Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education 231Gerstle (2001: 349) put it, that ‘cultural diversity and national pride [are]compatible... that ethnic diversity and a respect for ethnic and racialdifferences strengthened America’. Outright ‘anti-multiculturalists’, aswell as proponents of ‘softer’ versions, make a counter-argument.Permanent ethnocultural heterogeneity is a recipe for social discord and(as in the Canadian case, for example), it will work against the gradual anddesirable emergence of some overall national ethos.There have been other similar distinctions. Higham (1982) wrote of‘hard’ and ‘soft’ pluralism, Devine (1996) makes a ‘strong’ and ‘weak’distinction, and Wood (1994: 4849) at about the same time I wasdiscussing the matter in Odense referred to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ multiculturalismin America. Like Schlesinger, Wood is an historian, and thetype of distinction he draws is a very pointed one, reminiscent ofSchlesinger’s (1992) earlier arguments:There is no doubt that our understanding of American history hasbeen profoundly enriched by what might be called a soft multiculturalapproach... we used to call it pluralism, which assumed aprocess of assimilation. Celebrating the distinctiveness of one’s groupor ethnicity always has been part of the process of becomingAmerican... what is new and alarming is the use of ‘‘identitypolitics’’ and what might be called hard multiculturalism to break upthe nation into antagonistic and irreconcilable fragments.The distinction here is overdrawn and unnecessarily conspiratorial.The real efforts of the ‘hard’ multiculturalists are not to break up thenation but, as I have implied above, to fundamentally alter its character.‘Hard’ multiculturalists could point nowadays, for instance, to thepowerful Hispanic population in the United States, and to the changesthat this influential presence has brought to everyday life, as an exampleof a real sea-change in American society. ‘Soft’ multiculturalists look atthe same picture, and bewail the passing of the status quo.Notes1. A point of comparison here: in formerly Communist societies, the emergencefrom under the dead hand of totalitarianism often signalled, unfortunately, areturn to older ethnic rivalries. But this does not mean that democracy awokethe sleeping princess she had always been there, waiting in the wings for anew chance to occupy the spotlight.2. A much fuller story of Canadian multiculturalism from the importantUkrainian point of view, is found in Lupul’s lengthy memoir (2005). Scholarsfrom the Canadian Ukrainian community have, from the first, been keenobservers of, and commentators on, the federal policy of multiculturalism.