Diversity, Democracy and Education

The purpose of the Civil Rights Movement was not to alter the American Dream but to realize it. "Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy," King said. When a democracy excludes its own members for whatever reason (slavery, patriarchy, and the Jim Crow apartheid system are among the U.S.'s most egregious examples to date), it is "actively and purposefully false to its own vaunted principles," wrote Judith Shklar (1991, p. 12). Here is democracy's built-in progressive impulse: to live up to itself. Typically, it is the unjustly treated members who are democracy's vanguard, pushing it toward its principles. "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed" (King, 1963b, p. 80). The Framers of the U. S. Constitution may have been the birth parents of democracy, American style, but those who were excluded, then and now, became the adoptive, nurturing parents.

The second assumption, related closely to the first, is that there can be no democracy without democrats. Democratic ways of living together with our differences intact are not given; they are created, and much of the creative work is undertaken by citizens who share some understanding of what it is they are trying to build and sustain together.

Third, these citizens do not materialize out of thin air. They are not "natural"—born already grasping difficult principles of democracy such as toleration, impartial justice, the separation of church and state, or the need for limits on majority power. They are not born already inclined toward or capable of deliberating public policy issues with other citizens whose beliefs and cultures may be sharply different. These things are not, as is everywhere too apparent and as the historical record makes all too clear, born into our genes. They are social, moral, and intellectual attainments, and they are hard won. On this second assumption, we can appreciate the formidable challenge of educating democrats. On the three assumptions taken together, educators are justified in shaping curriculum and instruction toward the formation of democratic citizens, and they are expected to do so.

But how to do this effectively? Schools, I believe, are ideal sites for multicultural democratic education. The main reason is that they have within them congregations of diverse students—some schools more than others, of course, but all of them are diverse to some extent. This diversity is their main asset when it comes to multicultural democratic education.

A school is not a private place, like our homes. A school is a civic, public place. Former kindergarten teacher and moral philosopher Vivian Paley (1992) observes, "The children I teach are just emerging from life's deep wells of private perspective: babyhood and family. Then, along comes school. It is the first real exposure to the public arena" (p. 21). Boys and girls are both there, and Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists. There are Africans, Asians, Anglo, Latino and more. This buzzing variety does not exist, as Paley notes, in "a private place, like our homes" (1992, p. 21). It exists in public places where diverse people congregate, places where people who come from numerous private worlds and social positions are brought together on common ground. These are places where multiple social perspectives and personal values are brought into face-to-face contact around matters that "are relevant to the problems of living together," as Dewey put it (1985, p. 200). These are mutual, collective concerns, not mine or yours but ours. These arise in public places—places such as schools.

Compared to home life, schools are like village squares, cities, crossroads, meeting places, community centers, marketplaces. When aimed at democratic ends and supported by the proper democratic conditions, this interaction in schools can help children develop the habits of thinking and caring necessary for public life—the courtesies, tolerance, respect, the sense of justice, and the knack for forging public policy with others whether one likes them or not. If students are fortunate and if the right conditions, both social and psychological, are present and mobilized, students might even give birth to critical, post-conventional consciousness. This is the kind of thinking that enables them to cut through conventional wisdom and see a better way. Without the formation of these habits, anything approaching a vigorous and flourishing pluralistic democratic civic life is put desperately at risk.

This, then, is the great democratic potential of the public places called schools. As Dewey (1985) observed, "The notion that the 'essentials' of elementary education are the three R's mechanically treated, is based upon ignorance of the essentials needed for realization of democratic ideals" (p. 200). Used well, schools can nurture these "essentials"—the qualities needed for the hard work of living together freely but cooperatively and with justice, equality, and dignity. Schools can do this because of the collective problems and the diversity contained within them. Problems and differences are the essential assets for cultivating democrats.

But how actually to accomplish this? Three actions are key: First, increase the variety and frequency of interaction among students who are different from one another. Classrooms often do this naturally, but these and other opportunities can be deepened and others created. Second, orchestrate these contacts so that competent public talk—deliberation about common problems—is fostered. This is talk about two kinds of problems: those that arise inevitably from the friction of interaction itself (Dewey's "problems of living together") and those grounded in the academic controversies that are at the core of each subject area in the school curriculum. Third, clarify the distinction between deliberation and bull sessions and between open (inclusive) and closed (exclusionary) deliberation. In other words, expect, teach, and model competent, inclusive deliberation. Concentrate not only on the open expression of honest viewpoints but on the receptive practice of listening.

I lay out the pedagogical details of teaching deliberation in elementary and secondary schools in my book, Teaching Democracy (2003), so let me close by indicating what I think is at stake here: no less than the future of democracy as well as the strength of that democracy; that is, the extent to which it makes real the ideal of government of, by, and for the people. Democracy is created anew, continually, by democratic citizens, and these citizens are as culturally diverse as the society of which they are a part. In order to deepen, strengthen, and otherwise "make real the promises of democracy," as King said, democratic citizens must be educated to understand the relationship of diversity to democracy—that they are interdependent (as in the motto e pluribus unum)—and to deliberate with one another the never ending problems of living together democratically.

References

Dewey, J. (1985). Democracy and education. (Vol. 9). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (original work published in 1916)

King, M. L. J. (1963a). I have a dream. Stanford University, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project [2000, October 27, 2000].

King, M. L. J. (1963b). Letter from Birmingham Jail, Why we can't wait (pp. 76-95). New York: Mentor.

Paley, V. G. (1992). You can't say you can't play. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Parker, W. C. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York: Teachers College Press.

Shklar, J. N. (1991). American citizenship: The quest for inclusion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

About the author

Walter Parker, Ph.D. is a professor of social studies education and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a faculty associate of the Center for Multicultural education, and a senior research fellow in the Center for American Politics and Public Policy. Formerly, he taught for ten years in the Northglenn, Colorado public schools. He was born and raised in Englewood, Colorado.

Walter's specialization is education for democracy. His books include Renewing the Social Studies Curriculum (1991), Educating the Democratic Mind (1996), Education for Democracy (2002), and, just published, Teaching Democracy (2003). He serves as the editor of "Research and Practice" for the journal Social Education.

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