spirits, some to honour
the art market!
Education programme
The focus of the education programme for the Haiti exhibition was the bright and
beautiful array of ceremonial sequinned flags depicting Vodou lwa. Lwa are supernatural
beings, found in all forms of nature: in the trees, the mountains, the streams, in air, fire
and water. They are dedicated to serving humans, but will only bestow their largesse if
well fed and welcomed. Lwa spirits can effectively be likened to the Catholic pantheon of
saints, the product of a fertile hybridization between the two religions. Below is a brief
outline of some of the major lwa, their attributes, likes and dislikes, with correlating
Catholic saints in italics:
Legba Master of Passageways, opens the door between physical and

metaphysical. Likes red, and offerings including rice, green bananas…and
bones! (St Lazarus, St Peter, St Antoine)
Danbala Great Life Spirit, the master of the sky, considered the most
powerful lwa by many. The ova or egg symbolizes his potency as a source
of life. Prefers white, while female counterpart likes blue and white—her
image is the rainbow. Offerings include white chickens, eggs, rice and
milk. (St Patrick)
Ezili Great Female Spirit, governess of love. Likes sweet wine, cakes,
lace and the colours pale blue and pink. A virgin, desirable but
unattainable. To honour her, sleep on the floor and leave the bed free!
(Virgin Mary)
Ogou Warrior Spirit. Bestows the power to survive. Led the slaves in
their fight for independence from France in 1804. Likes the colour red.
Offering is red rooster. (St Jacques and St James)
Simbi Master of Clairvoyance, who guards the source of fresh water;
rivers, lakes, springs and rain. Today, said to govern all things that flow,
like electricity, telephones, television and computers. Prefers black and
grey. Offering is pig/guinea hen/turkey so long as it is black and grey.
(The Magi)
At the autumn term Inset meeting teachers requested more emphasis on education
programmes targeting KS1 pupils (age 5–7). This was in order to fulfil the curriculum at
Attainment Target 2 (Knowledge and Understanding) which states that pupils ‘respond to
the ideas, methods or approaches used in different styles and traditions’ by comparing
artefacts and making links with their own work. It was decided that the Haiti show would
target this age group and curriculum area because the decorative and ceremonial flags in
the exhibition provided an excellent example of collaborative art work using textiles and
sequins rather than paintbrush and canvas. In addition they were the result of a
fascinating mix of different cultural traditions—sixteenth-century French Catholicism
and Vodou with its West African roots.
The visits commenced with a discussion of the historical and cultural background to
the practice of voudou belief in Haiti, albeit in a manner accessible to the age of the
pupils. The discussion focused on how slaves found clever ways to preserve and nourish
their sense of cultural identity despite the difficulties and obstacles put in their way. The
resource pack provided an introduction to each lwa, including their likes and dislikes and
the best ways to gain favour with them (as above). Suitably introduced to each lwa pupils
then set off on a ‘lwa hunt’ around the gallery, in which they were requested to find not
only sequinned representations of the different spirits but also various objects in the flags
(for example, a bottle, a snake, a sword) which were used as secondary identificatory
symbols. Depending on preference, each pupil then made up their own lwa (we had lwas
of holidays, of the sea, mermaid lwas and—no surprises—even a Ryan Giggs lwa!) and
drew a design for it. Schools brought a range of different materials with them, such as
sequins, ribbon and buttons, with which the lwas were decorated.
Collaborative work focused on the flag’s border patterns. Groups of pupils selected
one of their lwa designs and made up a border for it. They asked about the differences in
detail between the borders on the flags in the exhibition. Why did some have fewer
sequins than others, or no decorative border at all?2 Talking about the borders provided
an opportunity for pupils to indulge in some canny cross-curricular activity as they were
required to search out and name the different geometric shapes featured on them (or
count up the sides on a triangle, or distinguish between a circle and an oval, etc.). Back at
school the groups followed up their visits by transferring their designs onto fabric and
making collaged textile and card flags.
Feedback from the education programme for the Haiti show suggested its main
educational value reached beyond the original curriculum requirements. The historical
background to the flags provided a wider window on the world than that which pupils
had previously associated with artwork. One teacher from a school with predominantly
Bengali pupils expressed how this was of value in that:
Our children have quite a narrow view of life in this country. They go on
few outings and just visiting a gallery widens their experience
tremendously. As many have travelled to Bangladesh, however, they are
aware of a world ‘out there’ and it is good to show how we are interested
in and value other cultures, and the ways they interact. Many inner city
children see only negative reactions to their own or other (i.e. non
western) cultures. You redress this experience. (Marie Coar, Year 1 class
teacher, Argyle Primary School, Camden)
Case Study 3: Aboriginal paintings from Western Australia (24 Oct.–7

Dec. 1996)
Prior to contact with the west, Aboriginal ‘art’ was found in the form of rock paintings,
etchings and sand paintings, executed in a variety of mediums from ochre to charcoal to
sand to chalk. The paintings—termed ‘Dreamings’ in western literature—marked out
aboriginal sacred sites and were used for didactic and ceremonial purposes (for example,
a boy’s initiation into manhood). Aboriginal culture and heritage was originally an oral
and visual language passed down through generations via such teachings as the sand and
rock paintings. In the mid-nineteenth century, with the arrival of Western Europeans,
aboriginals were persuaded to put their Dreamings onto barks so they could be taken
away and studied for anthropological and ethnographical purposes.
In 1971 an art teacher called Geoff Bardon joined the Papunya Community, 150 km.
north-west of Alice Springs, set up by the Australian government in the 1950s. Papunya
consisted of five different tribes living together under the government’s edict that they be
‘assimilated’ into western ways of life—for example, methods of education, health care,
etc. Bardon was perplexed to find that the children in his classes were extremely hesitant
to express themselves visually when he requested them to do so. This would have meant
exposing sacred knowledge to an outsider. However, when the elders of the community
heard what Bardon wanted they came into the school and painted a magnificent Honey
Ant Dreaming on the school wall. The elders wanted to record and validate their
traditions in the ‘new’ way of life being foisted upon their younger members of the
community before it became lost knowledge, swept up by the secularity of contemporary
Australian society.
In 1975 Bardon was succeeded by Dick Kimber who equipped the community with
western artistic materials such as acrylics and canvases. Barks and carvings were already
being sold to museums, and acrylic-based works entered the commercial art market. All
the communities in the Central Desert had a booming tourist market as well as local
museums eager to purchase their works. In the early 1980s there was a big Dreamings
exhibition and Aboriginal art gained international recognition.
Works from two main areas were represented in the October Gallery exhibition, the
Central Desert Region to the south of the Northern Territories, and Arnhem Land, which
stretches from the top of the Northern Territories eastwards into Queensland.
Works from the Central Desert were executed in the Dot and Circle style, using
acrylics on canvas or polymer synthetic paints on linen. Focusing specifically on two
communities, Papanya (works by Clifford Possum) and Utopia (works by Emily
Kngwarree), the paintings were made up of symbols from Aboriginal visual culture.
The Arnhem Land works were executed in an X-ray or Figurative style, using natural
ochres and spear grass on 100 per cent compressed cotton/ Arches Rives paper. The X-
ray style (so called because the insides of the different creatures and spirits depicted is
visible) of the works in the exhibition was specific to the Kunwinjku people. Each
Aboriginal within each skin group/language group/area group/tribe has his or her own
colour and design which fills out the creature/spirit. This is called ‘cross-hatching’.
Education programme
The telling of stories underpinned the education programme. As mentioned earlier, prior
to the teaching of reading and writing which resulted from the introduction of secular
society into Aboriginal life, Aboriginal culture had an entirely oral and visual tradition.
Stories from the Dreamtime were orally passed down through generations, or sketched
out in the sandy desert with the aid of a stick or a toe to teach younger community
members. Pupils’ interaction with the non-representational (in a western sense) paintings
was accessed through story-telling. Keeping it simple and closely tied to one particular
painting I retold a native Aboriginal folk-tale about a character called ‘Wirrenum the
Rainmaker’ who lived in the Central Desert. With the aid of his willgo-willgo (rainstick)
Wirrenum was able to end a terrible drought which had caused most of the wildlife and
flora near his tribe’s main waterhole in the Central Desert to perish. Having heard the
story the pupils were then asked to retell it with reference to the painting and to Geoffrey
Bardon’s simple explanation of the semiological system of Aboriginal works from the
Central Desert, which the pupils had in their resource packs. Thus the concentric circles
at the centre of the work were understood as representing the waterhole, and the parallel
lines which led to it were the tracks of animals who had come in desperate search of
water. The ovals around the outside were identified as ‘coolamons’ (food baskets) left
empty at the waterhole, their owners awaiting rain-fall and new plant growth. It was a
tremendously satisfying and valuable exercise because it put the interpretative tools and
strategies in the hands of the pupils. Once they had grasped how to read the signs in the
Central Desert paintings, the pupils were able to work independently at interpreting other
images in the exhibition.
The semiological approach to these works fulfilled that part of the National
Curriculum which requires pupils to ‘identify how visual elements, e.g. pattern, texture,
colour, line, tone, shape, form and space, are used in images and artefacts for different
purposes’ (Attainment Target 2, Key Stage 2). Some of the visiting pupils were
simultaneously studying pointillism and the work of Georges Seurat, and were able to
cross-reference the use of ‘dots’ in two very different cultural traditions and explore how
they were used for different ends. Bardon explains that the dots of the Central Desert
paintings are there to hide the sacred background—which purportedly shows the paths
taken by the ancestors across the land in the Dreamtime—from the prying eyes of secular
viewers. At the Inset for this exhibition it had also been decided that there should be
opportunity for pupils to do 3D work based on gallery visits. Accordingly, the second
part of the exhibition featuring the X-ray style paintings of Aboriginals from Arnhem
Land, which were more representational than the dot and circle works, were used as a
starting point for chicken-wire and papier-mache models of desert animals. Other groups
made willgo-willgos which were then decorated with symbols from the Central Desert
region.
In Education for Critical Consciousness the Brazilian educationalist Paolo Freire
discusses how alternative pedagological models to those which dominate in the west can
help to develop critically aware students. In terms of cultural plurality and art education
this could be taken as a need to provide a different framework in which pupils can engage
with visual images besides the western formalistic one—a legacy of modernist art
practice—with its emphasis on and vocabulary of line, form and colour. What if the
‘meaning’ of an image cannot be accessed simply by looking at the shapes in front of
you, but you know the work is not ‘abstract’ in the western sense? The semiotic system
used by the Central Desert Aboriginal artists in their Dot and Circle paintings provided an
excellent opportunity to investigate alternative critical approaches for pupils to engage
with and ‘read’ an artwork.
The Aboriginal exhibition also provided fertile ground for discussions of how the idea
of ‘art’ varies widely according to culture, and how the methods and materials available
from the environment influences what sort of work is produced. Pupils learnt about the
restricted palette of Aboriginal artists who, before the introduction of acrylics, oils and
canvas, made up their colours using natural substances (red/brown from ochre rock,
yellow from sand and white from chalk) and painted on rocks, on their bodies, on the
ground and upon bark. Without paintbrushes, they used twigs from the stringy bark tree,
which were chewed until a fine tip was achieved, or spat paint onto bark, or scratched
images onto rock. Pupils were encouraged to see how the idea of an autonomous work of
art, divorced from its cultural and didactic context, stretched over a canvas and hung
upon a wall in a gallery is a far cry from the original context and purpose of Aboriginal
visual images. Indeed, it would have been a fascinating exercise to have exhibited the
paintings on the gallery floor underneath a protective perspex sheet rather than
conventionally hanging on the gallery wall. This would have given an alternative view—
the aerial perspective—from which these paintings were originally intended to be seen,
whilst moving outside a western hegemonic system of framing and enclosing the image.
Feedback from this exhibition reflected the continuing necessity and challenge of
engaging pupils with artwork which is outside the western mainstream. It can provide
teachers and pupils with new ways of ‘seeing’ and alternative pedagological models with
which to engage with art. Visual language is widely divergent and culturally contingent.
The challenge of the Aboriginal exhibition was that the works demanded a different, i.e.
semiotic, approach before they could be assimilated. The familiar art education
paradigms for Key Stage 2 were inappropriate and unable to access fully or satisfactorily
the content of the paintings.
Future developments: the year ahead
For the forthcoming academic year the education department at the gallery proposes to
expand the basis of its art education work with schools to include more cross-curricular
activity, particularly with reference to Craft, Dance, Design and Technology and English
Language at Key Stages 1 and 2. This is in recognition that the limited and Eurocentric
definition of ‘art’—drawing, print-making, collage, sculpture, and, as if an after-thought,
textiles—offered in the National Curriculum for Art at Key Stages 1 and 2 fails to include
a broader definition of art as inclusive of cultural artefacts such as, for example, vodou
flags3 or West African gedes. What is needed is not just attention to culturally pluralistic
art practice but to broader categories and definitions of what constitutes ‘art’ within the
National Curriculum. Perhaps we need a National Curriculum for Arts?
The frequency with which oral tradition directly informs much of the visual work
exhibited at the gallery has informed exciting plans for a forthcoming festival of art from
Yoruba Diasporas to be hosted at the gallery from October–December 1997. The
education department will be collaborating with Iroko, a London-based theatre company
who run performance and story-telling workshops based around folk-tales from West
Africa. Cross-curricular work for Yoruba Diasporas will be an integral part of the
education programme in recognition of the rich layering of different art practices,
particularly music and story-telling, which are part of Yoruba culture. In addition there
will be a six-strong team of artists of Yoruba descent, half of whom will come from
overseas and be resident at the gallery for the duration of the festival, to lead visual arts
workshops both at the gallery and in local schools.
Alongside the Schools Education Programme the department will also continue to run
its Outreach Arts Programme (OAP). At present a three-pronged project, OAP works
with members of Camden and Islington’s Over-sixties community, a small number of
refugee families rehoused in Camden, and a Pupil Referral Unit in Tower Hamlets to
provide a creative and integrated introduction to cultural plurality in arts education.
Cultural plurality and educational value

An outline of the aims of the international art journal Third Text states that ‘the historical
legitimation of art was and is still being maintained on the basis of Eurocentric aesthetic
criteria and the myth of white intellectual superiority’. Since 1987 the magazine has
analysed and challenged the theoretical and historical ground by which the west
legitimizes its position as the ultimate arbiter of art. In a small but it is hoped not
insignificant way, the activities of the education department at the October Gallery work
towards a similar aim, but through practice rather than theory. Our audience and
participants are not highbrow intellectuals but the richly multicultural children who
comprise our future. We work not in the academy but at the chalk face, offering practical
resources for cultural diversity in arts education that are not readily available in schools
hard pressed to fulfil creatively and imaginatively the somewhat stringent and
Eurocentric demands of the National Curriculum for Art at Key Stages 1 and 2. By
engaging primary school children with the work of artists from cultures worldwide in a
supportive environment, they learn to engage with arts and artefacts from outside the
hegemonic western culture. It is a continual source of excitement and challenge to seek
interesting and relevant ways to approach artwork such as that shown at the gallery in
order to remain true to the divergent cultural contexts of the work, while fulfilling and
complementing the demands of the National Curriculum;
It is vital to aim for equality for all but at the moment it is a struggle to do
so against larger art institutions which support western art. Only through a
strongly and clearly defined multicultural art curriculum can we hope to
contribute satisfactorily to our multicultural classrooms, schools and
society. (Linda Talbot, Year 1 teacher. Argyle Primary School, Camden)
However, as I hope to have suggested, the educational value of such practice reaches
beyond the requirements of the National Curriculum. Cultural diversity in arts education
can play an active role in raising pupils’ self-esteem and sense of worth by encouraging
them to value diverse cultural heritages equally while expanding their experience and
understanding of a world in which cultures actively interact rather than simply exist side
by side.4
Postscript
In his essay ‘Ouverture du piège: l’exposition postmoderne et “Magiciens de la Terre”’
art critic and curator Thomas McEvilley (1989) proposes that the art exhibition is a
defining collective, which is involved in the construction of the identity of the viewed,
which the viewer must consider, even if he/she then rejects it. The gallery shows
culturally selective and stratified images. When, as in the curatorial practice of the
October Gallery, one culture exhibits the works of another, the exhibition brings relations
between the different cultures into focus. This can become problematic in the light of the
complicated histories of expansion and conquest which inform relationships between the
western and non-western world. It is of continuing importance therefore to present arts
education programmes which validate cultural plurality at the level of both policy and
practice. This is in recognition not only of the multicultural make-up of schools but also
of the wider society, in which the individual is a part of a larger whole, with opportunities
for shared experiences. As Kagiso put it after finishing his residency at the gallery: ‘What
was interesting and surprising was that although the group was diverse and came from
different places in the world, we shared similar ideas.’
Notes
1 At a recent visit to the group exhibition Aboriginal Artists by children who had been at the
Argyle Primary School for just 11 weeks and had already visited the exhibition of Ironworks
and Sequinned Flags from Haiti at the gallery, the Education Co-ordinator was thrilled to be
greeted at the door by a huge cheer. This is exactly the response from 5-year-olds that I wish
for—that children perceive a gallery as a welcoming, interesting and exciting place in which
to spend their time.
2 The reason for these differences is directly connected to the commercial art market; as
demand for vodou flags has developed they have become increasingly decorative and ornate.
3 While it is true to say that artefacts such as the vodou flags could be identified under the
heading ‘textiles’, this discounts other elements of the flags—for example the collaging of
Catholic images on chromolithographs underneath thickly stitched sequins—which give the
flags an almost sculptural quality.
4 My thanks go to Chili Hawes, Elisabeth Lalouschek and Gessie Houghton for their support
and encouragement of the Education Department over the years.
References
Bourdieu, Pierre (1980) The aristocracy of culture. Media, Culture and Society 2, 225–54.
Davis, Stuart (1994) By Popular Demand. London: Museums and Galleries Commission.
Department of Education and Science (1991) Final Report for Art. London: HMSO.
Girouard, Tina (1994) Voodoo: Truth and Fantasy. London: New Horizons/Thames and Hudson.
Griswold, Wendy (1994) Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. London: Pine Forge Press.
Gulbenkian, Calouste (1990) Moving Culture: An Inquiry into the Cultural Activities of Young
People. London: Gulbenkian Foundation.
King, Anna and Reiss, Michael (eds) (1993) The Multicultural Dimension of the National
Curriculum. London: Falmer Press.
McEvilley, Thomas (1989) Ouverture du piège: l’exposition postmoderne et ‘Magiciens de la
Terre’. Catalogue to exhibition, Magiciens de la Terre. Paris: Musée de l’Art Moderne.
TES (1996) Review of Kagiso Pat Mautloa’s first workshop. Times Educational Supplement, 28
June 1996.
Williams, Jennifer (1996) Across the Street around the World: A Handbook for Cultural Exchange.
London: British American Arts Association.
12
Who Decides for Posterity? On the Concept
of Classical Art
RUTH LORAND
The notion of classical art is a promising notion. It suggests that there is something
genuinely good and everlasting created by mankind. It is a notion that allows human to
compete with God in the attempt at achieving excellence and eternity. It expresses the
confidence that in spite of temporal obstacles and cultural diversity, the true values are
ultimately bound to win and bridge cultural differences. However, the idea of such rock-
solid values does not cohere with the widely accepted understanding that matters of taste
are individual, subjective and highly sensitive to their cultural context. Moreover, the
concept of classical art appears to disagree with the contemporary tendency towards
cultural pluralism and the diminishing boundaries between high and low art.
In this chapter I examine the philosophical implications of the concept of classical art
and its role in a pluralistic society. I propose an understanding of classical art that
preserves its distinctive status without opposing pluralism. Classical works should not be
taken as the expression of the objective truth or the highest accomplishments of human
kind, but rather as significant junctions in the history of cultures—the assets that each
culture contributes to the multicultural interactions. The classics of each society form the
basis without which no interactions among cultures is possible.
The division of the map into objectivism and subjectivism (or relativism) cannot
simplify the issue and resolve the difficulties introduced by classical art. If it were simple,
the case would be only a matter of taking sides and consistently adhering to one of them.
The subjectivist would deny the significance of such a concept, arguing that it expresses a
patronizing attitude of the so-called experts. Any aesthetic value, so the argument may
go, reflects an individual perspective and there can be no ultimate justification for
preferring one value over another. The objectivist would bestow on art properties and
values of the status of truth that can be confirmed by the testimony of the experts and the
“test of time”. According to the subjectivist, “classical art” is a normative concept that is
used to influence, or even implant, cultural ideologies. According to the objectivist, it is a
descriptive term that refers to actual developments in the history of a culture.
There are good arguments and enough empirical evidence to support each party, but
no party may hold to its views without genuine difficulties that force it to admit some of
the opposition’s points or ignore or explain away some crucial facts. Those who hold a
firm subjectivism and define artistic values solely through the experience of the
individual, are forced to accept that some works outlast individual experiences or
opinions or cultural differences and deserve to be presented as masterpieces. There is
always a Shakespeare, a Bach, or a Rembrandt to embarrass the firm relativist or
subjectivist and make him or her feel if not defeated then at least uncomfortable. The
objectivist, on the other hand, will have to bridge the gap between individuals and
cultures and explain not only variations in taste and cultural diversity, but also the fact
that the need for art is never satisfied by past achievements. Why is it that in spite of the
many excellent works of the past: Shakespeare’s, Bach’s, or Rembrandt’s, we still crave
for new forms of art that touch upon contemporary materials? Does it not suggest that art
echoes social trends and thus has a temporal, and even individual significance?
Is there a way to reconcile the two opposing tendencies? Is there a way to accept the
idea of classical art without paying the undemocratic price of ignoring, or suppressing,
the significance of the experience of the individual who ever he or she may be? Such a
way, I believe, has to separate between the value of an immediate, personal experience
and the cultural significance of a work, and give the notion of classics a meaning that is
not directly associated with the immediate “aesthetic pleasure”.1 The following
discussion consists, accordingly, of two parts: The first part attempts at exposing some of
the difficulties inherent in the view that does not accept such separation. Hume’s position
serves as a paradigm for such view. The second part presents Kant’s notion of
objectivism and classical art, an understanding that allows for disconnecting between the
value of an immediate aesthetic experience and the value of classical art. The conclusion
of this analysis touches upon the role of education in preserving and respecting the
classics of each culture, and viewing them as raw material for new developments.
Homer’s poetry may serve as a case study. It is regarded as one of the most important
and influential works within western culture; it certainly deserves the category of
classical art. However, does it mean that Homer’s poetry is enthusiastically read today by
the majority in the subways, or that it is for ages at the top of the bestseller list? Homer is
probably taught in many schools, but this is a decision that is forced upon the students; it
does not express, in most cases, their immediate preferences or the nature of their
experience while reading Homer. A survey may reveal that for most students this poetry
is remote, strange, incomprehensible or boring. Nonetheless, such a survey is unlikely to
affect the status of Homer’s poetry as classic, or decide the philosophical issue.
Plato, who demanded that artists be banished from the city, and accused Homer more
than any other poet of spreading dangerous lies, acknowledged nonetheless the greatness
of Homer’s poetry. Plato wished that this poetry would not become popular because “the
better they are as poetry the more unsuitable they are for the ears of children or men”
(1975, III [387]). Plato disapproved of Homer mainly on ideological grounds: he believed
that the underlying messages of Homer’s poetry go against the best interest of the ideal
Republic. Art, according to Plato, may serve as an educational tool only if it submits
itself to the “right” ideology. However, high art does not qualify for this purpose; it is
only mediocre and simple-minded art that can be conveniently plied by politicians. There
is a clear connection in Plato’s doctrine between his anti-pluralism and his rejection of
Homer’s poetry and other praiseworthy works. This implies that good art is pluralistic in
its nature; it can be interpreted in many ways and it does not submit itself to a single
ideology.
It is a fact, however, that Plato himself could not banish Homer from his own
intellectual world. He cites Homer quite frequently and relies on the wisdom of his words
in many of his dialogues. Plato is implicitly accepting Homer as “classic” by
demonstrating the effectiveness and relevance of his writings to many of the topics raised
in the dialogues.
Being basically an objectivist Plato does not depend on popularity as an evidence for
Homer’s worth. The ambivalent attitude towards Homer has little to do with Plato’s own
appreciation for him; rather, it concerns the issue of education in the Republic. Plato
Who decides for posterity? 185
implicitly draws a distinction between the effect that a work has in its immediate
experience, and its value as a source for ideas, examples and wise observations. It is as if
Plato is saying: Homer is dangerous for those who experience him directly and
innocently (that is, the immediate individual experience). Those who respond emotionally
and absorb the harmful hidden messages without awareness, cannot benefit from
Homer’s greatness. But for those who are capable of appreciating his wisdom (that is, the
philosophers), Homer is a great poet. Needless to say, that Plato, expressing such
patronizing attitudes, did not favor the idea of democracy and pluralism.
Hume, like Plato, expresses his admiration for Homer although his general standpoint
is very different. Unlike Plato, Hume is an empiricist, a subjectivist and a skeptic
philosopher, at least in important parts of his work. In a sense, his philosophical
personality is opposed to that of Plato. Values, according to Hume, are rooted in
sentiments and these are individual, subjective and influenced by cultural traditions. The
fact that many people share the same sentiment is an evidence not of the objectivity of
this sentiment but rather of the fact that people are basically quite alike and share similar
interests. The notion of classics, accordingly, should be based on empirical observations
of the actual, perhaps coincidental, popularity of a certain artist or a work of art. It could
serve as an evidence for the similarity among peoples’ sentiments and upbringings and
not necessarily for the true value of the work itself. Nevertheless, some two thousand
years after Plato Hume writes:
The same Homer, who pleased us at Athens and Rome two thousand years
ago, is still admired at Paris and London. All the changes of climate,
government, religion, and language, have not been able to obscure his
glory. (Hume, 1985, p. 233)
Note that Hume uses a typical objective terminology. It is the “same Homer” whose merit
is the same for centuries. He takes Homer’s popularity for granted and associates this
popularity with the inherent value of his poetry. The genuineness of this value and its
stability in the changing contexts is confirmed by empirical evidence: the popularity of
the work throughout the centuries. This view does not quite cohere with the idea that
values in general and matters of taste in particular originate in personal emotions.
At the beginning of his essay, Of the Standard of Taste, Hume states that the “variety
of taste is obvious to the most careless inquirer” but it is “still greater in reality than in
appearance.” This variety is the immediate reflection of the fact that “the sentiments of
men often differ with regard to beauty” (pp. 226–7). Note that Hume admits here a
natural pluralism of aesthetic sentiments and is far from admitting that people are very
much alike in this sense. Moreover, he claims that even when people seem to agree on
matters of taste it does not prove that they actually mean the same thing. The vocabulary
that is used for praising or condemning a work of art is very limited, general and vague.
There is a discrepancy between what aesthetic terms convey and what people actually
mean by them in relation with a particular case. “Every voice,” so Hume writes,
is united in applauding elegance, propriety, simplicity…and in blaming

fustian, affection, coldness and a false brilliancy; but when the critics
come to particulars, then seeming unanimity vanishes. (p. 227)
The same quality that makes a work elegant for one person may appear as the very
quality that prevents elegance in the view of another person, although both agree that
elegance is a positive aesthetic feature. However, even if two persons were to agree that
an object is elegant, it does not necessarily follow that they refer to the same qualities in
the object to support their claim. People may seem to agree without the awareness that
they actually disagree.
If this is the original understanding, how is it possible for Hume to accept that the
same recognition of a single work lasts for two thousand years? Moreover, how does the
above view cohere with the belief that such a recognition is not just a coincidence but an
indication of genuinely inherent values? Why does not the variety of taste apply in
Homer’s case as it does in many others? What are the theoretical implications of the fact
(assuming that it is a fact) that a single work of art maintains its glory for centuries?
Suppose we take Hume’s statement not as a claim for objectivity in matters of taste in
general but as a mere empirical observation: it is a fact (let us assume that it is) that
Homer is admired for centuries in spite of differences in language and changes in western
trends. As an empirical observation this can be confirmed by conducting a survey (as for
the present situation), and relying on scholars to confirm the historical facts. A survey
may measure the popularity of a work in a given period, not necessarily its genuine
inherent values, if indeed it has such values. Likewise, a historical research may confirm
that a poet was admired by, say, the majority of the educated audience for a given period.
What are the theoretical implications of such a survey? For one, conducting a survey
indicates a relativist or even subjectivist stand point. It implies that one has to ask the
consumer to know the worth of the work and not examine the work itself (if such a thing
is possible at all). If we were to judge by the number of people who actually read Homer
willingly these days we would probably be compelled to admit that the popularity of the
Greek poet has dramatically deteriorated since the eighteenth century (assuming Hume’s
description is accurate). Savile, for one, argues that a work of art may receive attention
for different reasons, not all of them the right ones. Popularity (or lack of popularity) may
be based on misconception and not necessarily indicate an objective artistic value (Savile,
1982, pp. 6–7).
From the subjectivist point of view popularity should not matter either, because it is
the experience of the individual that counts even if that experience is not shared by the
majority. The history of art provides us with a variety of cases that cannot prove any
position: there are works that were looked down upon in their own time and gained the
high appreciation of the coming generations; there are works that played an important
role in their time and lost their prestige with changing trends; and there are works that
maintained their status as good art ever since they were first presented to the public.
But Hume wishes to say more than just to state the “statistical” facts. The popularity
of Homer (in Paris and London) as well as the inherent value of his poetry (the glory that
cannot be obscured by changing trends) must justify each other: it is popular because it
has some inherent values, and its popularity for two thousand years is a clear indication
of such values. Hume distinguishes accordingly between an unjustified popularity (or, for
that matter, an unjustified neglect) that grows out of a coincidental taste and a justified
popularity that is based on the recognition of genuine values:
Authority or prejudice may give a temporary vogue to a bad poet or

orator; but his reputation will never be durable or general. When his
composition is examined by posterity or by foreigners, the enchantment is
dissipated, and his faults appear in their true colours. (Hume, 1985, p.
233)
Here again Hume uses an “objective” terminology. Like the qualities of gold that are
revealed only under certain conditions and by those who obtain certain knowledge, the
true value of a work of art is revealed under certain conditions by those who are not
blinded by envy or any kind of prejudice and have the required sensitivity that allows
them to detect the true qualities of the work.
Hume’s position seems to be supported by the history of art: there are many famous
cases in which an artist’s work was not appreciated by his contemporaries and only after
his time he received a more deserving attention. The theoretical question, however, is not
settled by such empirical evidence. One may argue that the artist’s contemporaries were
right and the later positive recognition rests on mistake. Is it necessary to accept that the
judgment of the “foreigners” is impartial and with no prejudice whatsoever? And how
“foreign” need the “foreigner” be? A “complete” foreigner, I believe, is unable to
appreciate the work or relate to it in any beneficial way. Although an outsider may notice
qualities or aspects that the insider does not notice, it is an illusion to believe that the
outsider sees things as they “really are”. No viewer, regardless of his or her era, is free of
a priori assumptions, beliefs or postulates of some kind that construct a certain
perspective and context. If such purity is fictional, then the question arises: In what sense
is the “foreigner” more reliable than the artist’s contemporaries? Whose prejudices are
more justified? There is also no guarantee that the following generations will view the
work as it “really” is. Similar (or different) obstacles to those that conceal the “real”
value of the work from its contemporaries, may also hide it from the following
generations. Which generation or which culture sees the work as it “really is”?2
Hume suggests that time is an important factor: a mistaken judgment cannot last for
long, sooner or later it is bound to be replaced by a lasting, correct judgment.3 This
surprisingly optimistic observation cannot be validated by empirical evidence. For one,
differences among traditions or cultures may last for centuries without reaching any
agreement as to which of them is better. Hume (1985, p. 229) himself confesses that
being a “foreigner” to the Islamic culture he sees the Alcoran as a “wild and absurd
performance.” The Islamic followers, however, insist, as Hume puts it, “on the excellent
moral” of this book for quite a substantial period of time. If time would be the ultimate
test, then it is not clear who is mistaken here—Hume and with him, perhaps, the entire
European culture, or the Islamic followers. The so-called “test of time” or the perspective
of an impartial foreigner clearly do not settle cultural differences. These differences may
be “settled” only by a historical process in which different cultures gradually merge, or
alternatively one culture dissolves itself and lets the other take over. But such historical
developments do not prove the objective superiority of the values of either of the
cultures. It is naive to believe that the best always wins.
The idea that a work passes the “test of time” means that art has no history; it is not
affected by changes and does not go through different stages in different periods. Croce,
for one, portrays such an understanding of the nature of art. Art, being an intuition, a
contemplation, is not subjected to changes; it does not depend on its physical features nor
on the pleasure or displeasure it induces. Indeed, Croce (1974, p. 31) enthusiastically
describes the works of the great masters as “the eternal flower that springs from their
passions.”
It is interesting to note, that for some reasons the idea of the “test of time” is
associated with good works only, but this is logically not justified.4 If time proves the a-
historical worth of the good ones, it proves, by the same reasoning the eternal value of
bad or mediocre works as such. In general, the belief in the test of time is a belief that
artistic values are inherent, objective values. These values are not affected by cultural
changes, and are bound to take over other cultures as well. Western classical music, one
may observe, has conquered the far east: it is played and enjoyed by a culture that has
been entirely foreign to it. This may be taken as an evidence for the inherent value of this
music. One may draw an analogy between such artistic values and the chemical qualities
of an element. A nugget of gold, regardless of its “personal history”, maintains its
genuine gold qualities throughout changing context. When it is dug out, it may acquire
different economical values and social significance in different periods; or it may remain
in the ground for centuries without anyone knowing that it is there. Whatever the
situation, the chemical qualities of gold remain the same; they have no history. Is this the
status of classical art? I doubt it very much.
Let us take translations as a paradigmatic case. Hume argues that changes in language
have not affected the glory of Homer. This may be very true, but it does not follow that it
is the same Homer in English or French as it is in Greek. Translation demonstrates the
forces that act upon the original work in a new cultural context. Language in general, and
poetic language in particular, is not a simple transparent means of communication. It is
saturated with cultural connotation and temporal associations. The effort that is made to
adapt a literary work to a different language results in a modification of the original to
some degree. The question that often troubles translators is whether the original should
submit to the spirit of the new language and may thus become alive and natural to the
new readers; or whether the translation should be loyal as much as possible to the original
at the cost of remaining somewhat alien to the new readers. It is obvious that each way
sacrifices something—the accurate original meaning or the liveliness and intimacy of the
translation. It is a fact that the poetry of Homer, Dante and other great poets is
retranslated once in a while. Changes in Zeitgeist are reflected in the language and
therefore the old translation, like the original text, becomes remote from the
contemporary readers and requires modifications.
Furthermore, to study art in its historical context seems more natural than to study
mathematics or chemistry in that manner. One may study mathematics without its history
and still be an expert in that field, but how can one be an art expert without any
awareness of the history of art? The innocent immediate individual experience does not
need the assistance of an expert: one may enjoy a work or disapprove of it merely
because it causes one pleasure or displeasure. One does not have to be an art expert in
order to enjoy a work of art, just as one does not have to be a gourmet in order to enjoy
one’s meal. Indeed, some aestheticians believe that there are correct and incorrect
experiences of art, but from the individual point of view it does not matter whether the
pleasure is a “justified” one or not. Even Hume (1985, p. 240) states that the end of
poetry is “to please by means of the passion and the imagination.”5 This end is achieved
whenever one enjoys a poem, regardless of its cultural context or historical status. But if
there is to art more than just the pleasure of the immediate experience, then history and
social context are significant.
Going beyond the individual experience means understanding a single work of art in
relation to other works, as well as other social factors. Works of art, unlike mathematical
or scientific truth, bear the individual finger-prints of their creators and the history that
helped to shape them. Art has no other laboratory then a historical perspective that allows
comparisons between works and consequently appreciation of their mutual qualities, their
differences, or their cultural impacts. The historical background is especially significant
if one considers originality an essential quality of art.6
If historical knowledge is indeed relevant to art appreciation, then it is not the
impartial “foreigner” that decides the issue. The “foreigner” has to obtain some
qualifications in order to become an art expert. But Hume suggests that being an expert is
a matter of high sensitivity, but not necessarily one of historical knowledge. The opinion
of the experts may not reflect the popularity of the work, but their sensitivity is the
“laboratory” for testing the true value of a work. To illustrate his position Hume (1985, p.
235) refers to the story told by Sancho in Don Quixote. The story is about wine experts
who tasted a wine that was supposed to be excellent. Upon tasting the wine one detected
a taste of leather while the other sensed a taste of iron. They were both ridiculed for their
judgment, “but who laughed in the end? On emptying the hogshead, there was found at
the bottom an old key with a leathern thong tied to it.” The lesson, according to Hume, is
clear: some people are more sensitive than others in different matters, and therefore we
should rely on their impartial judgment. The main problem with the moral of this story is,
that in the case of art it is not clear when and how the hogshead is emptied and the key
with leathern thong found to support the judgment of the sensitive expert.
Indeed, the opinion of the expert and that of the layman may differ in many domains.
But there is an important difference between the experts who “establish their own
sentiment as the standard of beauty” (Hume, 1985, p. 241) and experts in any of the
sciences. The chemist may obtain knowledge that is not popular but is nonetheless
subjected to proof in the laboratory. Anyone, theoretically speaking, may conduct a
laboratory test in order to decide whether a given ore is gold or not. In the same sense,
everybody could see the key with leathern thong that confirms the expert’s testimony.
But if we accept that the sentiments of the art expert constitute the laboratory conditions,
we accept then that only one person (or a few) is capable of conducting the test and
evaluating the results. We accept thereby a vicious circle that bears very little explanatory
power and forces upon us sentiments that we are, in many cases, incapable to feel. The
sensitivity of the wine expert may detect qualities that others may not, but upon drinking
the wine it is the taste that we sense that matters, not the qualities that we are not
sensitive enough to feel. Nonetheless, Hume believes that once the expert has revealed to
the audience a so-far concealed quality of the work the audience will see it from now on
just as the expert does. Unfortunately this does not work so simply, especially since
different experts “reveal” different, and sometimes even contrasting, qualities.
Hume’s analogy is misleading also because wines are evaluated according to generic
standards; the evaluation of art is more complex. The wine taster has the talent of
identifying the ingredients of the wine and stating whether a certain wine has the
necessary ingredients (and only them) which make it a good specimen of its kind. This
does not authorize the wine taster to decide which kind of wine we should like better, or
whether a new type of wine is better than a traditional one, or that a certain tradition will
last forever. Works of art are not appreciated for having the necessary generic
ingredients. Although generic categorizations have their role in evaluating works of art,
the appreciation of art goes beyond the generic standards. Breaking generic rules is often,
if not always, the mark of great works of art.
Savile, like Hume, argues that the test of time should be associated with the idea of
experts. Hume’s qualified critic is a sensitive person without any prejudice. Savile’s
demand is somewhat different, but no less firm:
To pass time’s test, then, a work of art has to hold our attention for
reasons that bear on its critical estimation as the work it is. To do so it
must in particular hold our attention under some interpretation…that
allows the work to be correctly perceived and understood. (Savile, 1985,
p. 7)
But the two notions: “the work it is” and “correctly perceived” are mines in the
objectivist’s field. They touch upon the hermeneutic circle and the debate between
monism and pluralism in interpretation. If there is one correct way to read Homer, then
chances are that most readers are ignorant of that way and their admiration for Homer
rests on the “wrong” reading. For one, most of Homer’s readers are incapable of reading
the original, and how can Homer in English be as correct as Homer in French? Hume
assumes that this mission is not only possible, but also accomplished: it is the “same
Homer” in London and Paris.
Monism in interpretation seems necessary for the kind of objectivism that Hume and
Savile wish to defend: if it is not the same Homer (correctly perceived) than it is a work
that surrenders to changes in time; it has a history. Pluralism in interpretation allows not
only for different understandings, but also different evaluations since evaluation depends
on interpretation: a work may lose its status as a masterpiece as a result of new
interpretations. Values, norms, beliefs and lifestyle have significantly changed since
Homer’s days and it is hard to believe that they account for nothing. The idea that it is the
“same Homer” for all, is a patronizing idea that ignores actual pluralism and cultural
developments. Pluralism in interpretation allows each generation or trend its own
understanding in the value of the original identity of the work; monism protects the
original identity but risks the alienation of the work. Which approach is more suitable for
classical art?
Kant characterizes the aesthetic experience as a personal, immediate experience. It
does not satisfy any interest and does not adhere to a given purpose; it is not subjected to
generalizations or reasoning. Although “we allow no one to be of another opinion” (Kant,
1951, §22). However, since the “determining ground can be no other than subjective”
(1951, §1), there is no basis for demanding a general agreement. As such, aesthetic
evaluations do not present a form of knowledge, nor can they initiate a science.7
Consequently, no particular knowledge or sensitivity preconditions an aesthetic
experience; aesthetic education remains thus an empty concept. In this view, the only
objective of education is a moral one: tolerating the taste of others. Notwithstanding,
Kant acknowledges classical art and gives it a status that is objective in some sense.
Originally “objectivity” denotes a state that is totally independent of the perceiver.

Primary qualities, for instance, are the real properties of the object to which the perceiver,
according to Locke, contributes nothing.8 “Subjectivity” denotes a state that is entirely
dependent on the perceiver; it reflects the perceiver’s qualities and not those of the object.
However, according to Kant, all qualities obtain the status of secondary qualities, because
the thing in itself is not known to us. All qualities indicate a mutual contribution of the
object and the perceiver.
Objective validity and necessary universality (for everybody) are

equivalent terms, and though we do not know the object in itself, yet when
we consider a judgment as universal, and hence necessary, we thereby
understand it to have objective validity. (Kant, 1951, §46)
“Everybody” in this context refers to all rational creatures—rationality being the common
quality of all relevant agents. That which depends for its comprehension on rationality
maintains the highest degree of objectivity; it is expected to be similarly perceived by all.
That which depends on features less common among rational agents is less objective. The
less common the conditions for perceiving a specific quality, the less objective this
quality is.
An objective quality, then, is not entirely independent of the object, but a quality that
may be expected to be equally perceived by all relevant members. “Subjective” purports
a sensitivity to individual differences, where no sufficiently wide common grounds may
be found. All rational agents are expected, for instance, to arrive at the same solution for
a logical or a mathematical problem; the solution is then considered “objective.” When it
comes to aesthetic matters, individual differences are effective and the judgment of taste
is, therefore, subjective. Cultural norms and traditions are less common than logical
orders, but more common than private associations which are unique to one person or to a
very limited group of people. Accordingly, judgments that reflect cultural values are
more objective than those that reflect individual preferences. In the final analysis, the
distinction between objectivity and subjectivity is made depended on the degree of
sensitivity to individual difference: “objectivity” expresses a tendency towards reduced
sensitivity to individual differences, while “subjectivity” expresses the opposite tendency.
The above understanding allows us to differentiate between various stages of aesthetic
appreciation. There is the immediate, personal experience that depends solely on the
individual viewer, and there is an experience that involves concepts of a trend, a tradition
or a culture that is common to a large group of people. The former is subjective whereas
the latter is more objective. The immediate personal experience is associated by Kant
with free beauty which is completely non-conceptual and does not allow any common
grounds. Dependent beauty is conceptual and therefore expresses an understanding that is
common to a certain group of people—a nation or a culture in a given period.
The beauty of a flower, according to Kant, is a free beauty. It is independent of
cultural norms or botanical knowledge and thus generates an immediate, entirely
subjective aesthetic experience.9 In order to enjoy the beauty of the flower one does not
depend on common concepts or norms. Therefore, no education is required for such an
experience. Whereas the beauty of a man is conceptual, dependent beauty, and cannot be
detached from a cultural-racial-geographical context:
A Negro must have a different normal idea of the beauty of the [human
figure] from a white man, a Chinaman a different normal idea from a
European etc. (Kant, 1951, §17)
This determines then the role and significance of education: since the “idea of beauty” is
not a natural, innocent reaction, education should shape and preserve it.
A personal experience has a very limited justification; its only “justification” is the
free play of imagination of one person, although it may, coincidentally, be shared by
more than one. A cultural experience is justified by a set of norms, values and traditions
that are common to a large group of people and define their identity as a group. A
justification that stems from a certain tradition is not necessarily valid in the context of a
different tradition. Since objectivity depends on some common grounds, and since these
common grounds may vary in their content as well as in their extension, objectivity is
“quantitative”, that is, it is manifest in various degrees. This implies that objectivity is
relative—there is a continuum between subjectivity and objectivity. Furthermore,
objectivity depends on education: most of the common concepts are conventional-cultural
concepts that have to be learned and applied within the relevant cultural context.
Equipped with this understanding we may return to Hume’s wine tasters. We need to
differentiate between the sensitivity which is the natural talent to identify the taste, and
the evaluation of the taste, although the first influences the second. Sensing the leather in
the wine is indeed a matter of a special sensitivity which not everybody is blessed with,
but stating that a wine should not have such taste is also cultural dependent. It is effective
only within a certain tradition. Another culture may develop an entirely different
approach to wines—their manufacturing methods, their desired tastes, their social
significance, their norms of consuming and so forth. Likewise, only within the tradition
of eating sweetened fish (the Polish-Jewish tradition, for instance) there is a point of
arguing that the fish is too much or too little sweetened. Outside of this tradition the
whole concept may be appalling. The expert’s judgment is effective, then, only within a
certain tradition and only in this sense it maintains a certain degree of objectivity. This, in
general, is the fate of art; the objectivity of its value is limited and determined by a
complex of historical developments.
Art, being an artefact, cannot be detached from a cultural context. Be it the culture of
the artist (the context of the work) or the viewer (the context of its experience). The
cultural context is bound to influence not only the ingredients of the work (technique,
motives, ideas, etc.) but also their perception and evaluation by the viewer. Hume’s
position seems to deny, not that each work involves cultural ingredients, but that these are
relevant for the significance and the value of the work. He implicitly suggests that these
elements are (or should be) ignored. It is not that Homer’s poetry does not contain
elements of his pagan culture, but that “all the absurdities of the pagan system of
theology must be overlooked by every critic” (Hume, 1985, p. 247). The question then
arises as to what does remain in a work of art after deducting the specific cultural
elements (linguistic norms, moral and religious beliefs, style, etc.). Very little, I believe,
and that little is dull and in most cases, banal.
Indeed, Hume (1985, p. 231) believes that aesthetic rules are founded “on the
observation of the common sentiments of human nature.” This position coheres with the
idea that individual as well as cultural features are redundant in a good work. The critic,
by this understanding, has to see through these “redundant” features and be able to point
at those features that are common to all humans at all times. But if these “common
features” are indeed common, it transpires that all works of art deal, eventually, with the
same “common sentiments of human nature” and their differences are redundant. This
strange conclusion obviously stands against common sense and the history of art.
Reducing individual differences among works of art results in an abstract and banal idea
of human sentiments at the cost of the individual flavor and value of each work.
Kant makes it clear that although art in general (or most forms of art) is conceptual,
such an abstraction is useless in the case of art. Great works set their own rules, or rather,
it is the spirit of the genius that constitutes artistic rules. The work of the genius “must
serve as a standard or rule of judgment for others” (Kant, 1951, §46). Playing by the rules
means imitating previous examples, but genius is entirely opposed to the spirit of
imitation; it is “the talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given”
(Ibid.). In a sense, the rules of the genius are not rules at all but models for inspiring, not
dictating, further creativity and new forms of art. As such, these are also models for
shaping our world-view in general. As such, the notion of “classical art” is not only
descriptive, it is also normative.
Classical art, then, is not just any good work of art and its test is neither the immediate
aesthetic pleasure of any individual nor its popularity in a certain period. A classical
masterpiece is such that starts a new tradition or influences significantly an existing
tradition by offering new and fruitful perspectives. Its power and significance is from the
change it brings about, and not necessarily from being acknowledged and admired by all.
Lacking the required knowledge, the majority may not be aware of the contribution and
historical significance of an artist; they live nonetheless under his or her cultural
influence.
Serving as a model for new forms of art the work of a genius is bound to be culturally
dependent. Being original and being cultural dependent are not mutually exclusive. On
the contrary, these two categories condition each other: cultural traditions are shaped by
the original works of the great masters and their works, in turn, can only be appreciated
within the cultural flow. Only within a framework of certain norms and traditions can one
appreciate the novelty and significance of the contribution of the genius. The test of time,
in this sense, is the examination of the influence of the artist in the coming generations,
not a test of the value of his or her work per se. Achieving the status of classical art
means being vital beyond its time. A work may be very good by certain standards, and
yet, it may not pass the test of time because its influence along the centuries and, thus, its
vitality beyond its time, is minor. A work that loses its vitality in a certain period of time
is not necessarily a failure as art. Many forces determine the centrality of an artist in the
history of art, not all of them purely artistic (if there is such a thing as “purely artistic”). It
may so happen that a hundred years from now Tolstoy’s work will be considered an
interesting but non-influential episode in the history of literature. Such historical
developments cannot be foreseen. The belief that our present preferences are bound to
determine future developments is a sign of human vanity. It is also a sign of vanity to
attempt to determine the eternal status of any value in any culture.
Furthermore, accepting that the work of the genius sets a model for the following
generations does not mean that this role, i.e., setting a model, is eternal even within the
same culture. If it were so, there would be no place for another genius to set a different
model and thus “allow” for cultural development.10 Aristotle, for instance, believed that
King Oedipus by Sophocles sets the model for all tragedy writers. In some respects he
did, but this influence has a history. Sophocles is an important figure in the history of
theater, but nobody expects contemporary play-writers to be explicitly loyal to his
formula. Aristotle believed that, since the essence of tragedy is the same for all
humankind, a work that expresses this essence successfully is the ultimate model. But
tragedy-writing has gone through many stages since the days of Sophocles, or even since
Shakespeare for that matter, who himself broke some of the traditional patterns of tragedy
and inspired new formulations.
In the light of this understanding we need to differentiate between: (1) the value of the
immediate, personal aesthetic experience; and (2) the value of a work as classical art
within a cultural tradition. One does not necessarily condition the other. The first
corresponds to Kant’s understanding of pure judgment of taste and free beauty, and the
second corresponds to dependent beauty, i.e., beauty that is experienced through
concepts. The first, as already noted, is subjective; the second, being evaluated by its
cultural role, achieves some degree of objectivity. Although I doubt it that there is such a
pure experience that is entirely divorced of concepts and cultural values, I accept that
there is a difference in degree between the “innocent” experience of the layman and that
of the expert. Knowledge is certainly important for appreciating the contribution,
influence and place of a single work or an artist in the history of a culture.
Hume (1985, p. 241) argues that the expert is the highly sensitive person who can set
his or her “own sentiment as the standard of beauty”. According to the above analysis,
sensitivity is necessary but insufficient—historical knowledge, involvement with the arts
and awareness of cultural processes are no less crucial. The sensitive piano tuner is not
necessarily an enlightening music critic or an art authority, although the music critic has
to have a sensitive ear. To be able to evaluate art beyond one’s personal pleasure, one
must have some knowledge, not just acute senses. However, sensitivity depends to some
degree on knowledge; knowledge trains and refines a natural sensitivity.
For instance, in order to appreciate Homer, a basic acquaintance with Greek
mythology is required. Such knowledge allows one to get into the world of Homer
(although in a limited sense) and experience it as the vital and effective poetry it is within
this world. One may also “translate” Homer’s poetry into contemporary terms, that is,
interpret it according to one’s own conceptions, but this again requires some basic
knowledge. We may view the mythological elements as metaphors and thus prevent the
clash between the belief that underlies Homer’s poetry and our own beliefs. However,
even in this case, a certain mythological knowledge is required. Natural sensitivity is not
enough. Plato, for one, did not share the mythological beliefs that underpin Homer’s
poetry, and certainly did not read it as one of Homer’s “innocent” contemporaries.
Nonetheless, Plato was aware of the mythological world and used it as means for his own
arguments.
In conclusion, classical art is the “visiting card” of a culture, without which no proper
cultural acquaintance is possible. Education has an important role, not in determining the
status of a work as classic, but rather in preserving its status and benefiting from it. There
are at least three tasks for educational work with respect to classical art: (1) disseminating
knowledge of the past; (2) interpreting its present consequences; and (3) familiarizing
foreign cultures through analogies with the indigenous classics.
1 Knowledge of the past is the knowledge of the influence a work or an artist had within a
culture. The expert cannot directly set the norms and decide future developments; s/he
can only acknowledge what social, economical, ideological and other historical forces
have determined. However, the expert may teach us how the works of the past have
shaped our present ideas. We thus learn that our present achievements have their own
roots. Ignoring these roots may result in shallowness, vanity, and very little to pass on
for future generations.
2 The applicability of a work beyond its time and cultural boundaries preserves its
vitality and allows new developments. Classical works are not a-historical entities, but
rather works that maintain a vigorous effectiveness throughout the ages. Being
important junctures in the history of a culture is not enough to keep them alive beyond
their time. Their “eternal” status cannot be assured by the past. It is both the
prerogative and the burden of the experts, the cultural elite, artists and educators to
build the bridge between the works of the past and the contemporary audience and
maintain the vitality of the works. Without such bridges masterworks of the past
would remain dead as Latin.
The Shakespeare we see today is obviously not the same as the Shakespeare of
the sixteenth century. It is an “applied” Shakespeare. His plays not only generated
a new tradition and had a dramatic influence on the history of theater, but have
also received many modern interpretations. Hamlet, King Lear or Romeo and
Juliet are not just fictional figures, but effective symbols and metaphors within
western culture and beyond it.
The applicability of a work and its historical significance nourish each other. The
significance of a work cannot be detached from the history it helped to shape, and
this history, in turn, modifies the understanding and experience of the original
work.
3 The familiarization of foreign cultures can be achieved through analogies with one’s
own heritage. We learn about the feelings and situations of the other through analogies
with our own feelings and situations. Educational programs and academic researches
that attempt to built a bridge of understanding and tolerance between cultures, may
start with analogies between classical works of each culture as effective means. If it is
true that a classical work has gained its status through its influence and applicability, it
means that it touches upon basic human situations. As such, the classics of each
culture must have common patterns and materials.
Familiarity with creation mythologies of different nations, with folk tales, central
motifs in paintings or music, may teach us that the basic materials have more in
common than meets the eye. Educators may point at these common materials and
draw the relevant conclusions. But this does not mean that education should strive
at eliminating cultural differences, just as understanding another’s point of view
does not entail eliminating one’s own individuality.
In sum, the idea that some values do not depend on immediate experience but require a
broad perspective and knowledge, suggests that it is important to preserve one’s own high
culture as well as to respect that of others. Immediate pleasure, important and legitimate
as it may be, is not the only factor to determine the worth of an object. Accepting the
differences between cultures as real, on the one hand, and learning about their common
roots, on the other hand, not only teach us to tolerate the other, but also demonstrate the
wonders of the innumerous reflections of the world.
Notes
1 Aesthetic pleasure is typically associated with the experience of the individual. The mark of
such an experience is the pleasure it causes to the individual; a peculiar type of pleasure that
is disconnected from interests, prior expectations or any kind of reasoning. Such pleasure is a
direct indication of the value of the object that caused it, though, a subjective value. There
were, however, a few attempts to construct a notion of “objective” aesthetic experience and
accordingly “justified” and “unjustified” pleasure. Hume, as we shall further see, defends
this type of objectivism.
2 These kinds of questions point at difficulties raised by theories of “aesthetic distance” and
theories that suggest “proper conditions” of the “proper” aesthetic experience.
3 Savile takes one step further. He argues that “the test [of time] does not even begin to operate
until the attention the work receives is properly anchored” (Savile 1982, p. 35). This
argument easily falls into the trap of the hermeneutic vicious circle.
4 This belief is rooted in the fact that bad works are usually forgotten through the test of time.
But the fact that a work has not become classic, that it was forgotten, or remembered with
contempt, is no less indicative of the fact that a work is appreciated long after its time.
5 I disagree with Hume on this, but the question of the “end” of poetry or art in general demands
a separate discussion.
6 There are, however, some aestheticians who would disagree with this position, those who
believe that a work of art should be viewed without any connections whatsoever to its
creator, its time or its actual history. Those who believe that the viewer of a work need not
possess any knowledge of the circumstances of the work, like Bell, Fry, Beardsley (in his
earlier writings), have to face serious difficulties, pragmatic as well as theoretical.
7 In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant (1990, Introduction, Part I, p. 22) refers to Baumgarten
who attempted at constituting the science of aesthetics: “Baumgarten conceived, of
subjecting the criticism of the beautiful to principles of reason, and so of elevating its rules
into science. But his endeavors were in vain.”
8 The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is adopted by Locke in his An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, but the origin of this distinction is in Democritos’
atomism.
9 Kant assumes that it is possible. I disagree that an experience can be so individual that it does
not depend on any common concepts whatsoever and is not determined by any cultural
context. But this is beside the point here.
10 “Development”, in this context, is not an evaluative term. It indicates the natural need for
changes, but it is not necessarily the case that each stage is better than its former.
References
Hume, D. (1985) Of the Standard of Taste. In Essays—Moral, Political, and Literary, pp. 226–49,
ed. Eugene F.Miller (rev. edn). Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
Croce, B. (1974) The Essence of Aesthetics, trans. Douglas Ainslie. Folcroft: Folcroft Library
Editors.
Kant, I. (1990) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J.M.D. Meikeljohn. New York: Prometheus Books.
Kant, I. (1951) Critique of Judgment, trans. J.H.Bernard. New York: Hafner Press.
Kant, I. (1951) Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. Lewis W.Beck. New York: Library:
Liberal Art.
Plato (1975) The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Savile, A. (1982) The Test of Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
13
The Use of Stories in Intercultural
Education
PIERO PAOLICCHI
We see that understanding war does not stop war.

Krishnamurti
Their stories, yours, mine—it is what we all take with us

on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect
our stories and learn from them.
R.Coles
Intercultural education
Intercultural education is the object of ever growing attention in current educational

debate, but the problem of relating to differences between cultures has as long a history
as humanity itself. It depends on the universally human dilemma between the
acknowledgement of some features shared by all human beings as distinct from the world
of non-human entities (animals, things), and each human group’s cultural invention of
boundaries which determine one’s own identity with respect to some ‘human otherness’
defined on the basis of the most varied features, such as the colour of skin or language,
religion or political ideology. Nowadays, the contacts and reciprocal knowledge between
different cultures have grown greatly, both through living together in the same territories
and through the spread of communication systems. Awareness of the interdependence
between individuals, groups and societies for the solution of global problems, however,
stands together with hostility, exclusion, discrimination and violence towards minority or
weaker groups in real life practices and in cultural patterns. These range from episodes of
‘ordinary’ sexism, racism, homophobia, to persistent or resurgent particularisms,
separatisms and conflicts with outcomes of dramatic collective aggression.
The growth of rationality and of scientific thought does not seem to be able to reduce
or eliminate indifference, hostility and violence towards individuals, groups and
communities. These phenomena occur not only in the so-called ‘underdeveloped’
cultures, but also in those with a high level of ‘civilization’. In the latter, attitudes of
indifference and tacit tolerance towards injustice are common, if not a direct participation
in discriminating and aggressive actions, and when concrete interests or viewpoints come
into conflict, attitudes of refusal, hostility and discrimination are easily activated and
manifested. In western culture, however, the need for explicitly and systematically
directing education towards such goals as tolerance and respect for differences is
connected not only with the problems issuing from the multicultural character of our
The use of stories in intercultural education 199
societies, but also with the developments of philosophical thought in ethics, politics, law
and education. In effect, one of the main issues of modern philosophical debate in these
and other fields is the dilemma between the value of equality among all human beings
and the value of difference as an intrinsic character of any single manifestation of life in
its individuality (at the biological, psychological and cultural level), according to the idea
that in nature and in society, ‘only diversity makes change and progress’ (Dewey, 1916/
1966).
Intercultural education then is not a totally special issue or problem in modern
education, but a particular expression of recurrent dilemmas between authority and
autonomy, tradition and novelty, freedom and order, individual identity and belonging.
Intercultural encounters, exchanges, conflicts, are much the same as those between
individuals with different religious or political beliefs, or sexual orientation, when in their
confrontation something important with respect to the participants’ identity, such as
values, is at stake and may be challenged or suppressed. So the aims and methods of
intercultural education, and of education for citizenship, tolerance, democracy, are the
same as those of moral education in a context in which the function of cohesion, which
education always carries out through the sharing and transmission of a common heritage
of beliefs and values, has to be combined with the idea of difference and pluralism as an
unrenounceable conquest. Moreover, the dominance of scientism, rational
instrumentalism and bureaucracy in all modern societies tends to keep apart individuals
as separate and ‘self-contained’ entities (Sampson, 1977) and to obscure their presence
and value as persons by including them in categories and organizational systems, in order
to solve problems in strictly formal and functional ways.
In this context, the principle of respect for differences and for pluralism of values,
though it is certainly a step forward on the road to civilization and democracy, brings a
further complexity into education, helping to create a general climate in which it has
become increasingly difficult to articulate, with a degree of certainty and hope for
consensus, world visions that express the ends and the values of human life (Maclntyre,
1981). The voice of the fully developed rational-moral individual, advocated as ‘prior to
society’ (Kohlberg, 1976) and then to any other possible voice, seems to lead inevitably
not to dialogue, but to a ‘monological’ perspective which negates any possible ‘other’
(Sampson, 1993). The claim of constructing a ‘metavocabulary’ (usually in the name of
science or universal principles such as justice) able to exhaust all the claims expressed in
the different vocabularies which confront one another in the continuing exchanges
between human individuals and groups (Rorty, 1989) has been specifically criticized in
the moral and political arena. It is usually followed by a series of consequences such as
the devaluation of the voice of care (Gilligan, 1982), the imposition of a unique ‘grammar
of justice’ which obscures the features of need, power, responsibility in human
relationships (Wolgast, 1987), the oblivion of the primary solidarity upon which justice
itself is grounded and rights and duties are acknowledged and legitimated (Habermas,
1990), the suppression of the very capacity of listening to the needs of others in their
concrete and varying humanity (Ignatieff, 1984).
The subject who knows the truth and inevitably feels legitimated to impose it on all
others for their sake has to be replaced by a subject who is aware of the finite and situated
nature of his or her truth, though that truth is still central and decisive for his or her
identity and understanding of the world. Any universalistic perspective, though deeply
rooted in the human need for certainty, does not escape the risk of opening the way to
fanaticism or at least to the unconscious defence of the status quo. The situation seems to
be without a way out between the defensive returning to one’s own certainties which so
often produce domination and aggression, and the willingness to work together through
and about everyone’s differences. ‘We are condemned to either ignoring and annihilating
differences, or to working tenuously across them to form always risky bonds of
understanding’ (Narayan, 1988, p. 34).
To this end, the first step seems to realize a ‘respect’ for diversity which in turn must
be grounded in the acknowledgement that
we are in dire need of reformulating our conceptions of both responsibility

and moral objectivity such that they enable and support our seeing,
acknowledging and struggling with how to change our embeddedness in,
and identification with the interests of, particular groups. Failing to do so
will mean that, rather than countering oppression, moral education will be
continuing it on our behalf. (Boyd, 1996, p. 29)
Only once we have abandoned the conviction that someone (usually we or our culture)
has already reached the unique truth or that the confrontation’s endpoint must be a unique
and particular one, do we enter a perspective in which the different points of view on
human life and relationships can make themselves heard. Now education is no more an
institution for the transmission of alreadymade and verified truths and codes but a forum
in which humans ‘talk to each other over time about the differing interpretations of what
it means to be fully human, interpretations which are always essentially contestable and
never more than performative, prescriptive claims made to each other’ (ibid., p. 25).
The relationship with ‘otherness’, in its form of ‘cultural otherness’, may therefore
offer a special occasion for rethinking the problem of moral education in terms of a real
development of self-awareness and openness to confrontation, to dialogue and to all the
possible but still unknown truths it creates. Education thus has a further and special
chance to cope concretely with its having, like science and morality, an anti-authoritarian
essence dialectically linked to the normative one (Peters, 1959). The truth of the teacher,
like that of any participant in an open dialogical exchange, is set up as such but is open to
a common process of verification, in which consensus (from the Latin cum-
sentire=feeling with) is searched for instead of that passive assent which silences the
other’s voice and breaks up the relationship no less than total dissent. In the field of
knowledge as in that of education, the problem of truth and authority can therefore only
be correctly approached from the point of view of their relational, participatory, dialogic
dimension, which paradoxically appears as both their limit and their strength.
The paradox of education lies in the necessity of proposing a point of view in which
we believe without aiming at imposing it, in expressing the deep meaning and value it has
for us, its ‘truth for us’, and at the same time our respect for other points of view, for the
points of view of others. This ‘accommodation of incompatible aims that arise from the
competing pulls of different ways of interpreting relationships’ requires a general
framework (not only cognitive but also affective), an atmosphere of caring for ourselves
and our values as much as for others and their values, and of feeling motivated to live
well and to live together, without negating one’s own and others’ differences. It implies
going beyond recognition of these differences to facilitation of a deeper

understanding of how they are different, including clarification of both the
contexts within which the different relationships are psychologically and
sociologically located and the boundaries of those contexts as they come
into contact with each other. (Boyd, 1996, p. 25)
Therefore intercultural education, like moral education, cannot simply be another item of
curricular content, but a shared process which leads all the participants to certain ways of
thinking and feeling about, and concretely acting in, relationships between people despite
their differences.
The moral world is much more than mere reasoning on moral questions: there are also
things like feelings, empathic and identificatory processes, everyday analogical and
metaphorical arguments, attention to the common features of classes of actions and to the
specificity of each case, to principles and to the affective relationships between people, to
peoples’ virtues and vices and to the contexts in which decisions are enacted. Moral
decisions are always made in an involved and problematical experience of finding out a
solution to individually and collectively relevant problems with cognitive, affective,
social and cultural connotations.
The intertwining between cognition and motivation, cognition and action, which has
already been singled out as the core point of moral development, is central also to
intercultural education. Both processes imply not only cognitive decentralization or
perspective change, but decentralization with respect to one’s own self-interest, and one’s
group-interest, in order to take the view of the other as that of a fellow participant not
only in some theoretical discussion, but in everyday life with its minor problems and in
occasions when important decisions are to be made in individual and collective life.
Focusing attention on justice as a formal, rational and universal principle has led, in both
fields, to neglect of the motivational constituents which structure the relationship with
others and with social rules: the sense of belonging and responsibility and the whole
world of Pascal’s ‘reasons of the heart’ which are not only emotional responses but
meanings forged by the heat of living with others in a shared world. Thus, in order to
educate children (and adults too), to live together respecting one another, to be committed
and responsible towards the common world, to be sensible, pay attention and use
tolerance towards difference, it is necessary to speak to their hearts, not only to their
minds.
Also in intercultural education pupils have not only to be taught about which beliefs
and values to hold, but both to acquire some rational justification for holding those
beliefs and values, and to be motivated to act upon them in appropriate circumstances. In
order to give pupils not only ‘justifying’ reasons for action but also reasons which
‘motivate’ them to act, it is not enough to teach them the form and the content of moral
reasoning: it needs talk about virtues together with discussion on principles and rules;
character education together with development of moral reasoning; critical thought and
empathy must be developed together and vitalized reciprocally, engaging pupils not only
in dialogue and discussion but also in real cooperative and communal activities.
Moreover, as intercultural education, like moral education, is about issues of living
together, it cannot be delegated to experts or relegated to particular spaces and times of
school activity, but must be undertaken responsibly by all members of the community
and by any institution which represents it. Schools must become places where pupils and
teachers, as members of a whole community, experience a shared social climate of
acceptance, respect, open-mindedness, and put into effect ‘an “ethics of everyday”, a
morality of minor affairs, that translates respect for persons into small deeds of kindness,
honesty and decency’ (Lickona 1980, p. 131) as occasions for all to take responsibility in
a concrete and real way.
Basic patterns of relating with others must be acquired, much as mother language is
acquired, through directly experiencing and enacting them, through the force of daily life
and shared world visions. This means a deep change in the very communicative activity
of schools; the construction of a shared universe of meanings implies the abandonment of
‘institutional’ communication according to the pattern: the teacher asks a question, the
pupil answers, and the teacher evaluates. This must be replaced by a real exchange,
beginning from a common experience that does not involve a single interpretation or
solution, a discourse that re-elaborates that experience through confrontation and
negotiation between different meanings, and a turn- and role-taking that are not rigidly
and formally fixed. Dialogue about values and difference has to become part of shared
relationship patterns, of the very social climate in which all members live. It needs a sort
of ‘knowing from within’ (Shotter, 1993) which presupposes that at least some shared
cores of beliefs and values be deeply felt and acted out in concrete situations before being
reflectively and abstractly articulated. Communicating itself implies having already
something in common as a basis for reaching the goal of understanding, some overlap
between different life horizons is as much a prerequisite and an instrument as the product
of communication. Moreover, in order to cope with value conflict, a minimal consensus
has to be brought about at first, going down to the level of what we already have in
common, or otherwise reciprocal understanding will not be reached, nor dialogue even
start: paradoxically, a ‘community’ is required for communication and negotiation about
conflicting values to be possible.
Why stories?
On these premises, the educator’s main, if not unique, starting point and instrument
seems to be ‘to take seriously both the quest for life’s meaning and the call to care for
persons’ (Witherell and Noddings, 1991, p. 3), and to invite other people to do likewise.
This can be done by proposing not only abstract principles of justice or duty to discuss,
but also a common life adventure, through which all participants can reach the goal of
becoming ‘friends of one another’s minds’ (Greene, 1991), even, and perhaps especially,
when the other is ‘stranger’. Such a way of going ahead with one another and with
everyone’s own differences must pass across the territories of emotion and imagination
no less than those of reflection and judgement, and ‘requires bringing together the skills
of rational moral deliberation and of opportunities for concrete cognitive, affective, and
aesthetic responses to human suffering, injustice, caring and joy’ (Witherell, 1991, p.
238). As a consequence, as Boyd brilliantly states, ‘sorely needed in moral education
discourse at present is more openness to paradox, to irony, to tragedy, an openness that
will require more effective countering of prevailing psychological orientations that thrive
on easy closure, certainty, close-minded commitment and exclusion’ (1996, p. 25).
This sort of plea for imagination or for ‘paradox, irony, and tragedy’ echoes a lot of
other proposals by moral and educational philosophers or psychologists (Paolicchi, 1994)
to introduce (or better systematically to make more explicit) a ‘narrative perspective’ for
an education that uses the potentialities of affectivity and imagination together with those
of critical thought so strongly privileged in recent times, but showing their shortcomings
precisely in the field of moral and intercultural education. Advocating a narrative
perspective on education means: (a) thinking and speaking about problems of persons and
their relationships by applying the ‘narratory principle’ according to which human
conduct cannot be considered apart from ‘the phenomenon of emplotment’ (Sarbin,
1990), that is sense-making through assigning observations to a narrative structure, in
order to grasp the meaningful richness of individually and socially variable life textures
and contexts; and (b) using the patrimony of wisdom and knowledge regarding human
problems, cumulated across space and time in narrative and fiction of any kind, as a basic
educational tool to promote self-awareness and a better capacity of living together with
and through everyone’s differences: ‘The story fabric offers us images, myths, and
metaphors that are morally resonant and contribute both to our knowing and our being
known’ (Witherell, 1991, p. 239).
As world visions and values are all ‘storied’, that is described, explained and
legitimated in myths, legends, traditions, religious and political philosophies, to
understand and respect others and their differences without annihilating them (through
attacking, segregating, assimilating, removing them by any sort of theory or schema or
pre-judged knowledge), implies getting closer to one another through a sort of corollary
of the narratory principle: the understanding of people and their problems, especially
problems of difference and relationship, of values and beliefs, can be better reached by
narrating one’s own stories to one another.
Logical-mathematical thought is by definition empty of the experiential and cultural
contents that structure human action and constitute its ‘reasons’. It tends towards the ideal
of totally formalized description and explanation through abstract conceptualization and
the construction of perfectly defined categories linked together in a fully coherent system;
its use produces ‘good theories, tight analysis, logical proof, sound arguments and
empirical discovery guided by reasoned hypothesis’ (Bruner, 1986, p. 13). Narrative
thought refers instead to a human reality that may be true or imagined but that is always
endowed with meaning; it is linked to the emotional life and to feelings; it introduces an
evaluative dimension into the vision of the world, a dimension in which events are also
arranged and made meaningful from a moral point of view; its use produces ‘good
stories, gripping drama, and believable, though not necessarily “true” historical accounts’
(ibid.). It therefore seems to be the natural and, so to speak, consubstantial instrument for
an adequate description and explanation of some of the essential aspects of human life.
Stories can accordingly be seen as the best way to becoming dialectically, dialogically
and contextually aware of others’ and one’s own particularity and diversity, and to find in
diversity a resource instead of a threat. In the field of education, stories
provide us with a picture of real people in real situations, struggling with

real problems. They banish the indifference often generated by samples,
treatments, and faceless subjects. They invite us to speculate on what
might be changed and with what effect. And, of course, they remind us of
our persistent fallibility. (Witherell and Noddings, 1991, p. 280)
So a ‘narrative perspective’ appears particularly useful for rethinking educational practice

and implementing a new one coherent with the current theoretical and practical scenario
of education, in which problems of democracy, citizenship, difference, and interculture
have become central. To this end, we shall bear in mind that story-telling is not only a
way of exchanging cognitive contents in a storied form, but of setting up and developing
a story concretely experienced between narrators and listeners: a narrative perspective on
education is concerned not only with what is taught or told in schools, but with what
happens in schools as places in which people exchange narrated stories and interweave
‘lived’ stories which mould the meanings and goals of their life.
Telling stories to one another has always been the main way through which every
society carries out its fundamental task of transmitting across generations the meanings
that define actions. Narratives explain how and why something happens to or is done by
someone, or could happen or be done, and why the explanation they give can be suited to
that particular case or person: they serve, in short, to give a lot of information on human
facts that any formal model would not give. They therefore have an essential role in the
transmission of those cultural patterns that cannot be proposed in structural form through
lines, graphs, numbers, letters, or abstract terms, and therefore seem rather to require
‘presentation’ (Hymes, 1980). That is why stories, (parables, myths, legends, tales,
novels, dramas) have always been a special tool for transmitting values. Stories offer
‘journeys into practical ethics’ (Coles, 1989) because they do not simply describe, but
legitimize some features of the world, which they put forward not only as it is but also as
it could be, or should be, or as we would like it to be. They endow the world with an
order which is not only of a causal and spatial-temporal type, but also depends on the
intentions, desires, feelings, aims and decisions of human beings. Furthermore, they are
always authored, they express their author’s choice of a ‘point of view’ on the world. For
all these reasons stories seem specifically apt to treat
matters of value—and especially value difference—[which] must always

be performatively interpreted because they refer not to unchanging
empirical facts about the world, but to particular forms of human
intentionality and meaning-making when individuals and groups seek to
situate themselves in the world and in relation to each other. (Boyd, 1992,
p. 19)
Knowing and relating to one another through stories
As Coles (1989) reminds us, there are many interpretations to a good story, and it is not a
question of which one is right or wrong but of what you do with what you have read (p.
47). Stories, like symbols of any kind, always tell more than their content, not only for
the hearer, but for the teller, who can discover some of their meanings in the very act of
retelling them. Their interpretability makes stories, in Bakhtin’s (1981) terms, not an
‘authoritative’ but an ‘internally persuasive’ kind of discourse. The former ‘demands that
we acknowledge it, that we make it our own; it binds us’. Its authority is fused to it and
depends only on the speaker; so it is not a ‘generator of meaning or a thinking device’ on
the part of the hearer, and in fact it is never presented in narrative forms, but only
transmitted in formal ones. The latter, on the contrary, is not finite but open, creative, for
it ‘awakens new and independent words’ from within the hearer. Therefore, the
usefulness of stories in intercultural education depends also on the fact that, unlike
arguing by the rules of principled moral reasoning, in telling and confronting stories some
really ‘new’ truth (concealed in one of them or in both, or born in their very encounter)
can emerge from the exchange and from the participants’ confrontation between truths
that are concrete, situated, partial and open to discussion, though deeply believed.
A story, however, is never registered ‘objectively’ by the listener. Listening too is
constructive and selective, because the listener enters the narrative context and hears the
story with the background of his or her personal experience which contains the roots not
only of oppression and standardization but also of difference and the possibility of
fighting external pressures in the present. Like the heroes of fables, who can only fight
their opponent by winning possession of the magical instrument with which they are
oppressed, children (and all others who bear some difference with respect to dominant
models) face up to the power which stories have over them by their own power to
recreate the stories they hear or to invent new ones. Even in the face of general
agreement, the individual, as the child in the well-known fable, can shout that the king
has no clothes. On the other hand, to tell one’s own story presupposes not only having
something to say, but facing the risk of entering the border-land between acceptance and
rejection in which communication always takes place, and then feeling and being
qualified to speak. So, the power dimension of the social world in which dialogue has to
be brought about must not be overlooked. It is not enough to apply to the abstract rule of
equal right to make one’s voice heard in an ‘ideal discourse’ (Habermas, 1983); the
inequalities issuing from having lived in a world of actually unequal social power,
including the power of making one’s voice heard, requires that those in power agree to
listen more, especially in the first moments of the exchange: they, in fact, have more to
learn both about the others’ world, almost unknown to them, and about theirs, which
others know as much as it is necessary for them to live or at least survive in it (Boyd,
1992; Sampson, 1993).
As human exchanges are almost never balanced, and educational exchanges are
unbalanced by definition, a second fundamental rule can be derived from the fact that
narrating, like every educational intervention and encounter between human beings,
develops on the two levels of exchange of information (the story narrated) and of
participation in a common experience (the story lived), that are not the same but are never
independent of each other. So a further rule in story-telling could be one of sincerity,
which demands that the listener move systematically from the question ‘What are you
saying to me?’ to the question ‘What are you doing to me, and why?’ To tell a story, in
fact, can mean to try to impose, suggest, counsel, deceive, ask, answer, sell, give, and
anything else: this ultimately decides the ‘truth’ of the story, which is not exhausted in
the narrative content and in the relationship between narrative content and the real world,
but regards the meaning and the purpose of the narrative act as a relationship between
human beings.
The very act of ‘knowing’, as Langer (1957) stated, is not a sort of accurately
registering what the world is in itself, but the result of a human mind’s throwing its light
on the world and giving it some new feature and meaning. Some shared basic experiences
(such as joy, pain, hope, fear, anxiety) in a common world in which, as Vico (1730/1952)
reminded us, trees and thunder came long before philosophers, make those acts
potentially shareable, understandable, to a large extent. However, knowledge, as
intersubjectively shared as it might be, is not the product of seeing but of looking at the
world and the others. Seeing ‘the’ other is a mechanical response to an external reality
which in a sense moulds the seers’ eyes and excludes responsibility on their part; looking
at, like narrating, ‘an’ other is an intentional act characterized by will, choice and
awareness, and then is endowed by an essentially moral character.
A narrative stance with respect to others, values and relationships seems therefore the
best way to become aware at once of one’s looking and of the other, and so to see at once
the others and ourselves in their faces. When the other is something fixed ‘in itself which
does not offer us any choice, knowledge is distant, cold, final; when the other is looked at
as a lot of still unexplored possibilities, knowledge is close, passionate, open, and the
relationship tends to attune correspondently. Psychological and historical research (Staub,
1989) is full of examples that demonstrate how the major episodes of destructive
aggressiveness or passive tolerance towards them imply a process of transforming the
concrete single other into a distant, stereotyped and objectified ‘otherness’ for individuals
and groups being able to destroy ‘it’. Collective violence is always legitimated by reasons
rooted in some totalizing logic in which persons are supplanted by social, political,
economic, religious categories, and decisions are made in the name of universal abstract
principles and rules. Maybe this is what an African immigrant boy in an Italian school
sensed in the seemingly kind attention paid to his culture, when he reacted by crying,
‘I’m not a culture, I’m a boy.’
This takes us into a further special feature of stories, their concreteness, which is
strictly related to their educational power. It is primarily by means of their concreteness
that stories exert their capacity to speak to the minds and the hearts of pupils, to stimulate
at once imagination, intellect and emotions. They act upon consciousness and behaviour,
critical discrimination and judgement, especially with children and adolescents, by
showing them familiar and concrete moral issues in which characters not unlike
themselves act and decide, rather than abstract moral dilemmas. The task of
understanding the concepts of justice, equality, peace, dignity, rights and democracy, can
be achieved with more deepness and liveliness through stories, narrated and lived, which
give pupils opportunities to experience affective involvement in those values and to
express them through art, drama, or creative writing, as the Council of Europe’s
Committee of Ministers itself recommended (1985). Using Hoffman’s (1984) terms, we
can say that stories mediate between the level of primary or global empathy and that of
reflectively motivated action, through the ‘sympathy’ they can activate towards a person
or a group or category.
Together with the ability to take others’ point of view, stories stimulate the capacity to
recognize and differentiate individuals and their feelings, and to accordingly experience
and be aware of one’s own different feelings and emotions towards them. Moreover,
characters are likely to be perceived by the reader as new and exciting possibilities and
not as ultimate exemplars. The power of a story can lead us to be completely involved
with the fortunes of its characters and influence also our attitudes towards similar real
people and situations. But our involvement will be with a single specific character and
situation rather than with a culture or a set of values, so that the other as a concrete
individual in a concrete context will be more probably ‘an alternative for us, not to us’
(Williams, 1985). This is also in accordance with some recent results in educational
research and practice, such as the fact that accepting others does not mean to totally
accept or exalt their values, nor to overlook differences among members of a culture by
identifying them all with a cultural identity with which they themselves do not identify
totally, nor finally to refuse to stress the possibility that others can be mistaken.
The educational function of stories depends particularly on the fact that the various
cognitive, aesthetic, affective and moral dimensions are connected and reinforce each
other within them. Stories stand centrally between thought and emotion, as well as
between everyday life and exceptionality, conversation and rite. They draw their
‘socializing’ force from the ‘choreography of language’ (Ochs, 1991) and from the
narrative context no less than from their content. Stories and story-telling, through the
double identifying relationship they establish between the narrator and the listener (to the
story and to each other) are a special tool for imagination as ‘the site of identification and
the place where identity is constructed’, and for moral imagination as ‘the place that
allows us to relate to each other’ (Pagano, 1991, p. 264). Poets have already stated that a
human being, in order to be ‘greatly good’, has to ‘imagine intensively and
comprehensively’ (Shelley, 1961, p. 495), that ‘imagination has a way of lighting on truth
that the reason has not’ (Yeats, 1961, p. 65). But also Dewey wrote long ago that
‘imagination is the great instrument of moral good’ (1934/1980, p. 344), and more
recently Kekes (1993) advocated systematically the use of materials drawn from novels,
biographies, history, ethnography, as the best way to enlarge pupils’ knowledge of what
life may be, to confront with possibilities other than those of our tradition, and to reflect
on conventions and values of our culture, on their shortcomings, biases and mistakes.
Stories succeed because ‘they work their way well into one’s thinking life, yes, but also
one’s reveries or idle thoughts, even one’s moods and dreams’ (Coles, 1989, p. 204):
stories, in sum, educate because they can teach and touch.
Emotion, in this context, plays the basic role of a ‘skill at imaginative identification’
(Rorty, 1989, p. 93), that penetrates deeper into daily moral life than a critical abstract
approach to moral dilemmas can do. Emotions are not mere subjective natural reactions,
but constitute ‘a kind of appraisal’ (Peters, 1970, p. 188) of reality: as such, they are an
important part of our practical reason, they are internal to a cultural way of looking at the
world, to a shared set of thoughts and beliefs, and then they can be educated. And stories
are important just because they do not only stimulate emotions, but also show them in
ways that activate both involvement and reflection, and so can lead the listener to an
understanding of the emotional world in other people and in oneself.
Concluding remarks
Intercultural education is a complex, theorical-practical set of concepts and strategies

which aims at creating in schools an accepting climate open to diversity in any form, both
in the presence and in the absence of ‘strangers’. The choice of occasionally privileging
one or another among those strategies and the concrete ways of implementing it depends
on the concrete features of educational situations, such as the age of pupils and their
family environment, the larger social context in which the school operates, the necessity
of coping with special current problems and conflicts, and so on. The general background
which is now shared by most of those who practise intercultural education can be
summarized as follows.
Pupils have to be thought of and treated as persons, that is as bodily, mental, affective,
social and cultural wholes, and as members of a plurality of social groups (the family, the
peer group, the class, the school, the society, the human community) with which they
identify and in which they have to be aided to develop individual and original stories in
relation with others. Openness to others can be actually favoured by stimulating both
reflection and discussion on universal principles and rights, and knowledge of different
cultures and even of the particular story which is the only thing that can make a mere
person a friend. The actual presence of a ‘stranger’ is a concrete problem to solve but also
the most powerful resource to activate respect for justice and rights and at the same time
reciprocal curiosity and the discovery of differences and similarities between people. In
the absence of ‘strangers’, the best way to educate to interculture is through the forms of
‘otherness’ brought about by differences between sexes, age groups, social roles, family
contexts, past experiences of people of the same culture.
The best substitute of a real encounter with a present other is its ‘presentation’ through
narratives with their multifarious set, both of dramatic and emblematic life features and
dilemmas, and of the everyday features which make differences interesting and exciting
rather than problematic and threatening. Narratives allow powerful educating trips across
individual, historical and cultural differences, so that they are the best tool to prepare the
contact with the other and to impede or reduce his or her pre-emptive and prejudiced
rejection, abstraction (stereotyping), fragmentation (nick-naming), exploitation
(scapegoating), so frequent in school and often not reduced even by ‘contact projects’
(Miller and Brewer, 1984). In concrete relationships and in narratives, difference,
however, must not be stressed as an absolute alternative to assimilation, but together with
the similarities which enhance the possibility of intercultural understanding and
fellowship. Furthermore, it has to be based on the reciprocal looking at between equals
who disclose oneself to each other: difference is not only in the other.
Which kind of stories to narrate will depend on many factors: the age of pupils, the
atmosphere of the school and local community or of the whole society in a certain
moment, the salience of specific problems between different cultural groups within it, and
so on. Space will be left for stories about pupils themselves in their everyday school or
family life, about characters like them in the classics or current narrative, about pupils’
parents or the elderly, especially when they faced different or unusual life conditions.
Suitable stories can be found both in our tradition and in others’: difference and its unjust
treatment are well represented in our history. Otherness itself is not necessarily outside
us, it is in the multiple voices that speak in our culture and in our very mind, which is
born and nurtured by the dialogical exchange with concrete others (Wertsch, 1991). So
intercultural education can be carried on not only through confrontation between opposite
cultural visions of the world, but within and by means of every culture’s
‘multivoicedness’, though we westerners have to strongly oppose the idea that the best
way to understand and represent others’ problems and sufferances is that of our culture.
In education, as in anthropology and in social sciences, a recent core attainment is the

awareness that people who suffer and face problems daily are the most competent to
speak about them.
Narrating and interpreting stories plays a central role in intercultural education, first of
all because stories embody in particularly incisive ways issues of values and value
conflicts that are the core of intercultural encounters. Secondly, because to build and
interpret stories is the best way to become aware of other people as individuals and of
one’s own identity, which in turn gives a ground for the possibility of a mature morality.
Thirdly, because stories, in their concreteness and finiteness, present the world without
the rigidity of formalized and absolute truths, as they are interpretable, open to further
enrichment from the listener. Finally, because to exchange stories requires and in turn
enlarges the shared patrimony necessary for their comprehension and the very
community both presupposed and consolidated by every story narrated. As narrating,
correctly understood in an educational perspective, is always a ‘talking with others, not
only to or about others’ (Boyd, 1992), to understand a story, in fact, always implies and
stimulates a dual competence: that related to the world narrated and that related to the
world in which the act of narrating is performed as part of a real story enacted by the
narrator and the listener.
Compared to the truths that science has continually and tenaciously presented as
objective and final, in stories and in education something different takes a central role:
the meaning and the value not only of what is transmitted but also of the kind of world
that the very act of transmitting produces and proposes to those who are involved in the
relationship. This does not conflict at all with the central role of critical thought and
discussion in modern pedagogy, linked to the existence of modern institutions such as
science or political democracy. Democracy, justice, tolerance, like all values, are abstract
ideals to be translated into particular forms and practices that are subject also to other
requirements according to the variety of historical and social conditions. Nowadays, the
objectives, methods and contents of education must be examined in a context in which
passions and violent actions, instead of being controlled by reason, seem to be
proliferating in conjunction with such degenerations of reason as pure calculation of
interest or the mere reckoning of preferences. The impact of a new story depends strongly
on the possibility to tell it in ‘real time’ to all the inhabitants of the ‘global village’, who
are increasingly deluded into believing that they are playing an active role in it through
opinion polls and remote controls. Communication is no longer a discourse constructed
and developed in time step by step, but a matter of who is able to shout loudest and make
his or her voice heard in the fleeting moment in which it can be distinguished, so that the
quality of the single voices and stories is inevitably clouded and confused.
Against this background, school education plays a strategic role, for it can constitute a
specific and privileged narrative-relational context: meaningful, ruled, open, shared, of
long duration, and so potentially incisive in the immediate present and, in many cases,
equally incisive in the long term. What is most important is that stories narrated and
concretely enacted in everyday school life go ahead accordingly in a shared, meaningful
and positive way of living together, because it is only
in the context of an ongoing dialogue between a teacher and her students

(or between students and other students) that words, language, and forms
of discourse—including stories lived and stories told—can have their

most powerful, transformative, and long-lasting effect on young lives.
(Tappan, 1991, p. 253)
Especially in a multicultural context, ‘to start with a story’ (Sylvester, 1991), could be the
best way to make education an open-ended dialogue, a process of continually coping with
differences between people, their values and visions of the world, with the twofold goal
of striving to reflectively and committedly understand both one’s own and others’ stories,
and to construct the best possible common story for us and for all others involved in it.
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14
Aesthetics, The Arts and Post-School
Education
DAVID JONES
This chapter is about what are sometimes called aesthetic values. I hedge a little in the
use of the term aesthetic values because it implies a set of identifiable criteria which have
to be met for, usually, a work of art to be considered good. Philosophically I find this
position difficult to maintain. There is no way in which aesthetic value can be objectively
identified or measured. There are no criteria which transcend time and geography which
we can apply to a work to ascertain its aesthetic merit.
What I will be discussing are preferences; the way in which cultures establish a set of
preferences about what is good or bad in term of the arts and the ways in which the
education system either supports or develops these aesthetic preferences. Such aesthetic
value systems change over time and are different from one culture to the next.
Throughout this chapter I will draw on examples from higher education and from
work in the non-vocational sector in both higher and further education. It is, arguably,
within arts education that cultural differences can be most problematic: at the very least
they are, or should be, central to the subject area itself. Values in the arts are derived from
their cultural context. The practice of arts education confronts head on the issues of
values in a culturally diverse society. It is not only in the vocational sector that
examination results can be based on no more than the aesthetic preferences of the
examiner, but in non-vocational adult education too the cultural values of the tutor can
influence the development of a particular aesthetic. The examples I give will be drawn
mainly from the visual arts though much of what I say applies equally to other art forms.
Cultural traditions in music, drama and literature can be considered in the same way.
I also ought to make it clear that much of what follows does not only concern what
have become known as the high arts; it also concerns the folk tradition and much that is
not considered to be art at all. I am thinking here of preferences in food, in clothes and in
other aspects of design. To begin I want to give a few examples of the issues which this
chapter will address.
The Fashion and Textiles Department of a British university has, for some time, been
attracting students from the Far East. These students have undertaken their primary and
secondary education in a country with very different traditions, different values and a
different prevailing aesthetic. They arrive in a northern European city where they are to
study for a degree in fashion and/or textiles. The staff at the university are conversant
with the markets in the West and feel that they understand and appreciate the sort of
designs which will suit this market. These staff come from a cultural tradition where the
brightness and sparkle of eastern designs are often thought of as lurid and vulgar. Designs
and colours which can hold their own in the bright heat of southern China can appear
Aesthetics, the arts and post-school education 213
wildly ostentatious under a northern sky. This is a situation where two cultural traditions,
two aesthetic value systems immediately come into conflict.
In most cases the response to this situation is to attempt to westernize the oriental
students. It is argued that the fashion market is worldwide, that these students, on
graduation, will have to survive in this international market and that the experts in the
university are best placed to help them to do this. It so happens that the prevailing
aesthetic in this world market derives from a European tradition, albeit sometimes filtered
through the ex-colonies in the Americas and the Antipodes, and that the tastes and
preferences of traditional China or India have no place in this scheme of things. At best
they may be acknowledged as an influence on the western aesthetic.
What is never said, but equally true, is that the staff in this northern European
university are generally not equipped to make judgements about work from these
different traditions. As I will argue later, perception itself is culturally determined. They
have, at best, an art historical knowledge of these traditions; they know about them at an
intellectual and cognitive level. They invariably lack the perceptions and insights which
derive from living and breathing a particular culture from birth.
Inter-cultural activities in the field of the visual arts demand a reassessment of values
and deeply held beliefs, not only about what is thought to be good in the arts, but also
about the nature of art itself. This process can be painful for the teacher and for the
student. It demands an acknowledgement that expertise in this particular area has a
cultural dimension; that their knowledge of the demands of the international market stems
not from some pan-global perceptual insights but rather from a cultural imperialism that
has exploited features of the market economy to impose one set of aesthetic values onto
the willing consumer. Western designs and a western aesthetic have been sold throughout
the world—at least to those who can afford them.
The second example comes from non-vocational adult education. Adult students often
approach a practical painting class with an idea of what sort of paintings they would like
to produce. On the face of it this seems reasonable. The tutor, however, may have very
different ideas about what the class will eventually produce by way of finished work. The
student may want to take home something that looks like a Constable landscape whilst
the tutor might expect the outcome of the course to be a series of abstract expressionist
exercises; pieces of work which have arisen from the particular activities in which the
students have been invited to engage.
It is interesting that when writing the above paragraph I was so aware of how unlikely
it would be for a student enrolling for a painting class in Britain to have expectations of
doing a Chinese brush painting or an Indian silk painting that I did not even consider
citing them as serious examples of student expectations. Whilst at one level I
acknowledge that the term ‘painting’, in a global context, embraces a whole range of
different styles and approaches, I still use it, almost unconsciously, to relate to the
particular artistic tradition in which I was brought up. I am not alone in this.
On one level this may not seem surprising, quite normal in fact. However, I cannot
escape the fact that it is a tendency I have been fighting during the many years in which I
have been involved in teaching adults to work creatively in the visual arts. This simple
fact offers me compelling evidence that we rarely persuade ourselves to think about the
arts in terms which are outside our own traditional cultural value systems and outside our
own creative experience.
I could pick more examples like the ones above but they will suffice for the moment.
They illustrate some of the issues I want to address. Before that, though, I want to spend
some time explaining the way in which I am using some key words.
I have written about culture elsewhere (Jones, 1988, pp. 10–28). Because of the
subject of this chapter it is important to make clear that I do not use the term culture in its
narrow sense of referring solely to the arts; even sometimes just to the so-called high arts.
I use the word in what Williams (1983, p. 87) refers to as the sociologists’ and
anthropologists’ conception of culture where it refers to the whole way of life of a group,
or community, or nation state, or civilization. This use of the term includes the arts, and
education in the arts is the subject of this chapter, but also includes the beliefs and values,
the norms of behaviour and the rules which govern the social relationships of those who
include themselves in a given culture.
Culture is a messy concept. I prefer to attack it, not by seeking a definition—there is
rarely agreement about this—but by looking at the ways in which the term is used in
order to identify those characteristics or attributes which can define a particular culture. I
ask the question, ‘What attributes are used as the defining characteristics of cultures?’
One can thus examine the different ways in which specific cultures are delimited.
The most obvious defining characteristic of a culture is ethnicity; thus we talk of
African or Asian culture and in so doing point to a set of values and behaviours which are
shared by those identifying with this ethnic group. We also identify cultures in terms of
their place in history. Talking about Minoan culture or Classical Greek culture or even
the Sung Dynasty places the discussion at a particular period in time as well as in a
particular place. Geographical location also becomes an important defining characteristic.
We can talk about Asian culture in Birmingham or Bradford as well as about Asian
culture in India or Bangladesh and they may all have slightly different characteristics.
Within the European tradition it is not unusual to define culture in terms of both age
and socioeconomic status. Sociologists write about working-class culture (or middle-class
culture) as well as making references to youth culture and the culture of the middle-aged.
I don’t know whether this use of the term is common in other traditions but one can
accept that the groups delimited in this way may well share a way of life, a set of beliefs
and a common value system. In a similar way there are those who argue that a culture can
be described in terms of disability or gender. I have difficulty with both these approaches.
Disability culture is a term first coined in the arts world. When many Regional Arts
Associations, as well as the Arts Council of Great Britain, adopted equal opportunities
policies their attention was turned to the needs of people with disabilities. As the debate
developed the argument moved on from what was no more than a consideration of how to
provide audience access to art venues and began to address the situation of artists and
performers with disabilities. This discussion moved even further when people with
disabilities themselves pointed out that it was not simply a question of ensuring physical
access to places where art events occurred; not even a question of ensuring their right to
exhibit their paintings, to act in Hamlet or play in an orchestra; it was more a question of
developing an aesthetic which grew out of art forms which spoke for and about and were
created by people with disabilities. This was disability culture.
As a concept it appears to lean towards the narrow artistic definition of culture. It is
difficult to see people with disabilities, a term which itself is questionable, as a
homogeneous group. The degree to which anyone might be considered disabled depends
as much on the context as on the nature of the so-called disability. As many of those
people categorized as disabled will tell you, it is the design of the building, the office or
home which disables them, not their physical characteristics. They see disability as a
social construct. The group in question is so diverse and the members inhabit so many
different contexts that I have doubts about whether or not a culture can be delimited in
this way.
Similar arguments apply to attempts to delimit culture in terms of gender. It was the
women’s movement which first drew our attention to the situation of women in society,
originally in developed western countries. They argued that, globally, women were
oppressed and pointed out the many ways in which men constructed a society which
excluded women from key positions. They referred to sexism and to the sexist use of
language. All this was legitimate. However to try to delimit a culture in this way, to assert
that all women share a set of beliefs or values, I find difficult. Within a particular cultural
context, it may be possible to say that women share certain values which are not shared
by men. In this respect one could address issues which arise from the position of women
within that cultural context. But it would be difficult to demonstrate this empirically.
Many of these characteristics are shared by men. Men are equally the victims of sexism.
There are also questions about the size of a culture. It is easier to identify the defining
characteristics of a culture if it is small rather than large. Can one really talk about
European Culture, for instance. What beliefs, values or behaviours are shared by the
people of Europe? There may have been a time when it was possible to argue that the
peoples of Europe shared the values of Christendom but this position can no longer
remain tenable. Is there really anything which Scottish fishermen share, in terms of their
tastes and values, with, say, a Spanish lawyer or a German financier?
What I have attempted to do in the previous paragraphs is to illustrate the many
different ways in which cultures can be identified. One can see from this that twentieth-
century life in many countries is characterized by a huge cultural diversity. In Britain the
education system is trying to come to terms with this but mainly at a cognitive level. The
effort has been put into understanding the nature of different cultures in an attempt to
overcome prejudice and to become more accepting of the other. Little attempt has been
made to share the different experiences of and responses to the world which these
different cultures inhabit. As I will explain next, this would require much more attention
being paid to perceptual matters.
There is now overwhelming evidence that perception is culturally determined. The
thesis is that perception is learned and the way in which we now perceive the world
depends on the environment in which we learned to perceive. This evidence comes from
three sources.
First, there is evidence from early anthropologists which suggests that peoples who
developed their visual perception in one context could not make sense of some objects or
artefacts from another context. For instance, it has been known for some time that when
photographs were a reasonably new phenomenon many people from so-called primitive
tribes could not make sense of a monochrome print (Herskovits, 1948, p. 381 and 1959,
p. 56). Other evidence from Thouless (1933), Beveridge (1935 and 1939), Hudson (1960)
and Dennis (1960) all pointed to the idea that the way in which a person perceived the
world was culturally determined and a function of the environment in which they learned
to perceive. However, it has to be said that many of these writers, at the time, attributed
the differences they found to ‘racial differences’ rather than to environmentally and
culturally determined perceptual differences. It is only in more recent times that the
cultural determinants of modes of perception have been more fully understood.
The second source of evidence is from people who were born blind and subsequently
gained their sight after a surgical operation. Latta (1904), Senden (1932), Hebb (1949),
London (1960) and Gregory and Wallace (1963) all provide evidence that when sight was
restored the patient could not make sense of the images on the retina and had to learn to
interpret them. The thesis here is that perception is not an innate ability but has to be
learned and, like many other learned behaviours, is influenced by the cultural context.
The third source of evidence comes from Segall, Campbell and Herskovits (1966) who
used empirical tests and other statistical techniques to show that people from a whole
range of different environments scored significantly differently on a range of perceptual
tests. They tested people from urban American environments to people from rural Africa.
The researchers concluded that perception was determined by the culture in which they
learned to see.
The ways in which perception is affected by this phenomenon vary. People who do not
have the opportunity to look over long distances, people who are brought up in forests for
example, do not learn to see perspective as others do. Distant objects, when they see
them, are interpreted as small rather than distant. Railway lines are not seen as parallel
lines receding into the distance but as two lines converging. People from different
cultures have been tested to find out if they interpret converging lines and other optical
illusions in the same way. Gregory (1973:160–1) sums up some of the findings as
follows.
The people who stand out as living in a non-perspective world are the
Zulus. Their world has been described as a ‘circular culture’—their huts
are round and have round doors; they do not plough their land in straight
furrows but in curves; and few of their possessions have corners or
straight lines. They are thus ideal subjects for our purpose. It is found that
they do experience the arrow illusion to a small extent, but that they are
hardly affected at all by other illusion figures.
Studies of people living in dense forests have been made. Such people
are interesting, in that they do not experience distant objects, because
there are only small clearances in the forest. When they are taken out of
their forest, and shown distant objects, they see these not as distant but as
small.
The relevance of this research to questions of value, particularly aesthetic value, will be
becoming obvious. Whilst these tests have been concerned with visual perception it is not
unreasonable to assume that other perceptual systems have similar characteristics.
Consequently, when value systems are developing they are informed by a perceptual
capacity that is peculiar to a particular time and place, to a particular cultural context.
Before we can attribute value to something, we have to be able to sense it, to perceive it.
Taking the example quoted above, it is salutary to remember that in a history of
European art going back 27,000 years (French Ministère de la Culture, 1997) to the
Palaeolithic cave paintings of France, we have only used perspective to depict distance in
the four to five hundred years since the Italian Renaissance. The European way of
depicting the world in representational paintings depends on our learning how to make
and to read pictures which embody European methods of representation and which arise
from a perceptual system firmly established in European culture.
It can be seen from the above that aesthetic value systems relate to a concept of culture
and, in a sense, become divorced from other determining factors such as ethnicity. If
someone who is ethnically Indian is brought up in an English cultural context then it
would be expected that their perceptual systems and their aesthetic value systems would
reflect this and they would have preferences which relate to their English cultural
environment. If, on the other hand, their cultural environment at home was predominantly
Indian in terms of dress, food and art, for example, then one would expect this to be
evident in their value systems. Sociologists would refer to this as a subculture existing
within the dominant European culture. One would expect that subculture to retain and
preserve its cultural value system, as far as this is possible within a predominantly white
European educational system.
The same could be said of other so-called subcultures. Youth cultures can be seen and
analysed in this way. Whilst they spring from a parent culture they develop their own
cultural norms and their own aesthetic preferences. Thus we have pop music, in its wide
variety of forms as well as forms of visual expression which often reject the aesthetic
norms of the dominant culture.
It is worth remembering here that even the way in which we define the arts is
culturally determined. Historically the range of activities which we have included within
a concept of the arts has varied. These activities also vary from country to country. John
Pick makes the point.
If we had created the Arts Council at the end of the Eighteenth Century, it
would have turned its attention to preserving the approved arts of
gardening, sword fighting, needlework and dancing while letting such
commonplace arts as novel-writing and drama fend for themselves on the
commercial market. In like manner we might notice that the art of
juggling is state supported as high art in the Chinese People’s Republic
and the arts of circus are state-supported as high art in the USSR (sic). In
Britain we support neither. (Pick, 1986, p. 11)
In the same way as our definition of the arts is culturally determined, definitions of and
practices within other disciplines are similarly affected. Roseanne Benn, in a paper
delivered to the 1996 SCUTREA conference, develops the concept of ethnoknowledge.
As all cultural groups generate language, beliefs, rituals, etc., so they

develop subject knowledge, i.e. all knowledge is a social construct.
However, not all knowledge is valued. Intellectual racism, sexism, and
classism in educational institutions have affected the way that knowledge
has been perceived, produced and propagated by scholars and academics.
(Benn, 1996, p. 21)
Benn goes on to take mathematics as a case study and demonstrates that mathematics is a
social construct and not a structured body of knowledge. ‘It is a set of ad hoc procedures
which evolve as a result of societal change.’
What is becoming clear is that in an age of postmodernist thinking the relative nature
of knowledge, and, from the point of view of this chapter, of aesthetics, is becoming
increasingly accepted. However, there are aesthetic value systems related to art which
arise from these cultural differences and there are other value systems which apply to the
writings about the artistic value systems. Any history of art will reflect the culture from
which the writer originated, not the art being written about. Students from the Far East
coming to Britain often have difficulty in finding writings on the arts which are written
from their own cultural perspective.
This brings us back to the first example quoted above. What is an appropriate response
for higher education providers to make to a student from an Eastern culture who comes to
study, say fashion, in Britain?
Many third world countries send their students to study abroad. This is seen as a way
of ensuring that they can benefit from research and knowledge developed globally. Such
a policy gives them access to the latest and most up-to-date research with a minimum
investment. But it also exposes these students to different mind sets.
We in the West insist that such students conform to our way of presenting and
transmitting knowledge. We provide induction courses to ensure that students from
different cultures can conform to the demands of the host organization. This is seen as
being helpful and caring. We never question the validity of this policy. We never ask if
these behaviours will be appropriate in the country from which the student has come.
And so, with aesthetic value systems, we expect students from overseas to adopt a
western aesthetic; to learn to view the world as a westerner and to accept the validity and
superiority of this western value system. Norliza Rofli (1997) explains from a Malaysian
point of view the effect of international educational initiatives:
Traditional local values are being overwhelmed by western concepts,

when in reality, the origins of and reasons for creativity are completely
different, determined by the needs of society and the environment.
And goes on to talk of students who study abroad as ‘bringing home learned western
expressions [having] no relation to local culture’. It is clear that a sort of cultural
imperialism is in place and is being supported by the education system in the West and,
perhaps unknowingly, by those educational institutions from culturally diverse societies
which send their students to study abroad. Hence, the dilemma arises as to whether it is
possible to have an art and design curriculum which can accommodate the different
aesthetic value systems embraced by a multicultural student group.
In trying to find answers to these educational problems it is instructive to ask
questions of purpose: why higher education and why creative art work?
If it is national policy to train creative designers to enter the international market in
fashion and haute couture, then there may be nothing wrong in sending them to study in
an institution which will prepare them for this. The purpose of the policy, to train
designers for the international market, would have been achieved.
If, on the other hand, there is concern about national culture, about preserving and
developing the local and regional aesthetic, then such a course of action will be counter-
productive unless the host institutions in the West can devise an appropriate curriculum.
And this is the nub of the issue. Is it possible to construct an educational course which
successfully addresses these issues?
I will set out below some ideas which are a development of thoughts first published in
my book, Adult Education and Cultural Development (Jones, 1988). I will not recite
references here but rather direct the reader to that publication for much of the supporting
evidence.
My starting point is to ask the question ‘What knowledge, skills and abilities does a
person need in order to function as a creative artist or designer?’ In answering these
questions I am aware that many of the concepts I use derive from European psychology
but, where appropriate I hope to show that they have equivalents in other philosophical
and culturally diverse discourses.
It seems to me that there are four areas in which creative artists need to be proficient
and which could form the basis of a training course or, indeed, an educational syllabus
for non-vocational adult education. Visual artists and designers need to have
(a) a heightened level of visual perception
(b) an ability to exploit the potential of a medium of expression
(c) an ability to become involved in the creative process
(d) sufficient knowledge about associated matters to allow them to function as artists.
From references to perception above it is clear that the nature of our vision is culturally
determined. However, the creative artist often moves beyond the constraints which
culture imposes on his vision. It is known that in everyday life we perceive minimally,
that we see as little as we need to see in order to survive, in order to avoid walking into a
tree or under a bus. The artist, on the other hand, is much more sensitive to colour and
form, to composition, texture and rhythm. This seems to be a cross-cultural phenomenon
and artists from different cultural backgrounds seem to share this high level of perceptual
acuity.
Second, it is self-evident that artists need to be able to manipulate the medium in
which they choose to work. Whether this is textiles, yarns and threads, clay, paint, stone,
wood or precious metal, the artist and designer has to exploit the potential of the medium.
I use this form of words deliberately. I want to avoid giving the impression that this
involves a ‘how to do it’ approach. There are, in certain crafts, techniques to be learned
but what characterizes many creative artists is their willingness to use the medium of
expression in new and different ways, to exploit its potential.
Artists obviously need to know how to become involved in the creative process, to
generate visual metaphors and imagery, to create designs which echo their cultural
experience. Much has been written about the nature of the creative process from a wide
range of theoretical standpoints. What these writings seem to have in common is an
understanding that the process involves what western psychologists would call both
conscious and unconscious processes. It is felt that the images arise from a level which is
not the product of conscious thought.
I remember talking to a traditional Chinese painter about this. He was explaining to
me how the process of painting had its roots in religion, in Buddhism and Taoism, and
how painting was never intended to be representational. It was about observation, about
being in sympathy with one’s subject and then trying to distil the essence of that subject
using ink and paper. This explanation, though using different vocabulary, seemed
remarkably similar to that of western writers. There are different and culturally specific
ways of describing the creative process but I want to suggest that they are all saying the
same thing.
Finally there is the area of cognitive knowledge. It is not possible to be prescriptive
about this. It is important, however, to identify what the artist needs to know in order to
function creatively. One could consider, on a mundane level, the names of colours, of
different bits of equipment and the advantages and disadvantages of different processes.
Then one could go further and consider how much the artist, or trainee artist, needs to
know about the history of art, about the cultural heritage. Is a knowledge of other cultures
necessary? I would also argue that the artist needs to understand the nature of the creative
process, the psychology of creativity as well as something about the nature of perception.
These four areas of activity, or development, are essential to the activity of the artist
and designer. In terms of classical pedagogy they could be considered as educational
aims. It is my belief that they are not culturally specific though I acknowledge that I am
using language which is culturally specific and which, by and large, can be traced back to
a European tradition of Freudian psychology.
Above I have been addressing the educational needs of the trainee artist or designer
and I will pick up this thread shortly. I want to digress for a moment to consider the
second example I gave at the beginning of this chapter, that of the non-vocational adult
education student.
It is not unusual for students to want to paint like someone else, in the West it is often
like one of the so-called Old Masters. However, given the way in which we have defined
culture, they would need to live in say, eighteenth-century England or nineteenth-century
France to achieve this. They cannot hark back over time and create paintings as though
they were living in a different earlier cultural context. They cannot deny their own
experience and life in their contemporary culture. It is in situations like this that the
teacher needs to explain the futility of these aspirations.
If students are truly engaged in the creative process they will not know what their
paintings are going to end up like. Many writers and creative artists have testified to the
fact that when involved creatively, the work in hand appears to be out of their control; it
appears to have a life of its own and to function independently of the creator.
I am suggesting that a wish to create works which look like they belong to an earlier
period is as much cross-cultural as a Malaysian wanting to create like a Bradford wool
weaver. This is what my two examples have in common.
Now I want to return to my four-part model of creative activity. It will be noticed that
nowhere in this model have I mentioned the word aesthetic, indeed, the model makes no
reference to standards or values. How then are we to measure the success or failure of
artists or students in terms of this particular conceptual framework?
It will be clear that the emphasis has moved from the products of creation (the
paintings, the designs, the sculptures) to the processes of creation (the methods, the
nature of the involvement, the abilities of the artist). What I am suggesting is that the
educational activity is not directed at helping students to produce a particular type of
design which would appeal to a particular cultural aesthetic value system but rather to
helping the student to become familiar with and get involved in the processes of creation.
For this to be successful it is necessary to move the focus of evaluation and assessment
away from the commonly accepted practice which involves making fairly subjective
aesthetic judgements about the work produced.
Assessment in art and design education normally involves an exhibition of work, or a
fashion show. Examiners are invited to assess, not the student, though there may be some
input from the teaching staff, but rather the work they produce. This means making
subjective aesthetic judgements which can never be universal; they can only reflect the
particular tastes and preferences of the examiner.
But if one shifts the focus of evaluation to the four developmental areas outlined
above, then one can begin to identify evidence for an assessment of expertise in these
areas which does not rely on aesthetic preferences.
Evidence for evaluation comes from three sources. We can watch students working,
we can look at the work produced and we can accumulate verbal evidence, either oral or
in written form.
Watching students working can be instructive. Many teachers say that they know
when their students are creatively involved. We can tell a great deal about students from
the way they tackle their drawings, for example. We can see how precisely they are
observing the still life they are painting. This is an important but often neglected source
of evidence.
Looking at the work produced, though currently the main basis of many assessment
procedures, is of limited use. We may be able to tell something about levels of perception
in the sense of the work providing evidence of an ability to discriminate between very
close colour values. A succession of works may provide some evidence about developing
creative ability. Though it is difficult to tell from just looking at the work whether or not
the student is exploring a theme or merely becoming self repetitive.
Finally we can talk to students or ask them to write about themselves and their work.
Talking to students provides a valuable source of evidence. We can check assumptions
we have made from other pieces of evidence.
In this way, evidence can be accumulated which will enable us to make judgements
about proficiency in each of the four areas of development. Watching students work will
tell us, depending on the aims and objectives of the particular activity they are involved
in, something about their levels of perception, about their ability to become involved in
the creative process and about the way they exploit the potential of the medium. Looking
at the finished work will also tell us something about these three areas. Talking to them,
or asking them to write, will provide further evidence and also provide an opportunity to
test out their knowledge of the subject area. In this way it becomes possible to assess a
student’s ability without recourse to a culturally specific aesthetic.
Most of what has been said above concerns the education of creative artists. However,
people engage with the arts in a variety of ways and there are those who want to learn
about art, to attend art appreciation or art history classes. The required skills here are
concerned with perception and with the acquisition of cognitive knowledge. A syllabus
can be constructed which provides opportunities for students both to develop their
perceptual acuity and to learn about the arts of their own and different cultures.
Finally I want to propose that educational activity can affect a culture in one of two
ways; it either maintains a culture or develops it. Much activity in art history and art
appreciation classes is about maintaining cultural values by inducting a new generation

into the predominant aesthetic. It is about demystifying the arts for those who may
previously have felt alienated.
Many creative arts classes are concerned to develop the predominant aesthetic. They
invite participants to move on from the known into the unknown; to develop work which
pushes the cultural aesthetic forward. One can think of the ways in which the history of
European art has been moved forward by those who built on the previous aesthetic. The
Impressionists moved us into a new area by building on the realist tradition in French art
and moving it forward. It could only have happened in that cultural context. In the same
way Picasso and Braque moved from representational work into cubism and abstraction.
Similarly, with art students, we can invite them to reinforce their cultural values or to
move them forward; we can invite them to celebrate them or to challenge them. They will
not be able to deny their own history if they are working at a creative level. It will force
its way from their unconscious into the work in hand. They will reflect the predominant
cultural aesthetic value system or they will challenge it and move it forward. What we
must avoid is a situation where we only invite them to create what will be no more than a
pastiche of the styles and artefacts of an alien but dominant culture.
References
Benn, R. (1996) Adult learning, cultural diversity and ethnoknowledge. In M.Zukas, Diversity and
Development, Futures in the Education of Adults. Proceedings from the 26th annual SCUTREA
conference. University of Leeds, SCUTREA, Leeds.
Beveridge, W.M. (1935) Racial differences in phenomenal regression. British Journal of
Beveridge, W.M. (1939) Some racial differences in perception. British Journal of Psychology 30,
57–64.
Dennis, W. (1960) The human figure drawings of bedouins. Journal of Social Psychology 52, 209–
19.
French Ministère de la Culture (1997) WWW page: http://%20www.culture.fr/culture/respp-en.htm
Gregory, R.L. (1973) Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing. London: Weidenfield and
Nicolson.
Gregory, R.L. and Wallace, J.G. (1963) Recovery from early blindness. Experimental Psychology.
Monogram no. 2, Cambridge, UK.
Hebb, D.O. (1949) The Organisation of Behaviour. New York: Wiley.
Herskovits, M.J. (1948) Man and his Works. New York: Knopf.
Herskovits, M.J. (1959) Art and Value. In R.Redfield, M.J. Herskovits and G.F.Ekholm (eds),
Aspects of Primitive Art. New York: The Museum of Primitive Art.
Hudson, W. (1960) Pictorial Depth Perception in Subcultural Groups in Africa. Journal of Social
Jones, D.J. (1988) Adult Education and Cultural Development. London and New York: Routledge.
Latta, R. (1904) Notes on a case of successful operation for congenital cataract in an adult. British
Journal of Psychology 1, 135–50.
London, I.D. (1960) A Russian report on the post-operative newly seeing. American Journal of
Pick, J. (1986) Managing the Arts? The British Experience. London: Rhinegold.
Rofli, N. (1997) Culture and the Arts. Unpublished essay, University of Nottingham.
Segall, M.H., Campbell, D.T. and Herskovits, M.J. (1966) The Influence of Culture on Visual
Perception. Indianapolis, New York, and Kansas City: Bobbs-Merrill.
Senden, M.von (1932) Raum und Gestaltauffassung bei operietan Blindgebornen vor und nach der
Operation. Leipzig: Earth.
Thouless, R.H. (1933) A racial difference in perception, Journal of Social Psychology 4, 330–9.
Williams, R. (1983) Keywords, London: Fontana.
15
Values and Visions: Values Education in a
Pluralist Society
SALLY BURNS
In this chapter I shall show how a recent curriculum project has addressed the issue of
values education in a pluralist society. The project in question is the Values and Visions
project. I shall:
• give a brief history of the project
• outline the assumptions on which the project is based, its learning cycle and structure
• discuss whose values should be upheld
• discuss the context of values education
• look at practical ways of developing shared values and shared visions which include
individual perspectives
• identify the underpinning skills for values education
• identify listening as a key to values education
• highlight the active acknowledgement of suffering as a factor in values education
• assess how the Values and Visions project meets the criteria of the spiritual, cultural,
moral and social dimension of the curriculum
• reflect on the question ‘Are we doing Values and Visions?’
Brief history of the project
Values and Visions is an experiential training project which draws on the research and
experience of Georgeanne Lamont from 1990 to 1994, based at Manchester Development
Education Project.1 The project grew out of the inspirational work of World Studies in
the 1970s and 1980s.2 World Studies actively introduced the global dimension into the
curriculum and fostered ways of working which encourage self-esteem, co-operation,
critical thinking and care for the Earth and the people on it. World Studies raised
awareness, but where World Studies perhaps did not go far enough, was in terms of
commitment. Values and Visions does this, by specifically requiring the individual to
make a commitment to action. A further extension of World Studies in Values and
Visions is the spiritual dimension. Values and Visions explores our spirituality and
promotes stillness, contemplation and reflection as ways of working in the classroom.
For four years (1991–5) Values and Visions was funded by a variety of charitable
trusts (including the Rowntree Foundation, Gulbenkian Foundation, Christian Aid and the
Catholic Association For Overseas Development) to provide a broadly based curriculum
which promotes, inter alia, the spiritual development of children in primary schools,
encouraging them to respond to the global issues of justice, peace and environmental
Values and visions 225
responsibility; to help children realize the oneness of all creation; and to create, within
classrooms and schools, a sense of real community, self confidence and growing
awareness of the values and visions on which society is based. During that period,
activities were devised, adapted and trialled in schools. Training was carried out with
teachers in long-term, whole-school projects and in one-off in-service training days. All
the information and expertise gained during those years was crystallized in Burns and
Lament, 1995 (hereafter cited as ‘Burns and Lamont’). In September 1996, phase 2 of the
project began with the specific objective of enhancing community in schools, particularly
where social and cultural differences were felt to be divisive. In this second phase, work
was also undertaken to trial and adapt the work for secondary schools.
While the bulk of the training so far has been in the Manchester area, work has also
been carried out in Wales and Derbyshire, and the project now has a number of
accredited trainers around the country who are developing the work in their own
particular localities.
The learning cycle and structure of the project
Values and Visions is based on certain assumptions which are deemed to be crucial to any
form of values education within a pluralist society:
• People matter. Every child and teacher in the school and every one of us has infinite
worth and untold potential.
• Interwoven in a human being are body, mind, emotion and spirit.
• We grow physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually through actively relating to
ourselves, others, the natural world and the spirit.
• We are each part of a community.
• Diversity of thought, experience, culture and life forms is the true wealth of this planet.
Values and Visions work is based on a clear learning cycle (Figure 15.1), similar to the
pastoral cycle in theology: it begins with experience and the feelings generated by that
experience, moves on to reflection on that experience and concludes with purpose and
action, which becomes the new experience and the cycle begins again.
Within Values and Visions, experience has been classified in three interlinking ways:
experience of self, the community and the earth, known in Values and Visions as the
three key areas. As a result of our experiences we are made aware of suffering and joy,
which the project sees as two parts of the same whole, like yin and yang. We then reflect
on our experience using a variety of activities and ways of working, known in Values and
Visions as the seven key ways: encounter, listening, story, stillness and contemplation,
sensory awareness, celebration and grieving, and visioning. Out of this reflection comes
our purpose (‘What do I want to do about…?’) and our action (our decision to act or not
to act). This action becomes our new experience and the cycle continues.
How does this work in practice? To begin work on values education, a school first
needs to reflect on its values and visions involving the whole community of the school.
The focus should then be on which particular aspect of school life is a challenge here and
now. That challenge should be located in one of the three interlinking areas of
experience: self, community or the Earth or within the section of suffering and joy. For
example, a school in Warrington felt that listening was a problem in the school: that
pupils did not listen to teachers. They located this in the key area of ‘community’. They
then reflected on their experience of community using activities from that specific section
and from the sections on listening and stillness and contemplation, holding in mind all the
time their vision of a school where people listened to one another. Finally they
formulated their vision into practical action using ideas and activities from the section
called purpose and action. As a result of this process, members of the school feel that the
quality and extent of listening between pupils and adults working in the school has
improved significantly and they have integrated such practices as the ‘magic microphone’
and the ‘listening council’ into the everyday business of the school (Burns and Lamont,
pp. 99 and 105).
Underpinning the whole process outlined above and weaving through it are the
parameters of Values and Visions which we feel are crucial to sound values education. It
must be about spiritual development. It must be about becoming aware of what gives
meaning and purpose to our life and it must draw on the insights and wisdom of many
faith and non-faith traditions. It must be practical, set in the here and now, facing current
challenges. It must be about treating people as unique human beings who matter, while
acknowledging the oneness of humanity and the interdependence of living creatures on
the planet. It must be aware of, listen to and take account of marginalized voices: those in
our midst as well as those in the wider world and it must recognize and value our
differences as individuals and groups, working towards equality and challenging
discrimination and oppression. It must use a holistic approach, nurturing the whole
person and drawing on our creativity. It must effect change—a change of inner attitude
and perspective. Perhaps most importantly, it must be about creating a community in
school: a microcosm of what the world might be, where people care about and value each
other.
The Values and Visions approach acknowledges that it is not possible to do all the
above at one and the same time, hence the statement that if, at some point during the
school week you have addressed some of the above issues, and if, over the school year,
you have done something on all of them, then
Figure 15.1 The learning cycle

‘you are working the way others are working in Values and Visions’ (Burns and Lamont,
p. xxi).
Whose values?
One of the major debates around values education is whose values should be taught in
schools? There are those who would say we should adopt Christian values, since
Christianity is the traditional religion of the country. However, this not only excludes
those members of the population who profess to religions other than Christianity, but also
ignores the views of the many who would describe themselves as being of no faith. One
traditional way forward in the multi-faith school is to examine the commonality between
the values upheld by the major religions, but again this does not include people of no
faith. Perhaps the answer lies in working together to find shared values and a shared
vision, which can accommodate individual perspectives. This is the approach taken by
Values and Visions.
The project aims for parents, teachers, governors, ancillary and domestic staff in a
school to work together to find out what it is they ultimately want for their children—
their vision—and what it is that is important to them—their values. The experience of the
project is that wherever and whenever the question is asked, ‘If you could give a child
one gift or quality when s/he leaves school, what would it be?’ the same answers appear
again and again: love, happiness, sensitivity, tolerance, respect, truth, thoughtfulness,
honesty, sense of self, stability, thankfulness, compassion, joy, peace of mind, wisdom,
wonder…. By sharing their thoughts, the parents and those who work in the school
realize that they want the same things for their children. This realization is the first step
towards creating a community with explicit shared values in the school. When you go on
to explore which moments with their children have been the most special, again there is
tremendous similarity: times when children have suddenly grasped a concept, been awe-
struck by some element in nature, been excited by or proud of something they have done,
have shown care and consideration for others, times when children have been open to
new people and ideas and genuine learning has taken place.
The philosophy in Values and Visions is not to lift an established set of values from
any one source and impose them on a school or schools, nor is it to ‘teach them’, but to
let the members of each school explore for themselves what is important to them and
generate their own sets of values. The outcome may be very similar to an established set
but the difference is the process. It demands involvement and leads to ownership of and
commitment to the values established for the community of the school.
A characteristic of Values and Visions is that it draws on a diversity of faith traditions
and ancient wisdom. Throughout the work, quotations from a wide range of secular and
non-secular sources are used as illustrations and as teachings in their own right. The work
is truly multicultural.
The context of values education
Values education cannot take place in isolation. It must be set in the context of the world
in which we live: where there is a racist attack every five minutes,3 where women and
girls are raped, where there is theft, violence and murder. Where many are marginalized
and ignored by society as a whole. It is for this reason that the Values and Visions project
is clearly set in the global context. ‘Global awareness is not an optional concern for far-
off people and places. It is as much about our own school and our own lives; how
individually and together we are “world players” with responsibility for the type of world
in which we wish to live’ (Burns and Lamont, p. xiii).
Values and Visions is firmly rooted in the here and now, in the problems and issues
facing teachers and pupils in school at this very moment: bullying in the playground,
intolerance, the inability to listen. ‘The disorder of the world surfaces in school in many
ways and the qualities that are needed to address global problems are the very same
qualities required in school’ (Ibid.). In many ways, schools are a microcosm of the world
and if we can create a community with shared values and visions in school, we can
perhaps begin to effect change in the wider world in which we live.
Practical ways of developing shared values and shared visions which

include individual perspectives
Having discussed in broad terms how schools can develop shared values and visions, I
would now like to look in detail at some of the practical ways in which the Values and
Visions project does this. ‘Values and Visions is a way of working. It encourages spiritual
development and global awareness and in the process it helps to create community’
(Burns and Lamont, p. xi).
Perhaps the most important premise of values education as defined by the Values and
Visions project is that people matter. If people matter, I matter. A significant part of the
work of Values and Visions, therefore is on affirmation: developing the skill of being
positive about yourself and others. Recognizing what is good in yourself and others. This
may take the form of a fable like ‘IALAC’ (I Am Loveable And Capable), read in RE or
assembly, where a poster bearing the letters IALAC is torn up, letter by letter as the story
unfolds of a young girl who is criticized from the moment she gets up. The fable
demonstrates the devastating effect of negative comments on a person. Alternatively, it
might be an activity like ‘Silhouettes’ set in the context of language work on personal
description. A person lies on a long sheet of paper while another draws around her.
Meanwhile the rest of the class write on cards something they like about the person on
the paper. People who are the subject of this activity usually hang on to their cards and
have a peep at them when they are feeling depressed and undervalued.
Affirmation can also be built into standard school administrative practice, such as
profiles and records of achievement. A teacher in a school for severely handicapped
children told the project how she turns the required papers into affirming documents for
each child. Photographs are taken of the child as she undertakes something new, shows
marked improvement or acquires a new skill and these are included with descriptions
written by or with the child. The emphasis is always on what the child can do. The pupil
has regular access to the document so it becomes something she owns and is proud of.
The work on affirmation enables people to understand that we are all individuals; no
two of us are alike, and we all have something to contribute to society. That I matter on
my own is important, but so too is the fact that I matter in a group. A vital ingredient of
the above is that pupils learn to affirm each other in the context of their community.
The Values and Visions project describes community as follows: ‘Genuine community
is open and inclusive, valuing and involving all the individuals and groups within it and
creating a door to the wider world’ (Burns and Lament, p. xiv). Community is where each
is considered as a unique element of the greater whole and is valued for what s/he can
contribute to that whole. Community is therefore about celebrating diversity and about
relationships based on mutual respect and open communication. One activity Values and
Visions uses to explore this concept is ‘Which community?’ (Burns and Lamont, 1995, p.
31). As part of work on sets in mathematics, pupils are encouraged to reflect on the fact
that they are members of many different overlapping communities: those who speak more
than one language; those who are girls/ boys; those who go to x mosque/synagogue/
church/temple etc. They discuss the number and variety of communities of which they
are part and to which they do and do not enjoy belonging. They consider which
communities do not get on well together, the reasons for this and what they can do to
change this. Another activity asks children to compare a typical day in their school life
with that of children in a community in Tanzania, developing the concept of similarity

and diversity of experience (Burns and Lamont, 1995, p. 33). A third explores the
interdependence of communities in ‘Living a day without the rest of the world’ (Burns
and Lamont, 1995, p. 35). ‘Webbing’, where participants are given cards identifying
them as members of the animal and plant kingdoms and are linked by string to show their
relationships to each other, does the same with the natural world as its focus (Burns and
Lamont, 1995, p. 48).
Acknowledging feelings, forgiving and being forgiven is another aspect of
community, as defined by Values and Visions. The activity ‘Advocacy’ (Burns and
Lamont, 1995, p. 37) is one of those which focuses on techniques for doing just that.
When a conflict arises, the participants involved are each given a spokesperson to present
their side of the story. This technique usually diffuses tension quickly and allows
reasoned discussion of the problem. These are some of the ways Values and Visions
advocates for learning the skills to live in community with others. As M.Scott Peck says:
I am dubious as to how far we can move toward global community—

which is the only way to achieve international peace—until we learn the
basic principles of community in our own individual lives and personal
spheres of influence. (Peck, 1990)
Values and Visions encourages each one of us to be aware of what gives meaning to our
lives and, by extension, to become aware of what gives meaning to the lives of others.
This leads to mutual understanding and respect and often to the realisation that many of
the same things matter to us all. ‘Magic spot’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 110) is a wonderful
technique for allowing children time to reflect in their own way on what is important to
them. Out of doors on a field trip or a social occasion, children choose somewhere to sit,
away from others, and they either look and listen or just allow thoughts and feelings to
come and go. They are given opportunities for writing poetry or diaries if they want to
record anything. The writings of one child show the range and depth of reflection that can
be achieved under such circumstances:
I thought about myself. Am I helping the earth enough? I thought about

the wars in other countries and how stupid they are. I thought about
people who give up their time to help children at activity centres. I
thought about Jesus and how he didn’t boast about the good things he did.
I thought how I can improve the thing I do. (Burns and Lamont, p. 111)
An example of an activity which can be used in science—‘The hoop’ (Burns and Lamont,
p. 83)—is another which allows children time to reflect and develops awe and wonder.
Each child goes outside with a hoop, places it on the ground away from other people and
spends a few minutes in silence, looking carefully at what s/he sees in the hoop. One
child rushed up to his teacher and said:
That’s it, isn’t it? Everything is related. The bee gets the stuff and makes
the honey and we eat it and at the same time it carries off the seeds and
more flowers grow so there is more honey and everything is connected…

(Burns and Lamont, p. 84)
Perhaps the key implication here for values education is allowing time for reflection,
‘making an empty space in our lives where we can respond to that inner sense of being
part of something greater’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 129). Too much of the work in schools
is busy work—frenetic activity which can be highly productive but is rarely balanced
with peace, calmness and time for oneself. Outside the classroom it is often the same
story, albeit interspersed with passive periods in front of the television. If people are
given time and space for contemplation, they often begin to see for themselves what
really matters in life, what is important to them and others, where mistakes are being
made and where things can be improved. In the over-packed National Curriculum it is
still possible to fulfil statutory requirements and allow time for stillness. The two
activities quoted above are examples of this. The targets for observation and critical
thinking are easily attained by using stillness and contemplation as techniques and much
more valuable experiences are created for the child at the same time. A Japanese fable
illustrates the point:
A great Japanese master received a university professor who came to

enquire about wisdom. The master served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup
full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until
he could no longer restrain himself. ‘It is overfull. No more will go in!’
‘Like this cup,’ the master said, ‘you are full of your own opinions and
speculation. How can I show you wisdom unless you first empty your
cup?’ (quoted in Burns and Lamont, p. 129)
There are other ways of reflecting on our experience and, in the section on ‘Encounter’,
simulation games are used to develop understanding and empathy. ‘Rafa Rafa’ (Burns
and Lamont, p. 85), a simulation to explore language and culture, has stimulated much
revelatory discussion on intercultural relationships. In the debriefing with one group of
10 and 11-year-olds, a girl suddenly shouted out, ‘Yeah! That’s what it must be like for
Mustafa (a little boy who had just arrived from Pakistan). He must feel like we just did.’
Hours of explanation on the part of the teacher about welcoming newcomers into the
classroom could not have done what that game did in just 45 minutes. Used in a language
lesson, another group of pupils said it had helped prepare them for travel to other
countries and could be used as a ‘safe’ way of getting used to other cultural practices
such as kissing on both cheeks in France. For adults, the activity ‘Parents’ evening’
(Burns and Lamont, p. 87) is a wonderful introduction to cross-cultural communication
and again, is a non-threatening way of reflecting on and raising awareness of differences
in communication patterns and devising strategies for mutual understanding. As Shirley
Machine said, ‘The more I travelled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of
people who should be friends’ (quoted in Burns and Lamont, p. 87).
The aim of all these activities is to allow reflection on our experiences of the world.
What is crucial in Values and Visions however, is that reflection is not enough on its
own; what matters is the effect it will have on our lives. Perhaps the most important part
of all the above activities is the ‘questions you might like to discuss’: the debriefing
section of each piece of work. These are designed to draw together the insights gained in
the reflection, to focus the participants in the activity and to help them draw together
what they have learned.
The next step in Values and Visions is a commitment to action, without which the
reflection would be ephemeral. This is where individual perspectives develop into shared
values and visions.
Action is related to contemplation and vision. It is the embodiment of the

decision to act or not to act … Action without reflection and
contemplation is just busyness. Action without vision has no context or
future. Mindful action will be rooted in our reflection on the past and the
present and it will be able to grow up into the space provided by vision.
Ideally, action is the outward expression of our inner understanding,
values and visions. It is about getting on and creating what we say and
what we want as individuals and as a community. The action for justice,
peace and the environment taken within the school embodies the action
that may be taken in the wider world. (Burns and Lamont, p. 182)
Some examples of activities to turn reflection into action in Values and Visions include
‘Strategizing’ (p. 192) a questioning and listening technique, ‘Generating class rules’ (p.
183), a collaborative class or whole-school activity or ‘Setting goals’ (p. 175) which
involves visualization, listening and writing.
It is this commitment to action which differentiates Values and Visions from its
forerunner World Studies (see n. 2) and from many other curriculum initiatives. It both
completes the learning cycle and re-establishes it by providing new experience. The
project has shown that people, whether they be teachers, parents or governors on courses,
or children in the classroom, are usually changed by their experience of Values and
Visions; they see things in a new light; their attitudes are different. This inner change
leads to outer change: a change in the way they respond to people, in the way they work,
in the way they live. In evaluating Values and Visions, Kirby (1995, p. 28) notes,
‘INSET’s appear remarkably effective at changing teachers’ practice in classroom and
school when considering that the survey respondents only attended one session of Values
and Visions training’, and ‘Impact on staff and children is seen in all schools’ (p. 29).
This ability to effect inner change is perhaps the greatest strength of Values and Visions
and the reason why it should be disseminated more widely across the country.
The underpinning skills for values education
From the experience of World Studies (see n. 2) and Values and Visions, the
underpinning skills which need to be developed for values education are affirmation, co-
operation and communication: for each individual to be recognized and respected as a
unique being, for individuals to work together cooperatively not competitively and for
people to have the confidence to say what they feel and know they will be listened to.
The three skills are not discrete but are mutually dependent. All the activities in Values
and Visions are designed to develop these skills. It might be through working on trust in
‘Trust walk’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 43) or ‘Trust dance’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 140); it
might be through dancing together in ‘Mirrors’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 139) or celebrating
together in ‘Festivals’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 159) or it might be in telling each other’s
stories in ‘Interview as story’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 121). These three create a climate
where there is mutual respect and openness, the foundation for exploration of shared
values and visions within a pluralist society.
Listening as a key to values education
I would like now to dwell on one particular aspect of one of these underpinning skills, the
significance of which has emerged during the four years of working on the Values and
Visions project. It is listening; listening to pupils, teachers, parents, governors…listening
to each other. It should be seen as the key to good values education in a pluralist society.
Polyingaysi, a Hopi teacher, working in the 1920s, said, ‘Teachers who know how the
parents and grandparents of their pupils live and think, will understand their pupils better
and be able to work more efficiently with them’ (Polyingaysi, cited in Carlson, 1964, p.
180). Polyingaysi was criticized for her student-centred teaching, for teaching from the
known to the unknown instead of what she called ‘parrot-learning’. It took seventeen
years for her methods to receive the acclaim they deserved, but then she was asked to
give demonstrations all over the USA. It is now 1997 and we have moved a long way
forward in educational practice, but we still have far to go and we would do well to
follow Polyingaysi’s advice.
Clay (1986, p. 241) says, ‘Children are what they have experienced and when they
come to school they have had experiences that are excitingly diverse.’ Children cannot
just shed their culture and background when they cross the threshold of school. Many
schools, however, (and particularly since the introduction of the National Curriculum)
work on universal principles founded on a white, middle-class belief system (Bernstein,
1972), described by a colleague as ‘the trans-national culture of schools’. It is dangerous
to make assumptions about children’s backgrounds and even more dangerous to ignore
them altogether. The child we see in school is only a part of the whole and carries behind
her a wealth of culture, language, ways of being, which must be, at the very least,
acknowledged and, at best, celebrated in school. Often schools which have developed
equal opportunities policies preface them with a statement of intent, to the effect that,
‘We treat all pupils equally regardless of race, colour or religion.’ This suggests a one-
size-fits-all type of education. If opportunities are to be really equal this should read,
‘with due regard to’, recognising that each pupil is an individual, bringing a unique set of
experiences to the classroom. For true values education to take place in schools it is
essential therefore, that teachers get to know their pupils. The way to this knowledge is
through listening.
According to Hope and Timmel (1984):
Most of us are so much thinking about our own ideas and points of view
that we do not listen very attentively to others, unless we think they are
experts. For a spirit of trust and appreciation of one another to grow in a
group it is essential that people listen to one another.
The Values and Visions project has explored a number of ways of developing listening.
As well as those listed in the handbook under the specific section on listening, listening
underpins many of the other activities, such as ‘Circle time’ where everyone reviews the
day or week (Burns and Lamont, p. 23), ‘Heartbeat of a tree’ which involves using a
stethoscope to listen to heartbeats (Burns and Lamont, p. 41), ‘Sounds’ where people
listen to the sounds of the world around them (Burns and Lamont, p. 44) or ‘Strategizing’
which is about planning and action (Burns and Lamont, p. 192). The activities alone,
however, are worth little if the whole ethos of the school does not encourage listening.
There is absolutely no point in prefacing an activity on listening by shouting, ‘Now, sit
down, be quiet and listen.’ An ambience needs to be created where people want to listen.
Listening is one of the outward manifestations of valuing a person. It shows consideration
and respect for the other. It shows openness to others.
To conclude this section it is fitting to quote the old saying, ‘God has given us two
ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak.’
The active acknowledgement of suffering as a factor in values

education
Most schools acknowledge suffering when it takes place on a personal level—the death
of a member of a child’s family, the death of or injury to a child in school or a member of
staff—or on a national level—the Aberfan disaster or the massacre at Dunblane. The
people concerned are comforted, the disaster is discussed, thoughts are focused and
prayers are said. Is this enough? Suffering is sadly a constant part of the lives of many of
the children we teach: name-calling, bullying, harassment, physical and sexual abuse,
war, poverty, hunger, sickness. It is also something they hear about all the time: deaths,
murders, epidemics, conflict, natural disasters bombard children all the time from the
radio, the newspapers and especially the television. Suffering is a daily occurrence and
children need help to make sense of it. This fact must be openly and actively
acknowledged. It is for this reason that the Values and Visions project highlights both
suffering and joy as key areas of experience and both grieving and celebration as key
ways of reflection. The openings to these sections in the handbook state:
Suffering is about:
• a spectrum of feelings from discomfort, irritation, frustration, anxiety, fear and loss, to
desolation, misery, despair, pain and agony
• facing the uncomfortable and the unfaceable
• issues of injustice, violence and environmental destruction
Suffering and joy are both about:
• relationships
• the immediate, both local and global (Burns and Lamont, 1995, p. 57).
Grieving is about:
• our response to our own and others’ suffering; acceptance, letting go, finding peace
• acknowledging anger and frustration
Grieving and celebration are about:

• being fully present in the here and now with a heightened sensory awareness
• bringing together the past and the future into the present
• expressing the inexpressible and integrating that into ourselves; knowing that there is
more to this than meets the eye
• transformation (Burns and Lamont, 1995, p. 151).
If the suffering which children bring with them into school is ignored, they may well turn
to resentment, anxiety, put-downs, irritability, boredom and aggression, both in the
classroom, in the playground and in their lives outside school. ‘Illiterate in dealing with
suffering within school we remain illiterate and unable to respond to the suffering in the
wider world. This inability to respond to suffering is perhaps the most crucial challenge
of this decade’ (Burns and Lamont, p. 58).
True values education must face suffering head on, must help children to explore the
many, often controversial causes of suffering, must encourage the belief that there is a
way through suffering. Only by being open to our own and the suffering of others can we
begin to work creatively towards a pluralist community where people value each other.
Only by openly acknowledging in the classroom that racism is a fact of our lives, by
facing the issues both at a local and a global level, can we ever hope to eradicate it. Only
by openly accepting that many of the children we teach live in poverty and come to
school cold and hungry can we begin to challenge the causes of poverty and change the
world we live in.
In Values and Visions, activities have been devised and trialled which do tackle
specific areas of suffering in the context of the school curriculum. ‘The leaf’ (Burns and
Lamont, p. 60) is a meditation on death and dying in the context of the cycle of the
seasons; ‘The large and beautiful palace’ (p. 64) uses a fable to explore issues of
suffering and justice; ‘Endings and farewells’ (p. 158) tackles the suffering around
departures; and ‘Developing empathy’ (p. 164) deals with grieving following a death or
disaster. Much of the work in this area, however, is done through the hidden curriculum,
in the resources we decide to use and the diverse perspectives they offer; in the
achievements and events we celebrate and grieve for and those we choose to ignore. For
example, if we only celebrate European achievements and the contribution of white men
to mathematics, science and technology, we are ignoring the gender, background and
culture of many of the pupils in our schools, thereby devaluing and diminishing their
culture and origins, rendering them less equal. Jacquelyn Thompson, educational
psychologist, asserts ‘all children need pictures and literature that reinforce what they are
and give them confidence in their own abilities and the abilities of their people’ (BBC
Education, 1992). The majority of resources available to children, however, offer a white,
middle-class, male-dominated, able-bodied view of society, which is not the reality of
many of the children reading them. Similarly, if we only grieve for the two British
citizens who were killed in a plane crash, where over a hundred people died, we are
perpetuating inequality by suggesting the two Britons are more important than the others
who died. On the other hand, in the experience of Values and Visions, when a school
does actively tackle the suffering in its own community and in the wider world by
challenging discrimination and inequality, pupils know they are valued and develop the
confidence to challenge for themselves the injustices they encounter. ‘Each experiences
his humanness to the degree he can open to his joy and sorrow’ (Stephen Levine, cited in
Burns and Lamont, p. 60).
Does the project meet the criteria of the spiritual, cultural, moral and
social dimension of the curriculum?
A curriculum initiative may be very commendable in many ways, but since the Education
Reform Act 1988 it is vital that any new development meets the considerable
requirements of the National Curriculum in England and Wales. I would like to review
the Values and Visions project in the light of some of the documentation relating to
inspection of the spiritual, cultural, moral and social dimension of the curriculum.
The Inspection Schedule: Guidance (HMSO, 1993)4 states as one of its evaluation
criteria,
A school exhibits high standards in these aspects [spiritual, moral, social

and cultural development] if…pupils display a capacity for reflection,
curiosity and a sense of awe and wonder, as well as an ability to discuss
beliefs and to understand how they contribute to individual and group
identity.
This is exactly what Values and Visions is aiming to do and embodies the thinking behind
the project. The same document also asks inspectors to judge:
Whether the quality of relationships is such that pupils feel free to express
and explore their views openly and honestly, and are willing to listen to
opinions which they may not share; whether pupils are developing their
own personal values and are learning to appreciate the beliefs and
practices of others; whether there is an ethos which values imagination,
inspiration and contemplation, and encourages pupils to ask questions
about meaning and purpose. (HMSO, 1993)
Once again, this is the school ethos which Values and Visions aims to develop.
The National Curriculum Council’s document on the spiritual, moral, social and
cultural dimension of the curriculum (SCAA, 1995) outlines one aspect of spiritual
development thus, ‘The development of personal beliefs, including religious beliefs; an
appreciation that people have individual and shared beliefs on which they base their lives;
a developing understanding of how beliefs contribute to personal identity.’ This is one of
the parameters explicit in Values and Visions. The same section of the document goes on
to highlight other desirable aspects of spiritual development:
A sense of awe, wonder and mystery… Experiencing feelings of

transcendence—Feelings which may give rise to belief in the existence of
a divine being, or the belief that one’s inner resources provide the ability
to rise above everyday experiences. (SCAA, 1995)
These are threads which run through many of the activities intrinsic to Values and
Visions.
Later on, the same document outlines the steps to spiritual development as including,
amongst other things, ‘recognising the existence of others as independent of oneself
(SCAA, 1995). Values and Visions goes further than this: not only does it recognize the
existence of others, but it values the existence of others—people matter. Another step is,
‘becoming aware of and reflecting on experience’ akin to the seven key ways of
reflection in Values and Visions and yet another, ‘applying the insights gained with
increasing degrees of perception to one’s own life’ which is comparable to the purpose
and action section of the Values and Visions learning cycle. A difference here, though, is
that Values and Visions’s call for commitment from the individual is more explicit.
Further on in the SCAA document, in the section on moral development, the guidance
is more prescriptive: ‘School values should include…should reject…’. This is very
different from the Values and Visions approach where members of the school community
work cooperatively to establish the values by which the community is to operate. The
latter is a much more flexible approach which allows the voice of the individual to be
heard and is arguably more appropriate to the pluralist society in which we live. It may be
that the members of a school arrive at the very same code of values which SCAA
advocates, but the difference is the process—the members of the school community are
much more likely to adhere to the values they have had a say in adopting.
The recent SCAA consultation paper on values in education (SCAA consultation
paper, 1996) contains key statements on values, including:
We value truth, human rights, the law, justice, and collective endeavour
for the common good of society. In particular we value families as sources
of love and support for all their members and as the basis of a society in
which people care for others.
Not only is this approach prescribing the values that schools should uphold, but,
according to the Development Education Association’s response, it also fails to recognize
that ‘our society is just one of many societies and nations which make up an
interdependent and ever changing world’ (Midwinter, 1997). The paper does, however,
assert, in its section on ‘self’, that ‘we value each person as a unique being of intrinsic
worth, with potential for spiritual, moral, intellectual, and physical development and
change’ (SCAA consultation paper, 1996), which is very similar to one of the
assumptions on which Values and Visions is based.
It would appear therefore, that Values and Visions not only meets the requirements of
the spiritual, moral, social and cultural dimension of the curriculum, but embodies the
practical enactment of National Curriculum recommendations and goes even further by
actively encouraging schools to develop their own values. This is precisely what is
needed in a pluralist society according to the Guidance on Inspection of Equal
Opportunities by the Association of Local Education Authority Advisory Officers for
Multicultural Education (ALAOME, 1996). They highlight as an indicator of good
practice that, ‘all staff share the same values and operate consistent systems’ which is the
likely outcome of the Values and Visions process. A further indicator is that, ‘the
diversity of values and beliefs in society is fostered and celebrated by the school’
(ALAOME, 1996) which again, is intrinsic to Values and Visions.
In other aspects too, ALAOME’s indicators of good practice in a pluralist society are
an endorsement of the Values and Visions process. On the subject of spirituality, they
recommend that, ‘Pupils are taught to respect the beliefs of others as well as their own
beliefs’ and that ‘Pupils of no faith are given the opportunity to develop spiritual values,
(e.g. a sense of awe and wonder in relation to the universe)’. With regard to moral
development they propose that, ‘The school’s moral code, e.g. rules for behaviour, is
sensitive to the range of values within the community’. Under cultural development they
want all subjects on the curriculum to, ‘make a contribution to the development and
celebration of cultural diversity’, which is the ‘built-in’ not ‘bolt-on’ approach of Values
and Visions. Basically, if you are using Values and Visions you will be more than
meeting their criteria.
Values and Visions is an exciting project. It presents a challenge: a new way of
working. One observer commented, ‘Most training programmes are like sticking plasters,
stuck on to patch up the wounds. Values and Visions heals the whole person. It prevents
the wounds from ever happening.’
According to Kirby (1995, p. 26), Values and Visions has done well in achieving its
own objectives:
I believe that Values and Visions has a ‘special ingredient’ which fires the
enthusiasm of certain teachers and schools which some other curriculum
initiatives fail to do—somewhat like a certain lager beer! This ingredient
is the focus on the spiritual and the attempt to apply this focus to the
classroom and playground as well as the staffroom.
The vast majority of teachers interviewed by Kirby agreed that Values and Visions is an
important curriculum initiative, which has something to offer all teachers and all schools.
He concludes that the project has been successful.
Are we doing values and visions?
So what does a school look like where good values education is taking place? It is a place
where people listen. It is a place where everyone is valued as a unique individual, where
cardboard cut-outs gather dust in the corner and real people have taken their place. It is a
place of confidence and mutual respect, where the lives of the pupils come into the school
and, equally importantly, teachers and other adults in the school share with them
something of their life outside school. It is a place of openness and co-operation. It is a
place where everyone is learning, the teacher included. Beliefs, values, traditions and
languages are explored and discussed. It is a place of discovery, of mutual enrichment. It
is a place of equal power, where no one feels subjugated to the will of another. It is a
place where individuals matter. It is a place where student-centred learning is more than
just a catchphrase. It is not the ‘universal school’.
Every now and then, one walks into a school which is special. One knows
immediately this place is different; there is a hum of activity: people are
glad to be there; there is a sense of purpose and well-being; people are
relating to one another with confidence and respect; there is an openness,
an aliveness and the wider world is there. There arc many elements at
work in such a school but valuing oneself, others and the earth provides
the bedrock. Such schools offer a glimpse of a future world that works for
all. (Burns and Lamont, p. xv)
Notes
1 Manchester Development Project is housed in Manchester Metropolitan University.
2 See Fisher, S. and Hicks, D. (1985) World Studies 8–13. Harlow: Oliver and Boyd and Hicks,
D. and Steiner, M. (1989). Making Global Connections. Harlow: Oliver and Boyd.
3 Quoted in a presentation by CRE Cardiff, 1996.
4 This document has been superseded by the 1995 version, but the spirit of the 1993 document
is embodied in the new shorter guidance and the detail is more helpful here.
References
ALAOME (1996) Guidance on Inspection of Equal Opportunities under the Framework for the
Inspection of Schools: Indicators of Good Practice. Hertford: Association of Local Education
Authority Advisory Officers for Multicultural Education.
BBC Education (1992) The Mosaic Project: Marked for Life. London: Mosaic.
Bernstein, B.B. (1972) A critique of compensatory education. In T.C.Garden, V.P.John, and
D.Hymes (eds), Functions of Language in the Classroom. New York: Thackers College Press.
Burns, S. and Lamont, G. (1995) Values and Visions: A Handbook for Spiritual Development and
Global Awareness. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Carlson, V.F. (1964) No Turning Back. Alburquerque University: New Mexico Press.
Clay, M. (1986) Young readers and their cultural connections. Australian Journal of Reading, 9,
239–49.
HMSO (1993) Handbook for the Inspection of Schools. London: HMSO.
Hope, A. and Timmel, S. (1984) Training for Transformation. Zimbabwe: Mambo Press.
Kirby, B. (1995) Evaluating Values and Visions: An Evaluation of the Values and Visions Project
(1992–1995) run by Manchester Development Education Project. Manchester: Global Ink.
Midwinter, C. (1997) Values in education and the community. In Schools News: Development
Education Work in the Formal Sector, 1, p. 2. London: Development Education Association.
Peck, M.S. (1990) The Different Drum. London: Arrow Books.
SCAA (1995) Spiritual and Moral Development: SCAA discussion paper no.3. London: School
Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
SCAA (1996). Consultation on Values in Education and the Community. London: School
Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
16
Tolerating the Alien: Empathy in History
Education
MARNIE HUGHES-WARRINGTON
I would like to dedicate this chapter to Bruce.
In the 1960s, Hirst’s and Bruner’s claims that the ‘central ideas’, ‘concepts’ or
fundamentals of a subject could be taught to students, coupled with Bloom’s taxonomies
of cognitive skills and abilities, led to an increased interest in the nature of history as a
discipline and in questions of what could or should be taught. History educators wrote not
only of historical knowledge, understanding, reasoning and judgement, but also of
empathy. Empathy, it was claimed, would help students to recognize and appreciate
others’ ideas and values, and thus contribute to their moral development (see e.g. Schools
Council, 1975; Shemilt, 1980; Thompson, 1986). That empathy was considered part of
the historian’s craft was counter-intuitive to others, however, for the concept is
commonly associated with fantasy and the emotions (Beattie, 1987; Deuchar, 1987;
Skidelsky, 1988; Kedourie, 1988). Furthermore, it was argued that empathy was simply
‘unteachable’ and ‘unassessable’ (Gibson, 1969; Portal, 1987; McGovern, 1988; Lawlor,
1989; Low-Beer, 1989). Despite decades of debate, the concept of empathy is still little
understood. In the discussion that follows, I should like to examine, first, whether
empathy can give us access to others’ ideas and values and second, what ethical issues
arise from its use in history education.
Empathy, it has been claimed, involves ‘an imaginative “actor-oriented” interpretation
of a people’s beliefs and conduct’ (Geertz, 1973, pp. 14–15), ‘taking on another’s
preferences’ or ‘very reality’ (Hare, 1981, p. 94; Buber, 1965, p. 70), ‘joining in the
performance of [another’s] acts’ (Scheler, 1954, pp. 167–8), ‘a transference of the self
into a complex of life expressions’ (Dilthey, 1914–36, p. 220), ‘entering into another’s
personality’ (Coltham and Fines, 1971, p. 7), ‘accurately imagining what it would be like
to be someone else’ (Schools Council, 1975, p. 21), ‘understanding [another’s] problems
or attitudes from the inside’ (Schools Council, 1980, p. 6), ‘thinking the very same
thought, not another like it’ (Collingwood, 1939, p. 111) and a ‘direct acquaintance’ with
the ways in which another person thinks about the world (Norton, 1996, p. 1). At the
heart of the idea is the claim that it is possible to lend oneself to the viewpoint of another.
Standing in the way of such a claim, however, is the currently prevalent thesis that human
beings are bound to, and indeed cannot escape, their own perspectives.
Empathy and ‘our own lights’
Claiming that a person’s perspective is inescapable has been taken to mean at least two
different things. First, it can mean, as Davidson (1989) has suggested, that the idea of
incommensurably alternative perspectival worlds is incoherent. If this is so, then there
cannot be any multiplicity of the kind that calls empathy into play. Second, it can mean,
Tolerating the alien 241
as Putnam (1981), Rorty (1989) and Krausz (1993) have pointed out, that there are
different perspectival worlds but that each person is bound to his or her own. According
to both accounts, we cannot conceptualize, understand or judge other people’s thoughts,
beliefs and values except by ‘our own lights’.
For Davidson (1982), our own lights are the only lights possible. Conceptual schemes
are languages, intertranslatability establishes sameness of conceptual scheme and
translatability into our language is the criterion for something’s being a language. An
‘alternative conceptual scheme’ would have to be both a language (and hence translatable
into our own language) and an alternative to our conceptual scheme (and hence not
translatable into our own language). Thus the idea of an alternative conceptual scheme,
and indeed of any conceptual scheme, is unintelligible. He writes:
What matters is this: if all we know is what sentences a speaker holds

true, and we cannot assume that his language is our own, then we cannot
take even a first step towards interpretation without knowing or assuming
a great deal about the speaker’s beliefs. Since knowledge of beliefs comes
only with the ability to interpret words, the only possibility at the start is
to assume general agreement on beliefs. (p. 78)
Davidson suggests that this assumption is like the ‘charity’ that Quine considers to be
necessary to translation. ‘Charity’ towards others does not involve lending oneself to
another’s viewpoint but making others’ ideas and values intelligible to us in a non-
optional way. What we find intelligible, Davidson claims, is a non-option in the empirical
sense: we can no more decide what we find intelligible than we decide to see with our
eyes.
The idea of a conceptual scheme that is incommensurable with our own, Davidson
argues, is ‘meaningless…due simply to what we mean by a system of concepts’ (ibid.).
Such a conclusion arises from his equation of ‘incommensurable’ with ‘totally
untranslatable’. In reply to Davidson, it can be said that we can know of alternative
schemes because we have sufficient access to them to recognize that we cannot accept the
beliefs and values that they entail while retaining our own. For example, I reject Hitler’s
statement that ‘He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is
the law of life, has not the right to exist’ (1943, p. 118) not because it is unintelligible to
me, but because I understand it sufficiently to recognize that accepting it would entail
embracing beliefs, values and patterns of conduct that I find unacceptable. Similarly,
Mormon ideas of God are not wholly unintelligible to me, but I cannot accept them
without widespread changes to my beliefs, values and patterns of conduct. Thus
incommensurability exists between systems of beliefs, values and patterns of conduct that
cannot be simultaneously accepted. The situation, as Maclntyre (1989) has pointed out, is
analogous to those where different language systems are involved:
It is not that the beliefs of each community cannot be represented in any

way at all in the language of the other; it is rather that the outcome in each
case of rendering those beliefs sufficiently intelligible to be evaluated by a
member of the other community involves characterising those beliefs in
such a way that they are bound to be rejected, (p. 186; see also Norton,
1996)
For example, what is from one point of view an act of acquisition of what had so far
belonged to nobody will be from the other point of view the illegitimate seizure of what
had so far belonged to nobody because it is what cannot ever be privately owned. Such a
division of opinion is seen in Aboriginal and European views of land. What characterizes
adequate knowledge of two languages by one and the same person is that person’s ability
to discriminate between those parts of each language which are translatable into the other
and those which are not. Maclntyre’s point is that bilinguals can understand two cultures
or parts of those cultures while not being able to translate between them. Maclntyre’s
argument thus undermines Davidson’s claim that the coherence of the idea of a
conceptual scheme or an alternative conceptual scheme is simply a matter of
translatability.
If ‘incommensurability’ is taken to mean ‘incompossibility’, or ‘cannot exist in the
same subject at the same time’ (Norton, 1996, ch. 2), then what prevents us from getting
access to other perspectives is allegiance to our own. Such a problem is at the heart of
Gardner’s (1992) claim that multicultural or religious education programmes encourage
students to believe that people of other perspectives have mistaken beliefs. It is true that
we have no access to an interpretation-free neutral ground or that we cannot throw away
the ‘lenses of our own grinding’, but this does not preclude the lending of oneself to
another’s perspective. Indeed, as writers such as Collingwood have claimed, empathy (or
re-enactment as he prefers to call it) demands no less than the identity of thoughts and
values. How is that possible?
One explanation is that it is by appeal to her inner, subjective criteria that the historian
comes to know, through a direct act of intuitive insight, the thoughts and beliefs of the
historical agent. Such a view of history entails, it has been argued, ‘a unique and direct
form or understanding which raises it above other kinds of knowledge’ (Walsh, 1964, pp.
44, 48), a ‘quasi-Spinozist scientia intuitiva’ (Cohen, 1957, p. 177) and ‘the resolution of
historical knowledge into intuition’ (White, 1957, p. 166). This ‘intuitive’ view of
empathy is open to the criticism that it implies a private view of minds and thus a
subjective view of truth. That is, only the historian can know whether her empathized
thoughts and values are those of the historical agent. This view can be seen in Jenkins’s
(1992) claim that:
what is effectively ignored in empathy is that in every act of

communication there is an act of translation going on; that every act of
speech (speech-act) is an interpretation between privacies, (p. 39)
Considering intuition to be the key to the identity of thoughts and values results in a
private and uncritical view of historical understanding. The historian, Gardiner (1952)
has advanced, simply has access to an ‘additional power’ that allows her to ‘see into the
minds of [her] study and take, as it were, psychological X-ray photographs’ (pp. 211–20).
Nothing is said of the interpretation of evidence and of historical judgement. It also
makes it very difficult to assess others’ attempts at empathy. For instance, only God,
Beattie (1987) argued, could assess the empathy questions in GCSE history exams.
Such a view of empathy makes no sense, because the historian cannot establish
‘private’ rules of identity to the exclusion of the linguistic community that she belongs to.
Our usage of the concept of ‘rule’ involves the idea that rules are public because they are
rooted in social practices. This implies that the application of rules, including any criteria
of identity, are to some extent under the control of the members of our linguistic
community. In the historian’s attempt to establish ‘private’ criteria of identity the rules
for using mental concepts and the rules for using the same (namely, the historian and the
historical agent share the same value) are presupposed. If the historian wants to
communicate with other members of her linguistic community (such as other historians),
she has to use mental concepts and the concept of ‘the same’ as they commonly use them.
Another way of looking at empathy is to say that our common language provides us
with the conceptual criteria that help us to communicate about the identity of peoples’
thoughts and values in a particular situation. Such a view of empathy emerges in
Collingwood’s refutation of the copy theory of identity in §4 of the Epilegomena of The
Idea of History (1993). For Collingwood, ‘re-enactment’ requires that the thought and
values of the historian and the historical agent are identical in content. According to the
copy theory of identity, however, the historian cannot think the same thought or hold the
same value as the historical agent because thoughts and values, as mental acts, are
numerically and temporally different when performed in different temporal contexts by
different persons (pp. 297–8, 300–2). This means that the historian cannot have the same
thoughts and values as the historical agent but only a copy of them. Thus, the copy
theorists conclude, it is not possible to get at the thoughts and values of the historical
agent through re-enactment.
Collingwood’s reply is that this theory is based on the mistaken assumption that
thoughts and values are ‘different specimens of the same kind, different instances of the
same universal, or different members of the same class’ (p. 285). The copy theory can be
refuted because we do not define the identity of thoughts and values in terms of
numerical identity. He writes:
The dogma is not that there is no such thing as identity in difference

(nobody believes that), but that there is only one kind of it, namely
specific identity in numerical difference. Criticism of the dogma,
therefore, turns not on proving that this kind of identity in difference does
not exist, but on proving that other kinds exist, and that the case we are
considering is one of them, (ibid.)
What Collingwood means here is that the copy-theorists are mistaken in believing that
mental acts ‘are numerically distinct and therefore numerable’ (ibid.; see also pp. 287–8).
He also advocates that, on conceptual grounds, the temporal difference between the
historian’s and the historical agent’s thoughts and values is of no consequence in
deciding the identity of their thoughts and values because these are not dependent on the
specific temporal context in which they are performed. Using his example, assume that I
want to re-enact Admiral Nelson’s thought: ‘In honour I won them, in honour I will die
with them.’ My act of thought and that of Nelson are temporally different because ‘[t]o
Nelson, that thought was a present thought, to me, it is a past thought living in the
present’ (1939, p. 113). Failing to realize this difference would make the historian like
mentally ill persons who are convinced that they are Nelson, Napoleon, Christ, etc. If we
hold to the copy theory of identity, we should say that my mental acts and those of
Nelson cannot be the same, since they are numeric-ally and temporally different acts.
But, Collingwood reminds us, our common usage of the concepts ‘to think the same
thoughts as someone else’ and ‘to share values with someone else’ allows us to say that
‘Nelson’s thought, as Nelson thought it and the historian re-thinks it, are certainly one
and the same thought’ (1939, p. 112).
In other words, the numerical and temporal difference between the historical agent’s
thoughts and values and those of the historian is not relevant if the thoughts and values
are identical in content. Collingwood makes this clear in the Le Martouret manuscript of
1928:
The re-enactment of the past in the present is the past itself so far as that is
knowable to the historian. We understand what Nelson thought—not
copies of thoughts—a silly and meaningless phrase—but his thoughts
themselves over again. When we have done that, we know what Nelson
thought, not mediately, but immediately. The historian’s thought, then,
neither is nor contains nor involves any copy of its object. The historian’s
thought is, or rather contains as one of its elements, that object itself,
namely that act of thought which the historian is trying to understand, re-
thought in the present by [her]self. A person who failed to realise that
thoughts are not private property might say that it is not Newton’s thought
that I understand, but only my own. That would be silly because, whatever
subjective idealism may pretend, thought is always and everywhere de
jure common property, and is de facto common property wherever people
at large have the intelligence to think in common. (1993, p. 450)
Norman Malcolm (1977) makes explicit the view of identity that Collingwood is trying to
explicate when he remarks that ‘contents of consciousness have only generic and not
numerical identity.’ (p. 120). Collingwood reinforces this point when he asks in the Le
Martouret manuscript: ‘Is the binomial theorem as known to us; we should ask; the same
theorem that Newton invented or not? If he [the objector] says yes, he has admitted all we
want. If he says no, we can easily convict him of self-contradiction: for he is assuming
that in our mutual discourse we have ideas in common, and this is inconsistent with his
thesis’ (1993, p. 446).
We could say, in summary, that Collingwood is right in arguing, on conceptual
grounds, that in so far as the historical agent’s thoughts and values and that of the
historian are identical in content the historian thinks the same thought or holds the same
value and not merely copies of such. There are cases where we talk about copying
people’s thoughts. But even the plagiarist has to think the same thoughts as the original
thinker in order to be able to copy his thought. Thus in empathy, the criterion of identity
is clearly conceptual. By conceptual criteria, I mean the rules governing our actual use of
the words ‘the same’ and mental concepts such as ‘thought’ and ‘value’, when we talk
about thinking the same thought and sharing the same value.
Rex Martin (1985) raises a difficulty with the conceptual view of empathy that is
concerned with the historian’s attempt to establish the identity of the thoughts and values
of historical agents who lived in a form of life different from her own by applying
conceptual criteria of identity provided by her own society. He contends that the
historian’s conceptual criteria are applicable only within her own linguistic community,
because they depend on how mental concepts and the concept of identity are actually
used in her language. Martin assumes that if mental concepts are used differently by
historical agents, or if they use different mental concepts and a different concept of
identity in describing their mental acts, this implies that they also have different
conceptual criteria for identity. Second, Martin holds that those who accept the view that
the identity of mental events can be established by conceptual criteria presupposes that
the historian can understand past or culturally different thoughts and actions only by
reference to the ‘rules of understanding’ that draw on institutions, practices and traditions
from her own society. Martin concludes that the conceptual view of identity breaks down
where the historian confronts a form of life that is very different from her own. That is, if
the historian does not understand the mental concepts which the inhabitants of such a
form of life use in talking about their mental occurrences and their identity, it arises that
the historian cannot establish the identity of their mental events or the identity of thoughts
and values.
I do not think that the conceptual view of empathy precludes the historian from
establishing the identity of, or understanding, past and culturally distant thoughts and
values as Martin suggests. First, the historian must adhere to the rules concerning mental
concepts and the words ‘the same’. Second, it does not follow from the conceptual view
that the historian is forced to accept the idea that it is only by making use of her own
‘rules of understanding’ (from her linguistic community) that she can render the thoughts
and values of the historical agent intelligible. It is true to say that it is only in relation to
the concepts current in the historian’s society that she can render the mental concepts and
criteria of identity of historical agents intelligible to herself. In that sense the historian
sees the past through ‘lenses of her own grinding’. But if the historian wants to
understand the agent’s thoughts, values and actions, she tries to take into account their
mental concepts and criteria for identity. When the historian attempts to grasp the agent’s
concepts, a foothold is provided by the common concepts and practices that link both
societies. For example, if the historian is studying the works of medieval troubadours, she
has to gain a mastery of the concepts in terms of which they describe experiences and
make judgements about their identity (e.g. ennoblement, noblesse oblige, courtly love).
Although the way of life of medieval troubadours differs substantially from our modern
western way of life, the historian finds some common practices and concepts that provide
her with a link to the past. For example, the historian may be familiar with the treatment
of love and conflict in modern lyrics, and with concepts such as ‘honour’ and ‘lust’ even
though she cannot take it for granted that they have the same significance for medieval
troubadours as for people in her own society. It is also important to stress that conceptual
criteria need not exclude empirical criteria. When the historian tries to establish the
identity of troubadour’s experiences by making use of their conceptual criteria of identity
and their descriptions of their experiences, she may also use some empirical criteria of
identity. For example, the historian may use descriptions given by a troubadour’s
contemporaries of the consequences of his work as evidence when she attempts to
establish the identity of their experiences. Following on from Hegel, Croce and
Collingwood, I also believe that it is possible to gain a foothold into a conceptual scheme
that is radically different from our own via opposite or distinct concepts. Thus even when
a conceptual scheme is radically different from our own, we can use opposites to ‘flip
over’ into that conceptual scheme and proceed from that point to grapple with the other
concepts that are initially unintelligible to us.
That the historian’s empathetic account of the historical agent’s ideas and values
should cohere raises two familiar objections. The first is that coherent systems of ideas
and values may have no existential grounding. The second is that a coherence criterion
misrepresents actual persons and peoples by its inability to accommodate the measure of
incoherence that actual lives exhibit. The first objection to the coherence criterion is met
by the stipulation that the requisite coherence is not simply of ideas and values alone, but
also of conduct and events recorded in documentary and material evidence. This is the
thinking behind Collingwood’s (1993) suggestion that the historian creates a’web of
significance’ that is fixed down at points with evidence. Taylor (1985) provides a good
response to the second criticism. Methodological reliance on a coherence criterion, he
writes:
is not to say that all behaviour must ‘make sense’, if we mean by this be
rational, avoid contradiction, confusion of purpose, and the like. Plainly a
great deal of our action falls short of this goal. But in another sense, even
contradictory, irrational action is ‘made sense of when we understand why
it is engaged in. We make sense of an action when there is coherence
between the actions of the agent and the meaning of his situation for him.
(p. 24)
Taylor’s point is that what we are looking for is the terms in which an historical agent’s
action seemed to make sense to him.
Krausz (1993) believes that using empathy to grapple with conceptual schemes very
different from our own raises the question ‘whether [the historian] could, in that scenario,
continue to recognize [her]self as the culturally embodied person that [she] is’ (pp. 90–1).
Such a loss of identity is at the heart of Skidelsky’s (1988) complaint that simply by
choosing for study historical agents who hold values and ideas similar to her own, the
teacher can use empathy as an indoctrinatory tool. In reply, I contend that empathy does
not preclude the occupation of more than one perspectival world. When we identify with
certain thoughts and values, the identification may be either exploratory or committed.
When the identification is exploratory, we suspend the beliefs and values that we are
committed to in order to try and understand the other viewpoint. When the identification
is committed, we substitute new values or ideas for old ones. Thus in exploratory
identification, ‘their lights’ are ‘our lights’ for as long as it takes us to make sense of
them. For example, in empathizing with Emmeline Pankhurst, I initially suspend belief in
my own values and ideas to make sense of hers, even though I may not consider them
ordinarily acceptable. This suspension of disbelief does not make the understanding of
conceptual frameworks simply a passive one which excludes the possibility of evaluating
and criticizing the alien values and ideas under study. Not only can the historian ask
whether Emmeline was right to do X in the light of her own ideas and values, but she can
also evaluate Emmeline’s actions in the light of ideas and values held by other
contemporaries. She can even evaluate them in the light of modern ideas and values. That
is, empathy allows the historian to ‘step back’ to critically consider the ideas and values
under study. Thus empathy does not preclude criticism of others’ ideas and values, either
by standards internal to the perspectival world of the historical agent or by such external
standards as their compatibility with alternative ideas and values (including one’s own).
Such a view of empathy is seen in Russell’s (1945) comment on philosophy:
In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor

contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to
know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival
of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state
of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held.
Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with
the second, (p. 39)
The key to successful empathizing, it seems, is shifting from suspending one’s disbelief
about another’s ideas and values to the critical evaluation of those same ideas and values.
Viewed in this way, I think that it is fair to say that studying historical agents through
empathy can help the student to see her own ideas and values in a new light or help her to
modify them. This comes about when the student moves from exploratory to committed
identification. That is, the student takes on some of the ideas and values of the historical
agent. Given what empathy can allow the student to achieve, what ethical issues arise
from its use in history education?
The limits of empathy
Fundamental to much of the literature on empathy and education is the belief that many
positive benefits are thought to accrue to those who recognize and appreciate alternative
ideas, values and patterns of conduct. Empathy is thought to be the hallmark of an ethical
life, and as such, should be developed in students. Those students who fail to empathize
with historical agents do so simply because they are unable to let go of their own ideas,
values and patterns of conduct or because they have not worked hard enough at it. Whilst
I think that there is much to these points, I also believe that they ignore the crucial
question of whether there are cases in which empathy is inappropriate. That is, can a
student’s failure to empathize with a historical agent ever be justified, and do teachers
have any obligation to restrict the choice of agents that students are to empathize with?
At first sight, answering these questions may seem a simple matter. History, it might
be replied, should be studied for its own sake, not harnessed to meet the aims of moral or
values education. Thus the teacher should not restrict the choice of agents studied.
Furthermore, it might be claimed that the study of history requires an open-minded
consideration of alternative ideas, values and patterns of conduct, and that any student
who fails to display such open-mindedness should be taught to do so. Both of these
claims are naïve. First, history education is selective. This is not just because teachers and
curriculum planners cannot hope to cover the entire range of historical events or
discussions on the nature of history, but because they want to educate students in
particular directions. Designing a history course is not a matter of ‘we shouldn’t try to
influence students at all’ or ‘if we cannot help influencing students then we might as well
influence them in the right direction’ but of formulating aims in the light of society’s
plural values, aims which change as society changes. Recent literature on history
education stresses that courses should develop critical thinking, self-reflection, a love of
knowledge, knowledge of the history of one’s community, other communities from
around the world and debates on the nature of history, and an awareness of and respect
for alternative ideas and values.
Second, dismissing other people’s ideas, values and modes of conduct out of hand can
be reasonable. It all depends, as Jackson (1992) points out, on why we reject them. It
would be unreasonable to dismiss another person’s values, ideas or modes of conduct
merely because they do not fit in with our own current repertoire of values, ideas or
modes of conduct. It might be reasonable, on the other hand, to refuse to suspend
disbelief about an historical agent’s ideas and values on moral grounds. For example,
would it be reasonable for a student to refuse to empathize with someone she considered
to be a cruel murderer? It seems that if open-mindedness is a virtue that we want to
cultivate, it must be critical open-mindedness displayed not by those who are willing to
contemplate every view, but by those who can recognize when a particular view deserves
a hearing and when it does not.
On what grounds are we to prohibit students from empathizing with particular
historical agents or to decide that a student was reasonable not to empathize with an
agent? Many political, legal and moral writings suggest that a necessary condition for the
restriction of any activity is its being harmful. Actions and practices which are not
harmful should thus be tolerated. Such a view is clear in Mill’s (1974) statement that ‘the
only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over a member of a civilised
community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’ (p. 68). Despite its apparent
simplicity, Mill’s principle has been subject to much debate about how one can
distinguish harmful practices from those which are not. One need not try very hard to
think of a range of activities charged with being harmful by their critics while their
adherents defend them as at least harmless and even positively beneficial. A clear
example of this is seen in the debate about pornography. In the case of the history
teacher, confusion about the meaning of ‘harmful’ is compounded by the fact that a
historical agent’s ideas, values and modes of conduct may tend to harm students, not that
they actually will harm them. The difficulty here is finding evidence that an agent’s views
and modes of conduct will lead to harm.
Faced with such a situation, it is tempting for the teacher to refrain from asking the
unanswerable question ‘will this historical agent’s views and modes of conduct tend to
harm students?’ in favour of the easier question ‘would I be shocked or offended by this
person’s views or modes of conduct?’. In doing so, however, the teacher ignores the fact,
first, that there are many views and modes of conduct that we dislike or disapprove of yet
not think harmful and that the study of them may even prove conducive to moral
development; second, that in a culturally plural society such as ours there are bound to be
views and modes of conduct that offend one’s students but not oneself. For example,
would it be too much to ask the Jew to empathize with the Nazi, the Australian
Aboriginal with the European settler and the female with the misogynist?
It might be more promising for the teacher to take ‘harmful’ to mean ‘unjust’. The
case for developing empathy in students rests mainly on the necessity to coexist in a
culturally plural society in peace, a necessity which requires us to recognize and tolerate
alternative views and modes of conduct. But the same necessity also requires that we set
limits to toleration and thus to empathy, which correspond to our understanding of what
justice requires of us. Here justice not only refers to the law, but the right distribution of
benefits in society. There is, as MacIntyre (1981, 1988) has pointed out, little agreement
in our time about the meaning of justice, but irrespective of this, our society cannot do
without it. In thinking about justice, the aim is not to produce a timeless theory, but to
spell out the ideas, values and modes of conduct that we believe to be good for a
multicultural liberal democracy. What we believe to be good is revisable in the light of
changes in society and also by critiques provided by groups like educators. Taking stock
of both society’s understanding of justice as well as that of specialist groups is necessary
if we are to work out the benefits and limits of empathy. As well as working out what
justice requires of us, there are further questions that the history teacher needs to address.
First, this account assumes that the injustice of the historical agent’s ideas and values is
manifest. What if there is a measure of doubt about it? Should we still include that agent
in our course of study? Second, would filtering our choice of historical agents to be
studied through the lens of justice give students a highly distorted view of past ideas and
values? Should they not see the unjust as well as the just? Could studying unjust ideas
ever help to throw our own ideas and values into relief and perhaps even modify current
views and values for the better? For instance, would studying slavery help students to
appreciate and contribute to modern attempts to achieve racial equality? Is it possible that
preventing students from studying unjust views might just draw more attention to those
views? I am sure that the list of questions that I have raised here is far from exhaustive,
but it shows us how much work still needs to be done on the ethical dimension of
empathy.
Conclusion
Empathy, as we have seen in this discussion, can allow us to explore and evaluate the
ideas and values of historical agents. It can do much to enrich our understanding of past
events and help us to recog-nize and appreciate alternative ideas, values and modes of
conduct. As such it can play an important part not only in history education, but also in
values education and moral education. Furthermore, it can help the student to examine
and appreciate her own ideas, values, and modes of conduct and those of her community.
Empathy can thus foster an appreciation of the many views that give shape to our society
today. But empathy can also expose us to ideas, values and modes of conduct that we
consider to be offensive or morally objectionable and that we cannot tolerate, even in an
exploratory fashion. Whilst the benefits of empathy have long been declared by history
teachers, little thought has been given to the issues of whether students are ever right to
refuse to empathize with an agent or whether some agent’s views and modes of conduct
should not be studied for fear of harming students. Having made some progress towards
the clarification of the concept, it is time that we looked to the ethical implications of its
use. Though there are many disagreements about what is harmful and what is not, I think
that we can get somewhere if we base our considerations on what we believe as a society
justice requires of us. Justice, so viewed, is everyone’s business, but surely as educators
we have a special responsibility towards children to chart the benefits and limits of
empathy.
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17
Language Education for a Pluralistic
Society
ELISABETH GFELLER
1. Diversity and change
Change seems to be one of the most constant factors in today’s society, even if the type
of change that different societies have experienced this century varies considerably. For
the members of a tribal community, change may have meant access to and/ or knowledge
about electricity, modern transporation and mass media in the nearer or wider
neighbourhood. An urban dweller in an industrialized country may have experienced
change as a multitude of new choices, whether of consumer goods or with regard to
transport and information systems, including electronic media and ‘virtual reality’.
Technical developments have brought closer the strange and foreign, both things and
people, whether virtually or actually. The acceleration of change in space and time make
it an omnipresent feature touching material, intellectual and spiritual levels.
Constant change brings diversity into focus and may cause insecurity; the average
human being cannot cope with limitless diversity. Some kind of simplifying principle is
necessary to make a pluralistic, heterogeneous reality thinkable and liveable, cognitively
understandable, psychologically bearable and practically manageable.
It seems that unifying principles develop in at least two different directions. One can
be summarized by the terms ‘generalization’ or ‘globalization’. ‘Globalization’ includes
economic, technical and cultural factors and is characterized by a supposedly worldwide
presence and accessibility. Whilst a global claim may be justified in terms of
geographical expansion, it is limited to an elite with access to electronic media by virtue
of education and wealth. It tends to look at outsiders as irrelevant, old-fashioned and
underdeveloped. Another unifying principle is particularism. It is characterized by an
emphasis on separateness, purity and intimacy. Internal differences tend to be overlooked
and moral judgements tend to be used to establish strong boundaries between ‘insiders’
and ‘outsiders’.
Hierarchical categorization is probably one of the most widespread ordering
principles, in open as well as in closed societies.
Are there any generally acceptable principles that help to balance the need for unity
and actual diversity? How can individuals and groups deal with diversity and change?
What, if any, are the values that can unite whole societies? What are the principles that
can systematize diversity on a worldwide scale without losing their relevance in the
immediate context and for concrete action?
Language education for a pluralistic society 253
L’affirmation de l’unité, de la suprématie de l’unité, peut avoir partie liée

avec les formes totalitaires, qu’il s’agisse d’une unité théologiquement
fondée, gérée par une religion d’Etat et exclusive, ou idéologiquement
imposée et bureaucratiquement amintenue, réalisée par les totalitarisme
modernes, ou d’une unité déjà constitutée par le marché (ou en formation)
dans le cadre d’une ‘économic monde? à contrôle unique ou directorial.
Dans le domaine du politique, la reconnaissance du pluriel s’allie à la
démocratie, à la multiplicilà du social et des relations et ‘associations’ qui
l’experiment, à certaines formes de l’individualisme. Et aussi à la
reconnaissance des nations et des cultures qui leur sont liées—dans toute
leur diversité.
Pour ce qui est de la culture—porteuse du sens pour les individus et les
collectifs, pourvoyeuse de ‘modèles’ directeurs et de moyens, et liant
social-, il importe de rappeler qu’elle sert à la fois l’unité et la pluralité.
Elle opère en oscillation entre ces deux extrêmes: celui de la culture
assimilatrice qui digère les particularités, celui de la culture plurielle qui
maintient les coexistences au prix d’une unité affaiblie.
Le rappel est simplificateur, mais il est nécessaire: il nous impose une
constante: le continuel ‘débat’ et le continuel jeux de force entre unité et
diversité ou pluralité. (Balandier, 1992:35–36)1
Balandier makes culture the ‘place’ where unity and diversity are dealt with. Cultures
create various means to balance assimilation of change and maintenance of tradition.
They provide the framework within which specific ‘relationships between collective
behaviour, values and organisations’ (Mercure, 1993, p. 3) are shaped and make up the
dynamics of society. It is significant that he questions whether culture should be used in
its singular or plural form. On the one hand, a single culture at a specific point of
development will be recognized as a unity with specific characteristics, distinct from
others; on the other hand, culture as a unity is always an abstraction that absorbs
differences by emphasizing certain features and neglecting others. If we look at
postmodern societies, the focus will be on diversity, whereas cultures more distant in
time and space appear as units.
Taking unity and diversity as two opposites that can shape a culture, we can associate
a set of values and options that are more likely to be produced by each of them.
Unity as a prevalent value will shape a culture that emphasizes features like authority
and hierarchy. Adherents may accept an all-embracing principle or person to guide
decision-making, often deriving its legitimacy from a transcendental source. ‘Good’ and
‘Bad’ may be defined in a specific, detailed manner and claim absolute acceptance. If that
is the case, a strong boundary between insider and outsider may be drawn and with it, the
tendency to become a closed society (Milroy, 1992). Assimilation, submission and
obedience to a prevalent power, institution or system may be cultivated. As long as unity
and its specific features are chosen, rather than enforced, values restricted to a
psychologically manageable group, they may promote intimacy and solidarity. Under
certain conditions, unity may be necessary for immediate, powerful action. Driven to its
extreme, it may become uniformity or abstract generality, devoid of sense and
personality, without relevance to a specific context or to reality.
Diversity as a prevalent value will emphasize interaction and communication,

individual freedom and activity. For a pluralist society to function, tolerance will be an
essential virtue for all of its members. Autonomy and self-reliance may be necessary for
the individual entity to survive and grow. Power may be achieved through conviction or
manipulation. Democracy and negotiated consensus may slow down action and make
immediate action impossible but they guarantee more complete implementation of
decisions. Creativity in finding solutions to problems is preferred to obedience to an
imposed plan of action. Driven to its extreme, it may result in cultural relativism. Linked
with an overemphasized individualism and lacking communication, it may threaten social
cohesion and lead to fragmentation.
These associations related to unity and diversity are not exhaustive; other factors could
be added, other variations could be proposed. Any specific culture or subculture will
combine elements of both and grow into a value system that can produce any
combination of the values mentioned. Nevertheless, it seems that at the end of the
twentieth century, a profound shift is taking place: values connected with unity tend to be
related to the past, whilst those connected with diversity may be linked rather to the
present or future and judged modern or postmodern.
The complex realities of our world become more visible and make a homogeneous
attitude towards values suspect. At the same time we realize that values as guides for
decisions and actions cannot be indefinitely multiplied, that in certain circumstances they
may contradict each other and some preference or hierarchical principle will be applied.
If in the past preference was given to the ability to integrate into and understand a pre-
existing (value) system, the future may increasingly call for the ability to change from
one system to another. Sensitivity to social and cultural implicits and flexibility in
moving from one culture to another may be values to be promoted and given priority
before others.
Given that education is one of the most influential factors in transmitting values and
knowledge from one generation to another, how does it deal with diversity? How does
formal education, known for its adherence to traditional values (Oelkers, 1992, esp. ch. 2,
Watson, (1992, p. 243), prepare the next generation to cope with the new situation of
increasing diversity and accelerated change?
2. Unity and diversity in education
The challenges to education are great in a world which is

increasingly multicultural. As the process of globalisation
becomes a more immediate reality for the planet’s
population, so also comes the realisation that ‘my
neighbour may no longer be like me’. For many people,
this may come as a shock because it challenges traditional
stable visions of neighbourhood, community and nation: it
questions long-established ways of relating to one’s fellow
human beings and it turns ethnic diversity into the stuff of
everyday life. (Delors, 1996, p. 229)
In all societies, formal education systems are seen by

governments, at least, as transmitters of knowledge,
customs and social values. In ethnically/ culturally diverse
societies, however, certain difficulties arise because
minority groups, be they ethnic, religious or linguistic,
may perceive the education system as providing and
transmitting the cultural values of the majority group
which they fear or reject as subversive of their own
culture. (Watson 1992, p. 246)
These quotations indicate two major areas where different solutions will be applied,
depending on the basic emphasis: if that emphasis is on unity, then the most prestigious
and powerful group that commands the existing structures will probably tend to shape
and influence, at least implicitly, what kind of values, developments and languages will
be given priority. In the past education systems were influenced to a large degree by
unifying tendencies through nation states, but in postmodern society this is giving way to
a variety of developments summarized by the term ‘globalization’.
Pring (1992) takes a moderate unifying approach towards education. He expects
reason to be a universal value independent of cultural influence, able to guide judgement
as to whether to accept or reject, if not whole cultures, at least certain of their aspects. At
the same time he insists on openness toward ‘other’ cultures. He takes an expressly elitist
and unidirectional stand towards education, but insists on the necessity for tolerance
towards ‘otherness’.
To be rational is indeed to give reasons; it is to respect basic rules of

logic; it is to ensure consistency in argument. But it is also to be open to
others’ reasons; it is open to speculate and to deliberate when new
perspectives are suggested: it is to reflect on experience and others’
interpretation of it; it is to be always less than certain about one’s own
view of things and thus to be ready to learn from other, culturally different
perspectives. (Pring, 1992, p. 27)
Emphasizing a pluralistic view, Reich (1994, p. 78) indicates the necessity of a change of
educational paradigms. In describing the resurgence and development of intercultural
education, he shows how it has brought the necessity for interaction between different
groups into focus, but that it has not completely avoided monopolizing its own views. He
insists on the appropriateness of multicultural education, but in indicating the relevance
of other societal problems (peace, environment, social inequality, development of
interpersonal relationships), he accepts certain limits on its universal claim.
Die interkulturelle Pädagogik hat ihre Nothelferfunktion erfüllt und ihre

Blütezeit gehabt. Es ist ihr schwergefallen oder schwer gemacht worden,
eine Pädagogik für den Normalfall zu werden und den selbstgesetzten
Anspruch, ein Bildungskonzept für alle zu sein, zu erfüllen. (Reich, 1994,
p. 73)
Die Zentralität (interkultureller Bildung) ins Bewusstsein gehoben zu

haben, ist vielleicht das wichtigste Verdienst der interkulturellen
Pädagogik. Die gegenwärtigen Prozesse kultureller Pluralisierung sind so
tiefgreifend, dass eine Verständigung über die Regeln des
gesellschaftlichen Miteinander erforderlich geworden ist. Bildung heute
soll diese Verständigung ermöglichen, indem sie Denk-,
Kommunikations—und Handlungsmöglichkeiten eröffnet, die einen
zivilisierten Umgang mit der Alltags-Kulturen-Vielfalt wahrscheinlicher
machen. (Reich 1994, p. 77)2
Education itself cannot solve the intercultural problems of a pluralistic society. If changes
are as profound as Reich indicates, all individual and collective actors are challenged to
deal with the problems. Nevertheless, education must rise to these new challenges. For
Reich, part of the educational task is to provide cognitive orientation for pluralism as well
as decision-making strategies for individual and cultural development. Assuming that its
role is to convey visions and to reinforce mechanisms that prepare the young generation
to cope adequately with the demands of society, dealing with diversity is one of its tasks
that has theoretical as well as practical components.
Some features can be specified that may clarify this dual task. Satisfying the demand
for cognitive orientation, a system or framework is necessary that identifies relevant
features, sets them in relation to each other and is applicable to specific contexts. In such
a system there should be a tool that enables us to interpret and deal with a variety of
recurring circumstances in real life.
Simplifying possible features to a few recurring ones results in the following:
• Common values, universally accepted principles serve as unifying factors. Different
authors name different values that might qualify as universal without giving an
extensive list. Baumann (1987) mentions survival and balances it with responsibility
and human dignity, Oelkers (1992) proposes justice and respect for human life and
nature, Lynch, Modgil and Modgil (1992) refer to human rights and anti-racism. All
these authors indicate that the relationship between values and behaviour is
ambiguous: on the one hand, they need interpretation to be applicable to specific
contexts; on the other hand, adherence to certain values and principles does not
automatically produce the corresponding behaviour. Both these factors reduce the
universal claim of common values.
• Acceptance of and respect for diversity is a crucial value in a pluralist society. This
includes a consciousness, even assertion, of one’s own individual and collective
identity, the ability to express it and distinguish it from others. It also includes the
readiness to limit one’s own development for the sake of other individual and/or
collective identities. Whilst certain individual rights have been established since the
French Revolution, the claim for collective rights has become important in recent
years and they are pronounced within the UNESCO framework (linguistic and ethnic
minority rights).
• Interaction and an emphasis on relationships takes preference over definition of parts or
establishment of categories (Abdallah-Pretceille, 1994, p. 205). Ideally they provide a
bridge between different value systems (cultures) and help minimise the contrast
between values in their application to behaviour. Such effective interaction is

characterized by an openness towards the unknown and the new.
Eine Voraussetzung, die sich nichttrivial formulieren lässt, ist

Nichtwissen, also der Umgang mit Neuem ausserhalb der gegeben V
erstehenshorizonte. Damit sind Überraschungen verbunden, Rätsel,
Aufregung, Geduld, Behutsamkeit, ehrliche Versuche, also ein
experimentelles Lernen, wie Dewey es beschrieben hat. (Oelkers
1992:154)3
Pring as well as Oelkers and others call for cultivation of flexibility and openness towards
‘otherness’. Looking at educational systems, what kind of changes would they need to
apply generally in order to incorporate these demands adequately? What kind of changes
would be necessary to provide a widespread pluralistic conceptualization and to make
multicultural or cross-cultural interaction everyday practice for a wide range of groups
and individuals? How would curriculum and methodological approaches be affected?
What is left to attitudinal and behavioural implementation on the part of the educational
personnel?
Strategies for multicultural education propose to implement it in the areas of social
studies relevant to education, through comparative studies evaluating sameness and
differences between cultures which enable to distinguish between aspects worthy of
transmission and aspects to be discouraged (Pring, 1992, p. 21). Lynch (1986)
enumerates some multicultural paradigms: ethnic studies, human relations (or
interculturalism), language provision and antiracist education.
Language is a crucial part of communication, especially in the context of formal
(heavily decontextualized) education. Language acquisition, however, does not lend itself
easily to flexibility, given the time and effort it takes to learn a new language to
functional proficiency. Is this the reason that multicultural education concepts rarely give
language education a prominent place?
The following pages will focus on language as a vital, inevitable ingredient of
education and interaction. What models have been elaborated and how are they
implemented? Do they deal effectively with the complexity of possible multilingual
situations and how do they avoid the tendency to unify by overlooking minorities? What
are adequate models for language education that appropriately prepare the students for a
pluralistic, multicultural society?
3. Multilingual education
Linguistic requirements for an individual living in a pluralistic, multilingual society will

be diverse and complex. An infinite number of varying situations is possible demanding
different and constantly changing language proficiency. Even if we accept the need for or
the existence of a generally used lan-guage on a global or national level, it may be that
only a minority of individuals will be able to satisfy their communication needs with that
one single language. Even if we look at certain local neighbourhoods, we may encounter
several languages.
In industrialized countries, multilingualism may be caused mainly but not exclusively

by immigrant groups; in developing countries, ethnic groups comprise the multilingual
setting. Both situations require some sort of multilingual proficiency. The treatment of
minority languages will be crucial to provide a balance between the need for unity and
the acceptance of diversity.
There may be many reasons to emphasize one language and to marginalize others in
an education system. The demand for equal acceptance of minority languages in
education complicates administration and probably threatens traditional curricula. A truly
pluralistic representation of culture and languages still comes up against a basically
monolingual conception of political and administrative units. Whilst a variety of
experiments in multilingual education have been carried out all over the world, they have
rarely been extended to the whole education system and have never included all
languages used as a means of communication in a specific country.
Hornberger (1991, p. 223) summarizes basic models in Table 17.1. The transitional
model emphasizes the unifying component in that it expects minority language speakers
to adjust to a majority language. Schooling in this model allows for a transitional period
where minority language students are supposed to learn the majority language to a
proficiency sufficient to pursue all studies in the majority language.
The maintenance model incorporates minority languages into the school curriculum in
a more or less marginalized manner. It accepts the prevalence of a majority language, but
leaves enough room in or around the curriculum allowing for the continuous use of
minority languages. It does not expect them eventually to disappear.
Hornberger’s enrichment model takes linguistic diversity and multilingualism
(individual and societal) as a richness, not as a problem. It envisages the school
producing bilingual individuals, including majority language speakers. Whereas the
enrichment model prepares best and most appropriately for a pluralistic, multilingual
environment, Hornberger (1991, p. 225) characterizes it as Utopian, in the sense of a
generalized bilingual proficiency, whereas in reality, bi- or multilingualism is expected
from minority speakers and from elite groups (except English mother tongue speakers?),
but not from the population at large. In a given area (e.g. US, European countries)
speakers of a majority language generally expect to be able to fulfil all their
communicative needs with one language.
Two main problems make generalized bilingualism appear Utopian: on the one hand
the reluctance of majority language speakers to learn a minority language, and on the
other hand the multiplicity of minority languages.
If we assume that the term majority is not restricted to numeric superiority but
includes dominance, prestige and power positions, majority language speakers generally
expect minority language speakers to adjust to their language and acquire the necessary
proficiency to make communication possible and not vice versa. Adhering to the
territorial language principle, a language is not seen as means of communication for (a)
group(s) of people, but is associated with a certain territory and its structures, for instance
German with Germany, Austria and some parts of Switzerland; English with the US,
Britain, Australia; French with France, some parts of Canada, Belgium and Switzerland.
In the former colonial territories French and English, for instance, are considered to be
dominant languages on the basis of their power and prestige position. Parallel to the
Middle Ages principle of distribution of religion (cujus regio, ejus religio) we can still
say ‘cujus regio, ejus lingua’. The average citizen in a society with a multilingual
immigrant population may not realize what kind of a power position he takes when
insisting on a linguistic assimilation of the immigrants.
The multiplicity of minority languages is seen as a problem for perceptual and
administrative reasons.
Table 17.1 Bilingual education model types
Transition model Maintenance model Enrichment model
language shift language maintenance language development
cultural assimilation strengthening cultural identity cultural pluralism
social incorporation civil rights affirmation social autonomy
The fact that language proficiency cannot easily be changed from one language to
another considerably limits the potential flexibility in language use and mobility from one
language community to another. We do not expect effective communication to
accommodate features of a multiplicity of languages in a single conversation, even
though mixing (especially borrowing from English) is widely used in trivial language. It
is also ‘natural’ among multilingual interlocutors who have at least some proficiency in
the same languages.
Effective communication may not primarily be a problem for a specific minority
language community as long as there are enough speakers to allow for group functions. It
becomes a problem in interaction with institutions dealing with multicultural membership
and clientele, when communication items are expected to reach different linguistic
communities (governmental decrees, expansion of any kind, mass education). For a
linguistic minority the small number of speakers may present a problem when modern
means of reproduction require large numbers of editions to be cost-effective.
The administration of a multiplicity of languages may appear as an insurmountable
problem in formal, classroom-bound education systems. The smallest entity that would
probably require a single language is the classroom and/or teacher. (Exceptions exist in
bilingual experiments, where teachers and pupils have some proficiency in at least two
mutually shared languages.) A typical class in a multilingual environment may consist of
speakers of several minority and majority languages. Reciprocity in language learning (‘I
learn your language, you learn mine’) would only be possible for a limited number of
students. Class size as a criterion for the acceptance of a minority language or the
separation of schools on a linguistic basis may appear to encourage separatism and hinder
integration.
Slightly different aspects of the majority-minority language problems are to be
encountered in developing countries. In Africa, for instance, the dominant ‘imported’
language rarely covers the full spectrum of language functions in any given area.
Although it is the language of an ever-increasing elite, communication in local
communities and in the (extended) family is in one of the numerous local languages. A
relatively strong cohesion between rural and urban members of an extended family, as
well as cultural associations that unite urban settlers along ethnic and/or linguistic lines,
make it almost impossible to avoid a minority language completely. Some degree of
bilingualism including a local language is necessary to function fully in public and

private life. Monolingualism in the official language restricts communication to
superficial and official interaction or interaction with elite groups, as proficiency in
official languages may be limited in the wider population. In the case of minority
language monolingualism, access to written communication and interaction with official
structures is restricted or impossible. Often an African language of wider communication
(LWC) is used in trade situations, so that in any specific area, at least three languages are
used concurrently: an indigenous local language, the official language and an African
LWC.
Monolingual education in an official language was widely accepted in the past.
Upward mobility was closely linked with official language proficiency. In recent years
however, this belief is severely threatened by the degradation of the economic situation
and structural adjustment plans so that the discussion about more appropriate education
models is intensified.
4. The model of extensive trilingualism
Tadadjeu (1980) proposes a trilingual model for language education in Africa. This
model takes into account the different functions of different languages in a multilingual
setting. Two basic functions are defined and assigned to different language groups: a
home-identity function for L1 (first local language) and an expansion mobility function
for an African LWC and/or a (foreign) official language:
The model is functional in that the language skills to be developed in each

language must correspond to the predominant social functions that it
actually serves. For example, some of the predominant functions of L1 are
oral communication, culture transmission, formal socialization and basic
literacy; those of a second African language could be socialization and
culture learning; and those of the official language could be specialized
communication (e.g. science and technology). (Tadadjeu, 1980:51)
Gfeller (1997b) tries to generalize this model by slightly changing the distribution of the
language groups and the function of the third language.
Table 17.2 Language functions in the extensive
trilingualism model
‘Rootedness’ (home/identity/heritage) Mobility-Expansion Flexibility
Local language Official language Trade, home or official
language
transmission of local cultural knowledge, mobility: geographical, increasing potential for
inheritance social, intellectual integration into various
contexts with either
construction of (symbolic) identity, construction of function: home or expansion
primary socialization (instrumental) identity participation in various

contexts,
participation in the development of local participation in national aiming at functional linguistic
communities and international life competence
instruction of basic knowledge (literacy,
numeracy, immediate environment
Sources: Adapted from Gfeller, 1997b
Interviews with various education personnel showed that proficiency in the first (home,
local) and second (official) language was necessary for every Cameroonian (and probably
any African); the third, fourth etc. languages are supposed to provide the individual with
the necessary flexibility to function in a multilingual environment. The language that can
promote such flexibility may vary according to personal needs and career goals.
5. Extensive trilingualism and its potential application to different

multilingual environments
Can the trilingual model be applied to any multi-lingual education setting? Does it
correspond to the demands of a pluralistic society in acknowledging the need for
generalization as well as respect for diversity? Does it strengthen the individual’s self-
esteem on the one hand and ability for tolerance on the other hand, abilities that seem
crucial to live and survive in a pluralistic society?
It is not possible to discuss every potential combination between languages and their
basic functions. Neither space nor the knowledge of the author would allow it. Some
contexts are chosen for discussion that have wide application and potentially different
consequences for education systems.
Language and function

The ‘rootedness’ function is fulfilled by the language of first socialization, integration
into the network of an immediate group where acceptance is experienced and solidarity is
instilled. In different contexts, this function can be met by either a majority or a minority
language; the language of the immediate or local community may or may not be identical
with the home language; home and heritage functions may or may not be covered by the
same language; an individual or a linguistic group may or may not have a single
dominant language to express their identity.
Education systems and decision-makers tend to neglect the rootedness function of
minority language speakers and with it the respect for diversity. This may be inevitable in
view of an extended complexity and diversity. It also shows that respect for diversity is
constantly threatened by established structures and power systems and that in curriculum
planning special attention should be given to this aspect.
The mobility-expansion function satisfies the need to ‘go beyond’, to discover the
world, to interact in a variety of different contexts and to equip for upward mobility.
Literacy competence is a basic requirement for the fulfilment of a large number of
activities permitting mobility. This function may or may not be met by the same language
as the rootedness function; various directions of expansion and development may or may
not demand different languages. The language for mobility may be different on a local,
national, international and global level, in pursuing a scientific, political, economic or
social career. Different proficiency for different kinds of mobility may be required (e.g.
tourism, trade, craftsmanship, industrial communication, academic studies or production).
Communication needs of established structures are best served by one language.
Powerful and prestige structures tend to dictate the language of upward mobility.
Language therefore may be associated with political movements that seek to change
power relationships.
Education systems tend to use a dominant national language as the principal medium
of instruction. In that way they reflect existing power relationships. In order to fulfil the
task of transmitting knowledge to the whole population, it is necessary to provide for
‘other’ language speakers. This requirement is often satisfied not in the general
curriculum but in extra-curricular school or community activities.
The flexibility component satisfies the need for multilingual (not only bilingual)
language abilities. It may be fulfilled by an additional language allowing either for
extended upward mobility or for further integration into a local community (including
minority language communities); linguistic flexibility may be satisfied by as few as two
or three languages, or it may demand a fourth and fifth (e.g. Africans with higher
education usually speak more than three languages). Some proficiency in many languages
may be more useful than high proficiency in one or two languages.
The capacity of school administration may limit the number of languages offered in
the curriculum.
Areas of change
Assuming that multilingual proficiency is necessary or desirable for every individual in a
pluralistic society and that a trilingual curriculum is required to meet these linguistic
needs, some profound changes in the conceptualization of language education may have
to be considered. The need to produce multilingual individuals (not just multilingual
minority language speakers), may require some kind of at least bilingual curriculum right
from the beginning of formal education.
Relation of instructional language and function

Certain relationships between languages and basic functions in the society may be
apparent, but they may not be reflected in the school curriculum. The home/heritage
function filled by minority languages rarely proposes two-way enrichment language
education. If a bilingual curriculum for every pupil is the norm, school administration
would have to provide for different student populations:
1 For minority language students, the distribution of language and function will probably
be the following: the first language (L1) fulfils the home and heritage function, the
second language (L2) allows for integration into a majority language community; this
relationship can be found between immigrant and respective national languages in
European countries, or in Africa where a local language as L1 fulfils the rootedness
function (home, heritage and communication in the local community) and an official
language (OL) as L2 serves as language for mobility (geographical, social and

intellectual).
2 L1 is a majority language fulfilling several functions (home, immediate community and
expansion on the national level) for its speakers; in this case the second language
becomes problematic in a widespread, basically monolingual conceptualization of
formal education. Generalized bilingualism may not be considered necessary. If it is
accepted, various questions may be raised. Should L2 be a language for expansion that
will permit interaction on a global level? (Probably languages like English, Japanese,
Russian, French, Chinese would qualify.) Should it be a language that permits
interaction with linguistic communities in the immediate neighbourhood, necessary for
careers in education, social work, practical medicine, law etc.? (Regionally prevalent
languages of immigrants and/or linguistic minorities would have to be considered.)
Should it be a language permitting interaction with national neighbours? (In countries
like Canada, Belgium, Switzerland other national languages would qualify; in other
countries, it could mean languages spoken in neighbouring countries like for instance
Spanish, Italian, German for France.)
3 No dominant first language is available, and in the (extended) family and/or immediate
neighbourhood at least two different languages or a mixture of languages are already
used even by pre-school children. First socialization happens in more than one
language. This may be the case for children of mixed couples, second generation
immigrant families, for international and government personnel, and for linguistic
boundary areas. Children in such contexts may grow up with no or several dominant
languages. Instead of adapting to different dialects or registers in different social
settings, they may be able to adapt to different languages in different social settings.
Choice of instructional languages

In view of the diversity of possible combinations between languages and basic functions,
the choice for instructional languages may have to be decentralized: the level as well as
the possible participants in a decision-making process may have to be designed instead of
making a choice for specific languages. It would not be practical to choose languages of
instruction on a national level when the linguistic context may vary from school to
school. Instead, it may be necessary to identify principles for choice and a number of
options as well as administrative levels where specific decisions regarding language
choice for education are made.
Practical criteria may have to take precedence in a period of change, when structures
and conceptualizations are influenced mainly by monolingual concepts. The small
number of pupils per age group speaking a specific minority language, the lack of
language proficiency of teachers, and administrative complexity may be practical
problems that need innovative solutions.
Administration of multilingual school programmes

Assuming that education systems in a multilingual society are expected to produce at
least bilingual individuals and give opportunity for at least one more language to be
learnt, and that a considerable number of minority languages qualify as educational
languages and are expected to be used for the teaching of rootedness related instruction,
how could a school administration handle such diversity?
As the distribution of languages used for instruction will depend on language

proficiency and subject content, we may want to distinguish between the beginning of
formal schooling, when the above mentioned linguistic profiles have to be taken into
consideration, and a later stage, when all students have some bilingual language
proficiency.
For initial schooling in a generalized bilingual school programme, we propose the
replacement of subject teaching by different languages streams and content.
In an L1 stream, minority as well as majority language speakers would learn basic
literacy and numeracy, and some aspects of their home culture, through the medium of
their home language. This would afford a grouping of the children according to their first
language, in which they have communicative abilities. A possible solution for minority
languages with few students would be to take several age groups of one particular
language together according to the traditional model of village schools. Children with
multilingual abilities at school entrance may be able to choose a preferred L1 stream. If
none of the languages offered by the available schools suits the home language, various
solutions can be considered: home/distance teaching; special integration class(es)
providing language proficiency in the majority language or an available and related
minority language, etc.
An L2 stream would be initiated into a second language. For minority language
speakers, it would have to be the most common majority language (official, national
language). For majority language speakers, several options are conceivable, based on
criteria similar to those mentioned for flexibility languages: an international, a
neighbouring majority or a minority language could be suggested. Assuming that the
status of minority speaker provides a necessary basis for effective language and culture
learning, a school may demand that majority language speakers learn a minority language
at least for a certain time and/or to perhaps functional proficiency. The choice of a second
language for majority language speakers may be guided by the motivation for (effective)
interaction with one or several specific minority language group(s), or by economic
considerations that would give preference to an international language.
A common stream could be added right from the beginning of formal schooling, but
would be expected to grow and take more time, according to increasing multilingual
abilities of the students. What is it possible to do together in the first months/years, when
no common language is available and when any language produces some kind of
asymmetric communication? Practical activities can be introduced with minimal verbal
communication (like arts, physics, crafts, music), cross-culture learning, some
multilingual competence (different names for most common objects, basic speech acts in
different languages) and competence in asymmetric communication (strategies for
asymmetric interaction: see Py, 1990; Heredia, 1987).
After three to four years, when bi- or multilingual communication becomes functional
(for all pupils), the L1 stream may become heritage or home culture learning and take
less time. L2 may become foreign language learning and include further languages, or it
may allow for in depth learning of one particular ‘other’ language in the L1 stream of a
specific minority culture group. The common stream will increase and specific subject
content may be taught in different languages. A comparative component may introduce
general (meta) linguistic knowledge, based on comparison between the available L1 and
L2. Such a component proved useful in an African context.
The extensive trilingualism was applied to the Cameroonian context in an

experimental school programme (PROPELCA, French abbreviation for: operational
research project for the teaching of languages in Cameroon). The above mentioned
exercises were part of the teacher-training courses. Comparative exercises between
certain grammatical features in local and official languages brought understanding of
each other’s languages, diversity within generally valuable (grammatical) structures and
contributed to strengthen the self image regarding the minority languages. Their
predominantly oral use created the impression that these languages do not have any
grammar at all. This was convincingly disproved with the comparative grammatical
exercises.
Such comparison can be extended to other cultural features and systems, according to
the age and educational background of the students. Depending on the competence in
common languages of students and teachers, multilingual communication may be
possible. A method tried in the PROPELCA project on the secondary school level was
the following: a cultural reader provided identical text in the four most common
languages in a certain area. This enabled the students to read in their own or in one of the
minority languages they had learnt previously and then discuss the text in a commonly
understood (not necessarily spoken) language, or in the official language in which at
secondary level every student has at least functional competence.
Methodological approaches
Such a language-based model would make some methodological changes necessary. Self-
contained classroom teaching, the teacher as transmitter of all necessary knowledge,
would not be suitable. Intensive collaboration with the respective linguistic communities
would be unavoidable, as well as coordination between different teaching personnel that
deal with the same students. Compared with the traditional role of the teachers and their
traditional relationships with students and communities, this may look extremely
Utopian. The role that is assigned to the future teacher (see Delors, 1996) in regard to
methods, classroom organization and relationship with pupils and community, however,
corresponds with this profile. An emphasis on independent learning, interaction between
the teacher and the students, between the teacher and parents, between school and
community is demanded for educational reforms in the post-industrialized nations as well
as in developing countries.
(Future perspectives for education in high-tech contexts)…teachers need

to make efforts to take the learning process outside the classroom:
physically, by practical learning experiences at sites outside schools, and
from the content point of view by linking subject-matter to daily life…
Teachers must adapt their relationship with learners, switching roles from
‘soloist’ to ‘accompanist’, and shifting the emphasis from dispensing
information to helping learners to seek, organize and manage knowledge,
guiding them rather than moulding them. (Delors, 1996, pp. 143–4,
referring to Thompson, 1995)
(Principles for primary school reform) 1. Environment-oriented
development of basic knowledge in reading, writing and arithmetic, and
furtherance of the children’s ability to apply such knowledge later to
changing socio-economic conditions. 2. The school should be a forum in

which community members having special knowledge and skills (e.g.
craftsmen or herbalists [and/or computer, media, etc., specialists] convey
their knowledge to the younger generation. 3. The school building and its
facilities should be kept open to all community members for purposes of
adult education, in particular literacy courses, cultural events or leisure
activities. 4. The teacher should assume the role of organizer or
coordinator of development projects intended to improve the living
standard of the community. (Bude, 1984)
If interaction with the communities is demanded in education for the future, it may be a
possible solution to the problem of lack of linguistic competence in a language-based
programme. If the teacher is a promoter and manager, he/she will regularly draw on the
competence of community members. This may be institutionalized in the case of the
above-mentioned L1 and L2 streams, where lack of pedagogical training of bilingual
minority language speakers and lack of multilingual competence and insight into the
specific minority cultures of pedagogically trained personnel may be matched.
In the common stream, interaction with the home context and cultural background of
the different L1 groups will allow for intercultural learning and multilingual
communication. Practice in self-assertion and tolerance, presentation of different cultural
viewpoints, customs, etc., would be readily available. Basically, the paradigms for inter-
cultural education that Lynch mentions (cited in Watson, 1992, p. 252) can be placed
here: ethnic studies, interculturalism (human relations), language provision, anti-racist
education. Learning objectives regarding content in natural and social studies in lower
classes may only need a slight adaptation. Block teaching, contributions of the students
and research in the immediate community (examples in Heath, 1993) may be well-known
methods to be applied in this stream. If such interaction in and with the community is
pursued systematically throughout primary school, students in higher classes will
automatically grow into participating in community management. This is particularly
helpful in African communities, where the basically oral tradition of minority
communities and literacy requirements for upward mobility happen in different, mostly
unrelated, languages and where only few aspects of local culture have found a place in
the official, mostly official language curriculum.
The comparative approach progressing from concrete, context-related linguistic items
(words, simple speech acts, cultural symbols) to abstract decontextualized concepts
(grammar, social relations and structures, customs, cultural interpretations, political
structures) could be applied to a variety of content and subjects. Such an approach,
systematically used throughout primary and secondary levels, can contribute to
understanding and dealing with cultural differences (including one’s own) in a systematic
manner. It may sharpen the ability to verbalize implicit cultural interpretations, value
judgements and prejudices and take a non-emotional stance towards them. An open
question is how to deal with the emotional aspect of such interaction in the context of
formal education, when either teacher’s or student’s emotions turn into violence or
prolonged withdrawal.
A basically monolingual age group in a completely monolingual context is
disadvantaged in such a programme as intercultural and multilingual interaction would
not be possible among classmates. ‘Other’ language input would have to come from the
teacher(s), from teaching material and from the mass media. ‘Natural’ situations for
language learning and practice of cross-cultural interaction would be reduced, maybe to
artificial bilingual behaviour. Such contexts are assumed to be or becoming rare, if all
minority languages are taken into consideration.
Language competence
Kommunikation gehört nicht zu den bevorzugten Zielen der Erziehung

und Bildung in der Familie und der Schule. Die dabei entstehende
Schwäche in der sprachlichen kommunikativen Kompetenz entspricht
offenbar dem geringeren Anspruch an Kommunikation und der geringen
Chance für Kommunikation in Beruf und Öffentlichkeit. (Müller, 1973)
Müller comes to the above conclusion by looking at the most frequent patterns of official
and educational communication, that is, top-down, highly formalized, even ritualized,
time-usurping monologues of various length. Even if in the last decades language
learning methodology has stressed the importance of communicative competence versus
competence in a highly normalized code, it seems that the generalization of the teaching
of oral competence still meets a lot of difficulties. In addition, knowledge in orthography
and grammar is decisive for promotion, whether because written norms are easier to
measure, or because they are more widely known. If oral and communicative competence
may best be learnt by doing, the traditional school context is best suited to transmit the
knowledge of rules and insight into concepts.
How would the model presented above apply the requirement for communication
competence and formalized language proficiency? Real communication and exchange of
information can be expected to happen mainly in the common stream, especially if a
‘research’ component related to the community is part of the educational routine. If we
think of this common stream as consisting of a group of students with different linguistic
backgrounds, but with some linguistic competence in one or more common languages,
communicative competence may be practised across languages and understanding of
meaning and intention may become more important than ‘correct’, formalized expression.
Diversity of vocabulary and speech forms may be achieved through satisfying the need
for mutual comprehension rather than through conformity to linguistic rituals in class
(e.g. saying a whole sentence in answering a teacher’s question and as a sign of
politeness and language competence). Standardized forms will have to be learnt and
taught in the L1 and L2 streams, ideally as an answer to the communicative needs
encountered in the common stream.
6. Concluding remarks
This chapter has discussed values that support either unifying tendencies or diversity. It
has looked at them with regard to language education and has proposed universal
application of a trilingual language education model. In generalizing language needs and
establishing three different groups, it has suggested some areas of change in traditional,
subject-related curricula that could better prepare the students for intercultural
interaction. Borrowing from old and new methodology, possible ways of realizing such a
model were presented that may bring some solutions to inevitable problems. Proposed
solutions indicate changes of curriculum planning and classroom organization. It did not
touch on psychological factors that would need to be considered in the proposed close
interaction between different cultures and languages.
It has been mentioned that the proposed model has a Utopian feel. This is definitely
true if we look at a possible generalization. Various experimental projects have been
carried in a variety of locations—whether in trilingual education in India and Nigeria as
well as in Cameroon, or in intercultural education—which show that trilingual education
is realizable.
If we anticipate an (increasingly) pluralistic future, language education, and especially
multilingual and multicultural interaction practice, may help to change our basically
monolingual and monocultural conceptualizations and expectations regarding education
and other structures. Respect for minorities and ‘other’ cultures may be best, most
profoundly, demonstrated by linguistic efforts, even though language competence may
not reach native speaker proficiency.
A consistent, generalized, multilingual and multicultural curriculum will not eliminate
linguistic and cultural difference, but practical means and coping mechanisms to
overcome or live with such differences will be more easily applied if they have become
the ‘stuff of everyday’ learning throughout the years of formal education and if dealing
with diversity has become a habit.
The author is aware that the proposed model and its consequences demand profound
changes of attitudes, but is convinced of its reasonableness and basic suitability for any
pluralistic society, and hopes that this or a similar model will eventually be introduced as
a necessary answer to problems of pluralism.
Notes
1 The assertion of unity, of the supremacy of unity, can be linked to totalitarian forms, be it a
theologically based unity, managed by a state religion, exclusively or ideologically imposed
and bureaucratically maintained, implemented by modern totalitarianism, or a unity
constituted (or being formed) by the economy in the context of a ‘global market’ of
directive, unidirectional control. In the area of politics, the acceptance of plurality goes
together with democracy, with the multiplicity of the ‘social’ and the relations and
associations it is expressed by, with certain forms of individualism. Also with accepting
nations and cultures linked to them—in all their diversity.
As far as culture is concerned—bearer of meaning for individuals and

groups, provider of guiding ‘models’ and of means, and social
links—it is important to remember that it serves unity as well as
plurality. It oscillates between these two extremes: the assimilating
culture that ‘digests’ particularities and the pluralistic culture that
maintains coexisting aspects for the price of weakened unity.
A reminder is simplifying, but necessary; it imposes a constant: the

continual ‘debate’ and the continual power play between unity and
diversity or plurality. (Translation by the author)
2 Intercultural pedagogy has fulfilled its function as helper in distress and has passed its peak.
Its generalization and the fulfilment of its self-assigned claim to be an educational model for
all was difficult, or has been made difficult for it.
Probably the most important service of intercultural pedagogy is to

have brought into focus its central position. The actual processes of
cultural pluralization are so profound that a new consensus is
necessary concerning the rules of social coexistence. Education today
is supposed to promote this coexistence by opening up new ways of
thinking, communicating and acting, and there-by to increase the
potential for civilized interaction within an everyday cultural
pluralism. (Translation by the author)
3 A precondition, possible to express in non-trivial form, is ignorance, that is, interacting with
the ‘new’ beyond the realm of established knowledge. Surprise is to be expected with it, and
mysteries, excitement, patience, sensitivity, honest experiments; in summary: experimental
learning, as Dewey calls it.
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18
The Role of Values in Psychology:
Implications for a Reformed Curriculum
BEN BRADLEY
I would like to thank Jane Selby for her careful reading of previous drafts and
information about HEATworks
Psychology’s value
To common sense, the value of a psychological education seems obvious. In the

humanities we are never far from debating what makes people tick, whether our inquiry
concerns the artist, their readers or the characters they together create. In science, as soon
as one starts to speak of the troublesome interrelations between theory and observation,
fact and preconception, one steps into a psychological domain. And day to day, whether
under the stars or at home, in the office or on TV, in novel or nursery rhyme, the whys
and wherefores of our own and others’ doings are staple diet for private reflection, gossip
and friendly deliberation. What better, one would think, than study a subject which bids
fair to unravel the mysteries of the human heart? But the connections between
psychology, culture and values runs deeper than these obvious and perhaps superficial
connections might suggest.
Delve into the past and we discover an august pedigree. In the rise of the natural
sciences during the Enlightenment, psychology had a founding role. As science set aside
divine authority in favour of reason, an insistent query was raised about the
trustworthiness of the senses. An epistemological psychology thus grew up to help
disentangle the knower from the known and provide a firm foundation for our
understanding of the natural world. ‘Thought cannot turn toward the world of external
objects without at the same time reverting to itself; in the same act it attempts to ascertain
the truth of nature and its own truth’ (Cassirer, 1932, p. 93).
Even more fundamental, the very birth of European science had psychological roots.
For the inception of the Royal Society in London was linked, through Comenius and
Samuel Hartlib, to the ‘Invisible College’ of the Rosicrucians. And the Rosicrucian
Enlightenment was intended to usher in a new age by means not only temporal (the
marriage in England of James I’s daughter Elizabeth to the Protestant Frederick V,
Elector Palatine of the Rhine) but intellectual and educational. The Rosicrucian ludibrium
drew on a long philosophical tradition to which Shakespeare’s conception of the Globe
Theatre belongs, a tradition which envisaged drama as a means to bring a new
enlightened understanding of daily affairs to its audience (Yates, 1972). And as the
Enlightenment grew in strength, scientists and philosophers did not relinquish their hope
that a psychological discipline might serve as the basis for a rational reconstruction of
human society. Hence, during the Enlightenment, psychology did not just become a
science. It became the strategic science. And it was strategic not only in offering the
philosophers good ‘scientific’ grounds for their assaults on religion:
it was strategic in the broader sense of radiating out to other sciences of

man, to educational, aesthetic, and political thought—‘general
psychology,’ Dugald Stewart wrote, is ‘the centre whence the thinker goes
outward to the circumference of human knowledge’—and strategic,
finally, because it was the groundwork, the empirical base, of the
Enlightenment’s philosophical anthropology, its theory of man. (Gay,
1969, pp. 167–8).
Any system of government that justifies itself in reason must draw on psychological
ideas. As Cahan and White (1992) relate, a host of speculative psychologies were put
forward during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a basis for proposals for the
design of political representation, governmental structures, criminal justice systems,
schools and social welfare arrangements. For example, both the feminist proposals of
Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) and the Rosicrucian republicanism of Erasmus Darwin
(1803) were explicitly based on associationist psychologies.
In the light of this history, layfolk coming to study the subject for the first time might
be forgiven for thinking that an education in psychology would be simultaneously an
education in the discrimination and discussion of values, values both personal and
political. If so, the incoming students’ expectations will be stood on their head. Students
may go in expecting to study a subject that is humane. But they will come out convinced
that psychology is a science—a science which has no place for an inquiry into values, or
into cultural difference, except insofar as these prove to be impediments to the acquisition
of reliable and objective knowledge (e.g. Howard, 1985). However, as wider debates in
the social sciences begin to open ears in the hallways of psychology departments,
questions about cultural pluralism and the role of values in the study of mental life are
once again being aired. It will not be long, perhaps, before the usually conservative
professional organizations that currently govern the curriculum for teaching (or not
teaching) psychology in schools, colleges and universities get wind of this renewed
debate. If so, the following discussion may prove germane to their deliberations.
Can psychology be value-free?
Psychology is today amongst the most buoyant of academic pursuits. Whether measured
by the rate of growth in student enrolments, the rise in referrals to its practitioners, the
success of its graduates in finding employment, the proliferation of new psycho-
therapies, or sales in popular books on the subject, westerners seem to be living ever
more in what we might dub a psychological age. Basic to its rising profile as a profession
has been psychology’s self-identification as a natural science. No one who has been
trained in the discipline has escaped inculcation into the rigours of experimental
methodology and inferential statistics, courses which are designed to be the backbone of
the discipline’s claims to be as objective a form of inquiry as biology, chemistry or
The role of values in psychology 273
physics. Likewise, no one can negotiate a training in psychology without becoming well-
practised in the use of a vocabulary which, however illegitimately, subverts the need for
debate about the philosophical and moral status of mind and mental life. For example, the
idea that the mind has ‘biological foundations’ is deemed crucial to psychology’s
scientific aspirations (Hetherington, 1983). But this idea begs the possibility that the
discipline investigates a distinctive sphere of phenomena (the psychical) with its own
unique characteristics and peculiarities, phenomena which can only be described in terms
that are incompatible with any vocabulary drawn from the physical or biological sciences
(Davidson, 1974).
In this way, by taking scientists as their role-model, psychologists evade many
questions about the ways culture and value may impregnate their work (John, 1986). For
example, they avoid the embarrassment of admitting that psychological research itself
shows any act of perception to be impregnated with values. Thus, there is growing
evidence from studies of human perception that vision is ‘ill-posed’ in formal terms.
There is never sufficient information in the retinal image uniquely to determine the visual
scene. This means that ‘the brain must make certain assumptions about the real world to
resolve this ambiguity, and visual illusions can result when these assumptions are invalid’
(Bulthoff and Yuille, 1991, p. 286). In fact, the visual system of any animal must provide
‘value perspectives’ that determine the way in which ‘the world’ appears to them. Some
of these perspectives are given to animals as a result of their evolutionary histories.
Others are cultural, imported by learning (Lock, 1996). Yet this is true in any science.
And, whilst it may pose problems for philosophers of knowledge (e.g. Feyerabend,
1975), it does not hinder the progress of science. So why should it hinder psychology?
To Wiener (1948, pp. 189–90), the answer was obvious. All the great discoveries in
science traditionally concern phenomena which live on a different scale from the
scientist:
there is a certain high degree of isolation of the phenomenon from the

observer… We are too small to influence the stars in their courses, and too
large to care about anything but the mass effects of molecules, atoms and
electrons.
The natural scientist can therefore afford to ignore events which might be of the greatest
significance from the point of view of an observer conforming to the scale of existence of
atoms or stars themselves. But in the social sciences, the significance of the culture and
values of the observer for the people they study cannot similarly be minimized. Indeed,
the last two decades has seen a long sequence of publications demonstrating the ways in
which previous psychological research, whilst claiming to be ‘objective’, has been
unwittingly slanted by the specific cultural values of researchers, whether with regard to
race (e.g. Rose, Kamin and Lewontin, 1984), gender (e.g. Caplan and Hall-
McCorquodale, 1985; Gilligan, 1977; Eagly, 1987), age (e.g. Schaie, 1988), class (e.g.
Bramel and Friend, 1981; Walkerdine and Lucey, 1989), development (e.g. Kessen,
1979; Burman, 1994) or cognitive style (e.g. Sampson, 1981).
Of course, the experimental psychologist can retort that to demonstrate that
supposedly objective research is biased is neither to show that all psychological research
is thus flawed nor that the psychologist’s identification with science should forthwith be
abandoned. Rather it is an argument for better, more carefully conducted, more objective,
genuinely value-free scientific research. But the criticism does not stop here. For there is
a contradiction about values at the very heart of the psychological profession.
Professional organizations of psychologists typically espouse two kinds of aim: (1) the
aim to be a science, and (2) the aim to promote human welfare. But, with regard to
values, these two aims clash. When the discipline is seen as just another natural science,
psychologists inevitably assume that they must aspire to view the human world in an
amoral, value-free, neutral way, acting as if immune, indifferent or blind, to social
disadvantage and oppression. ‘There is nothing in the definition of psychology that
dedicates our science to the solution of social problems’, said George Miller (1969, p.
1063) in his famous presidential address to the American Psychological Association. Yet
the idea that psychology should promote human welfare implies the opposite assumption:
that psychologists should take a moral stance. They cannot wash their hands of social
malaise. They must seek to criticize and change whatever blocks the roads to freedom.1
For example, Gordon (1973) argues that it is impossible to have a value-free psychology
with regard to race in the United States of America. Why? Because American
psychologists do not live in an ideal world. They live in a world where blacks are
disadvantaged when compared to whites. A psychology which conducts itself as if the
repression of the black minority can be ignored tacitly condones the status quo.
Alternatively, a psychology which does focus on the topic of racial oppression must
inevitably speak up for blacks. In an unfree world, a value-free psychology cannot
promote human welfare.
This conclusion underlines the fact that, to equate psychology with the natural
sciences and to aspire to value-freedom is itself to select one amongst many possible sets
of cultural values for the discipline. Science is not only a specific, highly valorized and
rewarded activity in the multicultural modern world. It is also an activity which typically
makes marginal work that drives directly at the solution of social problems. Science is
pure. And hence, it stands at odds (although it is not necessarily incompatible) with the
invitation by Andrew Young (Young and Seppa, 1996), in his recent address to the
American Psychological Association, for psychologists to join a ‘political psychology’,
aimed at building strong metropolitan communities that recognize multicultural diversity
and take seriously economic class barriers.
Personal and cultural values as instruments of inquiry
The Enlightenment promulgated a vision of knowledge in which reason and prejudice

were diametrically opposed. To reason freely one had to be, as the lawyers say, without
prejudice. In this respect, the curriculum of modern psychology is an Enlightenment
curriculum. The aim of the training is to inoculate the students against prejudices which
would limit or colour their capacity to arrive at the truth about human mental life. But
what if, as suggested in the previous section, there can be no such thing as an
understanding without presuppositions? How then should the curriculum for psychology
be structured?
Critique of the Enlightenment model of knowledge will be familiar to anyone versed
in the tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften in psychology. According to this
‘hermeneutic’ way of viewing human inquiry, prejudices and cultural presuppositions, far
from being impediments to human understanding, are the foundation of knowledge.
Understanding only grows up because inquirers are rooted in a particular fashion in their
own specific culture. If they were not so grounded, there could be no knowledge, because
there would be no basis from which to make sense of the inquiry. Hence, to adopt
categories or methods which supposedly stand outside time and place, as when
psychology claims to be objective, is, from the outset, to distort the phenomena so
described. This means that it is ingenuous for an empiricism to assume what is ‘really
there’ to be self-evident.
The very definition of what is presumed to be self-evident rests on a body

of unnoticed presuppositions, which are present in every interpretive
construction by the ‘objective’ and ‘presuppositionless’ interpreter.
(Palmer, 1969, p. 136)
In this view of interpretation, the meaning of a phenomenon is something that emerges

from reflection on the pre-existing relationship between the inquirer and their culture, a
relationship which will constantly change as the context changes. There is no single right
interpretation, because every interpretation draws its meaning from the structure of the
cultural present, something neither permanent nor fixed. Furthermore, the value of an
interpretation is not something free-floating. It is very specifically tied to the existential
predicament of the particular interpreter, his or her presuppositions and location in
cultural tradition. Apart from the individual’s own positioning in the world, without his
or her own questioning, without the attempt to appropriate it, the significance of the
world is indeterminate. Only ‘an objective uncertainty held fast in appropriation-process
of the most passionate inwardness is the truth’ (Kierkegaard, 1846, p. 182). So the
important thing for a psychologist, and hence a psychology curriculum, is to be made
aware of one’s own culture and biases, so that each phenomenon can ‘present itself in all
its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings’ (Gadamer,
1987, p. 269).
How is such an awareness to be educed? One candidate is the model adapted from
psychoanalysis by the psychoanalyst and anthropologist George Devereux (1968). In his
extraordinary book From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioural Sciences, Devereux
copiously documents the myriad ways in which an unwillingness to accept the anxieties
intrinsic to investigating the lives of others may lead to the use of methodological
practices as a form of psychological defence in the behavioural sciences. He then goes on
to argue that what psychoanalysts call ‘the counter-transference’ is the royal road to
knowledge in the behavioural sciences. Attention to others will be accompanied from
time to time by a subjective disturbance in the observer. And it is this subjective
disturbance that should most provoke the observer’s investigation (Selby, 1999). The
inquiry will have two faces. It will draw significance from the observer’s own culture,
personal ‘bias’ and situation. But it will also reflect on the other. Hence
Any analyst who believes that he [sic] perceives directly his patient’s
unconscious, rather than his own, is deluding himself… It is the analysis
of his unconscious which he presents to her [sic] as an analysis of her

unconscious…(Devereux, 1968, pp. 304–5)
The implication here is, of course, that anyone who is to be properly trained in
psychology needs to have undergone something akin to a years-long one-to-one ‘training
analysis’ so that they are rendered capable of tolerating and interpreting the kind of
anxieties and fantasies in themselves that Devereux shows to be an inevitable
consequence of inquiring into others’ lives. However beneficial such a training might be,
it seems inappropriate here for two reasons. First, the time and resources required for
one-to-one training of the kind psychoanalysts receive is clearly prohibitive (though the
capacity to conduct psychoanalytically informed group work of the kind pioneered by
Wilfred Bion is in my view desirable in any teacher of psychology). But, second, the one-
to-one basis of psychoanalytic training is likely to blind its products to the complex social
organization of values in any multicultural human community. For, while it may be true
that every individual is, so far as their subjective presuppositions and historical
positioning are concerned, unique, it is also true that the kinds of values that must be
raised to awareness in a psychology designed to promote human welfare, for example
those bearing on systematic oppression, are likely to be shared within a cultural grouping,
not idiosyncratic. A psychological curriculum that prepares students to use values as
instruments of inquiry and as the basis for action needs to do two things. It needs
1 to raise awareness of the specific cultural and historical constitution and subjective
corollaries of the seductive, traditional, ‘default’ subject-position for psychologists in
contemporary culture, viz. as biological or experimental scientists
2 to develop techniques that will sustain a situation where collective blindnesses and
oppressions can be brought to awareness in both students and their teachers.
The next two sections of this chapter tackle these two tasks in turn.
Some features of the subject-position of the psychologist as scientist
The thesis that scientific method is a defence against anxiety is becoming a feature of
contemporary commentary. In The Flight to Objectivity, for example, Bordo (1989) notes
how the inception of the Discourse on Method by Descartes was linked by its author to
what we now somewhat blandly call ‘doubt’. Of yore, few scholars have been prepared to
grant this doubt much depth or significance. Yet both Descartes’ personal experience at
the time, for example his dreams, bizarre, richly image-laden sequences, manifestly full
of anxiety and dread, and his particular cultural circumstances suggest that the Cartesian
faith in science and mathematical knowledge may indeed have been a buttress against
desperate anxiety. For the seventeenth century was the greatest crisis in intellectual life
that Europe has known. The waning power of established religion, Copernicus’
displacement of the Earth from the centre of the universe, and the relativity of values
forced by the discovery and exploration of extensive non-European worlds meant the
accepted mediaeval verities founded in the Church’s authority that had stood for centuries
were now undercut by an all-pervasive epistemological insecurity. In this section I want
briefly to recapitulate evidence that the scientific foundations of psychology are similarly
based in a defence against anxiety, albeit in a dynamic that did not come to fruition until
two centuries after the death of Descartes.
The tradition of scientific, biologically based psychology is usually dated from
Victorian times. The setting-up of psychological laboratories at Harvard by William
James and in Leipzig by Wilhelm Wundt during the 1870s are often-cited events. Almost
simultaneously, there was a chorus of announcements christening the birth of the new
science. Thus when Wundt (1874) published his book Principles of Physiological
Psychology, it was ‘to mark out a new domain of science’, a claim often echoed across
the Atlantic in the ensuing decades (e.g. Dewey, 1884; James, 1892; Dunton et al., 1895).
But a larger shape can be perceived in the background to all this furore. And that is the
Darwinian revolution in biology. For, as Gruber and Barrett (1974) have shown, a
principal aim of Darwin’s work and the victorious push by Thomas Huxley and his
followers for a thorough professionalization of Victorian science that bore it along, was
to establish a new materialistic foundation for psychology (Darwin, 1859, p. 488; cf.
Desmond, 1989). This achievement was fundamental to the imperial ambitions of
Victorian culture. For, without a justifiable universal measuring-rule for human
behaviour, the pre-eminence of the Victorian administrator would always be vulnerable
to the relativizing influence of religion and cultural difference.2 Darwin’s work
successfully laid the foundation for a psychology which reduced all things mental to the
measurable distribution of matter and thereby averted the need for the professional expert
on mind and behaviour to address any moral or philosophical question. For example,
Darwin’s (1872) book on emotion said nothing about the prevalence or experience of fear
and sadness in the human population, talking instead about the muscles that change the
expression of the face, their homologues in monkeys and possible evolutionary
antecedents. After Darwin, psychology was cast in the mould of a natural history that
could settle all the difficult questions about values and cultural difference. Or, more
precisely, it could ignore them. ‘He who understands baboon would do more toward
metaphysics than Locke’ (Darwin, 16 Aug. 1838).
This achievement was not without a cost, however. A cost to which Darwin’s own
biography bears eloquent witness. The psychologist can only act as a scientist by
investment in a subjective dynamic that defends him/her against what Devereux calls the
anxiety of being an observer who simultaneously is under the judging eye of the
observed. The psychologist is elevated above the observed who is denied the voice of
independent perception and judgement. This dynamic bears a close similarity to what
literary critics discussing the poetry particularly of Wordsworth call the Romantic
sublime (cf. Weiskel, 1976; Bradley, 1993, 1998).
The sublime is the result of what happens to a certain kind of mind whenever its
objects or signifiers begin to crystallize too distinctly, to stand out in too sharp a relief
from the continuities which normally subdue them. As if warned the mind will begin to
‘spread its thoughts’, to avert the lingering which could deepen into obsessive fixation
(Weiskel, 1976, p. 29). Thus the Romantic sublime rescues Mind from an excess of
meaning, as experienced by Wordsworth (1805) when overwhelmed by the terrifying
enormity of the Alps. It puts a stress on continuity. It stretches significance out across the
world, as if all were one. The uniqueness of distinct sensible impressions is suppressed in
favour of the writer’s own will to understand.
Wordsworth’s is a poetry in which awe at Nature’s alien glory has been transformed to
bespeak the grandeur of the author’s own vision of humanity, of his great destiny. A
Nature that had seemed at first too different, too active, too overwhelmingly powerful,
has been reduced to an illustration of Wordsworth’s own philosophy. The sublime melts
the formal otherness of things, reducing them to material or substance. The formal
properties of the perceived particular are cancelled and replaced by their universal
‘significance’, values assessed and assigned by the author’s mind (Weiskel, 1976, p. 59).
Simultaneously, the author is elevated above the disturbing phenomena. Hence the
sublime transforms both the writer’s ‘subjectposition’ and what the writer depicts, the
‘subjectmatter’.
Modern psychology is indebted to Darwin for just such a dual transformation.3 Not
only did Darwin’s work make it possible for him and all subsequent evolutionists to
discuss human behaviour in terms of comparative anatomy, without reference to its moral
or personal significance. We can also trace in his autobiography a change in Darwin’s
attitude to what he studied from the wide-eyed young man who circumnavigated the
world as ship’s naturalist on HMS Beagle (1831–6) to the sophisticated theorist of On the
Origin of Species (1859). Newly landed in the Brazilian tropics, he was overwhelmed by
the grandeur of the rainforest:
28th [Feb., 1832]…About 11 o’clock we entered the bay of All Saints, on

the northern side of which is situated the town of Bahia… It would be
difficult [to] imagine, before seeing this view, any thing so magnificent…
The town is fairly embosomed in a luxuriant wood and situated on a steep
bank overlooks the calm waters of the great bay of All Saints… But these
beauties are as nothing compared to the Vegetation; I believe from what I
have seen Humboldt’s4 glorious descriptions are and will for ever be
unparalleled: but even he with his dark blue skies and the rare union of
poetry with science which he so strongly displays when writing on
tropical scenery, with all this falls far short of the truth. The delight one
experiences in such times bewilders the mind; if the eye attempts to
follow the flight of a gaudy butterfly, it is arrested by some strange tree or
fruit; if watching an insect one forgets it in the strange flower it is
crawling over… The mind is a chaos of delight, out of which a world of
future and more quiet pleasure will arise. I am at present fit only to read
Humboldt; he like another sun illumines everything I behold. (Darwin,
1988, pp. 37–8)
Darwin is overawed by the infinitude of the forest. He is knocked out. Words fail him.
Yet he looks forward to creating a world of future and more quiet pleasure out of this
extraordinary knock out blow. He seeks a ‘mechanism’ that will explain and thereby
contain the unsettling chaos of delight, a mechanism that he was later to dub ‘sublimely
grand’ (Desmond and Moore, 1991, p. 330).
His success can be measured by a reading of the Origin’s (1859, pp. 489–90) final
paragraph. Darwin invites us to contemplate an English hedgerow, an entangled bank, a
bank described as a complex web of affinities, an interdependent multitude of contrasting
species, birds and birdsong, insects flitting, and worms crawling through the damp earth.
Here is the Brazilian jungle again, but attenuated, without the brilliance, modulated to a
more prosaic English key. Matter of factly, and in the same breath, we are told that this
myriad of multiplicity has all been produced by the fixed action of natural laws ‘acting
around us’. The laws are enumerated. Prominent amongst them being ‘a Ratio of Increase
so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence, Natural Selection,
entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms’.
Darwin has reappropriated the awe which held him in the Brazilian undergrowth. The
profusion of the rain-forest is subsumed and made as one by the reign of laws discovered
through science. No longer would he be overwhelmed by what he had once called the
grandeur of Nature. Darwin now claims that the grandeur attaches to ‘my theory’, his
own ‘view of things’. It had allowed him to see into the mind of God.
Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view
that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords
better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator,
that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of
the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those
determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings
not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings
which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited,
they seem to me to become ennobled… Etc. (1859, pp. 488–9)
The new and elevated ‘view of things’ that Darwin’s (1859) Origin bequeathed to the
study of mental life simultaneously created a superior expert-role for the psychologist as
scientist and justified the materialistic gradualism that James (1890, p. 152) damned in
his doomed rearguard action against what he called ‘mind-stuff’ theories. ‘Natura non
facit saltum’ was Darwin’s (1859) favourite theoretical maxim. And if Nature doesn’t
make leaps, then a Darwinian psychology can recognize no differences of kind in its
treatment of the phenomena that come under its investigation. A Darwinian psychology
can give no sense that the ‘nerve-world’ may differ in quality from the ‘mind-world’.
Hence consciousness, says James, ‘is an illegitimate birth in any philosophy that starts
without it, and yet professes to explain all facts by continuous evolution’. Either it must
have been there from the beginning at the big bang (what James, 1878, called ‘the appeal
to the polyp’) or it is beyond the reach of Darwinian explanation.5
What all this goes to show is that the socialization of student psychologists to adopt
the role-model of the scientist has effects that run directly counter to the kinds of non-
totalitarian sensitivity to personal and cultural difference, tolerance of anxiety and
uncertainty and awareness of the phenomena of the counter-transference that are essential
for respectful, realistic and insightful dealings with others as participants in cultural
traditions, personal consciousness and agency different from our own (John, 1986;
Levinas, 1967; Selby, 1990; see previous section). Now there are undoubtedly
compensations in adopting the role-model of scientist. Not least is the sober dignity of a
profession that deems itself to be ‘above’ the petty personal concerns of the laity,
especially when spiced with the sublime intoxication of imagining that one can devise
rulers and laws for human behaviour that transcend all the limitations of perspective
(imposed by personality, history and culture) that have previously troubled moralists and
philosophers when discussing human conduct. But, in my view, the costs outweigh the
compensations. For the compensations are rather of a selfish, elitist and defensive nature.
Whereas the costs are to disable a discipline that should be a vital if not revolutionary
agent for furthering the common good.
Toward a pedagogy of values
The role-model of the psychologist as scientist, implying, as it does that the psychologist
should aspire to be an expert who can stand above the mundane concerns of the laity
dovetails snugly with the monologic, ‘banking’ model of education pilloried by Paulo
Freire in his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). According to this model, the
teacher is the principal source of students’ knowledge. Students are as empty vessels into
which expertise must be poured (or ‘banked’). And, at the end of the year, rather as if the
teacher were inspecting their bank account, an examination is set to see how much of
‘his’ or ‘her’ money/knowledge the student has retained. The perfect student regurgitates
exactly what she or he has been told.
The architecture of the typical lecture-hall further sustains this model of education.
Lectern, microphone and spotlight are positioned to focus all attention on the lecturer,
who stands at the front of the auditorium. No matter how diverse they are, the audience
sit dimly in anonymous ranks, all facing the same way, so that interaction between
individual students is minimized, while, provided they sit in respectful silence, there will
be maximum exposure to what the lecturer says.
So what kinds of change are needed if we are to develop a pedagogy that does not
deny cultural difference and the positive role of values in psychological education? What
forms of teaching will be required if one of the main ideas in a course is the
(hermeneutic) idea that the individual’s own subjectivity and specific cultural location is
a main player in any psychological practice one undertakes, whether that be research,
teaching, study, therapy or service, and unless one understands the constitution of one’s
own subjectivity and cultural location, one is unlikely to be properly prepared for work as
a psychologist? I will now briefly discuss four kinds of change that are required to create
a genuinely psychological pedagogy that can deal with the diversity of a multicultural
society: changes in subject-position, ideal, technique, and strategy.
1. Subject-position
Greek science is based on piety. Ours is based on pride.

There is an original sin attaching to modern science. (Weil,
1956, p. 548)
According to the model of the sublime the psychologist looks down on a uniform world,
a world that is continuous with his or her own understanding and can be subsumed under
science-given laws. This position is a means of warding off the awareness that the
psychologist’s own scientific attitude, rather than constituting a detachment from values,
is itself a form of cultural partiality. Simultaneously it represses the anxieties that arise
from recognizing that the psychologist, like any human scientist (anthropologist,
sociologist, etc.), stands on an equal footing with, or as Wiener puts it, ‘is on the same
scale as’, the persons being observed, however different their culture of origin.
Unconsciously the observer must know s/he cannot subordinate the other’s mental life to
the observer’s own scheme of things. Really the gulf between self and other that William
James (1890, p. 231) called ‘the greatest breach in Nature’ cannot be glossed over,
whatever one’s methodological procedure. And across that gulf, the other is animatedly
observing and interpreting the psychologist in terms to which the psychologist is not
privy.
Following Devereux (1968, p. xvii) and Levinas (1969), the constructive move I wish
to make here is to argue that the disturbances, anxieties and distortions produced in the
observer/teacher in the process of observation/education are ‘the most significant and
characteristic data of behavioural science research’. As Levinas argues, if the
psychologist is to drop a totalitarian attitude to others such that others are subordinated to
one’s own all-inclusive, monologic, panoramic system of categories, then one must
recognize that the other, because they are equal but different, will inevitably be refractory
to and transcend one’s own categories. From one’s own finite point of view, the other
must be deemed infinite
The strangeness of the Other, his [sic] irreducibility to the I, to my

thoughts and possessions, is precisely accomplished as a calling into
question of my spontaneity…(1969, p. 43)
By wishing to learn from the other and by refusing to subordinate the other’s culture to
the categories of my own, I grant priority to the other over my egoism. (I am, as Bion
puts it, ‘without desire’.) It is in acknowledging this right that I open myself and my
culture up to question, to change and discovery. But the other’s unforseeableness is not
revealed to me directly. Rather, others ‘magnetize the very field’ of my self-
understanding (1969, p. 26). Just as a planet may, if it comes close to another celestial
body, deform its gravitational field, so the other may alter the psychologist’s subjective
field, not so much in content, but the form of one’s vision as a whole. Truth is ‘situated in
a subjective field which deforms vision, but precisely thus allows exteriority [the Other’s
existence] to state itself.’ (Levinas, 1969, p. 291). And, because my relation to the other
is to do with the form of my own culture and subjectivity, ‘it cannot be included within a
network of relations visible to a third party’ (1969, p. 121). Knowledge of a subjective
relation cannot be gained by onlookers. And it is not rational: ‘there is no science of the
subject. Any thought mastering the subject is mystical’ (Kristeva, 1974, p. 215).
All this implies a stark contrast with the kind of truth-seeking that usually goes on in
psychology: an objective generalizable impersonal march towards truth that is guaranteed
by the regimentation of reason and method. Psychologists normally act as if they have a
very good idea of what they are looking for. They can set out rules for truth’s pursuit,
train students in criteria for its authenticity and give a host of illustrative examples. They
have what one might call a positive theology of truth, a theology which is so sure of its
quarry that everything required for a successful hunt can be defined beforehand. But if
we admit that we are trying to understand phenomena that are in some important regard
beyond us, transcending our categories, infinite, then we have come to a place which can
only be described by a negative theology. Here, as Pseudo-Dionysius reminds us, our

only tenet is the incommensurability and incomprehensibility of God (or Truth) to the
human intellect: ‘he cannot be understood, words cannot contain him, and no name can
lay hold of him’ (1987, p. 109). In this case, knowledge cannot furnish a direct route to
understanding.
We must take a different negative way, a way modelled on that dubbed by theologians
the via negative. They tell us that, in our search for the divine, we must gain seemingly-
appropriate knowledge of the world’s horrors and beauties, Nature’s terrible powers and
rich complexity, of the intricate history of scholarship, of the mysterious evils and
sanctities hidden in the human heart—only to recognize their ultimate irrelevance to the
description of God. As with a ladder that we climb up and then throw away, it is by the
progressive acquisition, denial and transcendence of worldly knowledge that we enter the
state from which God may (or may not) irrationally, ecstatically, draw us to himself. We
must enter a state of profound uncertainty, the ‘cloud of unknowing’.
It is likewise in psychology. The psychologist, like the poet, must possess deep
resources of what Keats (1817) called negative capability: ‘that is when a man is capable
of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable searching after fact and
reason’ (Selby, 1990). Because, for all our attentiveness to the other, we can neither
predict nor pre-empt whatever understanding our encounter with them may bring.
In short, the subject-position implied by the sublime is that of the completely self-
contained and competent speaker-researcher, blind to cultural difference. Training is
perceived as something that fully equips the trainee for autonomous action upon the
world, whatever their cultural background: a proud self-sufficiency. In contrast, the
subject-position for both teacher and learner implied by a psychology of which the
practitioners recognize their inevitable partiality is one of incompleteness: we are all
unfinished beings in a likewise unfinished reality. ‘Dialogue cannot exist without
humility’ (Freire, 1970, p. 62). Hence both teaching and research must be cast as
processes that will take all those who take part in it a little further towards the goal of
becoming fully human, a goal that can only be achieved cooperatively and with a starting
awareness of the diversity of human cultures. If oppression and disadvantage are
culturally located phenomena, then we all participate in them, as their subjects, their
objects or as both. Neither teacher nor pupil is exempt. In a pedagogy aimed at
emancipation, there can be neither ignoramuses nor perfect sages, but only people who
are trying together to learn more than they now know.
2. The ideal speech-situation

Psychology is a discipline that has a revolutionary potential to promote human welfare.
Why? Because subjectivity has a central place in the process of transforming the world
and history. For three reasons, outlined earlier in the chapter:
(a) Values are an inevitable part of any inquiry into human mental and social life. Hence,
if one is to be a circumspect psychologist, one needs to be able to become aware of the
ways one’s own personal and cultural values constantly impact on one’s practice as a
psychologist.
(b) Personal experience is a crucial focus in a psychology that aims to redress
disadvantage and oppression. For oppression cannot be identified in abstract, as if the
individual were isolated, independent and unattached to the world. Oppression is

something that can only be identified in the present, existential, concrete, cultural
situation of particular people. The academic who decides ‘from on high’ in what
another person’s oppression consists only perpetuates that oppression. The first step in
lifting oppression is to lift the ban on those individuals and cultural groupings who
have been denied the right to speak the particularities that only they can know.
(c) Just as oppression is in part a subjective process: viz. the changing of consciousness
so that it is ‘adapted’ to a situation of domination, so liberation is also, in part, a
subjective process. The oppressed must ‘discover through existential experience that
their present way of life is incompatible with their vocation to become fully human’
(Freire, 1970, p. 48).
It follows from this that a curriculum for an emancipatory psychology needs to be
specified less in terms of items of information that need to be learned and more in terms
of a process for educing and organizing for individuals and cultural groups the
experiences which they wish to examine. Typically psychology’s syllabi are specified in
terms of content-areas: cognition, personality, the brain, child development, statistical
methods and so on. Consequently the ideal student is cast as someone who has ‘mastered’
these content-areas. Here, however, the ideal is a speech-situation in which experiences
likely to pose problems for human emancipation can be aired.
The difficulty is that the forces that create oppression in the macrocosm of society at
large will also be present in the microcosm of the educational speech-situation that is
supposed to lay oppression bare. In an ideal speech-situation, Habermas (1970) has
argued, communication should not be hindered by constraints arising from its own
structure. There would be unrestricted discussion in which no prejudiced opinion could
escape criticism and in which it would be possible to reach concensus (truth). There
would be unimpaired self-representation, in which the individualities of all participants
would be acknowledged and respected (freedom). And there would be shared goals and
expectations (justice). But this is only an ideal, unlikely to be met with in practice. Hence
a psychology that aims to create an arena in which oppression can become a theme for
discussion will need constantly to monitor the ways in which its practice departs from the
ideal (cf. Bion, 1961). And it will need to devise techniques for overcoming and
redressing these departures.
3. Techniques
There is now a considerable menu of techniques that aim to help participants in the
educational process explore their own personal experience with the aim of uncovering the
oppressions that individually or collectively structure their own specific culture and
subjectivity. Space is short, and I can here only mention five of these. In each instance
one finds a similar disestablishment of the psychologist as expert, such that the teacher is
no more likely to know in advance the outcome of an educational course, and no less
likely to learn from it, than any other participant. Thus ecological psychologists have
built up a considerable range of participatory workshops and transformational rituals
designed to awaken or reaffirm a committment to the defence of our natural environment
against the depradations of profiteers and cultural neglect (e.g. Seed et a l., 1987). These
techniques are just as likely to be of value to old campaigners as to initiates (Bragg,

1995).
Elsewhere Bronwyn Davies (1994) has developed a technique described by Haug
(1987) into a classroom strategy she calls ‘collective biography’. Here a group will
choose to investigate a common topic, for example, the acquisition of genderedness or of
the emotions of shame or guilt, or one’s positioning in specific discourses such as the
discourse of romantic love. Each individual then writes an account of their own
idiosyncratic experiences that bear on the topic and then shares their account with the rest
of the group. Once the accounts have been pooled, discussion is led to show how each
individual’s experiences reflect common ways of organizing experience and behaviour.
Students and teachers
can examine the construction of their own biography as something at the

same time experienced as personal and their own—woven out of their
own body/minds—and yet visibly made out of, even determined by,
materials and practices not originating from them. (Davies, 1994, pp. 83–
4)
As a result, participants are led to see which social practices need to be changed if their
own personal dissatisfactions are to be alleviated. For oppressions are often so
internalized within an individual that they have become a ‘cop in the head’. We must
therefore aim to help each other track down those oppressions with which more than one
in a cultural group can identify, oppressions which can be generalized and brought into
the theatre of change.
Third, a training in qualitative research is now becoming almost de rigeur for social
scientists. Typically, in psychology, such a training is seen as being in the same mould as
a training in experimental design and inferential statistics: qualitative methods are means
of ‘getting results’ which will ‘test hypotheses’. And they are ‘just as objective’ as
quantitative methods. The two kinds of method just process different raw materials
(words rather than numbers). Such a view misses the hermeneutic model of inquiry that
has informed the creation of many qualitative methods. Such methods are best thought of
as involving the researcher’s own culture and subjectivity as crucial elements in
grounding the research. Data only mean something because they mean something within
the cultural and subjective framework of that particular researcher. They challenge or
change his or her personal and cultural preconceptions. Conceived thus, a training in
qualitative methods can be a powerful means of education about one’s psyche and
cultural location.
Fourth, a useful adjunct to such a training can be induction into the process of keeping
what Progoff (1975) has described as an ‘intensive journal’. Designed as a daily log or
dialogue with daily experience as this is invested in the body, in dreams, in daily events
and in interactions with people and work, the intensive journal is an instrument that
enables a person to crystallize the present situation of their life in a telescoped
perspective of the whole of his or her past and thus to place themself in a better position
to improve their future.
Finally, we should briefly consider the work of Augusto Boal. Responding to Freire’s
(1970, p. 41) insistence that the oppressed engage in reflection on their concrete situation
as their means by which to enter collectively into critical and liberating dialogue that
transforms action, Boal’s (1974, 1992) theatre of the oppressed was first worked out as a
means by which Brazilian village folk living in a brutal military dictatorship could come
up with means by which to effect social change. Boal contrasts his poetics with Aristotle.
For Boal, Aristotle’s Poetics, in which poetry is taken to be independent of politics,
nevertheless constructs the first, extremely powerful poetic-political system for the
intimidation of the spectator, for elimination of the ‘bad’ or illegal tendencies of the
audience (by means of catharsis). This system, he says, is still in use, not just in
conventional theatre, but in TV soap operas, the ‘news’ and in western films as well—not
to mention the lecture-hall. Movies, theatre, television and monological pedagogy are
united, through a common basis in Aristotelian poetics, in repression of the people’s
recognition of the need for social change.
As in collective biography and Seed’s ‘Council of All Beings’, Boal’s poetics of the
oppressed assumes that many of the deepest distortions experienced in the context of the
intersubjectivity which defines any liberatory process are a product of bodily dispositions
culturally organized into collective practices. His work is especially relevant to a
multicultural society where different cultural groupings subsist in relations of domination
and subordination to each other. The doorway to a psychology that takes development to
be party to social progress is to recognize and change these psychosomatic practices.
Hence, in Australia, the Federal government has begun to fund a travelling Boalian
theatre group called HEATworks which employs Aboriginal artists and actors to help
depressed indigenous communities bring out their own experiences of oppression and
push for social justice and change. The primary focus of this group has been health
education and community development, with national campaigns aimed at exploring
beliefs and attitudes about HIV/AIDS, teenage self-esteem and suicide, anger
management, violence against women and the use of drugs and alcohol. They have
worked in schools, communities, prisons, women’s refuges, management groups, and
rehabilitation centres. Currently HEATworks are using theatre to dramatize and play-
back stories that emerge from specific client-groups. Stories that are unresolved can
receive more intensive treatment, with realistic, workable solutions being “rehearsed” in
the context of the performances. In this way the promotion of mental health is rendered
specific to each client-group, developing a public language for identifying and dealing
with psychological and psychiatric problems that is suited to the society in which these
problems occur.
Boal’s (1974) work has contributed three techniques to this kind of initiative (Image
Theatre, Invisible Theatre and Forum Theatre: Boal, 1992). I will here only describe
Image Theatre. In Image Theatre, the participants make still images of their lives,
feelings, experiences, oppressions; groups suggest titles or themes, and then individuals
‘sculpt’ three-dimensional images under these titles, using their own and others’ bodies
as the clay. However, the image work never remains static. As with all of the Theatre of
the Oppressed, the frozen image is simply the starting point for or prelude to the action,
which is revealed in the dynamization process, the bringing to life of the images and the
discovery of whatever direction or intention is implicit in them.
Beginning with bodies rather than words draws on the fact that many of our deepest
oppressions are reproduced through a symbolism that is never explicitly spoken. This is
the realm of unconscious symbolism that Voloshinov (1927, p. 88) called ‘behavioural
ideology’ to distinguish it from those realms ruled by consciously formulated ideas: law,
art, science, religion, government. Behavioural ideology, said Voloshinov, is more
volatile, more sensitive and more responsive than an ideology that has undergone
conscious explication. It is the site where the deepest contradictions in a multicultural
society accumulate. To raise awareness of this usually hidden realm of bodily meanings
is therefore to challenge the deep political implications of our most familiar daily
routines.
In teaching according to Boalian principles, I have found students raise issues rarely
canvassed in traditional modules of their psychology degree. Incidents will be taken from
experiences of the repression implicit in typical family scenarios, in the difficulties of
mourning, in anxieties about speaking and writing in their own voice, in cultural
disempowerment, in the dynamics of dating (which both genders often sculpt as
oppressive!), in the forbidden rituals surrounding drugs and in dominance by research
supervisors.
The ambiguity of images is a vital factor in this work. A group of individuals will
perceive a whole range of different, but often intriguingly related meanings within a
single image, often seeing things which the sculptors had no idea were there. Working
with images, sculpting rather than talking, can also be more democratic, as it does not
privilege more verbally articulate people. Image Theatre can be used in the preparation of
Invisible Theatre or Forum Theatre, and is central to Boal’s more recent therapeutic work
(Boal and Jackson, 1995).
4. Strategy
Teaching and research are typically seen as distinctly separate psychological practices.
The researcher accrues knowledge which, if deemed sufficiently central to the discipline,
may subsequently be taught to students. The model of education being advanced in this
chapter suggests a rather different strategy. Teaching is itself a form of research. The
psychologist can only find out about the barriers to human emancipation by learning from
the diverse cultures informing the communities in which he or she lives. But, using
Boalian techniques, this process of discovery will be collective, a process in which the
psychologist and their ‘subjects’ will all simultaneously discover something about
themselves. And this is particularly the case in teaching and research which is conducted
‘across’ cultures, as Selby’s (1999) brilliant work with indigenous groups in the north of
Australia shows. In particular, she demonstrates how what seem like ‘glitches’ in the
communication process between cultural groups provide a crucial source of cross-cultural
insights. This is especially the case where collaboration occurs between cultural groups
that have different material power over each other.
Extension of work like Selby’s should revolutionize the education of children. As
more and more people enrol for courses in psychology, the age at which individuals are
introduced to the subject becomes younger and younger. I see no reason why this process
should be halted. For, if one thing has become obvious over the past two decades, it is
that the voice of the child has to date been far too successfully silenced by adults, both
professional and lay, particularly in discussions of individual and cross-cultural
oppression (Miller, 1979; Lindley, 1986; Gilligan, 1994). Children know a lot about the
intimate dynamics of the multicultural worlds in which they live. But what they know
will only emerge under the aegis of a non-authoritarian pedagogy which takes as its ideal
a speech-situation where personal and cultural experience can be shared in conditions of
freedom, truth and justice. Most particularly, if teachers had ears to hear about the lives
of those they taught, then children might well turn out to be able to tell us a great deal
about the ways in which our current social arrangements oppress those that they are most
able to dominate. Information relevant to the practice of psychology as a means of
promoting the common good in our multicultural world would then not only flow into the
classroom but out of it.
Summary
This chapter has reviewed the place of values in psychology, arguing that a discipline
which aspires to promote human well-being in a multicultural society cannot pose as
value-free, and showing the complex but constructive role that cultural values and
‘subjectivity’ may play in psychological practice. I argue that an emancipatory
psychology requires a significant shift in four regions of pedagogy: the subject-position
taken by the educator, ideals for a learning-situation, techniques for overcoming social
and cultural inequalities as they distort communication in the class-room, and a revised
strategy when relating research to education.
Notes
1 Given such a stark contradiction of aims, it is no wonder that, though ‘psychology might be
expected to provide intellectual leadership in the search for new and better personal
arrangements…psychologists have contributed relatively little of real importance—even less
than our rather modest understanding of behaviour might justify’ (Miller, 1969, p. 1063).
2 The fact that the measuring-rule was bent in favour of white Anglo-Saxon educated men only
underlines the close connection between Victorian values and the inception of psychology as
a science (e.g. Gould, 1996).
3 ‘One has the suspicion that the only difference between poet and scientist is that the latter,
having lost their sense of style, now try to comfort themselves with the pleasant fiction that
they are following rules of a quite different kind which produce a much grander and more
important result, namely, the Truth’ (Feyerabend, quoted in Beer, 1983, p. 91).
4 Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer whose Personal Narrative described an
earlier trip to the Brazilian rainforest, a book which had become Darwin’s favourite reading
on his voyage across the Atlantic.
5 Note that it is not beyond the reach of evolutionary explanation, however, if such explanation
is not gradualistic. Darwin’s gradualism is not essential to evolutionary explanation, as
argued variously by Costall (1986) and in the debate on punctuated equilibria (Maynard
Smith, 1982).
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19
Sexuality Education, Values, and Cultural
Diversity: International Developments and
Questions Arising
RONALD W.MORRIS
I would like to thank Timothy Keys for his assistance with the library work, and
William Lawlor for his feedback and encouragement.
Sexuality education
Sexuality education is undoubtedly one of the most controversial subjects in the school
curriculum. In a recent article entitled “Sex, lies and political extremists,” Debra Haffner,
president of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS),
describes receiving more than 30,000 hate letters in one month. These letters, according
to Haffner, are the result of a campaign by an extremist political and religious
organization called Concerned Women for America. The letters accuse SIECUS of
promoting “promiscuity, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, pedophilia and incest”
(1996, p. 2). Many letters also include handwritten personal attacks on Haffner. She is
warned that she will be “destroyed” and that God has a place for her in the “lake of fire.”
In over twenty years of work in sexuality education Haffner claims she has never
received so much hate mail. “I am horrified,” she writes, “because the attacks are outright
lies.” Haffner admonished her readers to “join together to combat religious and political
extremist organizations and their influence” (p. 3).
The controversy over sexuality education in the United States is not limited to the last
few months. In the 1960s and 1970s supporters of sexuality education in the United
States were often called atheists, communists, child molesters and even rapists (e.g.
Drake, 1969; Lentz, 1972). Headlines of SIECUS publications give one the impression of
an all-out war zone. Titles in past years are replete with military language, referring to
“attacks,” “counterattacks,” “combat,” “strategies” and how to “win the battle” (e.g.
Dickman, 1982; Kantor, 1994; Ross and Kantor, 1995; Scales, 1984; Wacker and Daley,
1995).
Canada and the United Kingdom also have their share of controversy. In the 1960s
critics in Canada claimed that sexuality education programs were being supported by the
drug industry (Monk, 1984). More recently some critics charge that school programs lead
to moral perversion and the disintegration of the family (Gairdner, 1992:8). In the UK
there is, according to Michael Reiss, “a suspicion that teachers of sex education are, at
best, an unfortunate requirement and, at worst, corrupters of the nation’s youth” (1995a,
p. 200). (For an historical overview of the politics of sexuality education in the UK see
Thompson, 1994.)
In spite of continued controversy, there is now a growing international consensus on

the need for sexuality education in the school. Recent surveys indicate that opposition to
sexuality education comes from a small, albeit very vocal, minority. Surveys in Canada
and the United States reveal that most parents, students, and teachers support sexuality
education. Studies indicate that as much as 95 to 98 per cent of parents favor school
programs (McKay, 1993, 1996, 1998). In the UK, according to Scott, “four major studies
in the last 20 years have found (that) around 96 per cent of parents want sex education to
be taught in schools” (1996, p. 1; Reiss, 1995a, p. 374). This consensus is due in large
part to concern over growing rates of teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs), especially AIDS, and to concern over the sexual abuse of children.
“Since the advent of the AIDS crisis,” as McKay writes, “the need for sexuality education
in the schools has become universally accepted” (1998, p. 34).
Values and sexuality education
Until recently sexuality education was promoted as a value-free enterprise. In the mid-
1960s, although SIECUS understood that sexuality and values were inextricably related,
the organization called for a value-free approach to sexuality education. Mary Calderone,
a founding member of SIECUS, explained that it was “wise” to take sexuality “out of the
realm of morals” because this freed sexuality education “for objective, less emotional
study” (cited in Szasz, 1980, p. 122). Another writer on sexuality education during this
period argued that a value-free approach would give students the freedom “to make their
own ethical judgments” (Karmel, 1970, p. 96).
This strategy was consistent with developments in the social sciences. Sociologist
Alvin Gouldner explains that the doctrine of value-freedom freed the social sciences from
“moral compulsiveness” and “encouraged at least a temporary suspension of the
moralizing reflexes built into the sociologist by his own society.” Like the perspectives
on sexuality education described above, the aim was “to establish a breathing space
within which moral reactions could be less mechanical.” Ultimately the aim was to
“make better value judgments rather than none” (1962, p. 24).
Kohlberg was one of the first critics of value-free approaches to sexuality education.
In a paper presented to SIECUS he argued that teaching information only was inadequate.
“To promote mature decision processes sexuality education must attempt to stimulate the
development of underlying principles” (1971, p. 15). He agreed that teaching the so-
called “facts of life” was important. He argued, however, that “facts themselves, and
greater knowledge of the facts, will not resolve moral decisions in a satisfactory way
without more adequate principles of moral judgment” (1974, p. 119). For Kohlberg it was
critical that students be encouraged to formulate their own positions and provide reasons
supporting those positions.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s an increasing number of North American sexuality
educators adopted the philosophy and strategies of Values Clarification. Proponents of
Values Clarification reject the idea that sexuality education should be value-free. They
believe, however, that teachers ought to remain value-neutral. Teachers are to remain
non-judgmental and convey to students that there are no right or wrong answers. Since
values are viewed as personal and subjective, the teacher’s role is to “ex-pose” and not
Sexuality education, values, and cultural diversity 293
“im-pose” values. Proponents of Values Clarification value personal autonomy. They

encourage decision-making by helping students to clarify their own values, and by
helping them develop their self-esteem (Bruess and Greenberg, 1981; Read, Simon and
Goodman, 1977).
Values Clarification continues to be very popular in North American sexuality
education (e.g. Varcoe, 1988; cf. Morris, 1994, pp. 11–12). In the UK according to
Halstead, Values Clarification has not been as commonly or openly advocated. The
Values Clarification philosophy, however, “can be seen in the Humanities Curriculum
Project,” and “it may in fact underlie the approaches of many texts and materials in use in
schools” (1996, p. 10). Moreover, several authors in the UK argue, like proponents of
Values Clarification, that sexuality education ought to promote personal autonomy, build
self-esteem, and help students make their own decisions (for an overview see: Reiss,
1995a, pp. 376–7, 1996, pp. 110–101).
Although some people still remain suspicious, believing that “teaching values”
necessarily implies indoctrination and that sexuality education should take place only
within the family’s values (Reiss, 1995a: 375), we now see a broadly based international
consensus on the view that sexuality education in the school must have a values
dimension. Educators, researchers, and organizations involved in sexuality education
policy and practice throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe increasingly reject
the commitment to value-freedom (Reiss, 1995a).
In a revised position statement SIECUS affirms that all sexuality education programs
should include “spiritual and moral concerns” (1990, p. 10). In Canada, a national
working group, initiated by Health Canada and coordinated by the Sex Information and
Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN), recently prepared guidelines for sexual health
education. The guidelines emphasize that sexual health education should provide
“opportunities for individuals to explore the attitudes, feelings, values and moral
perspectives that may influence their own choices regarding sexual health” (Health
Canada, 1994, p. 13).
The province of Quebec has the most elaborate sexuality education program in Canada
(Barrett, 1994). In the mid-1980s the Ministry of Education (MEQ) developed a program
which is now compulsory from grade one to the last year of high school. In its
philosophical statement on the program, the Ministry writes: “because it is linked with
the person and with human behavior, because it is the subject of a moral position in every
society, because it holds the attention of all religions, sex education may not be given
without reference to values” (MEQ, 1985, p. 103). The Ministry goes as far as to list the
values on which the program is based. These values include respect for oneself, one’s
body and others, freedom, pleasure, responsibility, gender equality, self-control, and
commitment.
Prior to the development of the MEQ program, the Protestant and Catholic
Committees of the Superior Council of Education took a clear stand on the place of
values in sexuality education. (Until June 1998, Quebec public schools were
confessional, designated as either Catholic or Protestant.) The Catholic Committee
argued that values play a fundamental role in the integration of one’s sexuality. “Sex
education, therefore, must not be dispensed as a clinical exercise where one merely
analyses human psychology and physiology. It must aim at helping young people
integrate a value system” (1977, p. 25). For the Protestant Committee “the school can no
more refrain from education in this area than it can prevent the physical growth of the
child. Values are shaped and transmitted by the school “whether the school makes a
conscious effort in that direction or not” (1978, p. 1).
The situations in the UK and Quebec have many similarities. The UK requires that all
secondary schools provide sexuality education. Although a 1993 amendment to the
Education Bill called for a purely biological approach to sexuality education, the 1994
Department for Education Circular on sexuality education states that programs must
“present facts in an objective, balanced, and sensitive manner, set within a clear
framework of values” (Reiss, 1995a, p. 200). The Sex Education Forum, an umbrella
body bringing together over thirty national organizations supporting sexuality education
in the UK, sees the clarification and exploration of values as an integral part of sexuality
education (Plant, 1996, p. 2).
British schools, like Quebec schools, have a long history of religious education and a
significant number of British schools are denominational institutions (Halstead, 1996, p.
9). The National Society (Church of England) for Promoting Religious Education, like
the Protestant Committee in Quebec, believes that “learning about sex is an inescapable
element of school and home life” (Brown, 1993, p. 6). It emphasizes the importance of
awareness and exploration of value questions. Moreover, in 1991 members of six major
religious traditions in the UK wrote an agreed upon statement where they criticized sex
education programs which attempt to conceal value-controversies (Reiss, 1996, p. 100;
cf. Reiss, 1995b).
Cultural diversity
Another major development in recent years is the emergence of an international

consensus on the importance of respecting cultural diversity. SIECUS, SIECCAN, and
The Sex Education Forum have taken a clear stand in this regard. In 1993 the SIECUS
Board of Directors prepared a position statement on inclusiveness which “recognizes that
the myriad dimensions of human diversity—including age, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual
orientation, physical abilities, and social class—have a profound impact on sexual
attitudes, values and behavior” (cited in SIECUS Report, 1995, p. 5). Here diversity is not
seen as a problem in need of a solution but rather as a challenge to be met and celebrated.
Diversity “contributes to a richer, more authentic understanding of human sexuality and
is therefore viewed by the organization as a valuable resource” (p. 5). In a 1995 special
issue of the SIECUS Report on cultural diversity the editors explain that SIECUS is
presently adapting its 1991 Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education to meet
the needs of different cultural groups. SIECUS acknowledges the criticism that sexuality
education programs in the US are “ethnocentric and culturally biased” privileging “a
white, middle-class understanding of sexuality” (Ward and Taylor, 1992, p. 184; cf.
Brunner, 1992; Philips and Fine, 1992; Sears, 1992; Whatley, 1988).
The Canadian Guidelines For Sexual Health Education place considerable emphasis
on the importance of respecting cultural diversity. In one of its ten position statements the
Guidelines state: “In terms of access and content, effective sexual health education does
not discriminate against race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethno-cultural
background or disability (Health Canada, 1994, p. 8). In a special issue of The Canadian
Journal of Human Sexualiy devoted to the Guidelines, McKay and Barrett emphasize that
discrimination based on difference is unacceptable even though one might personally
disapprove of a particular value or behavior. Since Canada is a democratic society
sexuality education programs must promote respect for diversity and “the principle of
non-discrimination” (1995, p. 67).
McKay, research co-ordinator of SIECCAN, has published a doctoral dissertation
where he calls for a sexuality education based on democratic values. He argues that
sexuality education can become “a forum for participatory democratic discourse” when
students are given the opportunity to understand opposing viewpoints and when they see
that different views can “co-exist” (1998, p. 166; cf. Weeks; 1995). In a separate
empirical study McKay (1996) surveyed several hundred parents in Ontario on their
views regarding sexuality education in schools. He found that over 80 per cent of parents
agree that programs should respect diversity.
In the UK the Sex Education Forum identifies respect for diversity as one of its five
principles of effective sexuality education and training. “Sex education training and
support should have a core value which is respectful and responsive to diversity” (Plant,
1996, p. 2). As Moran points out, the documentation on diversity in the US often neglects
the reality of religious diversity (1996, p. 221). In the UK, however, religious diversity is
clearly acknowledged and discussed. In a Sex Education Forum booklet on partnerships
with parents, Scott writes: “It is essential that sex education policies acknowledge all the
potential areas of difference—gender, race, class, religion, sexuality, disability; and that
the program is culturally appropriate to the school population” (1996, p. 14). Thompson,
a member of the Sex Education Forum, prepared a document on religion, ethnicity, and
sexuality education which emphasizes the importance of inclusiveness and cultural
identity, and which attempts to assist practitioners in teaching young people about “the
range of moral and cultural frameworks within society” (cited in Plant, 1996, p. 23).
Moreover, an important part of the Forum’s work involves going out to schools with
ethnic minority populations in an attempt to negotiate support for the school’s sex
education program. This includes consulting parents and openly discussing cultural and
religious differences (cf. Thompson, 1997).
In the United States the main opposition to an ethically and culturally diverse sexuality
education comes from proponents of abstinence-only curricula (Kantor, 1994; Reiss,
1990). Here cultural and ethical diversity is seen a problem in need of a solution. The
solution proposed is a return to an objectivistic view of values and a prescriptive
approach to sexual-values education. Lickona, for example argues that the school’s
mission is to teach “the truth”, develop “right values” and show young people how to
make “the right decision” (Lickona, 1993a, pp. 85–8). Here the right value is “self-
control,” the truth is that “abstinence is the only 100 per cent effective way to avoid
pregnancy, AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases,” and the right decision is to
practice abstinence until marriage (1993a, p. 87; cf. 1993b; 1991, pp. 348–74). (For
critiques of the idea that abstinence is the only 100 per cent effective method see: Reiss,
1990, pp. 125–7; and Kegan, 1994, pp. 58–70.)
Abstinence-only curricula have not been as popular in Canada, although one program
has been implemented in western Canada (McKay, 1996, p. 85). In the UK, according to
Thompson, those favoring abstinence-only curricula have had limited practical success
(1994, p. 54–5). Moral rhetoric, however, bemoaning a decline in traditional values, the
breakdown of the family, and the privatization of morality remains pervasive in the UK
(Thompson, 1997; e.g. Doughty, 1996). It has influenced the “official moral framework
for sex education” (Thompson, 1994, pp. 54–5).
Questions and issues arising
1. The crisis-instrumental paradigm and cultural diversity

It appears that proponents of abstinence-only curricula and those holding extremist views
represent the most significant opposition to a multicultural and pluralistic sexual-values
education. All the other positions and approaches presented above, in various ways,
attempt to meet the challenge of diversity. There may be, however, another less obvious
obstacle. As was seen above, sexuality education is universally defined as a means to an
end. Internationally, most proponents of sexuality education agree that the primary goal
of sexuality education programs is to solve problems like unwanted teenage pregnancy,
STDs, and the sexual abuse of children (Reiss, 1995a, p. 371; Thompson, 1994, p. 41).
Here the success of a program is measured primarily by utilitarian criteria. Sears captures
the essence of this vision when he writes that: “Sexuality education is first and foremost
an instrument for sexual and social control in which the effectiveness of such programs is
judged on the basis of sexual behavior and its observable consequences: adolescent
pregnancy rate, per capita abortions, and … STD infection.” Here the content lessons are
taught to a “homogeneous group of students” and decision-making is viewed as the
process of weighing “the costs and benefits of particular sexual behavior” (Sears, 1992, p.
7). Both the pro-condoms and abstinence-only proponents fall under this “ideological
umbrella” (p. 17).
Elsewhere I argue that an instrumentalutilitarian vision is problematic because it
obscures the more positive dimensions of human sexuality; neglects other less
instrumental goals such as developing insight and self-understanding; fails to see
sexuality education as lifelong; is often based on a projection of adult fears; and sees
effectiveness in terms of shortsighted goals and unrealistic expectations (Morris, 1994,
1997, 1998). The question arising here is whether a crisis-instrumental vision is capable
of addressing the challenge of cultural diversity. Recognizing the importance of cultural
diversity marks a significant evolution in sexuality education. Can this evolution be
widely appropriated in practice, however, without a paradigm shift?
McKay and Barrett, who coordinated the development of the Canadian Guidelines for
SIECCAN, worry that the pervasive emphasis on problem prevention might limit the goal
of developing a comprehensive approach to sexuality education (1995, p. 64). By
focusing primarily on behavior and behavior change, an instrumental sexuality education
easily becomes exclusive. It has a tendency to obscure the cultural meanings adolescents
attach to sexual activity. Trudell, for example, argues that the tendency to focus on the
high rate of pregnancy among black teens “obscures the role of cultural differences in the
meaning of this event to a black teenager as well as the economic inequities such as
higher unemployment and lower average wages for blacks” (1985, p. 13)
According to Samuels, instrumental-behavioral approaches to sexuality education are
based on “Euro-American social norms, which may not be consistent with the beliefs and
values of many African-Americans” (1995, p. 4). Instrumental approaches “assume that

people have the resources necessary to proceed directly with rational decisions” or that
they have “personal control over traditional categories of resources—for example,
money, education, mobility” (Mays and Cochran cited in Samuels, 1995, p. 5). Diori
argues that an education which focuses exclusively on pregnancy and STD prevention
promotes heterosexual copulation as the essence of human sexual expression and thereby
serves to socialize adolescents into patriarchal values. “By failing to consider sexual
activity as anything but copulation,” sex education reinforces “not only the tendency to
think of sex in those limited terms, but the survival of arguably oppressive political
practices and structures as well” (1985, p. 253).
As Ghosh argues, a critical approach to multicultural issues does more than merely
acknowledge cultural differences. It seeks to challenge hegemonic conceptions of
knowledge, as well as challenge discriminatory and oppressive policies and practices
(1995, p. 233). In the school this begins by attending to the various ways in which the
hidden curriculum perpetuates discrimination, and by asking whether the dominant
ideology reinforces discrimination and oppression.
In the classroom sexuality education can contribute to a critical multicultural
education by providing a space for social justice questions. The content of a critical
sexuality education could explore how AIDS is but one example of scapegoating; of how
minority groups typically get blamed for the onset of epidemics. From the blaming of
Jews in the bubonic plague which struck Rome in 1656, to the blaming of Irish
immigrants for the cholera epidemic that hit New York in 1832, and to the blaming of
homosexuals for the AIDS epidemic, powerless minority groups are consistently targeted
as the “outsiders” with “despicable morals” (Guindon, 1993, p. 77). This displacement of
the problem onto the shoulders of outsiders, according to Guindon, allows us to avoid
questions of personal responsibility and social justice. Rather than just promote safer sex
practices, a critical sexual values education encourages imaginative self-reflection, that
is, it challenges students to see how each of us is prone to scapegoating in our everyday
lives.
Carrera’s work in New York City provides a promising example of an approach to
pregnancy prevention which takes into account personal resources, social inequity, and
economic conditions. Working in conjunction with The Children’s Aid Society, Carrera
launched a comprehensive long-term pilot project for young people, parents, and adults in
Harlem. Believing that there are no “quick-fix solutions” to a problem which is
symptomatic of much larger problems “such as poverty, institutionalized racism, poor
housing, substandard health care, inadequate education, and limited career opportunities,”
Carrera rejects efforts which simply attempt to “teach” their way out of this problem
using “cognitive approaches alone” (1995, p. 16).
In addition to providing in-class lessons on various aspects of sexuality (anatomy,
reproduction, STDs, gender, sexual orientation, family, love, intimacy, body image), the
program includes sessions on career opportunities, on-site access to medical and mental
health services, help with homework, initiation into sports that teach skills transferable to
everyday life, and workshops exploring various issues through the performing arts.
Although the program does not focus directly on changing power relations and
oppressive structures, it does give the participants considerably more resources than most
pregnancy prevention programs.
2. Values, meaning, and narrative

Having rejected value-free approaches to sexuality education policy-makers and
curriculum developers are increasingly inclined to identify explicitly those values that
ought to inform sexuality education programs. This marks an important development in
sexuality education. Placing one’s values “on the table,” as it were, is much more
conducive to dialogue, critique and revision. As Halstead argues, however, it would be a
mistake to see this task as a matter of opting for a “prepackaged set” of values (1996, p.
8). Prepackaged lists short-circuit the task of pursuing an ongoing and inclusive
consultation, negotiation, and dialogue (cf. Thompson, 1997).
Value lists are also inadequate for consultation or education purposes. Value lists, like
Values Clarification exercises, abstract values from their interpretive contexts. In a
pluralistic society the same value will have diverse meanings. Even in a monocultural
context different individuals will give different meanings to the same value. Take a value
like “commitment” for example. In human sexuality and relationships some people
understand commitment to mean getting married and having children. For others
commitment refers to the serious quality of a partnership, regardless of whether or not the
partners are officially married or whether they have children.
Some people understand “fidelity” to mean sexual exclusivity, while others take
fidelity to mean faithfulness to oneself and to the uniqueness of the other (Guindon,
1986). In the same way some people see “mutuality” as a form of intimacy that comes
through the fusion of two partners, that is, as something that happens only when two
people become one. Others see mutuality as a form of interdependence where the self is
preserved while at the same time seeking, as Kegan writes, “a bigger context in which
these separate identities interpenetrate” (1982, p. 254). Still others see mutuality in
utilitarian terms: “If you do this for me I will do that in return.”
Values are not like objects on a supermarket shelf waiting to be counted, weighed,
packaged and sold. To have substantive discussions on values, whether it be among
policy-makers, among parents, or in the classroom, it is important to consider the
underlying ethic (paradigm, vision, world-view, myth) which nourishes and gives
meaning to real lived values (cf. Morris, 1997; Smyth, 1996, p. 64).
A narrative approach to sexual values education can play an important role in this
process. Narrative allows us to see the human shape of values. In literature, as Northrop
Frye writes, “the primary realities are not atoms or electrons but bodies, and the primary
forces are not energy or gravitation but love and death and passion and joy” (1963, pp. 8–
9). The power or “magic” of the narrative lies in its ability to take us to places where we
can see how values are actually lived. Narrative is capable of revealing the ambiguity,
depth, and complexity of moral life. It reveals the human struggle for value; the never
ending and often unexpected ways in which values are prized, defended, clashed,
compromised, challenged, revised, or appropriated and reappropriated.
A narrative approach can also play an important role in a culturally diverse sexuality
education. Because stories are consistent with the narrative structure of our experience
they provide opportunities for understanding ourselves and others (cf. Bruner, 1987;
Egan, 1988). Contrary to instrumental approaches to sexuality education, narrative places
meaning and the diversity of meanings at the center of the educational process. Narrative,
as Johnson writes, contributes the development “of our moral sensitivity, our ability to
make subtle discriminations, and our empathy for others” (1993, p. 197). It provides
opportunities for “deepened understanding of others and for bridging moral diverse
communities” (Witherell, 1991, p. 239).
Comparing and understanding different ethical positions, much like the process of
decision-making, involves what Johnson refers to as “imaginative rationality,” that is,
imaginative perception, envisionment, and action (1993, p. 216). Both involve “an
ongoing imaginative exploration of possibilities” (p. 209). To understand different
viewpoints we must go “out toward people to inhabit their world, not just by rational
calculation, but also in imagination, feeling, and expression” (p. 200; cf. Maguire, 1978).
In a pluralistic society the challenge is to identify those narratives and narrative forms
which open learners to depth, possibility, and diversity. Because narrative is so powerful,
stories can easily be used as a means of coercion and manipulation, as a means of
inculcating preconceived objectivistic conceptions of “the right value” and “the right
decision.” (For an example of an approach to sexuality education which uses culturally
diverse literature see: Brunner, 1992; cf. Morris, 1994, pp. 77–89.)
3. Sexual abuse prevention, miseducation and visible minorities

As was seen above, one of the main concerns of sexuality education programs in the
elementary schools is sexual-abuse prevention. These programs can play an important
role in empowering children to protect themselves from abuse. Presently, however, this
work is being done so poorly that children are increasingly equating all forms of touching
with abuse. In North America the question “Did X touch you?” is now almost universally
understood to mean “Did X sexually abuse you?” The confusion generated by this
miseducation, coupled with the incompetent manner in which investigations and trials are
frequently handled, is causing teaching and parenting to become more and more
antiseptic (Sears, 1992, p. 24). Children are afraid of being “touched.” Parents are afraid
to “touch” their own children, and male teachers are avoiding almost all physical contact
with their pupils. As Désaulniers points out, this miseducation inculcates in children a
form of “erotophobia,” leading to sexual repression rather than sexual education (1994, p.
27). Here it is the value of sexuality itself that is seriously called into question.
For a multicultural society an important question arising is whether attempts at sexual
abuse prevention also instill in children a fear of visible minorities. The main message
communicated to children is that they must beware of strangers. Although children run a
far greater risk of being sexually assaulted by someone they know, they are
systematically taught that strangers are the potential abusers (Désaulniers, 1994, p. 29,
1995, p. 145). In a multicultural society no stranger is “stranger” than the stranger from a
visible minority. The constant association of danger with strangers fails to cultivate in
children an openness to difference and to other cultures. This may represent another
instance of scapegoating, of blaming “outsiders” and of avoiding questions of personal
accountability and social justice (cf. Désaulniers, 1994, p. 29).
4. Teacher education
The issues raised in this paper point to the importance of comprehensive teacher
education programs. Unfortunately most sexuality education teachers receive very little
formal training. Most are either self-taught or receive a few professional development
workshops (Barrett, 1990; Désaulniers, 1995; Rodriguez et al. 1996). The relative
absence of comprehensive long-term formation is cause for serious concern.
Adequately preparing teachers to address value questions in pluralistic society is
particularly complex. Unlike knowledge about reproduction or contraception, an
understanding of the subtleties and nuances of good practice in sexual values education
cannot be obtained solely from a textbook or a day-long workshop. Teachers need a solid
grounding in the theory, language, practice, curricula, policy, and debates surrounding
sexual values and sexual values education. They need opportunities to critically examine
their own values and philosophical assumptions, and to explore the diverse meanings of
values. They also need to see how the values embedded in the hidden curriculum shape
and direct their teaching.
In my own professional experience I have found that teachers who have not done this
work usually resort to what McKay refers to as “the bare-bones” approach to sexuality
education (1998, p. 8). They will give a few lessons on anatomy, reproduction, puberty,
and how to say “no” (cf. Reiss, 1996, p. 102). In an attempt to avoid controversy they
will claim that their teaching is value-free. They will then go on to contradict themselves
by making several value-laden statements (cf. Kelly, 1986, pp. 114–16; Kilpatrick, 1992,
pp. 56–9; Morris, 1994, p. 11). Policy-makers, researchers and academics can write
volumes on the importance of values in sexuality education. Without adequate teacher
education, however, the values dimension will remain, as Roffman so aptly puts it, the
“Achilles’ heal” of sexuality education (1994, p. 19).
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20
Mathematics as Social Practice in a South
African Workplace Context
DAVE BAKER
Introduction: position
Many of us in mathematics, when faced by the question why so many people fail at the
subject or dislike it, reply that it is badly taught or that the learners can’t learn it. We
pathologize the teachers and the students. ‘The students are often incapable, do not have
the right background or were taught badly.’ Teachers of mathematics, we claim, are
unimaginative and uncreative. They enjoyed learning the subject and follow the same
paths they themselves met. We would like them to become more creative, to be more
lively and to try new and original approaches. I like to call this pedagogical polishing.
Polishing has an important effect on the look of furniture but it is marginal in that it
cannot make a poor piece of furniture into a good one. If we need a different piece of
furniture then we have to change the whole piece, from the start. In terms of
mathematical education we need to look at not only pedagogy but at the curriculum as
well. We have to look at the purpose of the whole enterprise. We need to question the
social setting in which teaching and learning mathematics occurs. Instead of
pathologizing the students and the teachers we need to problematize the institutions in
which they work whether these are local (schools and colleges) or national structures like
ABET, The Basic Skills Unit in the UK, or policies that specify national standards and
curricula or even the edifice of mathematics itself.
It is perhaps worth starting on a personal note to explain where I am coming from. It
may help provide a context for this account. I was born in South Africa into an
ideologically aware and politically active family. I grew up during some of the most
repressive periods of apartheid and yet as a ‘white’ person I was not oppressed. It was a
very privileged upbringing. However, my family background meant that I was alerted to
ideological and oppressive issues from an early age. My family was forced to leave South
Africa and again, being white, we found it relatively easy to find a place in liberal Great
Britain. During the last 15–20 years the atmosphere in the United Kingdom has changed
dramatically and the political and educational atmosphere there is no longer liberal. The
move has been away from notions of community and social justice towards profit and
entrepreneurialism; away from the welfare state towards individualism. This has been felt
in education where the move has been towards greater centralized control, initially of the
curriculum, but more recently of pedagogy as well. This has of course meant more
surveillance resulting in criticisms of so-called ‘liberal’ approaches and the stressing of
‘back to basics’ curricula and transmission pedagogy. The reaction of colleagues around
me has been to say ‘hand-up, yes we were guilty of that’. They accept the criticisms
Mathematics as social practice in a south african workplace context 305
without seeming to question the context, ideological, social or political, in which they
were sited. My response to problems in mathematics education has if anything become
more politicized by this move away from a liberal approach towards more control and
surveillance. To give this work more direction and focus I have pursued the notion of
mathematics as a social practice because it enables me to see the ideological and social
forces involved. And it enables me to move away from pathologizing the students and
teachers towards problematizing the social institutions in which they work.
The intention of this chapter is therefore to explain what I mean by saying that
mathematics is a social practice; to identify its main qualities and characteristics; to
analyse in depth what such a phrase means. This position statement will occupy the first
part of the chapter. The second part will look at possible implications of such an approach
for curricula and pedagogy in teaching and learning mathematics. The last part will
present a possible implementation of the ideas into an adult numeracy context in South
Africa. It is worth stating here that I have tended to use the word numeracy where
common usage dictates this in, say, adult numeracy. I have otherwise used the word
mathematics to emphasize a broader conception of the subject.
Background: the problem
Consider the following:
There is a major problem with under education in the United Kingdom…

About 1 in 7 people (almost 6 million) have serious problems with
reading, writing, spelling and/or basic mathematics.
Many…have problems with basic skills. They find …calculating very
difficult.
About 15% of people could not calculate the change from £20 if they
had spent £17.89. (ALBSU, 1993, pp. 6–7)
In these statements ALBSU (Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit, now The Basic Skills
Unit) are addressing a deeply felt concern in the United Kingdom about the ‘basic skills’
of the population. They suggest that deficiencies in basic skills are so widespread that the
cost to industry is £4.6 billion a year.
There is a resonance between these concerns and those expressed over 100 years ago.
In 1877, 7-year-olds were expected to be able to add together up to four-figure numbers.
In 1879 the following comments were made on the standards of 11-year-olds:
In a class of 58 children in standard V, only 11 could encounter with

success the difficulties of a sum in simple addition. (McIntosh, 1973)
There is nothing new in concerns about problems in mathematics. They have been around
since compulsory schooling began. Neither are these concerns limited to any particular
age group. They are claimed to affect children in schools, students in higher education
and also adults beyond schooling. First, in schools these concerns often focus on the lack
of basic skills of children, their inability to carry out computations quickly and
accurately:
only one in five 14-year-olds knows how to calculate percentages

correctly because the national curriculum is failing to provide adequate
education in mathematics. (Wilkie, 1995)
Second, in their report on the mathematical background of undergraduates for The

Engineering Council of the United Kingdom, Sutherland and Pozzi (1995, p. 51) write:
the majority of engineering lecturers said that the mathematical

knowledge of first year undergraduate engineering students is weaker than
it was 10 years ago.
and
Just over half (55 %) of lecturers surveyed said that the mathematical
background of their engineering students is undermining the quality of
their engineering degrees.
Finally, in adult numeracy, where the focus is clearly on ‘basic skills’ by which it is
meant counting and computational skills, the concerns are that there is little evidence of
successful learning of these skills. In a report for the World Bank Abadzi (1994) claims
that most adult literacy programmes [including numeracy], had ‘success rates of 12.5 %’:
On average 50% of those who enrol in the programme drop out within a
few weeks, of those 50 % fail to complete the programme and of those 50
% lose the skills taught to them within a short time.
So a real concern is demonstrated about mathematics in schools, adult education and

universities all of which complement each other. In these three sectors there are similar
concerns about mathematical skills. In higher education, for example, the students have
problems with algebraic manipulation or statistics. There is also the acute problem of the
recruitment of appropriately qualified students to mathematics courses. In some cases
recruitment to mathematics degree courses of the new universities in the United Kingdom
has dried up almost completely. In adult numeracy programmes, usually placed within
literacy programmes, there are also concerns about retention rates on courses as well as
the effectiveness of such programmes in raising levels of numeracy (Abadzi, 1994).
Finally, in schools children struggle with ‘basic skills’ and are not sufficiently attracted to
the subject to study it further.
These three phases of education are linked in many ways, not least by the part teachers
play in the process. Initially teachers are educated in schools. Many of them then engage
in maths studies in higher education as student teachers before returning to schools as
teachers. In adult education tutors may receive little training in numeracy and then from
those involved in existing literacy programmes. They have learnt their mathematics as
part of formal school mathematics. They learn about teaching mathematics from their
own experiences in formal schooling or from others within the adult education system,
thereby perpetuating the practices of which the World Bank are so critical, (Abadzi,
1994). Their experience of mathematics in this process contributes to their
epistemological and pedagogical beliefs about mathematics education. Within the
process, and the social institution that is education, there are prevalent views and beliefs
about knowledge and pedagogy. Teacher training and adult education tutors pass on these
views to student teachers who then pass them on to children in schools. The cycle
continues, reinforcing the dominant position, and with teachers as a common thread.
1. Autonomous model and responses to concerns

At this point it is worth reflecting on the underlying beliefs of such positions. They seem
to be derived from an epistemology that is based on beliefs about the nature of ‘basic
skills’ and what these skills are. The Basic Skills Unit itself makes their beliefs explicit
by identifying ‘basic skills’ within mathematics as ‘being able to calculate effectively’
(ALBSU, 1993, p. 13). They term this area of mathematics ‘numeracy’ and present it as a
set of pure skills separate from contexts in which it may be used, showing their belief that
mathematics is both culture and value free. Such a belief is based on what I term the
‘autonomous’ model of mathematics. In contrast, I will maintain later, that mathematics
is a social practice and therefore carries within it ideological and cultural values. ALBSU,
by rejecting a cultural basis for mathematics, is in effect situating its beliefs within a
particular cultural and ideological position and one that denies the importance of ideology
and culture. The concerns expressed about standards are therefore culturally loaded with
substantial implications for equity in schools and society at large and more significantly
perhaps for access to education, employment and established social institutions.
Whether the concerns raised above are valid is a question that could be explored
further but for the purposes of this chapter it is enough to signal the extent of these
concerns in order to consider society’s responses to the situation. In the United Kingdom
the response by authorities to this problem has been to look closely at the content of the
mathematics curriculum for all ages. This curriculum has been specified more tightly in
terms of skills. Teachers have been required to develop specific programmes to teach
those skills, and finally structures have been set up to ensure that those skills are taught
and assessed. This approach can be seen most clearly in the work of the National
Curriculum (NC) for England and Wales within the schooling sector. Thus the NC listed
the content that schools were legally required to cover together with areas in which
children were to be assessed (National Curriculum 1989, 1991 and 1995). Structures were
established to review the work of the schools and assessment regimes set up. These
included assessments of all learners. Scores have been used to set up league tables by
which schools are ranked by ‘quality’ of outcomes. Such an approach evokes images of
surveillance and control and shows the existence of power relations in the system.
Evidence of centralized control is also presented in an analysis made by Apple (1979) of
the response to failure in schools in the USA, where he described the stands taken to
identify the curriculum more carefully and to standardize accountability. Similarly
ALBSU nationally in the UK determined the basic skills adults needed. They then
advised teaching institutions to devise programmes to teach these skills directly to those
people identified as being in need. An example of this approach can be seen in the work
with prison populations and the work of the Training and Enterprise Councils (ALBSU,
1993). Within Higher Education the common response to student difficulties with maths
has been to see the problem as the students’ lack of appropriate knowledge. The students
are seen as not having met the kinds of mathematical topics they need and the blame is
consequently placed on what is done or not done in schools. Such a notion can be termed
‘gaps in their knowledge’ (Baker 1996a), which can then be remediated. For example:
Students’ difficulties with mathematics can be related to their lack of

previous experience of certain mathematical ideas, particularly those
related to algebra. (Sutherland and Pozzi, 1995, p. 52)
These gaps in knowledge are seen as caused by schools. Thus Higher Education passes
the blame onto others avoiding asking difficult questions of their own sector.
Changes in school mathematics…have not laid the necessary foundations

to maintain the quantity and quality of mathematically competent school
leavers and have greatly disadvantaged those who need to continue their
mathematical training beyond school level. (London Mathematical
Society et al., 1995)
The responses in all three sectors are based on a deficit model of assessment, one where
the learner’s lack of knowledge is perceived as the problem. The needs of an individual
learner can be resolved through remediation, the provision of extra help, delivered as
repetition of a failing mode of mathematics learning. To resolve the problem of the needs
of Higher Education, on the larger scale, changes to what is provided in schools are
suggested. Seldom is an examination made of what occurs in Higher Education itself. In a
similar manner, in adult education what is needed to be learnt is decided by outside
institutions. According to Prinsloo (1996), for example in South Africa, ABET provision
is shifting towards accreditation through the Independent Examinations Board which will
close off choice. The curriculum cannot then be questioned and certainly not be explicitly
related to the needs of the individual learner. The student is therefore seen to be in need
or in deficit and pathologized. Such a deficit view of teaching and learning mathematics
is based on what has been termed the autonomous model of mathematics (Baker and
Street, 1994). In this model mathematics is seen as a unified well-determined and
accepted body of knowledge, abstract in nature, value-free and independent of the society
in which it is sited. In other words, the model foregrounds mathematical content. This
autonomous model is dominant in Higher Education and underpins the notion of deficit
in student knowledge and the associated remediation responses to student difficulties
with mathematics. At present there is little evidence that such responses are providing
resolutions to the concerns with problems of recruitment and student ‘competences’
deteriorating. This is also discussed by Jeffery et al. (1995) in their analysis of problems
inherent in deficit models in the training of teachers. They argue that ‘the deficit model is
deeply engrained’ and they conclude that ‘a deficit model is not the sound basis for
effective professional development in mathematics’.
Such approaches and responses are based on a particular view of mathematics, one
that accepts a canon of concepts, skills and procedures. Such a view sees mathematics as
culturally neutral. A different view of mathematics, one that is based on an acceptance of

its cultural and ideological nature, challenges this canon and leads to different approaches
to tackling problems of poor levels of numeracy. The focus of this article is, therefore, to
consider such views of mathematics and to propose an alternative model, acknowledging
the socio-cultural and ideological in mathematics. This model will include the notion of
‘mathematics practices’ which is defined later. At this point it is sufficient to state that the
model focuses on mathematics as a social practice and I will consider the implications for
theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in teaching and learning mathematics. It is
important to reiterate that, although numeracy and mathematics can be seen
synonymously, mathematics will be used in this paper in preference to numeracy to avoid
limiting the application of ideas to a narrow meaning of numeracy, that is to do with
knowledge and use of numerical and arithmetical skills. I am aware that in adult basic
education numeracy is the more commonly used term. However it is clear to me that the
implications of this chapter apply just as readily to numeracy and to adult numeracy as to
mathematics in the other two sectors.
2. Mathematics as a social practice: explanations/definitions

The dominant autonomous model of mathematics has not resulted in significant
improvements in areas of concern in mathematics. I now wish to explore in some detail
the alternative model of mathematics as social practice.
First let us see how mathematicians and mathematics educators respond to being asked
whether mathematics is a social practice. In common with others, those in my institution,
accept this assertion readily, seeing mathematics as a human activity and therefore based
within the social. But they then pay lip-service to the notion and are not aware of or do
not want to face possible consequences of such an assertion. They will discuss
mathematics in terms of its content, for example, seeing some content as geometry or at
its broadest as spatial thinking. They may see it as a tool, or a means of communication
or a way of thinking. These aspects, although broader than skills and inclusive of
mathematical processes, nevertheless are restricted to a view of mathematics as a well-
defined accepted body of objective knowledge, with unique procedures and monolithic
logical outcomes. In some cases they may see it in terms of its applications to areas
outside mathematics itself. Here they would include problem-solving and perhaps
mathematical modelling, accepting a more utilitarian role. In a sense they are seeing
mathematics as contextualized into aspects of the world beyond mathematics. Yet such
an acceptance still involves a specific set of knowledge, specific kinds of techniques and
in general is abstract in kind. It is still mainly seen as decontextualized, certainly value
free and as nothing to do with ideology. This view of mathematics as well-accepted and
well-identified knowledge is broadly held within the mathematics community, and is one
that is seldom questioned or debated. It is seen as valid because it works, ‘it has put a
man on the moon’ (private conversation with a mathematics educator at University of
Brighton). Their mathematics is therefore not contested knowledge; it has legitimate
status in its close relationship with science and technology. What I want to do in this part
of the chapter is to pursue the ideas behind mathematics as a social practice and then see
possible implications for pedagogy and the curricula of both numeracy and mathematics
teaching for all ages.
The alternative model to the autonomous one is an ideological model of mathematics

practices. This sees mathematics as social practices with its content or body of knowledge
sited within contextual, cultural and ideological circumstances. It enables critical
questions to be raised about the subject itself, its relations to society, tutors, relationships
with students and with the subject. The ideological model is an extension of an earlier
one, the cultural model discussed in Baker and Street (1994), with the additional
acknowledgement that power relations are important as well as cultural factors, (Baker,
1995). An essential notion within this ideological model foregrounds mathematics
practices rather than content. Mathematics practices are seen here as more than just the
behaviours exhibited when doing mathematics. They include conceptualizations beyond
the surface behaviours, that is the model acknowledges the cultural context and power
relations in which the behaviours are sited. Such a model, were it used to look at
problems in teaching and learning mathematics in all sectors, could enable different and
potentially more effective responses to be framed.
To pursue what the mathematics as a social practice model means and possible
implications, I first want to look at two situations sited in the UK and draw from them the
essence of these practices.
The first situation demonstrates differences in mathematics practices. The following
‘fact’ can be found in many school mathematics curricula.
The angles of a rectangle are right angles.
This is not a particularly difficult idea, one that primary school children will have met at
school. It is not of earth shattering importance but it is helpful when dealing with
geometric ideas on paper. In secondary schools students will take the idea further and
will be aware that a rectangle is a special type of parallelogram—one with right angles.
The properties of rectangles and their relationship to parallelograms are met many times
during the course of a student’s schooling and are not seen as unusual. It would also be
widely regarded as ‘legitimate’ mathematics, its legitimacy deriving from historical and
social experiences within mathematics and not from use in society beyond. I wish to
discuss an incident involving these ideas which occurred outside a formal educational
setting. In this context it proved to be a problem for me as someone well versed in formal
academic mathematics yet was not a problem for a builder who had left school without
formal mathematical qualifications.
The problem was to ensure that a sand-pit which was being set into the ground was
‘square’ as the builder described it. By that he meant that the four corners were right
angles, that is the hole in the ground was rectangular. The sand-pit was being built by a
community under the guidance of the local authority who required a rectangular sandpit.
My response and that of the community of local residents was to use a protractor or set
square to make the angle 90 degrees. Such a response fitted our experience of
mathematics in formal classroom setting. Our solutions were clumsy, impractical and
inaccurate given the size and nature of the task. The builder, when approached with the
same problem, expressed surprise at these solutions. Indeed he refused to build the walls
whilst the hole was not square. For him the special size of the angles of a rectangle was
not ‘legitimate’ knowledge. From his position, well steeped in the culture of practical
building, he suggested using string to compare the lengths of the diagonals of the shape
both to test whether the corners were square, and to help make them square. His solution
was powerful, very accurate, useful and appropriate to the situation. His knowledge about
the diagonals was legitimate knowledge for builders; it was effective knowledge. It just
happened also to be mathematically elegant, easily justified and interesting for an
academic mathematician. The fact that it was mathematically elegant and rigorous had
not occurred to the builder. They were not important issues for him. But the notions of
elegance and rigour have powerful status and legitimacy within academic mathematics.
This strongly suggests that issues of legitimacy and power depend on where they are
sited, questioning the objective culture-free, autonomous, view of mathematics.
The problem and its solutions are not in themselves interesting. What is interesting is
that the two settings, in which similar mathematics were met, were quite different. The
school paper-based geometry was quite different from the problem based, three
dimensional sand-pit. There were substantial differences to do with the physical space
they were set in, to do with expectations of the people involved and the purpose of the
problems, to do with their beliefs and values—what was important and what was not, to
do with ideology—the legitimacy of the knowledge and the power relations involved—
and to do with their experiences of mathematics practices. These are substantial socio-
cultural differences. Neither set of mathematics practices are better or worse than the
other; they are just different. One may be more appropriate in one setting and the other in
a different setting. Yet such notions of different mathematics practices do not seem to
have any currency in official educational policies or debates about standards and
responses to associated concerns. It is only the dominant practices of the formal
curriculum that are valued and in consequence legitimised and have status. Thus the
practice that sees a rectangle as a static figure drawn on paper with fixed right angled
corners is valued above the more dynamic practice of using string to measure the
diagonals of the rectangle. Acceptance of the former gives prominence and power to a
model of mathematics that is seen as decontextualised, always true, abstract and culture
free—the autonomous model of mathematics. This maintains power in the hands of the
few excluding the majority—perhaps a form of mathematical apartheid!
The second situation occurred during the research I conducted with two year 6 (10/11
year old) girls in a British primary school. The intention of the study was to look at the
different mathematics practices they engaged in in formal mathematics classes and those
in informal non-mathematics activities, (Baker, 1996b). They were asked to work out the
area of a doll’s house door which was a task set in a text book. The first girl, who was
seen as less successful at formal mathematics, added the length and breadth of the door
and sought immediate confirmation from the teacher of her result. She was concerned
with her performance, she wanted to complete the task and to get praise. Both the
completion and the correctness of her work needed to be legitimated and the only source
of that was the teacher—clearly a power relationship. The other child who was seen as a
higher attainer tackled a more complex follow-up question by seeking her own solution.
This problem required her to find the area of the frame of a four panelled door. Rather
than work out the areas of separate parts of the door she worked out the area of the whole
door, mentally merged the panels into one area, and subtracted the one from the other, a
quicker more elegant and less arduous approach. She did not seek immediate
confirmation that she had the right answer, instead she got great pleasure from finding a
quicker method and then sharing it with the teacher. The teacher again represented the
authority that legitimated the girl’s work but by choosing her own ‘best’ method she was
displaying mathematical curiosity. The values that drove the work of these two girls were
different. The first was performance led whilst the second was driven by personal
pleasure or mathematical curiosity. In what sense then can mathematics be value-free?
These two examples contain within them some of the essential differences between the
ideological model of mathematics as social practices and the autonomous model of
numeracy. To establish these more closely requires further and more detailed analyses.
To do this I want to look at the notion of mathematics practices. This is in some sense
parallel to the use of ‘literacy practices’ in work on literacy (Street, 1984). By
‘mathematics practices’ I mean the occasions, content, activities, and kinds of
mathematics that individuals engage in when they do mathematics. Mathematics in this
sense is the set of mathematics practices individuals engage in in their everyday lives.
Mathematics becomes a set of practices engaged in by individuals in a social setting.
Mathematics is not conceived here as an individual’s mathematics skills or knowledge
per se, it is a social practice in which the mathematics skills, knowledge and
understandings are applied for particular purposes in specific contexts.
In an earlier article (Baker, 1996b) I proposed that mathematics (or numeracy)
practices should be seen as having four components—content, context, culture and
ideology. There is a danger of atomization in such an analysis of practices into separate
components because, for example, culture can be seen as separate from content, context
and/or ideology which in turn can be seen as independent of culture and so on. Yet in fact
they are all integral to the nature of practices. No technique or skill can be seen in
isolation. To understand it, it would need to be described in terms of the context, culture
and ideology in which the practice occurs. The value of the identification of these
components of practices is that in making them explicit their significance is more easily
seen and their existence emphasized. Now the question 2+2=? presented in this form is
only partially situated and the practices needed to solve it are unclear. The activity may
be in formal classroom mathematics practices with particular roles, power relationships
and values with the expected answer, ‘4’. On the other hand it could relate to quite
different circumstances and practices. For example, its context may be children travelling
in a lift who press the second floor button twice and are transported to the second floor
not the fourth. The answer here would be ‘2’. A question like ‘2+2=?’ would only make
sense once it was fully situated within the four components.
I return now to these components to see them more clearly. The first two—content and
context—are the most familiar whilst the third—culture—and fourth—ideology—are in a
sense a new contribution, a different level of analysis, and will be looked at more closely.
The first, content, is the activities, techniques and kinds of mathematics that individuals
engage in. The second, the context, is the occasions when mathematics is done and the
purposes for that mathematics. The third is the culture, beliefs and values of the
individuals doing mathematics and the fourth, ideology, includes the power relationships
involved.
The first is to some extent related to the dominant view of numeracy which sees it as a
canon of skills and knowledge. The second is intended to provide an explicit recognition
that the context in which mathematics is practised and the purposes for which it is done
are a constituent part of mathematics. These purposes and contexts depend on the
individuals engaged in their mathematics practices. An appropriate context and purpose

for one person may not be so for another.
The third is concerned with the ways individuals’ beliefs, values and epistemologies
will affect the mathematics practices they adopt. They will make decisions on the
mathematics practices they engage in depending on their beliefs and concepts about the
nature of mathematics and on the values that drive their practices. In my research with
children in a British primary school I identified three different types of values that drove
their mathematics practices; performance, personal/social and mathematical.
Performance values—getting right answers; completing work; avoiding

blame; getting praise.
Personal/social values—desire to win; fairness, equity; peer, friendship
pressure; cheating; collaborating; aesthetics; pleasure.
Mathematical values—desire to understand; best solutions; curiosity.
(Baker, 1996b)
The fourth is the ideological component which is concerned with the relationships
between the people involved in the practice, their status and roles, and between the
people and the knowledge and concepts involved, what they see as acceptable and
legitimate mathematics. As we have seen, many in mathematics would reject any notion
that ideology is involved in mathematics.
To see the third and fourth components in action let us return to our sand-pit. The
builder had a job to do and in wanting to build a successful retaining wall needed a
sufficiently accurate solution. He did not want to know why the diagonals gave him what
he wanted. He was performance driven. On the other hand, I was curious about the two
different approaches and wanted to understand the situation in my terms. I was
mathematically driven. There were also power relationships at play as well. The builder
refused to build the wall until the hole we had constructed was ‘square’. He did not mind
how we did it yet we could not use him till we had solved the problem. I had degrees in
mathematics and therefore had status given to me by society that was positioned within
an academic setting. My desire to understand the ideas behind the technique was
acceptable within that setting but it carried no weight and had no currency in the building
of the sand-pit. On the other hand he wanted to get on with building as best he could,
ignoring the justification of the ideas. If he ever found himself in an academic setting, say
an adult mathematics class, he would no longer be able to ignore this. Indeed it may
become so central to the work that the building skills would themselves be ignored in
favour of the academic mathematics; a strange yet very common reversal of what was
regarded as important. The day-to-day practices of a working builder would lose currency
in favour of the paper-based theoretical meta-knowledge of the middle-class academic! It
is also interesting to note the power dimensions of the local authority’s requirement for a
rectangular sand-pit. Such a requirement was never questioned. It had the finality of a
bureaucracy behind it and thus remained unquestioned and even unnoticed.
The four factors of content, contexts, culture and ideology provide a model of
mathematics practices; viewing mathematics as social practice, which enables it to be
seen from a wider perspective than that traditionally given by organizations such as The
Basic Skills Unit, Higher Education Institutions, or national policies. Their visions are
focused most strongly on the first factor, seeing mathematics as being restricted to a
canon of mathematical activities and techniques. Other writers provide different
perspectives of mathematics yet they are shown to be restricted when compared with an
ideological model. Schoenfeld (1985) proposed a very useful analysis of mathematical
problem-solving performance. This has clear similarities to my analysis but also has
substantial differences. He suggested that four categories could serve as a framework to
analyse mathematical performance. The first two, ‘resources’ and ‘heuristics’ which are
mathematical skills, knowledge and approaches to problem-solving, can be seen to be
similar to what I have called ‘content’. His ‘control’ factor which refers to students’
choices of what mathematics to use in a situation most closely relates to my ‘context’
component, although it is possible to see it cutting across other components. His ‘belief
systems’ has similarities to my cultural component but ties these beliefs closely to
mathematics itself and not to the social. This lack of acknowledgement of the socio-
cultural nature of mathematics practices is further seen in his neglect of the ideological in
mathematics, which is not referred to at all. His analysis is most useful to teachers from
an autonomous standpoint because it throws light on difficulties their students are having
with mathematics. It does not, however, acknowledge the need to contest the
mathematics itself nor expose power relations involved unlike the ideological model that
I am proposing.
What I am arguing here is that mathematics practices are more than techniques and
behaviours. They also involve in a highly significant and integral way the context and
purposes in which they occur. But perhaps the most significant aspects that are being
added by this analysis of mathematics as social practices are the cultural and ideological
dimensions of mathematics. This is not what mathematicians would normally include in
their understanding of mathematics as a social practice. The initial view that ‘of course
mathematics is a social practice’ in a sense was banal as has been shown by this more
complex analysis. Once the notion that mathematics includes factors such as values
beliefs and power relations has been accepted then mathematicians and mathematics
educators would begin to look quite differently at the concerns, issues and problems that
beset them in schools, higher education and adult education.
The next part of the chapter looks at possible implications for teaching and learning
mathematics and numeracy in schools, higher education and adult education of viewing
mathematics as social practices.
Implications for teaching and learning mathematics: responding
In this chapter I have argued that the ideological model of mathematics as social practices
is more appropriate than the autonomous model for schools, Higher Education and Adult
Education and I now wish to develop some of the implications for policy and practice in
education. These implications can be seen in developing theoretical positions, in
curriculum and in pedagogy which now become the focus for this part of the paper.
The autonomous model of mathematics which lies behind national policy and adult
education is based on a belief in a well-defined body of knowledge that is culture- and
value-free. Such a belief has several consequences. The accepted canon of knowledge
determines curricula up to the point of selection of items from the canon. The debate is
then about whether particular content is included or excluded—for example, discussions

about long division for school-aged children in the UK. The original developers of the
National Curriculum wanted to exclude long division as learners rejected it as irrelevant
and too hard. It was ultimately included through government intervention—a political
decision. The debate about the curriculum is therefore framed by issues to do with power
and ideology. The exact order in which the curriculum may be met can be debated but the
recent tendency, often in response to concerns about standards, has been to specify in
some detail which skill or concept will be met at which stage.
To foster growth in knowledge of learners an autonomous model tends to specify
knowledge in terms of levels of attainment (cf. National Curriculum 1989, 1991).
Learners acquire this knowledge by moving up through the stages, making ‘progress’
from level to level in a linear and hierarchical fashion. Underlying this is a deficit model,
one that has in mind a target or range of targets the learners of a certain age or stage have
to reach. Any learner not getting to the target at the same rate or age as the ‘normal’
learner is seen to be deficient and in need of remediation. They are excluded from the
activities of the majority of the learners through the provision of programmes of study
that emphasize the skills they do not have, trying to make up the deficit. These learners
have been seen as part of the group termed ‘Other’ by Walkerdine (1990):
The Other can be regulated by attempting to render him/her normal and by

monitoring the pathology of development to try to put it right.
Adult education itself can be seen as an attempt to make all those adults who are labelled
as illiterate or innumerate and seen as deficient and therefore as ‘other’ into ‘normal’
adults.
Grounded in the autonomous theoretical position with its canon of content, are
pedagogical approaches dominated by transmission methods. That is not to say they are
the only ones but that they are seen as the most effective way of passing on the body of
knowledge:
the widespread acceptance of ‘objective’ mathematics has reinforced a

transmission pedagogy (Burton, 1996).
Debates about the effectiveness of transmission do occur and efforts have been made to
consider alternatives. But the evidence is that these alternatives have made few inroads
into the dominant transmission pedagogy. Where there have been genuine and substantial
changes in pedagogy teachers have had to cope with power relations in the teaching and
learning of mathematics including external, institutional and also internal, personal
pressures on teachers and schools. At the moment in Britain, Ofsted (Office for Standards
in Education, the official inspectorate) claims that so called ‘progressive teaching’
methods are responsible for problems of standards in schools (Phillips, 1996). Such
reports are based on little research and little evidence yet the powerful decision-making
position of Ofsted precludes serious critical debate, and programmes and schools can be
assessed and in some cases closed.
Built into this model is the need to assess the learners. Teachers need to know where
the learners are in their stage of acquisition of the canon of knowledge and procedures. It
is interesting to note here that these assessments are not looking at the learners’ own
mathematics practices, they are looking at their formal or ‘school mathematics’ (cf.
Nunes et al., 1993). Teachers see formative assessments as part of the teaching and
learning process. Without knowing what knowledge the learner has they cannot plan for
the next stage of learning. What is not made explicit here is that this kind of assessment
also has a control and regulatory function. Depending on the results the learners are
placed in positions in the class relative to others, often being labelled both to each other
and to their families as succeeders or failures. The teacher can determine where they sit,
who they will work with and what they will do both in terms of content and activities.
The public summative tests have a much more overt regulatory role. Success or failure
can affect future academic routes and employment prospects. In either case there are
substantial power relationships between learners and the teachers and educational
institutions that affect the mathematical educational endeavour. Recent research (Cooper,
1996) shows that such summative assessments are not culturally neutral and therefore not
even reliable. His evidence suggests that such tests as carried out in the UK tend to
underestimate the mathematical attainments of working-class children. Assessment itself
therefore is a manifestation of the ideology and epistemology underlying the education
system.
In contrast the theoretical position of mathematics as a social practice, based on an
ideological model, accepts that both cultural and ideological issues are involved in
mathematics practices acknowledging the plurality of mathematics practices.
The adoption of this model means that the curriculum itself will become more flexible.
The acceptance that learners will be involved in different mathematics practices (content,
context, culture and ideology all interrelated) means that the curriculum will need to be
open to negotiation and will have to be responsive to the needs and desires of learners.
The content of the curriculum will remain an open question, part of a continuous process
of debate and negotiation. There would no longer be the expectations of the ‘normal’
learner against whose progress through the system others would be judged. Such a
curriculum would acknowledge and accept that learners need access to the dominant
mathematics. This will get in the way of a fully and genuinely negotiated curriculum. But
power inherent in the dominant mathematics would be revealed and made explicit to
learners providing them with an understanding of its dominant position. They would at
the same time be able to work within the situation, to exploit it for their own needs, and
also be able to critique the power relationships.
The pedagogy of such a system would have to be flexible and sensitive to the learning
styles of the learners once the pressure of a fixed curriculum had been removed. Instead
of the dominant transmission mode of teaching, a more appropriate mode would be
learning in practice (cf. Baker, 1996b) or situated learning as posited by Lave (1988a and
1988b). Assessment itself would not need to be the province of the teachers or
educational institutions. Learners having a role in the negotiation of the curriculum would
have their learning needs taken into account and would be expected to be consulted about
those needs, so formative assessment would be a joint enterprise.
Implementation of mathematics as a social practice: a South African

case
1. Introduction
The last part of this chapter looks at an implementation of the ideas developed earlier by
examining a specific proposal that was drawn up in response to a request from an
organization in South Africa.
Starting from the theoretical position that mathematics is a social practice any
programme of mathematics must take into account the socio-cultural and ideological
nature of mathematics. This means that a programme—both curriculum and pedagogy—
for any age but particularly for adults must begin by fully studying and understanding the
social, cultural and ideological context in which the programme is to be sited. Such a
study will reveal:
• the needs, interests and desires of the learners.
• the social practices of the learners, their behaviours, concepts and power relations.
• demands of the society for both the knowledge the learners need and the formal gate-
keeping qualifications that will be required at the end of the programme.
• the strengths and insecurities and vested interests of the teachers and tutors.
• interpersonal and group relationships within the learner group and between the learners
and the tutors.
Once such a study has been completed then any proposed programme can be scrutinized
to see the extent to which it involves and makes use of the social practices of learners.
What follows is a report of a response that I made as a brief first step in answer to a
specific request to me to suggest a social practice approach to adult numeracy in South
Africa in 1997. It is not suggested that this is a complete or unchallengeable response.
Such a response would not be possible. It is given here to demonstrate the first steps in a
process that would enable such a programme to be put together. Initially the request was
based on an official plan that all public works would have to have an educational
component built in to them. Thus firms who tender for public works contracts have to
specify the ways that they would provide local workers with appropriate training. As the
programme of public works moved from one locality to another so more and more people
would be involved in such training. There are many potential problems with this kind of
educational plan. Not the least of which is that once the public works are completed the
local workers may return to their unemployed status and as a result there may be little
carry-over of the training they had received to them or their communities.
However, for the purposes of this chapter, I will pursue the request as it was made.
Sited in a public works programme it is an outline of a possible scenario for a social
practice approach to teaching adult numeracy in the work place. It has to be noted that
this is one programme sited in one context with a potentially large construction element.
It was not intended that such programmes be limited to construction-type public works.
This is clearly acknowledged here to avoid giving the impression that this kind of
analysis only applies to traditionally male occupations. I would welcome attempts made
by others to widen the application to other kinds of adult learning situations.
2. A possible scenario for a social practice approach to adult numeracy in

South Africa
(a) An analysis of the situation

Heavy political, industrial and popular demand exists in the Republic of South Africa to
raise the numeracy standards of the mass of the population. There is also concern about
the effectiveness of current adult numeracy programmes and the speed with which they
can be delivered. There is consequent pressure on NGOs and educational agencies to
provide alternative programmes. This is a proposal for developing potentially more
effective numeracy programmes based on social practice and situated learning models.
The situation in the Republic of South Africa in 1997 includes the following factors:
1 Numbers of unemployed have no formal numeracy qualifications or certificates.
Without such certificates they cannot get jobs. These certificates are based on a
curriculum which is the set of formal numeracy practices imposed by accredited
institutions.
2 The existing agencies and NGOs are concerned to raise the standards of numeracy
practices in as short a time as possible. Large numbers of unemployed people have to
be placed onto the rungs of the ABET ladder.
3 Curriculum. There are existing programmes and materials. These are often skills based
but seen solely as formal numeracy skills and practices and are decontextualised or
placed in a formal academic context. Such academic skills are based on a deficit
model, that is that there is an accepted list of skills that the students must acquire and
if they do not have these they are deficient.
4 Pedagogy. The current modes of delivery are problematic because:
• they present skills and practices in unfamiliar formal contexts and do not draw on the
students’ existing social practices
• the scale of the situation; the number of potential learners and problems of delivery
given a very limited number of numeracy tutors with formal mathematical
knowledge
• in attempting to decontextualise numeracy and make it abstract they remove
numeracy skills from practices in which they are met. The programmes then are not
able to exploit opportunities for teaching specific numeracy techniques and skills
appropriate to particular working practices in employment nor able to make issues
of power relations explicit that are inherent within the formal dominant educational
numeracy practices.
(b) Initial proposals for South African case (sited within mathematics as a social practice
and a model of situated learning)
In the earlier part of this chapter I proposed a cultural/ideological model of mathematics.
For the purposes of this proposal there are two crucial tenets. The first is that students
learn mathematics practices most effectively when these practices are situated, that is
when they are part of an activity that is itself meaningful and purposeful for the learners.
Such situated learning (Lave, 1988a) is often best seen as an apprenticeship model (cf.
Prinsloo and Breier, 1996), where learners learn whilst engaged on tasks whose primary
focus is the task and not the numeracy techniques themselves. The second is the
acknowledgement that people engage in many different mathematics practices. Examples
of these can be home, shopping, family, work, and building mathematics practices.
Included within these, as one particular practice, is the set of formal practices that is
required for academic certification. Awareness of the dominant position of this set of
practices is part of an important socio-political conscientization that will enable students
to benefit when engaged in educational endeavours.
The implications of this proposed model are:
1 Curriculum. The position of the dominant curriculum is fully accepted but the students’
own practices are acknowledged, valorized and exploited. Care is taken to value these
practices without romanticizing them.
2 Pedagogy. The central pedagogy would be based on an apprenticeship model together
with set withdrawal times for specific teaching and learning workshops, where
techniques identified by tutors and learners are studied. The perennial problem of
transfer of numeracy skills is seen here as the students moving (switching) between
different practices. By making this switching explicit and by understanding both the
need for it and the nature of the switching, the students are more able to move between
the more formal numeracy practices of the workshop and those situated in their work.
Further, the fact that the students’ learning was situated initially as an apprentice
means that they are aware of the situated nature of all learning and can more
effectively move between practices.
3 Power relations. Both by making explicit and contesting the dominant position of the
formal numeracy practices power relations in the learners’ educational endeavours are
made transparent.
(c) Components of the proposed numeracy programme in South Africa

Such an analysis leads to the following ingredients of the proposed numeracy
programme. Each one of these is discussed further below. Some of these may be already
in place in the work of some NGOs
The following are the main ingredients:
• Work based situations.
• Workshops and action research.
• Role of local trainers. Role of external trainers and consultants.
• Written learning materials.
• Role of master craftsmen (NB non-gendered terms are vital here but appropriate ones
are hard to find).
• Assessment and certification.
Work based situations

The suggestion is that use will be made of public works to provide for situated learning.
There are plans for public works programmes which could be exploited and used to
enable numeracy to be learnt in practice.
It is proposed that when firms tender for local public works contracts, conditions that
they employ local unskilled labour are imposed together with the requirement that they
provide workers with appropriate training. This training must be of two sorts. The first
will be the practical skills to do the job, for example, brick laying. People with specific
craft skills (master craftsmen) will be brought in to train the locals in practical work
skills. The second relies on the workers being released for an agreed period to enable
them to attend workshops where trained trainers will help to get them onto or rise up the
ABET ladder. These trainers will be trained under the models proposed above and will be
expected to work within the outlines of such a programme.
The identification of public works or other work situations would need to be done
locally as it would depend on demand for such works. Examples of such sites of work
could be; building sites construction industry, including housing, roads, water, sewage,
health clinics, hospitals. The kinds of trades involved could be: bricklaying,
woodworking, plastering, plumbing, tiling.
Workshops
As has been mentioned these will be used for specific teaching tasks. The frequency and
time allocated to them would be agreed beforehand and they will be held either on the
site of a particular job within the scheme or on a nearby site to provide a workshops for a
cluster of smaller public works. The exact area of numeracy for study will be decided
through negotiation between the trainers, the students and the master craftsmen. The
workshops will be expected to make use of the activities in which the student has been
placed during their work. The workshops will therefore enable specific techniques to be
taught to the students but will endeavour to maintain their situated nature. Timing will be
important here to ensure the situated nature of the learning and to avoid workshops
becoming separated from the needs of the learners on site.
Role of local trainers and external trainers and consultants

The local trainers will be expected to run the local workshops. They will be trained
through attendance at numeracy workshops run by external trainers and consultants. In
these workshops the principles involved in situated learning will be established. The
workshops will play a crucial role in enabling the trainers to develop reflective and
critical teaching techniques of their own. To provide further support the workshops will
be used to develop written materials. It will however be stressed that engagement in the
development of the materials will be essential to make the best use of the materials in the
workshops. The workshops will ensure that the trainers themselves are aware of their role
as action researchers of their own teaching and their own numeracy practices. By action
research is meant that they have to be able to:
• analyse the social and ideological situation in which they are sited; analyse possible
options in their practices
• be aware of possible choices and decisions
• make and justify their own choices and decisions
• reflect on the implications of their decisions
• anticipate the effect of errors
• criticize their own numeracy and teaching practices
• understand how to criticize their own practices
• reflect on ways of improving their practices

• identify their own skills and their need for improved skills or the learning of new
ones.
The local trainers will also have the task of training and supporting the master craftsmen
in their teaching and coaching of students on site (cf. below). The local trainers will
therefore have a mentoring role with the master craftsmen.
Written learning materials

Support materials will be provided for the trainers to use in the workshops. Such
materials will be in the form of situated problems. They will be simulations but will keep
to the situated nature of the task. For example instead of providing a shopping simulation
where money is spent and change given, the students will be asked to provide a
specification of the materials they will need for a task at work together with costings. The
tasks will not be straight academic calculations. Instead, as in the case of the trainers,
they will require the students to research their own numeracy practices and the situated
nature of those practices:
• to list possible options
• to make choices and decisions
• to justify and explain their choices and decisions
• to reflect on the implications of their decisions
• to anticipate the effect of errors
• to criticize their own numeracy practices
• to reflect on ways of improving their practices
• to identify their own skills and their need for improving their skills.
Role of master craftsmen (no gendered role intended)

The master craftsmen will have two roles. They will be expected to train the locals in
practical work skills. To avoid the potential danger of a split between practical
numeracies of work sites and workshop numeracies the master craftsmen will be
expected to contribute to the workshops. They will therefore have a vital linking role. On
site they will be aware of the activities undertaken in workshops and can coach the
workers with their numeracy practices. Their detailed knowledge of the practices the
workers have used on site will inform the activities in the workshops.
Assessment and certification

Summative assessment will be carried out by local trainers. But a system of validation of
their assessments will be sited within ABET and IEB.
A system of monitoring within a management structure will be need to ensure that the
roles, procedures and principles of such an approach are being implemented.
Conclusions
The original stimulus for this chapter was the concerns expressed in official channels
about ‘standards’ of mathematical skills in Great Britain. Such concerns, whether
justified or not, were located within an autonomous model of mathematics. They take for
granted that there is no real debate about what skills are central to these standards, whose
standards they are and even why we need them. Coming from that position it is no
wonder that the official responses to these concerns are to provide tighter curricula with
structures that ensure tighter control.
The ideological model of mathematics practices provided here would, on the other
hand, want to debate exactly those questions. The first one may be to ask why standards
are an issue at all? Is this being posed as an educational question when in fact substantial
issues of regulation and control underpin it and need to be uncovered? A second question
may be, whose standards are they? This is similarly a power issue. In both cases
awareness that there are power issues involved would be a first step towards
understanding problems of learning mathematics and being able to provide access to it.
The notion of multiple mathematics leads us to locate the concern about standards within
particular mathematics practices. In this case it would be the dominant formal
mathematics. Once this has been made explicit then the attention of educators can be
directed towards ‘raising’ these standards whilst questioning their validity.
Mathematics as a social practice also has implications for debates about curriculum,
pedagogy and power. When faced with a problem in education the temptation often is to
change the curriculum or the pedagogy or both. Attempts to do this have been made
(Baker et al., 1990) which even allow shifts in power relations by giving learners greater
levels of choice and control. However increased awareness of the power relations
involved in mathematics education would question the effectiveness and extent of
technical changes in pedagogy and would instead argue that at the same time as curricular
and pedagogical changes are made so power relations must be made more explicit and
open to challenge and critique. The scenario provided here for a social practice approach
to adult numeracy in South Africa is an attempt to apply these ideas in a context to
encourage challenge and debate.
References
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21
Design and Technology Education for a
Pluralist Society
BERNARD DOWN
Beginning with an analysis of pluralism and its educational implications, this chapter
goes on to examine what Design and Technology involves both in its National
Curriculum meaning and in the wider social context. To be considered are: how
educationally Design and Technology can be made more global in orientation, how the
links between society and technology can be made more apparent, and how the delivery
of the subject can be given a more equal opportunities’ direction.
The meaning of pluralism
The term ‘pluralism’ has many different meanings. Here we can only consider three
senses: (a) democratic pluralism (b) social pluralism and (c) epistemological pluralism.
(a) Democratic pluralism

In the first sense, a society is pluralist if there is power-sharing and the recognition of
different, but equally important, interest groups. In the primary sense here, the concept is
political and there are two different views of pluralism, a British view which recognizes
the claims of different social groups within society, and an American one, which focuses
on checks and balances of power in the political system (McLennan, 1995). On both
accounts, pluralists emphasize the dispersal of state power into distinct and functionally
autonomous domains of authority. However, the mere existence of a variety of cultural
values and practices does not in itself create democratic pluralism; rather:
It is only when cultural difference is thoroughly embedded in a system of

institutionalised social practices, practices which set apart one group from
another in the framing of the polity, that pluralism ‘proper’ can be said to
exist. (McLennan, 1995, p. 41)
In other words one goes beyond the mere fact of cultural diversity to the notion of fair
treatment in social practices.
Design and technology 325
(b) Social pluralism

Although the political concept of pluralism has much in common with the idea of social
pluralism, there are differences in emphasis and approach. Within a multicultural society,
each culture may be seen as possessing certain core values (e.g. those based on language
or religion or family network or folk lore), and certain shared values across groups
(Smolicz, 1981, pp. 23–5). An educated person should understand both their own core
values and shared ones. Within Swann’s account, pluralism (DES, 1995, p. 4) is to be
contrasted with assimilation and separation. With full assimilation minority groups lose
all their distinctive cultural characteristics and are eventually fully absorbed into the
majority group. Some degree of assimilation, on the other hand, must occur for there to
be interaction between groups. Separation occurs when the various groups live in the
same society but make a virtue of their own cultural distinctions, and do not recognize
shared values. This may represent an attempt to come to terms with their own self-
identity, which was being denied by the dominant community.
A pluralist policy is seen by the Swann Report as enabling, expecting and encouraging
members of all ethnic groups, both majority and minority to participate in shaping the
society as a whole within a framework of commonly accepted values, practices and
procedures, while also allowing and, where necessary, assisting the ethnic minority
communities in maintaining their ethnic identities within the common framework (DES,
1995, p. 4). Although each group may have its own religion, its own culture and
language, its own ideas and ways of life, the groups will meet and mix for economic,
social or political purposes. As a result the rules and principles by which each group
regulates its lives may have to be developed through a common education or negotiated,
with some accommodation or ‘give-and-take’ accepted by all parties. Society has to
allow for opposing moral convictions which are incapable of settlement, while
recognising the need to protect the young from the life-threatening decisions of their
parents (e.g. by making a child a ward of court because their parents refuse them an
operation on non-medical grounds).
As such society places obligations on all members to obey the laws and only to change
them through democratic process; and on the government to ensure equal treatment and
protection under the law for all. This includes equal freedom of religious and cultural
expression, equality of access to education and employment, and equal freedom and
opportunity to participate fully in the political and social life of the community.
An interpretation of this model might see it as being an ‘open society’ in the Popperian
sense, i.e. one which is democratic in structure and in which ideas are freely exchanged,
and freedom and toleration are accepted (Popper, 1966). Supporting the responsible use
of freedom is an attitude which Popper calls ‘rationalism’ or open-mindedness, a
condition which ‘leads to the view that we must recognise everybody with whom we
communicate as a potential source of argument and of reasonable information; it thus
establishes what may be described as the “rational unity of mankind”’ (Popper, 1966, 2,
p. 225). Popper related this, as Soros argues (Soros, 1997), to the view that since nobody
has a monopoly on the truth, with different people having different views and different
interests, there is a need for institutions to allow individuals to live together in peace,
through the establishment of democratic political procedures and institutions.
(c) Epistemological pluralism

Related to these two views of pluralism is a third view, the recognition that different
groups may have different traditions and claims to knowledge. This will be particularly
so in the arts—with different forms of music, literature and painting—and particularly so
in religion. The model recognizes the problem arising when different groups in particular
claim exclusive knowledge, e.g. in religion. One way of coming to terms with this
diversity is to accept cognitive relativism, the view that no one has the truth and that we
cannot go beyond any particular social or cultural agreement or paradigm to complete
objectivity or truth. An extreme view of epistemological pluralism would proclaim
anarchism in knowledge, where anything goes. In this context Mary Warnock wrote:
If creeping relativism is not rooted out, then it seems to me that

educationalists might as well shut-up shop. Not only in theory but in
practice as well, relativism tends to sap the confidence of curriculum
makers and teachers; and rightly. For confidence in their own curriculum
would be nothing but a sign of dogmatism according to the theory.
(Warnock, 1977, pp. 107–8)
However, because knowledge claims can only be seen within a human context involving
an agreed common framework of concepts and practices, this does mean that we can
distinguish between claims (Hamlyn, 1970, pp. 136–42). Objectivity depends on the
ability to check out at least some of the claims through experiment and critical dialogue
with others. As Wittgenstein said: ‘It is the world, not just public agreement that
determines the content of knowledge’ (Wittgenstein, 1953, paragraph 242). In the area
we are considering—that of design and technology—there are at least two tests of a
technology—whether it works, i.e. it achieves what is claimed; and whether it fulfils the
needs of a particular society.
In a vigorous pluralistic society different individuals and groups will want to try and
persuade each other of the truth of their differing convictions because they have
examined them and have genuinely come to believe in them. Also, because they believe it
is wrong for anyone to live in error. Such a society is not one in which toleration of
others’ beliefs may be found easy: rather it is one where the members, often swallowing
very hard as they do so, will recognize toleration as necessary to their common survival.
Indeed, the concept of toleration in contrast with freedom, implies a sense of
disagreement with certain beliefs held by others, yet a willingness to support their right to
hold them. To silence other people’s opinions is to assume one’s infallibility, but we can
never know for certain that our opinions are correct and that all other opinions are false
(Mill, 1859, ch. 2). We have no right, therefore, to force others to accept our beliefs.
Indeed, it is a positive enrichment to our life should our opinions be challenged and our
arts and culture touched by others.
However, even a proposal for a forum (in which the framework of shared values may
be discussed and hammered out by all the groups that make up our society) presupposes a
Western system of values; values which cannot be agreed by all groups. The problem is
that the various issues that have arisen within this context are not matters solely of
intellectual argument, they have become matters of life or death for some people.
Somehow tolerance has to be reconciled with the claims by different groups to possess
absolute and exclusive truth.
The Rushdie affair provides an example of the problems that may arise. Liberalism
assumes the importance of freedom of speech, but what if what is published is offensive
to the point of sacrilege to one group within society, in this case, the Muslims? One way
out of such dilemmas is to permit tolerance to a point which is short of that which would
endanger liberalism itself. But liberalism may find this principle difficult to follow when
the contending view maintains a position that seems to claim infallibility and an absolute
judgement in values.
The educational implications of pluralism
School education then needs to offer the opportunity for everyone to understand at least
some of the unique features of different cultures, while helping to offer a framework of
common values. In a National Curriculum Council (NCC) Newsletter (February, 1991)
an article entitled ‘A Pluralist Society in the Classroom and Beyond’, sees
multiculturalism as a dimension which should permeate the entire curriculum for all
schools:
Multicultural education is concerned with more than the needs of pupils

from ethnic minority backgrounds. It seeks to prepare all pupils for life in
a world where they will meet, live and work with people of different
cultures, religions, languages and ethnic origins. Multicultural education
is the professional responsibility of all teachers in all schools. (NCC 1991)
The article points to the need to respect the cultural background of ethnic ninority pupils
by ‘valuing their cultures, by drawing on their knowledge and experience in the learning
process; acknowledging their competence in different languages and dialects; offering
positive images and role models from all cultures.’ The NCC also calls for coverage
across the curriculum of gender and multicultural issues. The cross-curricular theme
Education for Citizenship (NCC 1989) directly tackles the problem of multiculturalism
for pupils by offering a component on ‘A Pluralist society’. This focuses on the
interdependence of individuals, groups and communities; the similarities and differences
between individuals, groups and communities, and their effects; the existence of
differences in perception and the ways in which these may be reconciled, together with
the origins and effects of racial prejudice both in this society and elsewhere. Britain is to
be studied as a pluralist society made up of many cultures, ethnic groups, faiths and
languages. The diversity of cultures in other societies is also to be studied against the
background of international and global issues, and human development (NCC, 1989).
Taking into account what has already been noted about pluralism as well as the above,
it can be argued that there are three concerns of education for pluralism:
(a) The need for a broadening of the curriculum to take account of other societies, other
cultures and other religions, both because these may reflect the make-up of British
society, and also because they put British perspectives into a global context. As
Jeffcoate wrote over twenty years ago:
An insular curriculum, preoccupied with Britain and British values, is

unjustifiable in the final quarter of the twentieth century. The curriculum
needs to be both international in its choice of content and global in its
perspective. Also since contemporary British society contains a variety of
social and ethnic groups; this variety should be made evident in the
visuals, stories and information offered to children. (Jeffcoate, 1976, p.
199)
(b) The need to show respect for other cultures, taking account of the values that different
cultures hold about knowledge, though balancing this with the claims to universal
methodology and knowledge, in areas such as science, while recognizing the need to
avoid the assertion of a strongly Western viewpoint through the manner of
presentation; and
(c) In line with democratic (political) pluralism, offering equal opportunities to all,
supported by opposition to racism and gender discrimination. This approach seeks to
challenge educational inequalities based on race, ethnicity, culture and gender, and to
counteract ideas which could lead to prejudice, discrimination and injustice. One
aspect is what Banks calls ‘equity pedagogy’ (Banks and Banks, 1993, p. 20) which
involves using teaching strategies within the classroom to facilitate the academic
achievements of all students, and in the whole school attempts to create a culture that
makes allowance for cultural differences and promotes gender, racial and social class
equity. Ethnic monitoring may be seen to be part of this strategy whereby ethnic
achievements and differential achievements in all activities, as well as in behavioural
matters, are considered.
Design and Technology education
Until twenty or so years ago, technical education was craft-oriented, gender-divided and
aimed at the less academically-talented students. Boys were given woodwork and
metalwork, and girls were given domestic science or home economics (i.e. cooking and
needlework skills). However, the gender and craft assumptions of this model came to be
challenged in the 1970s and the following decade. Then, during the 1970s a number of
major changes occurred. With the Sex Discrimination Act the gender division of subjects
ended, and girls joined boys in the workshop and boys took part in home economics and
textiles lessons. One approach to technology could also be seen as an emphasis on
applied science. This was greatly influenced by the work in Sevenoaks Public School of a
German physics teacher, Gerd Sommerhoff, which led to the creation of Project
Technology (Penfold, 1988, p. 117). About the same time, the Royal College of Art
produced a report describing how many teachers were dissatisfied with the craft way of
teaching (Penfold, 1988, pp. 13–15). They sought to implement more design-orientated
approach. With the adoption of such an approach, the style of teaching changed from
being a transmission model (in which there was the demonstration and practice of skills)
to a more active mode of pupil learning, involving practical problem-solving,
investigation and project work.
At the same time some schools were experimenting with engineering work. Their
influence tended to remain marginal, although there were important developments in
Modular Technologies. Under the influence of such movements the craft subjects of
woodwork and metalwork became transformed into CDT (craft, design and technology).
The style of teaching was revolutionized: instead of being teacher-driven, the model was
a problem-solving one in which pupils were set briefs or problems which they were
expected to overcome by their own design. Both Home Economics and CDT were
affected. In the workshops students were introduced to a multi-material approach. They
were given an introduction to a range of engineering concepts including mechanisms and
were taught new forms of power control, such as electronics and mechanisms.
The new form of the subject gave opportunities for individual and group projects, and
since most girls were coming to the workshops for the first time, there was much research
on gender differences, with an emphasis on the need to make the workshop and projects
more girl-friendly (Down 1986a; Whyte 1986). A defining moment in the development
of the subject was the September Note (DES, 1984) which advocated a more central role
for Design and Technology in the curriculum for 5–16 year olds, when previously
primary schools had tended to teach only light crafts. With the 1988 Education Reform
Act the area became a foundation subject for the National Curriculum.
The terms of reference of the original working group for the Design and Technology
National Curriculum stated that it should be assumed:
That pupils will draw on knowledge and skills from a range of subject
areas, but always involving science or mathematics. They should be
taught the principles and practice of good design, the applications of
theoretical knowledge, and within that context the practical skills needed
for realising their designs in wood, metal, plastics, textiles and other
materials. They should also learn about the variety of modern materials
and technologies in use in the industrial and commercial world. Pupils
should prepare for the world of work by learning how to work in teams as
well as by themselves; by understanding the importance of functional
efficiency, quality, appearance and marketability; and about the
importance of working within financial and technical constraints. (DES,
1988, p. 87)
The National Curriculum view of Design and Technology, as seen in this quotation,
stressed something of the applied science model of technology, although the working
party presented a cross-curricular model of the area (Down, 1989), starting with the
changes that had begun in CDT and aspects of Health Education (HE). A stage further
drew these together, with Business Studies, Art and Design and Information Technology.
There were four attainment targets: AT1, identifying needs and opportunities; AT2,
generating a design; AT3, planning and making; and AT4, evaluating. Home Economics
and CDT were seen as central to the processes of designing and making.
The most recent Dearing review has brought about a reduction of the attainment
targets from four to two, those concerned with designing and making. However, needs
analysis and evaluation are subsumed under these headings, while knowledge and
understanding are included in the programmes of study. There has also been a reduction
in the document details and the removal of the non-statutory guidelines, present in the
previous version; and with this a removal of references to multiculturalism and global
approaches.
Design and Technology in society
Both design and technology in general reflect the economic and developmental states of
society. At these stages of our development in the West, for example, we tend to see our
society almost as defined by technology, as much as medieval society was defined by
religion. Our lives have been radically altered by technological changes, involving
agriculture, health, war, transport, communication and mass production, etc., and with
these changes have come some major changes in our relationships and value systems. If
we consider the effects of developments in both contraceptive and kitchen technologies
on the lives of women, releasing them to work more competitively with men, we can see
how our lives as a whole have been revolutionized by the changes.
There is an ambiguity about the term ‘technology’ because historically it is a general
term covering many different types of pre-scientific human crafts, inventions,
fabrications or operations as well as the more recent scientifically-based innovations,
processes and products. For this reason Kai Nielsen has said that ‘there is no such thing
as technology, but different, often closely interlocked technologies, developed and
utilised for different purposes by different classes with different and typically conflicting
interests.’ (Nielsen, 1978, p. 132)
Technology, then, is not just one thing but it implies a number of conditions, aspects
or structures. As such, it takes place and is shaped by the sociocultural environment. The
needs and demands of society, the values of those in power, and the interests and funding
of various groups within society will affect the nature of the technology that is produced.
(Witness the debate on the cost of certain types of medical treatment and nuclear missile.)
Technology is developed within the specialized institutions of society—the hospitals,
factories, laboratories, armies, communication and transport systems. Through such
institutions technology has come to affect the organization of work-forces and leisure
activities, and altogether to have an over-whelming influence on the life of the general
population. These social structures and the increasing demand for technological
developments to make society more efficient, comfortable and pleasant for its members,
have implications for the way that modern people understand themselves and the
significance of technology In this context there is an ambiguity about the ways in which
the term ‘technology’ is used. Here we will consider three such usages, namely as (1)
processes (2) knowledge and (3) hardware.
(1) Processes
To call technology a process is to argue that ultimately it is about the processes of
planning, making and using, rather than about the objects themselves. As such,
technology uses human knowledge and physical resources to solve practical problems,
and in the process of designing what is to be done it analyses: the practical problem in
relation to particular human needs; the application or modification of existing traditions
or theories to the particular situation; the operation of different levels of imagination and
creativity, and the testing of the particular outcome (often initially by models or under
laboratory conditions and finally under the actual condition of its use). It is in this sense
that technology overlaps with design, although technology also involves processes of
manufacture and production, processes of which the designer needs to be aware as they
affect the practicability of his/ her ideas and their costing.
(2) Knowledge
To view technology as knowledge is to see it as a series of claims about the universe as
well as something constitutive of human nature. Technological knowledge ranges from
individual tacit knowledge—which is technically not knowledge at all—to major
theories. At various times it has involved something like four levels of skill or
understanding. The first three levels operate within crafts as well as pre-scientific
techniques: (a) an unconscious sensorimotor skill—not strictly knowledge—employed in
making or using artefacts (b) technical maxims or rules-of-thumb of pre-scientific work,
prescriptive rules which articulate generalization about successful making or using
operations, of which the clearest examples are cookbook recipes (c) pre-scientific,
empirical and descriptive laws, generalized on the basis of experience, and taking a more
general form than the technical maxims; and (d) technical theories, including the
application of scientific theories, which either systematize descriptive laws or provide a
conceptual framework to explain them.
(3) Hardware
Technology is also commonly identified with various types of devices, e.g. computers,
tools, machines (which are distinguished and identified by their use or functions or the
ends they serve). Such devices enable people to extend their human attributes and
capacities, with more developed devices or machines being less demanding on our
strength, skill and attention.
Related to technology, as we have seen, is design, which implies modifying, altering
or changing the environment in some way. Chairs, tunnels, houses, bridges, devices,
clothes, book covers, tools and cars have all been designed, and each design was created
with some attention to human needs. In so far as design is directed towards human needs,
it implies values—aesthetic, moral and social. It also involves thinking at the hypothetical
level, about something that has not yet come into being, together with the possible
problems of its production and the consequences of its existence and usage. In designing,
therefore, one considers not only the criteria already mentioned—the technological,
aesthetic, social and moral—but also those related to the practicality and viability of the
ideas, including cost and marketing.
In many traditional societies, the approach to the production of artefacts is through
craft. Whereas modern design involves a wide range of rational considerations including
experimenting and piloting, the traditional craftsman’s design was learned through
apprenticeship and ritual. In the actual making process the craftsman’s efforts are
continually at risk, his skills are continually being tested with the outcome uncertain, as
he transforms the raw material into the finished artefact. No such problem faces the
designer, for his operations are basically mental.
Pluralism and Design and Technology education
In a paper written over a decade ago I have argued that there are three main aims to
education in Design and Technology namely:
• The acquisition of Design and Technology capability through problem-solving,
designing and making.
• The ability to understand and employ the appropriate considerations and knowledge,
including strategies, formulae and laws which both explain existing technologies and
help to predict possible outcomes for new technologies.
• The development of a critical awareness of the historical place of design and technology
within society, enabling one to evaluate the social value of particular technologies and
their effects (Down, 1986a).
There are many who would want the emphasis to be entirely on the first two aims: on
design and making, and knowledge and understanding, and, in effect, that is what the
latest version of the National Curriculum Design and Technology requires. However, the
third aim of relating design and technology to the social context would seem to be
important, not only for the need to become aware of the social and political dimension of
technology, but also for recognizing how the selection of technology is related to the
aims and needs of society. In the context of pluralism and what has been said so far there
are three elements of this: one, concerned to put technology in a global context, another
to relate technology to social needs, and the third, no longer concerned with the content
and method of the subject, but with its availability on the basis of equal opportunities.
An emphasis on global technology education is important for the following reasons:
(a) in raising student awareness of the global effects of a technological product, (b) in
increasing student consciousness of the way that different societies differ in values and
experiences, and therefore offer different problems and solutions for technological
activities, (c) in making students understand the current state of the planet, environmental
issues and technological impacts, and (d) above all, in making students realize the
potential conflict of interests that occur in everyday technological choices. (Grieg, 1992,
p. 91)
The opportunities for pluralist Design and Technology education
The 1989 proposals of the Secretary of State for Design and Technology for 5–16 year-
olds has a section on ‘ethnic minorities’ (NCC, 1988), which states:
Cultural diversity has always been a feature of British life, and there are
positive advantages to be drawn from the different traditions represented
in society. In schools, the different cultural and linguistic backgrounds of
pupils are now becoming valued properly as a means of developing a
richer learning environment for all. However, the teaching of design and
technology gives rise to problems which will require perceptiveness and
sensitivity from teachers. Children from different ethnic backgrounds may
bring to design and technological activities solutions which reflect
different beliefs and practices, especially when food materials and

environmental designs are involved. Indeed the meaning and
interpretation of design can vary in significant ways from culture to
culture. (DES 1989 1.44/45)
It goes on to observe that rich opportunities exist to demonstrate that no one culture has
the monopoly of achievements in design and technology, observing that ‘technology has
an important part to play in preparing pupils for life in a multicultural society’. While
there seem to be few examples in the literature on design and technology of multicultural
work going on in the workshop (except for home economics), the subject order gives the
opportunity for such work. Thus by Level 6 students are expected to be able to explain
‘how different cultures have influenced design and technology, both in the needs met and
the opportunities identified’.
The Orders which followed (NCC, 1990) made it clear that in investigating needs,
students are expected to market research client needs. The process of investigation gives
them the opportunity to learn something about the problems and purposes of others (e.g.
when one has to design something within a developing world context). By Level 5 the
student is expected to be able to ‘recognize that economic, social, environmental and
technological considerations and the preferences of users are important in developing
opportunities’. At a later stage the student has to recognize that social and moral
considerations may have to overrule what the individual wants. Examples of activities
involving the identification of needs included: (a) examining the influence of different
religious beliefs on the demand for different food products (Level 6) and (b) learning to
recognize that the designing of a system to monitor air pollution involves complex
decisions about social, economic, health, safety and political considerations (Level 10).
Of course, for this to occur the teacher must be prepared to spend time drawing out the
principles and generalizations underlying the particular and concrete cases.
The stage of evaluation provides further opportunities for developing, communicating,
and acting upon an evaluation of the processes, products and effects of their design and
technological activities and those of others, including those from other times and cultures
(NCC, 1990). This offers the opportunity to go beyond the immediate present and to
consider the design decisions which have operated in other cultures. Under the heading of
evaluation it is possible to develop some kind of check list, after a number of regular,
reflective and not overlong discussions about different kinds of design have taken place.
Despite the different reviews in recent years a number of common phrases occur, such
as ‘pupils should be taught to recognize that moral, economic, cultural and environmental
issues make conflicting demands when designing’ (DFE, 1995, KS4, p. 10). The same
opportunities remain, therefore, to investigate a variety of consumers and their differing
needs, bearing in mind a range of issues.
Global Design and Technology Teacher Education
Anyone involved with educating technical teachers from developing countries will know
that while they may long to implement ‘high technology’, including the multiple use of
computers in practical problem-solving situations, they have to recognize that this may
not be possible, because of the present economy, level of skilled manpower and more
pressing social needs. For example, technical teachers in Zimbabwe teach a
technical/vocational course in which the practical elements are based on existing crafts
and trades (e.g. agriculture, building, home economics, woodwork and metalwork, with
theory lessons related to the practical work). Such pre-vocational courses are intended to
introduce an element of entrepreneurship, so that if youths fail to obtain employment with
others in the formal sector, they could as individuals or cooperatives set up small
businesses in the informal sector (Chinyamunzore, 1995, p. 131). Other developing
countries have similar problems: a non-Western superstructure and economy, a craft level
of training and apprenticeship, and with these a range of different social, technological
and educational needs (e.g. Ndaba, 1994 on Botswana; Watson, 1996 on Ghana). As
Ankiewicz says in relation to technical education in South Africa:
The particular nature of the South African situation demands that

whatever the nature of technology education is finally decided upon, it
must reflect the South African context. It would be disastrous to import
ready-made programmes from other countries and transplant them
uncritically on South African education. We must take care that we do not
necessarily replicate the content and methodology which is followed in
sophisticated societies. To meet the demands of relevancy, we must give
all learners the opportunity to develop gradually from the known
traditional technology to the more advanced technology which is offered
in First World countries. (Ankiewicz, 1993, p. 127)
Two points are brought out in these examples: that different societies have different
technologies and different needs. That can mean that a particular society may lack the
hardware, the general power and resources and the trained manpower to be able to take
up Western technology more generally. In some respects their level and kind of
technology may suit them. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the technical teachers
who come as students to this country want to stay with their technology: many as
Ankiewicz states above want to be part of the main stream of technology, typified by
Western advances in electronics and computer work.
Learning to be aware of the social basis of technology
Focusing on the relation between technology and society is the main thrust of a number
of different courses, developed in America, Europe, the United Kingdom and now in the
developing world, e.g. Science Technology and Society (STS) courses. These are aimed
at making students more scientifically and technologically literate, to help them to be

more aware of the interactions between science, technology and society, and to help them
become better in the related decision-making processes demanded of the future citizen
(Solomon, 1992). Supporting such courses in the United Kingdom since the 1970s has
been the material developed by Science in a Social Context (SISCON), written originally
for higher education but extended to schools in 1978. More recently STS has been joined
by newer courses such as Science and Technology in Society (SATIS). Both STS and
SATIS qualifications can be taken at GCSE and ‘A’ level. They can also be taught within
the science and technology National Curriculum areas. Elements can also be introduced
into the environmental aspects of Personal and Social Education (P.S.E.).
STS courses may be said to be about the impact of scientific theories and
technological hardware. Among the topics covered in American courses are developing
global communication systems, developing energy-efficient and low-cost housing. British
courses include risk analysis, feasible controls and regulations, and the relationship
between the citizen and their representative (Solomon, 1992).
The methods employed for this may involve debates, discussions on newspaper
articles, interviews with politicians, engineers and council workers, as well as employing
problem-solving in two senses: the setting up of scenarios and case studies with practical
investigation, and the attempt to resolve problems related to the implementation of
particular technologies, by role play (Solomon, 1992).
Another type of course that relates technology to society is the one concerned with
alternative or intermediate technology (Darrow and Saxenian, 1986; Budgett-Meakin,
1992).
Appropriate technology is a way of thinking about technological change,

recognising that tools and techniques can evolve along different paths
towards different ends. It includes the belief that human communities can
have a hand in deciding what their future will be like, and that the choice
of tools and techniques is an important part of this. It also includes the
recognition that technologies can embody cultural biases and sometimes
have political and distributional effects that go far beyond a strictly
economic evaluation. AT therefore involves a search for technologies that
have, for example, beneficial effects on income distribution, human
development, environmental quality, and the distribution of political
power—as well as productivity—in the context of particular communities
and nations. (Darrow and Saxenian, 1986, p. 4)
Global contexts and pluralist design and technology
Pluralist Design and Technology starts from the belief that Design and Technology as
taught in many schools is, like many other subjects too insular, preoccupied as it is with
modern Western British values. The traditional curriculum is often too narrow, divorced
from its historical and social background, Western-oriented and separated from what
might be seen as traditional crafts in traditional villages. This is unjustifiable in the final
quarter of the twentieth century. The curriculum needs to be both international in its
choice of content and global in its perspective. This means recognizing that modern and
past technology is a product of many groups and many nations. As Reiss (1993, p. 1)
reminds us, there were many technological discoveries in China hundreds of years before
they were ‘discovered’ in the West—the compass, the iron plough, cast iron, the crank
handle, deep drilling for natural gas, the suspension bridge, paper, the wheel barrow,
biological pest control, etc. It is therefore misleading to point to the West as the main
source of technology, and one should therefore take any opportunity that is available to
correct this mistake in a consideration of historical aspects of technology and other
cultures. Reference, for example, can be made to the various objects of play (e.g. kits),
tools, musical instruments, foods, textiles, paintings and sculpturing, etc. found in every
society. Under the circumstances it should not be difficult to offer a multicultural
dimension to technology, or to design something for different social needs, recognizing
that what is appropriate for one society is not necessarily appropriate for another, and that
alternative technologies arise out of the need to achieve a balance between local needs,
the existing traditions and the specific resources available locally. Decorative artefacts
from other cultures reflect not only the local culture and its aesthetic values but also the
material resources available. A multicultural Design and Technology can take into
account non-European crafts, design work and technologies, as well as European ones.
One can also take a regional perspective, reflecting the regional ethnic mix and their
different cultural achievements, or attempt to base design on the differential interests of
pupils as they reflect their cultural needs. One can also adopt a multiethnic focus to
displays, worksheets, posters, books, and so on.
One project on global contexts, worked on by the Education Office of Intermediate
Technology, in conjunction with a number of schools, was described by M.C.Martin at a
(the Institute of Design and Technology Education Research (IDATER)) conference in
1991. It looked at a number of examples of technological problems in other countries:
woodburning and cooking stoves (Sri Lanka), small scale fabric dyeing and printing
(Bangladesh), the life of a blacksmith (Malawi) and food processing (particularly
vegetable proteins in Malawi) (Martin, 1991, p. 142). Martin points out the need for help
to define the context very precisely and to avoid assuming a sense of cultural superiority,
with the idea that children can solve the problems of the developing world. Thus, in the
case of food processing, pupils studied a specific family in Malawi, investigated foods
that were unfamiliar to them and then planned, designed, made and evaluated a
nutritional meal, using ingredients that would be available to them in Malawi. In the
woodburning in Sri Lanka project pupils studied the case of a particular potter in central
Sri Lanka and her individual cooking requirements. Having investigated such matters as
the transportation of fuelwood, the efficiency of the cooking stove, the layout of the
cooking area, the local diet and the marketing of a fuel-efficient woodburning stove, they
worked on making a number of artefacts, systems and environments.
In looking at the case of a less technologically advanced society, it is easy but wrong
to make the assumption that society is therefore less socially advanced. It is important
however, for students to recognize that the alternative technology employed is the result
of the balance between local needs, the existing traditions, and the availability of various
kinds of local resources. As C.Mulberg points out;
Not only is the study in other cultures a way of teaching good

technological principles, but it can also affect the development of
technology in our own society. For example a study of mud huts reveals a
wealth of detail about heating and cooling effects, air flow, and passive
solar gain. This has helped a new generation of architects to design
buildings that absorb the sun’s heat in the fabric of the building, and give
it out when the sun goes down. (Mulberg 1992 p. 33)
One must be aware in this context that there is a great danger that any approaches may be
patronizing, that staff may be limited in their knowledge of historical technology, that
pupils may not be interested in something that distracts them from the practical aspects of
the subject, and the National Curriculum may inhibit this approach.
Equal opportunities and Design and Technology
Pluralism assumes an education that is dedicated towards a respect for the different ethnic
and cultural groups, for the rights of individuals and with these considerations a concern
to act against negative discrimination and harassment, and to support the values
associated with toleration. Eggleston (1992, Chapter 5) has given examples of the way
that a Design and Technology teacher has been observed using ethnic stereotypes: a
totally unacceptable practice in the classroom. Indeed, the concerns for equal
opportunities should raise the issues on another plane. If one examines the progress of
girls in Design and Technology, their GCSE results in the subject are now better than
those of boys (with 48.2 per cent of girls achieving A*—C grades in the 1995 GCSE
results compared with 32.3 per cent of boys). Several factors probably account for this:
Workshops are more girl-friendly and projects less male-oriented (Catton 1985), parents
are more aware of the importance of the area for careers, even for girls (Bridgwood and
Betteridge, 1989) and the increased demand for written work and design folders—an area
in which girls almost certainly do better than boys—as a major part of the assessment
process (Welch, 1996).
The same factors do not seem to be operating in the case of ethnic minority groups.
Despite the demand for ethnic monitoring, the Ofsted report on ethnic minority
achievements (Gillborn and Gipps, 1996, p. 79) points out that only about 1 in 200
schools do have such data. There are no figures on how ethnic minority groups compare
in Design and Technology results and no published research on parent attitudes on the
subject, although these might be critical in raising standards, especially since it is
generally believed that many Asian parents are less supportive of practical subjects like
Design and Technology than of more so-called academic subjects. However, in the
absence of relevant statistics, we have no reason to think that the progress achieved by
ethnic minority students is not observable in Design and Technology.
Conclusion
Taking three meanings of pluralism, this chapter has argued that a pluralist Design and
Technology education should be global in its perspectives, should be able to relate
particular Design and Technology claims to knowledge and social needs, as well as
universal discoveries, and should have regard for the needs and interests of all whom it
serves, regardless of cultural, social or gender differences. Each society’s education
system must have regard for social needs in employing its technology. The type of
hardware used and the level of craft skills employed in different education systems will
depend upon the supporting economy, superstructure, level of industrialization, and needs
of the society. Pluralist Design and Technology would match the technology to pluralist
social needs and attempt to consider technological problems from other societies.
Detailed information to set the scene and avoid a sense of Western superiority are vital.
The issue of equal opportunities has been considered, although here it was pointed out
that despite some indications of the improvement of some ethnic groups’ academic
achievements, there has been no extensive research similar to that found in gender
research (ref) over the last two decades.
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Index
Abadzi, H. 223, 224

Abdallah-Pretceille, M. 188
achievement 22–3, 85, 91–2
action 170–1
action research 31, 234
Adelman, C. 85
adult education 156, 157
arts 156, 157, 162
numeracy 223, 225, 230, 232–4
‘Advocacy’ 169
aesthetic dimension of experience 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 139–40, 142
aesthetic pleasure 135, 138, 142, 143–4n1
see also aesthetic values;
Carnival
aesthetic values 7–8, 144n7, 156, 163
‘aesthetic distance’ 144n2
classical art 134–43
cultural context 140–3, 156–7, 159–60
cultural imperialism 156–7, 160–1
culture 157–8
‘experts’ 138–9, 142
objectivism 134, 135, 136–8, 139, 140–1
perception 157, 158–9, 161, 199
preferences 156, 162
subjectivism 134, 135, 136–7, 139–40, 162
‘test of time’ 137–8, 139, 142, 144n3
western 156–7, 160
see also aesthetic dimension of experience;
arts education
affirmation 168–9, 171, 174
affirmative action 93–4
agency 105
ALAOME 174
ALBSU (Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit) 223, 224
Allport, G. 26
Allport, G.W. 71
Alsmark, G. 77, 80
Ålund, A. 78–9
Index 342
Ames, C. 62
Amish communities 98, 99, 100, 101, 101f
Anderman, E.M. 62
anthropocentrism 10
anthroposophy 102
apartheid 126–8
Apple, M. 224
Aristotle 142, 208
Arnot, M. 41
Aronson, E. 23
art 122
Aboriginal 130–2
classical 134–43
cultural context 124, 140–3, 156, 159–60
exhibitions 126–7, 127–8
Haitian 128–30, 133n2, 133n3
historical context 138, 139, 141, 143, 144n6, 160
originality 141–2
painting 157, 161
Plato on 135
pluralism of 135–6, 139
‘recycled’ 126–7
relevance 125
South African 126–8
western 124, 132
arts education;
October Gallery;
perception
Arts Council 160
arts education 132, 140–1, 143, 163
adult education 156, 157, 162
assessment 162–3
case studies 126–8, 129–30, 130–2
cognitive knowledge 161–2, 163
creative process 161, 162–3
cross-cultural dynamics 128, 133, 143
cross-curricular activity 129–30, 132
cultural diversity 123, 130, 131–2, 133, 156
cultural imperialism 156, 157, 160–1
media 161, 163
multicultural practice 124–5, 132–3
National Curriculum 123–4, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133n4
for visual artists and designers 161–2
art;
perception
Asencio, M. 218
Ashton-Warner, S. 73
Aspin, David 34–5, 39n5
assessment 162–3, 224, 225, 230–1
associationalism 96–7
Index 343
attitudes 35
Austin, J.T. 62
Australia
Aborigines 96, 98, 99, 102, 103, 130–2, 177, 208
Development Education Centres 105
immigration policy 78
indigenous schools 101f 102, 103, 106
Australian National Curriculum 29, 97
Baker, D.A. 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 231, 235

Bakhtin, M. 117
Bakhtin, M.M. 150
Balandier, G. 185–6, 196n1
Ball, S. 106
Banton, M. 79
Bardon, Geoffrey 130–1
Barrett, M. 214–15, 216, 218
Barrett, P.H. 202
Baumann, U. 188
BBC Education 173
Bear, G.G. 62
Beattie, A. 176, 178
beauty 140, 142
Beer, G. 209n3
behaviour 188, 204, 205
behavioural ideology 208
behaviourism 104, 104f
beliefs 35
Bell, Andrew 18
Benn, R. 160
Berkowitz, M.W. 73, 74
Best, D. 7
Bester, Willie 127–8
Beveridge, W.M. 159
bi-cultural schools 101f 102, 106
Bigger, S.F. 85, 87, 89, 90, 93
bilingual education 63, 102
administration 193–4
instructional language 192–3
language and function 192
language competence 195–6
methodology 194–5
model types 189, 189t
see also multilingual education
bilingualism 177
biocentrism 10
Bion, W. 201, 207
Bird, J. 93, 94
Birmingham Compact 87–8, 89–93, 94
Blair, M. 85, 86
blindness 159
Index 344
Boal, A. 208–9
Bonnett, M. 5, 8, 9
Bordo, S. 202
Boston Compact 86
Boud, D. 114
Boulding, E. 41
Bourdieu, P. 124
Bovet, M. 65
Boyd, D. 146, 147, 148, 150, 153
Bradley, B.S. 202
Bragg, E.A. 207
Braham, P. 86
Bramel, D. 200
Breier, M. 232
Brewer, M.B. 152
Bridges, D. 51, 52, 54, 57n2, 58n6
Brighouse, T. 41, 42
Broughton, J.M. 74
Brown, A. 214
Brown, P. 106
Bruess, C. 213
Brunelli. P, 62
Bruner, J. 149, 217
Brunner, D. 214, 218
Buber, M. 176
Bucknall, J. 102
Bude, U. 194
Bulthoff, H.H. 199
Burman, E. 200
Burns, S. 165–9, 170, 171, 172–3, 175
Burton, L. 230
Busch, C. 62, 73
Business in the Community 86
Cahan, E.D. 198–9

Calder, M. 105
Calderone, M. 213
Campbell, D.T. 159
Canada 212, 213–14, 214–15, 216
Capel, S. 57, 57n1
Caplan, P.J. 200
Capra, F. 10
careers education 90–1
Carey, G. 40
Carlson, M. 117
Carlson, V.F. 171
Carnival 117–21
‘dramatic rehearsal’ 119
masking 120
masquerading 120
‘moral artistry’ 118
Index 345
multiculturalism in 117–18, 120

role play 118–19, 120
Carraher, D. 230
Carrera, M. 216–17
Carrington, B. 85
Cassirer, E. 198
Castles, S. 78, 81
Catholic Committee of the Superior Council of Education (Quebec) 214
CDCC recommendations 78, 79
celebration 172
change 96, 98–9, 185–7
charity 177
Cheung, P.C. 62
children
as competent critics 72–4
concern for the future 41–9
theories of fairness 61–74
civic responsibility 17, 50
Clarke, B. 51, 53, 57
Clarke, J. 79
classical art 134–43
classroom events 62, 73
classroom practice
best practice 31
children’s views of 61–74
values 34, 37–8
Clay, M. 171
Coard, B. 85
cognition 115
Cohen, L.J. 177
Cohen, R. 114
Coles, R. 145, 149, 150, 152
collegial teaching teams 20
Collingwood, R.G. 176, 177, 178–9, 180
colonialism 113, 118
Colsant, L. 62, 73
Coltham, J. 176
Comenius, Johann Amos 18
Commission for Racial Equality 49
Common School Movement 18
communication 26, 148, 150, 153, 170, 171, 178
in bi/multilingual education 193, 194, 195–6, 209
ideal speech-situations 206–7
language 188, 189–90
communities 98–9, 98f 169
African 195
awareness of 169
ethnic 78
modern 98–9, 98f, 99–100, 99f
postmodern 98f, 99, 99f, 100
pre-modern 98, 98f, 99, 99f, 100
community 114, 166, 168, 169, 194–5
Index 346
Compact 86–7
aims 87, 88
Birmingham 87–8, 89–93, 94
careers education 90–1
celebrations of achievement 91–2
certificates 91–2, 94
Co-ordinators 89
Extensions 87
funding 88
GCSE 87, 91, 93
GNVQ students 92–3
mentoring 89–90, 91, 92
monitoring strategies 91, 93, 94
motivation 87, 88–9, 91, 93
Muslim girls 87, 90, 94
Plus 92
Post 16 88, 92–3
principles of partnership 88
records of achievement 91, 94
Tutors 89–90, 91, 93
whole school strategic planning 89
work-based assignments 92
work-related activities 90
competence 25, 71, 72–3, 195–6
competition 16, 22
compromise 56
conceptual criteria 178–80
conceptual schemes 176–7, 180
conflict resolution 50, 53, 169
Cooper, B. 230
Cooper, D. 5
cooperation 17–18, 171
cooperative learning 19–22
achievement 22–3
children’s view of 61–2
cooperative base groups 19–20
face-to-face promotive interaction 21
group processing 21–2
history of 18
individual accountability 21
interpersonal relationships 23–5
outcomes 23f, 25
positive interdependence 20–1
psychological health 25
research results 22–5
social competence 25
social skills 21, 22
values of 17–18
cooperative schools 20
Costall, A. 210n5
Council for Racial Equality 85
Council of Europe 151
Index 347
creative process 161, 162–3

creativity 111–12, 115
critical pedagogy 104–5, 104f
Croce, B. 137
cultural diversity 77–8, 174, 185–6, 196n1
in art 123, 124, 130, 131–2, 133, 156
Australia 78
Canada 214–15
definitions 122
as educational resource 82–3
sexuality education 214–15, 216
Sweden 79–80, 81, 82
USA 80, 214
see also diversity
cultural identity 79–82, 83, 118–19, 151
cultural imperialism 113, 156–7, 160–1, 171, 173
cultural romanticism 80, 81, 83
culture 122, 157–8
sub-cultures 159–60
‘trans-national’ 171
unity and diversity 185–6, 196n1
(see also cultural diversity)
Daley, D. 212
Daniel, Sudha 122, 123, 124
Darwin, C.R. 202, 203–4, 210n4, 210n5
Darwin, E. 199
Davidson, D. 176–7, 199
Davies, B. 105, 207
Davies, I. 49
Davis, S. 125
De Groot, E.V. 62
de Vries, B. 74
death 172–3
Delanty, G. 79
deliberation 113, 114–15, 116, 117, 119, 120
Delors, J. 187, 194
Delpit, L. 72
democracy 112, 113, 114, 119, 151, 153, 186, 215
Dennett, D.C. 62, 63
Dennis, W. 159
Department for Education and Employment 41
Department of Education and Science 123
deprivation 93
Désaulniers, M.-P. 218
Descartes, R. 202
Desmond, A.J. 202
Desmond, N. 203
Deuchar, S. 176
Deutsch, M. 22
development, approaches to 99f, 100
Index 348
development education 49–50, 104f, 105–6

Devereux, G. 201, 205
DeVries, D. 23
Dewey, J. 18, 113–15, 116, 119, 145, 152, 202
Dickman, I. 212
Dilthey, W. 176
Diori, J. 216
disability culture 158
discourse 51–2
discussion 52, 54
agreement 54, 55
aims 54–7
compromise 56
ground rules 57
imagination 56
role play 56
training for 51, 57, 57n1
truth 54–5
value of 53–7
of values 51–7
diversity 15
capitalising on 26
change and 185–7
in education 187–8, 189
multilingual education 188–96
respect for 145, 146–8, 151
understanding through story 149, 152, 153
value of 24, 145
views of 16, 17, 18
see also cultural diversity
Dombey and Co. 90
Don Quixote 138–9
Donald, J. 86
Doughty, S. 215
Douglas, K. 80, 81, 83
Drake, G. 212
drama 198, 208–9
‘dramatic rehearsal’ 114–15, 116, 119, 120
drugs, children’s views on 44
Duda, J.L. 62
Dunton, L. 202
Dweck, C. 74n2
Eagly, A.H. 200

eco-feminism 104f, 105
economic systems 99f, 100, 106–7
economics, children’s awareness of 43, 44
Economist 93
education 3
aims 114
‘banking’ model 204
Index 349
corrective role 113

market model 8–9
as ‘moral artistry’ 114, 115, 116–17
outcomes 9
paradox of 147
personal meaning in 5–6, 147
transformative 49, 50
truth in 146–7
unity and diversity 187–8, 189
values 3, 181–3, 186
(see also educational goods;
Values and Visions;
Values Review Project)
see also health education;
intercultural education;
moral education;
multicultural education;
multilingual education;
sexuality education
Education Business Partnerships (EBPs) 87, 88, 89
educational goods 66, 66t 70, 71, 72
Edwards, K. 23
effort 71
Egan, K. 217
emotion 152
empathy 172–3, 176, 182–3, 217
coherence 180
conceptual schemes 176–7, 180
conceptual view 178–80
copy theory of identity 178–9
critical evaluation 181
ethical dimensions 181–2
identification 180–1
indoctrination and 180
intuition 177–8
limits of 181–2
and ‘our own lights’ 176–81
employment 86–7
Employment Department 86, 87, 88
English as a second language 91, 93, 94
Enlightenment 198, 200–1
environment, attitudes towards 9–10
equal opportunities
in education 61, 94, 171, 174
in work 91, 94, 158
Equality and Excellence 85
‘essentialism’ 13
ethnic communities 78
ethnic identity 26, 82
ethnic minorities 78, 81, 85, 94
see also multilingual education
ethnicity 73, 74n5, 157
Index 350
ethnoknowledge 160
evolution 103, 203–4, 210n5
excellence 16
experience
imagination and 115
individualistic 17, 22
multidimensional 115
naturalistic 113, 116
‘qualitative immediacy of’ 115
structures of 116
work experience 87, 90, 93
see also aesthetic dimension of experience
fairness see testing:

children’s theories of fairness
Featherstone, M. 80, 82
Fein, J. 105
Feyerabend, P. 199, 209n3
Filer, A. 40
Fine, M. 214
Fines, J. 176
Fink, A. 62
Fisher, S. 175n2
Fleming, P. 207
Foucault, M. 105
Fournier, J. 62, 65, 73
Freire, P. 94, 105, 114, 116, 131, 204, 206, 208
French Ministère de la Culture 159
Friend, R. 200
Frye, N. 217
Fryklund, B. 79
fundamentalist religious schools 101f, 102–3, 106
future, children’s concern for 41–9
Gadamer, H.G. 201

Gairdner, W. 212
Gardiner, P. 178
Gardner, P. 177
Gay, P. 198
GCSE 87, 91, 93, 178
Geertz, C. 176
gender bias 41, 46, 50
see also women, position of
gender identity 26
Gfeller, E. 190–1
Ghosh, R. 216
Gibbs, J.C. 74
Gibson, M. 176
Gilbert, H. 117, 118, 120
Gilborn, D. 41
Gill, D. 85, 86
Index 351
Gilligan, C. 146, 200, 209

Gipps, C. 41
Giroux, H. 80, 105, 112
Glazer, N. 111
Gleaves, K. 73
global awareness 49–50, 165, 168, 175n2
global development education 104f, 105–6
globalization 99, 106–7, 185, 187
GNVQ 92–3
‘good life’ 10–12
Goodman, J. 213
Gordon, T. 200
Gould, S.J. 202
Gouldner, A. 213
Gralinski, J.H. 62
Greenberg, J. 213
Greene, M. 148
Gregory, R.L. 159
grieving 172
Griffiths, M. 41
Griswold, W. 122
Gruber, H.E. 202
Guindon, A. 216
Haas, N.S. 62
Habermas, F. 146
Habermas, J. 58n5, 58n7, 58n8, 150, 206
Haffner, D. 212, 218
Haiti 128–30, 133n2, 133n3
Haladyna, T.M. 62
Hall, G.S. 202
Hallen, P. 105
Hall-McCorquodale, I. 200
Halstead, J.M. 13, 213, 214, 217
Hammar, T. 77
Hannan, A. 49
Hare, R.M. 176
Harper, F. 62
Harris, W.T. 202
Harwood, A.C. 102
Haste, H. 72
Hatcher, R. 49, 85
Haug, F. 207
Haydon, G. 54, 56, 57, 58n4, 58n7
Hazzard, S.P. 62, 73
Health Canada 213, 214
health education 208
see also sexuality education
Heath, S.B. 195
Hebb, D.O. 159
Herdt, G. 72
Index 352
Heredia, C.de 193

Herskovits. M.J. 159
Hetherington, R. 199
Hicks, D. 40, 41, 45, 175n2
higher education
Compact 92–3
cultural imperialism 156–7, 160–1
maths 223, 224–5
Hill, B. 97
Hill, E. 117
HiPACT 93
Hirst, P. 96–7
Hirst, P.H. 7
history education 176
aims of 181
exams 178
harm 182
indoctrination 180, 181–2
justice 182
open-mindedness 181–2
‘webs of significance’ 180
see also empathy
Hitler, A. 177
HMSO:
Handbook for the Inspection of Schools 173
Hoffman, M.L. 151
Holden, C. 40, 41, 45
Holder, J. 112, 113, 116
Holubec, E. 17, 19, 20
Homer 135–7, 138, 139, 141, 142
Hooks, B. 116
Hope, A. 172
Hornberger, N.H. 189
Hosteller, J.A. 100, 101
Howard, G.S. 199
Hudson, W. 159
human rights 112, 151, 188
Humble, M. 225
Humboldt, A.von 203, 210n4
Hume, D. 135–7, 138–9, 141, 142, 144n1
Huntington, G.E. 100
Huntington, S. 106
Hutterite communities 98, 99, 100, 101–2, 101f
Huxley, T. 202
Hyland, T. 49
Hylland Eriksen, T. 80
Hymes, D. 149
Ichilov, O. 72
identity
Index 353
copy theory of 178–9

cultural 79–82, 83, 118–19, 151
empirical criteria 180
ethnic 26, 82
personal 26
rules of 178, 179–80
social 119–20
superordinate 26
Ignatieff, M. 146
image schemata 113–14, 115–16, 119
Image Theatre 208–9
imagination 56, 115, 116, 148, 151–2
immigration 80, 81
Australia 78
children’s views on 43, 44
Sweden 79, 81
US policy 78
imperialism 113, 156–7, 160–1, 171, 173
indigenous schools 101f, 102, 103, 106
individualism 146
individualistic experiences 17, 22
industry days 90
Inhelder, B. 65
inner-city schools 85
see also Compact
Institute of Race Relations 50
intercultural education 145–54, 158, 187, 196n2
aims 146
decentralization 147
‘ethics of everyday’ 148
in multilingual education 195
‘otherness’ 152, 153
as process 147
simulation games 170
‘strangers’ 148, 152, 218
use of stories in 148–54
see also multicultural education
interdependence
dependent variables 24t
social interdependence theory 22t
values and 16–18
International Labour Organization 41, 48
interpersonal relationships 23–5
acceptance and rejection 24, 25t
intuition 177–8
Jackson, A.S. 208

Jackson, J. 181
Jagers, R.J. 73, 74n5
James, W. 202, 203, 205
Jeffery, B. 225
Index 354
Jenkins, K. 178
John, I.D. 199, 204
Johnson, D.W. 15–17, 19–26
Johnson, F. 21, 26
Johnson, L. 42
Johnson, M. 113, 115, 119, 217, 218
Johnson, P. 49
Johnson, R. 15–17, 19, 20, 22–6
Jones, D. 157, 161
Jordan, C. 62, 73
joy 172
justice 146, 147, 151, 153, 182, 216, 218
Kamin, L.J. 200

Kant, I. 10, 135, 139–40, 141, 142, 144n7, 144n9
Kantor, L. 212, 215
Karmel, L. 213
Keats, J. 206
Kedourie, H. 176
Kegan, R. 215, 217
Kekes, J. 152
Kelly, T.E. 218
Keogh, R. 114
Kessen, W. 200
Kierkegaard, S. 5, 201
Kilpatrick, W. 218
Kirby, B. 171, 175
Klein, G. 86
‘knowing’ 150–1
knowledge 5–6, 160, 161–2, 163, 200–1, 205–6
Kohlberg, L. 146, 213
Kolb, D. 114
Kramer, R. 103
Krausz, M. 176, 180
Krishnamurti 145
Kristeva, J. 205
Kushner, S. 85
Lamont, G. 165–9, 170, 171, 172–3, 175

Lancaster, Joseph 18
Lange, A. 79
Langer, S.K. 150
language 188–196
Africa 190–2, 193
bilingual model types 189, 189t
comparative grammar 194
competence 195–6
function 191–2, 191t
instructional 192–3
language of wider communication (LWC) 190
majority-minority problems 189–90
Index 355

territorial principle 189
translations 138, 139
trilingual model 190–1
values and 4
Larsen, G.Y. 65
Latta, R. 159
Lauder, H. 106
Lauer, J. 62
Lave, J. 231, 232
Lawlor, S. 176
learning
authentic 9
children’s views of 62, 63
competition and 16, 22
individualistic experiences and 17, 22
interaction patterns 22
public image of 9
see also cooperative learning
Leask, M. 57, 57n1
Leggett, E. 74n2
Leicester, M. 112
Lemin, M. 34
Lentz, G. 212
Levinas, E. 204, 205
Levine, S. 173
Lewin, Kurt 22
Lewontin, R.C. 200
Lickona, T. 148, 215
Liebman, M. 96
Lindley, R. 209
listening 40, 150, 153, 166, 171–2, 173
Lister, I. 49
Little, A. 85
Lock, A.J. 199
Locke, J. 144n8
London, I.D. 159
London Mathematical Society 225
Louden, W. 31
Lovelace, E. 117–20
Low-Beer, A. 176
Lpf-94 (National School Curriculum, Sweden) 79
Lucey, H. 200
Lynch, J. 188, 195
Lyotard, J.-F 105
Mac an Ghaill, M. 41
MacDonald, B. 85
McEvilley, T. 133
McGill, I. 114
McGovern, C. 176
Index 356
McIntosh, A. 223
MacIntyre, A. 146, 177, 182
McKay, A. 212, 214–15, 215, 216, 218
McLaren, P. 105
Macy, J. 207
Maehr, M.L. 62
Maguire, D. 218
Malcolm, N. 179
Martin, R. 179
Mason, Rachel 122, 123, 124
mathematics 7, 222–3
adult numeracy 223, 225, 230, 232–4
assessment 224, 225, 230–1
autonomous model 224–5, 227, 229–30
basic skills 223, 224, 232
communities 169
content 228, 229, 230, 231
context 228, 229
cultural/ideological model 226, 227–9, 231, 232–3
curriculum 223, 224, 225, 230, 231, 232, 233
deficit model 225, 230, 232
ideology 228–9, 230
pedagogy 230, 231, 232, 233–4
power relations 224, 228–9, 230, 231, 233, 234–5
problem-based 226–7, 229
as social construct 160
as social practice 225–9, 231–4, 235
South African case study 231–4
standards 223–5, 234–5
teacher education 224, 225, 233–4
universities 223, 224–5
values 228, 229
Mautloa, Kagiso Pat 126–7, 128, 133
Maynard Smith, J. 210n5
Mayor, B. 85, 86
mentoring 89–90, 91, 92
Merchant, C. 10
Mercure, D. 186
Merryfield, A. 49
methodology 194–5
Midwinter, C. 174
Mihevc, J. 107
Milgram, S. 73
Mill, J.S. 182
Miller, A. 209
Miller, G.A. 200, 209n1
Miller, N. 152
Milroy, J. 186
Milroy, L. 186
Ministry of Education, Quebec 213–14
modernism 98–9, 99–100, 104, 104f
Modgil, C. 188
Index 357
Modgil, S. 188
Mohanty, C.T. 96
Monk, E. 212
Montessori, M. 63, 103
Montessori schools 101f, 103
children’s views on testing 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72
Moore, J. 203
“moral artistry” 114, 115, 116–17, 118
moral education 146–8, 174
empathy 181–3
‘ethics of everyday’ 148
use of stories in 151
moral world 147
Moran, G. 215
Morris, R.W. 213, 216, 217, 218
Morrison, T. 113
motivation 62–3, 71, 87, 88–9, 91, 93
Mullard, C. 85, 112
Müller, H. 195
multicultural education 85
modes of thinking about 12–13
strategies 188
see also intercultural education
multiculturalism 77
as agent of change 113
in art 124–5, 132–3
in Carnival 117–18, 120
educational implications 114, 120
EU recommendations 78
Sweden 80
as thinking differently 111–13, 114, 116, 120–1
see also pluralism
administration 193–4
communication 193, 194, 195–6, 209
instructional language 192–3
language and function 191–2, 191t
language competence 195–6
methodology 194–5
PRO PELCA project 194
trilingual model 190–1
Munsterberg, H. 202
Murray, J. 225
music, classical 138
Muslim girls 87, 90, 94
Myers, K. 50
Naess, A. 207
Narayan, U. 146
narrative 148–50, 153, 217–18
National Anti-Racist Movement in Education 85
Index 358
National Curriculum (England and Wales) 106

art 123–4, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133n4
market model 8–9
mathematics 224, 230
priorities in 4
social issues and 49
stillness within 170
values education 173–5
National Forum for Values in Education 40
National Professional Development Program (NPDP) 29
Values Review Project see Values Review Project
nationalism 79, 80, 83
naturalistic experience 113, 116
nature, attitudes towards 10
Nelson, J.R. 73
Nicholls, J.G. 62, 71, 72, 73, 74n1
Nisan, M. 72
Noddings, C. 148, 149
Nolen, S.B. 62, 65, 73
Norton, D.L. 176, 177
Nunes, T. 230
objectification 5
Ochs, E. 151
October Gallery
background 122–3
Education Department 123, 124–33;
aims 125, 132;
case studies 126–32;
group visits 126, 133n1;
Outreach Arts Programme 132;
programme 125–6, 132
Oelkers, J. 186, 188, 196n3
Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) 41, 85, 230
oppression 206, 207, 208, 209
‘otherness’ 151, 152–3, 187, 188, 203, 205
Pagano, J.A. 152

Palmer, R.E. 200
Paolicchi, P. 148
Parker, Colonel Francis 18
particularism 185
Patashnick, M. 62
Paulston, R.G. 96, 98
Peck, M.Scott 169
pedagogy 61, 103–6, 104f
behaviourism 104, 104f
critical pedagogy 104–5, 104f
eco-feminism 104f, 105
global development education 104f, 105–6
postmodernism 104f, 105
Index 359
post-structuralism 104f, 105

psychological 204–9
radical pedagogy 104–5
technical-rationalism 104, 104f
UK trends 222
peer tutoring 61–2
see also cooperative learning
perception 157, 158–9, 161, 162, 163, 199
personal identity 26
personal value 16, 17, 18, 133
perspectival worlds 176–7
perspective 159
Persson, A. 80
Peters, R.S. 3, 146, 152
Philips, L. 214
Phillips, M. 230
Piaget, J. 65
Pick, J. 160
Pintrich, P. 62
Plant, S. 214, 215
Plato 135, 142
pluralism 12–13, 15, 96–7, 113, 118
of art 135–6, 139
cognitive orientation 187–8
see also multiculturalism
poetry 138, 144n5
classical 135–6, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142
in translation 138, 139, 142
Polingaysi 171
Pollard, A. 40
population, children’s views on 43, 44
Portal, C. 176
postmodernism 4, 99, 100, 104f, 105, 106
post-structuralism 104f, 105, 106
Potts, H. 34
poverty 41, 43–4, 43 48, 93, 173
power 150, 182, 189, 191–2
Pozzi, S. 223, 224–5
prejudice 13, 152, 200, 218
pre-modernism 98, 99, 100–2, 105
Pring, R. 187, 188
Prinsloo, M. 225, 232
professional development 29, 31
see also teacher education
Progoff, I. 207
Project Trident 90
PROPELCA project, Cameroon 194
Protestant Committee of the Superior Council of Education (Quebec) 214
Pseudo-Dionysius 205
psychoanalysis 201
psychological health 25
psychology
Index 360
anxiety 201, 202, 204, 205

Boalian principles 208–9
catharsis 207
‘collective biography’ 207, 208
counter-transference 201, 204
cultural bias 200, 202, 209n2
curriculum 200–2, 206–7, 209
Darwin, Charles 203–1, 210n4, 210n5
ideal 206–7, 209
‘intensive journals’ 207
pedagogy 204–9
personal and cultural values 200–2, 204
qualitative research 207
Romantic sublime 202–3, 205, 206, 209n3
as science 198, 199–200, 202–4
speech-situations 206–7, 209
strategy 209
subject-position 202–4, 205–6
techniques 207–9
value of 198–9
value-free? 199–200, 209n1
Putnam, H. 176
Py, B. 193
quizzes see testing
racism 41, 171, 200

anti-racism 85–6
children’s views on 47–8, 49
education on 50, 113, 182
influence of school 47
underachievement and 85
radical pedagogy 104–5
Rampton Report 85
Rattansi, A. 13, 86
Read, D. 213
reason 187, 198, 200
records of achievement 91, 94, 168–9
reflection 169–70, 173–4
reflective practice 31
refugees 78–9, 81, 125
Reich, H.H. 187, 196n2
Reiss, I. 215
Reiss, M. 212, 213, 214, 215, 218
relationships 23–5, 150–2, 188
intercultural 170
teacher-pupil 8–9
religious education 47, 85, 100, 167, 173–4, 177
see also fundamentalist religious schools;
Values and Visions
religious identity 26
Index 361
Renfro, S. 218
Renshon, S.A. 72
research 209
‘resistance’ mapping 96
Richardson, R. 49, 50
Robinson, D. 225
Rodriguez, M. 218
Roffman, D. 218
Rofli, N. 160
Rogers, G. 93
role play 56, 118–19, 120
Rorty, R. 146, 152, 176
Rose, S. 200
Rosenshine, B.V. 62, 63
Rosicrucianism 198, 199
Ross, S. 212
Rothermel, B.A. 77, 79, 80, 82
Russell, B. 181
Salt 117–18
Salt, J. 79
Sampson, E.E. 146, 150, 200
Samuels, H. 216
Sarbin, T. 148
Savile, A. 136, 139, 144n3
SCAA (School Curriculum and Assessment Authority) 173–4
Scales, p. 212
scapegoating 216, 218
Schaie, K.W. 200
Scheduler, R. 117, 118, 120
Scheler, M. 176
Schierup, C.-U. 79
Schlieman, A. 230
Schmahl, C.M. 62, 73
Schoenfeld, A.H. 229
Schommer, M. 62
schools, types of 85, 100–3, 101f, 106
Schools Council 176
Schunk, D. 62
science 7, 198, 205
Scott, L. 212, 215
Sears, J. 214, 215–16, 218
Seed, J. 207, 208
seeing and looking 151
Segall, M.H. 159
Selby, J.M. 201, 204, 206, 209
self-esteem 25, 133
self-interest 17
self-realization 119–20
self-worth 16, 17, 18, 133
Senden, M.von 159
Index 362
sensibility 106
Seppa, N. 200
Sex Education Forum 214, 215
sexism 158
sexuality education 212
abstinence-only curricula 215
cultural diversity 214–15, 216
democratic values 215
discrimination 216
fidelity 217
goals 215, 216
as instrument of control 216
instrumental/utilitarian criteria 215–16
mutuality 217
narrative approach 217–18
patriarchal values 216
personal autonomy 208, 213, 217
pregnancy prevention 216–17
religious diversity in 215
repression 218
sexual-abuse prevention 218
teacher education 218–19
touching 218
value-free approach 213
value-neutral 213
values 213–14, 217, 218–19
Values Clarification 213
Shakespeare 142, 143
Shelley, P. 152
Shemilt, D. 176
Shire, George 122
Shotter, J. 148
Shweder, R. 72
Shweder, R.A. 72
SIECCAN (Sex Information and Education Council of Canada) 213, 214, 215, 216
SIECUS (Sex Information and Education Council of the United States) 212, 213, 214
Simon, S. 213
simulation games 170
Sinclair, H. 65
Skellington, R. 86
Skidelsky, R. 176, 180
slavery 128–9, 182
Slavin, R. 23
Smith, K. 19
Smyth, J.C. 217
social cartography 96
social competence 25
social identity 119–20
social issues 40–1
children’s views on 41–9
education on 49–50
National Curriculum and 49
Index 363
social justice 216, 218

social skills 21, 22
society 10–12, 174
solitary work, children’s views of 61–2
Solomon, R.C. 12
Sophocles 142
South Africa 126–8, 231–4
special needs 85, 94
spiritual development 173–4, 175
see also Values and Visions
Staub, E. 151
Steiner, M. 175n2
Steiner, Rudolph 102
Steiner schools 101f, 102
Stevens, J. 74n4
Stewart, D. 198
Stigler, J.W. 72
Stipek, D. 62
Stolee, M. 63
Storhaug, G. 102
stories 148–54
concreteness 151
emotion 152
imagination 151–2
listening 150, 153
reasons for using 148–50, 152–4
in sexuality education 217–18
sincerity 150
socializing force of 151, 152–3
truth 150, 153
‘strangers’ 148, 152, 218
Street, B. 225, 226
Street, B.V. 227
Student Outcome Statements 29–30, 97
Student-Teams-Achievement-Divisions 2 3
subjectivity 105
success 16, 17, 62
suffering 172–3
superordinate identity 26
Sutherland, R. 223, 224–5
Svensson, A. 79
Swann Report 85
Sweden
cultural diversity 79–80, 81, 82
integration 81
Malmö School of Education 82
national curriculum 79
welfare state 79, 81, 82
Sydney Morning Herald 78
Sylvester, R. 154
Szasz, T. 213
Index 364
Tadadjeu, M. 190
Tappan, M. 153–4
Taylor, C. 180
Taylor, J.H. 74
Taylor, J.M. 214
teacher education 107
cultural awareness 82
for discussion 51, 57, 57n1
mathematics 224, 225, 233–4
sexuality education 218–19
see also professional development
teacher-pupil relationships 8–9
team building 90
Team-Assisted-Instruction 23
Teams-Games-Tournaments 23
team-work 17–18, 20
Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) 86, 87, 90
technical-rationalism 104, 104f
technology 7, 42, 43, 99–100, 99f
testing
as authoritarian discourse 73
children’s theories of fairness 61–2;
conclusions 72–4;
interviews 63–5;
methods of analysis 65–6;
nature of 66–71, 67, 68, 70;
validation 70–1
class discussions 64, 67, 68, 69
daily quizzes 64, 67, 68, 69
educational goods 66, 70, 71, 72
expectations of 62
unit tests 64, 66, 68
yearly standardized 64, 67, 68–9
Thiessen, D. 40
thinking 116
authentic 5–6, 12
cognitive 3, 116
copy theory of identity 178–9
creative 111–12
deliberation 113, 114–15, 116, 117, 119, 120
developing children’s 7–8
image schemata 113–14, 115–16
logical-mathematical 7, 149
modes of 4–8, 10–12
mono/dialogical 56
motives and attitudes 3–4
narrative 149
poetic 6, 8, 9, 10, 11–12, 13
rational 112, 116
Index 365
rational-calculative 4–5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12–13

reflection 169–70, 173
reframing 113–17, 118
scope 116
skills 8
values and 3–14
Third Text 132
Thompson, A.R. 194
Thompson, F. 176
Thompson, J. 173
Thompson, R. 212, 215, 217
Thorkildsen, T.A. 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 72, 73, 74n3
Thouless, R.H. 159
Thränhardt, D. 79
Times Educational Supplement 40, 41, 48, 127
Timmel, S. 172
Tingbjörn, G. 83
tolerance 54, 106, 145, 153, 182
Tomkins, J. 117, 118, 120
Torney-Purta, J. 72
Traidcraft 50
Training and Enterprise Council (TEC) 87
trans-culturalism 80
transformative education 49, 50
translations 138, 139, 142
‘transvanguard’ 122, 123
Trevethan, S.D. 74
trilingualism 190–6
Trinidad 117–21
Troyna, B. 41, 85
truancy 92
Trudell, B. 216
truth 54–5, 114, 146–7, 201, 205, 209n3
in stories 150, 153
subjective view 178, 198
Turner, T. 57, 57n1
underachievement 85
understanding 7–8, 9
unemployment 41, 42–3, 42, 48, 93
Unicef 50
United States of America
bilingual schools 63
cultural diversity 80, 214
immigration policy 78
sexuality education 212, 213, 214, 215, 216–17, 218
unity 185–6, 196n1
in education 187–8, 189
values 34–5, 144n4

as absolutes 52, 58n3
Index 366
aesthetic see aesthetic values

anthropological view 106
behaviour and 188
classroom practice 34, 37–8
competitive 16
of cooperation 17–18
dependence on discourse 51–2, 56
developing children’s thinking 3–14
discussion of 51–7
empathy 181–3
experts 138–9
of individualistic experiences 17
as instruments of inquiry 200–2
integration into school curriculum 186
(see also Values and Visions;
Values Clarification;
Values Review Project)
interdependence and 16–18
justification for 147
modern 98–9, 98f, 99–100, 99f, 186
motivation to act on 147
National Forum for Values in Education 40
pedagogy of 204–9
postmodern 98f, 99, 99f, 100, 106, 186
pre-modern 98, 98f, 99, 99f, 100–2, 106
psychology and 199–200, 209n1
respect for 146–7, 150
‘test of time’ 137–8, 139, 142, 144n3
types 98–9, 98f, 99f
see also pedagogy
Values and Visions 165–75
acknowledgement of suffering 172–3
action 170–1, 174
affirmation 168–9, 171, 174
assumptions 166
community 169
debriefing 170
evaluation 171
history 165–6
intercultural relationships 170
learning cycle 166, 167f
listening 171–2
National Curriculum requirements 173–5
parameters 166–7
reflection 169–70, 173–4
skills 171
values 167–8, 174
values education context 168
Values Clarification 213
Values Review Project 29–30
Agreed Minimum Values Framework 30–1, 30, 32
Classroom Practice Trial 31–8
Index 367
curriculum 33–4, 35f

issues 32
School Values Statements 31, 37, 39n3
Vancouver, J.B. 62
Varcoe, C. 213
Vico, G.B. 151
violence 41, 44–6, 48–9, 145, 151, 168, 172
vocational courses 86
Voloshinov, V.N. 208
WA Cross-sectoral Consortium 29, 30

Wacker, B. 212
Walcott, D. 117
Waldorf schools 102
Walker, D. 114
Walker, L.J. 74
Walker, R. 85
Walkerdine, V. 200, 230
Wallace, J.G. 159
Walsh, W.H. 177
Walzer, M. 61, 66, 73
Ward, J.V. 214
Warner, S. 114
Waters, M. 106
Watson, G. 26
Watson, K. 186, 187, 195
Weeks, J. 215
Weil, S. 205
Weiner, G. 41
Weiskel, T. 202, 203
Welsford, P. 34
Wertsch, J.A. 153
Westin, C. 79
Whatley, M. 214
White, H. 177–8
White, R.W. 71
White, S.H. 198–9
white supremacy 113
Wiener, N. 199, 205
Wigfield, A. 62
Wilkie, T. 223
Willey, R. 85
Williams, B. 151
Williams, D. 26
Williams, J. 85, 122
Williams, R. 157
Willis, P. 73, 125
wisdom 170
Witherell, C.S. 148, 149, 218
Wodtke, K.H. 62
Wolgast, E. 146
Index 368
Wollstonecraft, M. 199
women, position of 41, 46–7, 46, 49, 158
Woodson, C. 73
Wordsworth, W. 202, 203
work experience 87, 90, 93
World Bank 107
World Studies 165, 171, 175 n2
Wundt, W. 202
Yates, F.A. 198

Yeats, W.B. 152
Yee, W.C. 93, 94
Young, A. 200
Young, R. 218
Yuille, A.L. 199

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Volumes I–III: Values Diversity in Education

Volumes IV–VI: Values Education in Diversity

Mal Leicester, Celia Modgil and Sohan Modgil

London and New York

Falmer Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

ISBN 0-203-98410-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7507-1018-7 (Print Edition) (6-volume set)

List of Contributors viii

1 Value Issues in Developing Children’s Thinking 2

10 The (Multicultural) Educational Value of the Aesthetic Dimension of 150

It is a commonplace to observe that education is a highly value-laden notion and the

Three fundamental modes of thinking

surface by an analysis of thinking as operating in three distinctive modes: ‘rational-

Developing children’s thinking and quality of understanding

our greatest scientists. Yet there lingers a competing—and highly influential—view

Teacher-pupil relationships and the culture of the school

Attitudes towards the environment and nature

The ‘good life’ and the ‘good society’

‘commonsense’ which increasingly insulate us from nature—such as those which lead to

by the poverty of its understanding of the issues it purports to comprehend. In order to be

Diversity: promise or problem?

Interdependence and values

The value systems underlying competitive, individualistic, and cooperative situations

The values resulting from competition

The values resulting from individualistic efforts

The values resulting from cooperation

Nature of cooperative learning

History of cooperative learning

Types of cooperative learning

2 Make a number of pre-instructional decisions. A teacher has to decide on the size of

The cooperative school

Basic elements of cooperation

to be small (2 to 4 members). Finally, while positive interdependence creates the

What do we know about cooperative efforts?

Everyone has to work together; if we can’t get everybody

Learning together to complete assignments can have profound effects on students. A

Interaction Pattern Promotive Oppositional None

Figure 2.1 Outcomes of cooperative

A faithful friend is a strong defense, and he that hath found

Table 2.2 Mean effect sizes for impact of social

Table 2.3 Processes of acceptance and rejection

Psychological health and social competence

Reciprocal relationships among outcomes

Making diversity among students a strength

Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

The National Professional Development Program (NPDP) Values Review Project in

working on Student Outcome Statements (SOS), a set of desired outcomes in eight

• Could SOS be modified to include a more specific reference to values?

• What values should be identified in each of the learning areas?

Stages in the project

The Agreed Minimum Values Framework

Tolerance Value dimension

Overview of 1996 trialing

Aim of the Classroom Practice Trial

Reflective Practice=plan act recall experience and reflect

Timeline for the trial

Stages within the Classroom Practice Trial

Stage 1: Awareness raising

• Are there any important issues that need to be addressed?

• What are the needs of schools?

• What are the needs of Administrators?

• Any other suggestions and ideas?