Challenges to multicultural education in the 21 century

Abstract

Post-war immigration into Germany did not challenge education for a long time since work migration was regarded as temporary in the fifties and sixties of the last century. When workers began to settle – mainly as a result to the stop of recruiting workforce in 1973 – education had to deal with the situation of migrant children attending German schools in large numbers. The first answer to this new challenge was the concept of migrant education (Ausländerpädagogik). Multicultural education (´intercultural education` in the German diction) was developed in Germany rather reluctantly in the eighties as a second answer to this challenge when the concept of migrant education was no longer regarded as an adequate one by many educationalists in practice and research. In this paper we will discuss more recent challenges to multicultural education. First we will deal with the fact that multicultural education is now sometimes regarded as a concept of international education dealing with the cultures of the world. Although this is a necessary approach in our world of global relationships, it tends to neglect local diversity. Future challenges to multicultural education concern the combination of local and global aspects within this concept. There is a further problem to be considered with regard to a multicultural education that deals mainly with global relationships: The needs of children from migrant families. The recent PISA study (OECD 2001) has clearly pointed out that the German school system has failed so far to give them access to a good school career that is, moreover, a precondition for economic and social participation. It is a great challenge to improve this situation without falling back into concepts of migrant education. In the third section we will deal with another challenge: While education - though not on all levels of educational policy in all European countries - has acknowledged the fact of a permanent immigration, which demands measures of integration and the preparation of all inhabitants - majority as well as immigrants - for a multilingual and multicultural society, there are also new developments in forms of migration to be taken into consideration. A main point is the question whether the model of integration in the concept of multiculturalism is compatible with transmigration, where migrants live in more than one social and spatial context, either at the same time, in following periods or in a way where social and geographical spaces are split or overlap. We will refer to citizenship education, language education, media education, intercultural communication and the European dimension in these aspects, though with different intensity. Media education will be highlighted in a short section that will end this paper instead of a conclusion.