Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education 213diversity noted that ‘one of the most extraordinary events of our time hasbeen the resurgence of tribalism in a supposedly secularized andtechnocratic world... ties of race, nationality and religion seem to havetaken on new importance’ (cited by Mann, 1979: 1718).In fact, however, it is debatable whether there was any ethnic‘resurgence’; it might be more apt to describe an ethnic persistence whichbecamemorevisibleintimeswhichwereatoncetendingmoreandmoretosome global ‘monoculture’ and, at the same time, more sympathetic to theplight of small-group identities. 1 In any event, the renewed visibility of whatsome called the ‘new ethnicity’ was celebrated in many quarters, not leastby scholars professionally and personally committed to an enduring socialdiversity. More poetic than most, but not unrepresentative, Michael Novakobserved that this phenomenon represented a ‘true, real, multiculturalcosmopolitanism... struggling to be born is a creature of multiculturalbeauty, dazzling, free, a higher and richer form of life. It was fashioned inthe painful darkness of the melting pot and now, at the appointed time, itawakens’ (cited in Gleason, 1979: 17; see also Novak, 1971).Contemporary directionsA renewed grappling with the difficulties and attractions of culturalpluralism led many researchers to develop theories and models thatdepicted and supported a workable accommodation between unity anddiversity. Sociological terms like pluralistic integration, participationistpluralism, modified pluralism, liberal pluralism, multivariate assimilationand social accommodation (among others) are indicative here. Some ofthe ‘committed’ were (and remain) critical of any sort of modified orattenuated multiculturalism, on the grounds that it can only be a detouron the road to the old and bad assimilation. Sociological models thatattempt to capture some intermediate position between total assimilationand group segregation, however, are at least rough reflections of whatmost indigenous and immigrant populations aim for. Besides, even ifsome seamless assimilation is the ultimate social destiny, it is difficult tosee how it might be avoided for significant segments of the population,short of draconian measures unlikely to be acceptable in democraticsocieties. (There are groups, usually having a strong religious core totheir identity, whose voluntary segregation from ‘mainstream’ societycan be quite enduring. I note, however, that recent reports suggest that,even among such stalwart populations as the Amish, the Mennonites andthe Pennsylvania ‘Dutch’, the mainstream tends to erode groupboundaries.)