Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education 209of religious orthodoxies, although fissures had already developed. Forexample, longer-established minority groups (particularly those fromSurinam and the Dutch Antilles) have become increasingly differentiatedfrom Muslim populations in the eyes of the ‘mainstream’. Coenders et al.(2008) and Sniderman and Hagendoorn (2007) have provided usefuloverviews of changing Dutch positions, each attempting to put Dutchreactions in broader social context. The French attitude to their largeimmigrant populations was sharply focussed by the week of rioting andburning in the Muslim banlieux in 2005. The Madrid train bombing in2004 and the London underground attack of 2005 have also led to policyre-examination, to say nothing of galvanizing all shades of publicopinion.An interesting recent development is the suggestion by the Ministerfor Higher Education that compulsory classes in ‘core British values’ beadded to existing ones on citizenship. Supporters immediately noted thatBill Rammell’s remarks (in May 2006) only built upon earlier suggestionsin January by Gordon Brown, then Chancellor that the governmentshould establish a ‘British Day’ and encourage citizens to put a unionflag ‘in every garden’ (Helm, 2006a, 2006b). Reactions to these ideaswere, at best, rather mixed (BBC, 2006), but there is no doubt that ‘statesponsoredflag waving’ strikes many as either American or (as one DailyMail columnist put it) totalitarian in its impulse; see also Parekh (2006).Roger Scruton (2006) a reactionary commentator, in a right-wingnewspaper did manage to put his finger on the essential fallacy in allthis. Whatever one’s views are of national ‘values’ (or of ProfessorScruton, for that matter), it is clearly wrong to think that values are ‘akind of knowledge, to be put up on the blackboard... values are mattersof practice, not of theory. They are not so much taught as imparted’.In an apparent demonstration of Jungian synchronicity, I came acrosstwo analogous references within a week of reading Scruton’s piece. HugoWilliams, the ‘Freelance’ columnist in the Times Literary Supplement,reported glumly on the recent announcement that Wellington College the Berkshire public school established in the mid-19th century as amemorial to the Iron Duke himself was about to provide ‘happinesslessons’ to its students. Reminding us that ‘show, don’t tell’ is the mottofor all successful creative writing, Williams’s (2006) implication is that anindirect approach to something as important but as vague as ‘happiness’is surely preferable to attempts to bludgeon it into children’s heads. AndRoger Schank, a cognitive scientist writing in the Times Higher EducationSupplement (2006), argues that while the most important acquisitions forstudents are reasoning ability, communication skills and human-relations