- Email: [email protected]
How multicultural is the school in “multicultural society”? A Belgian case study
CHAPTER
1
HOW MULTICULTURAL IS THE SCHOOL IN “MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY”? A BELGIAN CASE STUDY EUGEEN
ROOSENS
Department of Anthropology (Cimo), Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
Abstract The competition for efficiency that governs the production of goods and services throughout the world is in part determined by the structure of the non-man-made material world. Not all techniques are equally efficient. Formal education in complex societies is trying to stay attuned to the system of production and the labor market. The compulsory use of languages and the school curricula are powerful tools which regulate the distribution of culture and the hierarchy of ethnic groups in multi-ethnic societies. Most elements of immigrant culture which are not in harmony with the school culture or with the preferences of the labor market are eroded. What is emerging is not an egalitarian “multicultural society” in the true sense of the word but a stratified multi-ethnic society with a flourish of cultural ethnic markers.
Introduction The expression “multicultural society” covers a diversity of ideologies, power relations and agendas in both the European Union and the United States of America. Politicians, activists, policy makers, teachers, experts and social scientists all use the term in widely different contexts. Learned discourse and ethnic rhetoric are almost inextricable. Authorities in most EU countries agree that today’s society is multicultural and that education must reflect this reality and prepare young people to live in a multicultural society. When one looks at the facts and not merely at the words, however, one wonders if the term “multicultural” is not somewhat misleading. Neither parents of immigrant children, nor the children themselves are de facto, in their praxis, acting toward the survival of different cultures; neither are the schools nor the authorities; nor do most experts of education. The overwhelming majority of the actors seem to be moving in the direction of an internally diversified monocultural society, adorned with the remnants 11
12
E. ROOSENS
of alien life styles and flourishes of symbolic ethnicity. The logic of material culture, rejected as outdated and passe’ in the writings of a number of social scientists, could well be a very real driving force. What the expression “multicultural society” signifies depends on the meaning attributed to the term “culture”, in the first place. In the debate about culture, my own position comes very close to the view developed by Ulf Hannerz in his remarkable recent book (1992) Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. In industrialized or complex society, and especially in urban settings, a set of meanings and their externalizations (or culture) never constitutes one single holistic system, like the cultures of rural villages as described by Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, and so many other anthropologists. In today’s states, cultures are always fragmented into subcultures and diverse cultural perspectives. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find out how much people belonging to one the same ethnic group and claiming one identical culture tradition really have in common. The culture of a given ethnic group or ethnonation (like the Flemings in Belgium) is never a clearly delineated package: there is always a multitude of subcultures. The modern media, disseminating information and meaning from all over the world, have largely contributed to increase that cultural diversity. But even considered in this relativizing perspective, many cultures can be experienced and studied as distinct, so that a state in which populations with different cultures cohabit as equals, reproducing equivalent cultures, is not a utopia. The immigrants with whom we work, mostly hailing from rural areas or small towns in Spain, Morocco or Turkey where the local culture is more holistic than in Brussels, have to surrender a number of their culture traits if they want a job in the host country. Their home space and social environment will be entirely different and so will their daily routines, time schedule, work regulations, etc. Even if they stay together and form neighborhoods and networks of their own, keeping in touch with their country of origin, cultural transformation is considerable (Roosens, 1989). Immigrants, however, do not differ from autochthons in that they change sets of their “initial” cultural system or become internally diversified. In the context of complex societies, everybody does. It is the general direction of change that makes the difference. In Belgium, as in all industrialized countries, a “cultural apparatus” does exist (Hannerz, 1992) that controls the flow and the distribution of culture. For all the freewheeling culture change occurring both in the Flemish and French-speaking parts of Belgium - not to mention in bilingual Brussels -, some aspects of the culture are strongly institutionalized and kept tightly under control. The institutionalization of the use of languages and of formal education are two major tools of this controlling apparatus. Both tools are exclusively in the hands of the majority. It is a similar power position of the majority that the “English only” movement is defending in the U.S.A. In our view, the use of a particular language in all possible routines of daily life is one of the few pervasive, uniforming, and culture-preserving elements in complex societies. Six researchers of the Leuven Centrum voor Interculturalisme- en Migratie-Onderzoek (CIMO: Center for Interculturalism and Migration Research) have, in projects involving three to six years of field research (19881993), followed 240 cases of immigrant youngsters in the transition phase between the last year of secondary school and higher education, or between the school and the Brussels and Antwerp labor markets. The research focused on school and family contexts as loci of preparation for adult life in
“Multicultural Society” and the School
13
terms of culture and ethnicity. The young people belonged to the Moroccan, Turkish, and Spanish immigrant communities in Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp (Roosens, 1992). According to the official sources, 79.399 Moroccans, 19.310 Turks, 25.710 Spaniards and 717.339 Belgians were living in Brussels in 1990 (Leman, 1993). Three female researchers worked with three groups of forty young female students; three male researchers with three male groups. Each group was composed of at least twenty young people who achieved the highest scores in the best schools and twenty youngsters who, by educational standards, failed in the worst fashion in the worst “concentration schools” (schools with a student population of more than 50% immigrant ethnic minority youngsters). Additionally, three researchers of the same team, after working with the students, spent several months of field work among a selection of their teachers (Roosens , Cammaert , Hermans, & Timmerman, 1993). In this chapter we would like to address two questions: What kind of reality in social life does the expression “multicultural society” stand for? And what contribution does the school make to the coming about of multiculturality in the light of what the main actors in education with whom we have been working reulZy do?
Research Results and Discussion The Immigrant Parents and Their Sons and Daughters
Although the opinion is widespread among teachers in concentration schools that the lack of interest in the studies of their children is one of the major factors causing failure of numerous ethnic minority youngsters, the high expectations of almost all the parents in our sample were striking. As far as verbally expressed expectations are concerned, it is strictly impossible to make clear distinctions between parents of Moroccan, Turkish, or Spanish origin. Although many among them are practically or fully illiterate, they all consider the school and the education system as the main road to a successful life for their children. Parents hope their children will become wealthy professionals, like lawyers, medical doctors, or highly-achieving business people. Most parents explicitly stated that they expect, as a minimum, that their children will obtain a better position than they themselves were able to do. This general principle is widely accepted, whatever the cultural or ethnic background of the parents. It is striking that success is spontaneously seen as success in terms of the immigration society. Nobody looks back to the roots when social success and promotion of the children are at stake. Success is not defined in an alternative way, or in terms of a cultural style of the country of origin. When looking at what people really do in the concrete cases of their own children, a number of distinctions are to be made among the subjects of our different target groups. The Spanish parents of our sample, although working people with very little schooling, want their children to obtain the maximum. Spanish parents are extremely well organized in parents’ associations. They look for the “best schools”, which they define as Catholic schools with high academic standards, “schools without foreigners”, in which no Turkish or Moroccan children are present. As a general rule, parents ignore
14
E. ROOSENS
the advice given by school psychologists and teachers when it comes to selecting general (high level), technical (medium level), or vocational (lower level) secondary education. They almost all try to send their children to the highest level. Researchers often heard the remark that Belgian teachers and school psychologists are racist, directing children of immigrant workers to the lower levels of the educational system and holding them back. Although some Spanish children fail, almost all of them get maximum educational opportunities thanks to their parents’ strategy. Especially in the years of our research (198&1993), very many Spanish parents saw the educational opportunities offered to their children as the most important emigrant asset when they compared their own socioeconomic situation with the situation of those who had stayed behind in the country of origin. The economic situation of Spain has dramatically improved since the time of France. Very many Spaniards who migrated to the North are no longer fully accepted by their community of origin, when they visit or return “home”. With the passing of time, they have become “the Belgians”, who fled when the situation was poor, and who return now that life is again enjoyable. Moreover, very many Spanish immigrants are struck at the immigrant’s most sensitive spot: all what they have been suffering seems to have been in vain, as those who stayed behind are driving comparable cars, have decent housing and dress equally well. The emblems and markers of success immigrants used to display have lost their distinction. There only remains one exception: the schooling of their children. Good schools are difficult to come by and expensive in Spain, while they are plenty and free in Belgium. Good and inexpensive schooling, then, seems to be the only major asset left. It might be simplistic to explain the remarkable alertness of the Spanish parents in school matters by this single factor. Just like most other immigrants who came to the North, Spanish parents are self-selected people who were not satisfied with their material and/or social conditions in their region of origin. Although the overwhelming majority of first-generation immigrants we came across in the last twenty years said that they intended to go home one day, “where they really belong”, they all hoped for a return with considerable improved material means and enhanced social status. At the beginning of the migration career, they hoped to be able to return after a few years of hard work and money making to start a small business or to move up to a higher professional position. Enhanced prestige and social status - the difference between a successful immigrant and those who stayed behind - were always expressed in terms of conspicuous goods imported from the North. Martin, a member of our research team, studied more than 80 Spanish families who migrated to Antwerp twenty to thirty years ago. Despite their “modernistic” aspirations for their children, their communities constituted a true replica of their country of origin, reflecting the ethnoregional divisions of Spain. Even after all those years, only a few of the first generation immigrants were able to speak Flemish. Almost everybody stayed strongly oriented toward the region of origin. This basic identification did not conflict, however, with the “modern” orientation parents chose for their sons and daughters. Spanish parents differ from their Turkish and Moroccan counterparts in that they push both their daughters and their sons almost equally to achieve as much as possible. Even though daughters are expected to do household chores and boys are free to go out in their spare time, the differences are not striking. The target Spanish parents set is very unambiguous: “go as far as you can go”. The consequences in terms of culture or cultural elements - as technically defined - never
“Multicultural Society” and the School
15
arise as a possible source of conflict or an impediment for the career of the children. Many parents realize that their children are bound to “develop away”, to “outgrow” the milieu of the parents, but the choice in practice does not seem difficult to make. Education is perceived as an instrument of evolution, of getting away from the lower to the higher, and this “higher” is inevitably defined in terms of the elite school, reflecting the upper middle-class subcultures of Belgian urbanized society. Speaking strictly in terms of culture, the parents are prepared to sacrifice quite a lot. The Spanish parents are especially demanding of their children. They not only tell their children that school performances are important; most parents also keep their sons and daughters under daily surveillance, not permitting them to leave the house before they spend a considerable time with their studies. Although we never conducted a formal comparison with Belgian parents, we have the impression that Spanish parents act more rigorously in this respect than many of their Belgian counterparts. They push their children to conform absolutely to the school requirements, and instill guilt feelings, if necessary. By doing so, they contribute powerfully to the transformation of their children’s culture. Their children are not simply “moving upwards”, going from a worker’s subculture to the middle-class or higher-middle class subculture, but are moving in the direction of a Flemish or francophone middle-class life-style. Parents act spontaneously in the direction of a maximization of success, whatever the culture transformations involved. We are not suggesting here that the immigrant parents have a choice to act differently if they want their children to be “successful” in later life. There is no other way out. Everything starts with the language used in schools. Children who have problems with the use of the official school language have trouble in all other fields of education. The only way to maximize their chances is to attend a school where there is no concentration of foreign pupils, so that immersion in the autochthonous language and local competitive performance are possible. In this way too, young people can establish local connections and friendships and integrate into the social networks of their peer group. “Successful” youngsters are highly acculturated and almost assimilated, strictly culturally speaking. Despite this far-reaching cultural transformation, the Spanish youngsters of our sample all stay ethnonationally “Spanish” in an outspoken fashion. Their national, ethnonational, or ethnic identity leaves no doubt. Some youngsters - a small number even strongly identify with Spain and intend to “go back to their country of origin”, even though they were born in Belgium. (Most of these returnees to Spain emigrate again because they are not able or willing to conform to a number of local cultural practices or traits. See Roosens, 1992.) A minority of youngsters feel “bicultural” and enjoy playing with “the two systems”, while a number of their peers seem to be uncomfortable with “sitting in between”. Half of the young people of our target group made clear that they felt very close to the subculture of their Belgian peers. Visibly, ethnonational identity can be combined with various cultural self-definitions and various cultural styles. But becoming successful or even surviving in a decent fashion does not allow pluriformity in most fields and routines of daily life. Youngsters have no choice if they want to make it. Almost all Turkish parents in our target group express the same attitude towards education: at the level of principles, education is seen as the single most important way to betterment for their children, at least for their sons. Similar perceptions have been
16
E. ROOSENS
growing in the rural area of origin in Central Turkey. So much so that competition to enter the “good schools” in Turkey compares with the entrance examination struggle in Japan. As far as culture orientation is concerned, it is striking that the best schools with the highest reputation in Turkey are institutions where the languages of learning are either German, English or French. Turkish immigrant workers in Belgium have no other choice than do the Spanish. Although there is no difference to be found at the general level of attitudes, Turkish parents do differ from their Spanish counterparts. Turks will not encourage their daughters in the same way as they do their sons. Moreover, Turkish parents are less familiar with the Belgian school system than the well organized Spaniards. And even if they were, they would not be able to get their children accepted in the better institutions, as these schools avoid enrolling nonEU immigrant children. Until now, any significant number of non-EU pupils of the immigrant (ethnic minority) type tends to devalue the school’s reputation in a fatal way. Once the number of these immigrant youngsters rises, Belgian parents and even parents of other EU children withdraw their sons and daughters. The school and teachers lose their status, if they ever had any, and the school is doomed to become a “concentration school”. Immigrant youngsters, therefore, become segregated in this type of school. As Timmerman describes in Chapter 2 of this issue, young women cocoon themselves, dreaming of their future marriages, instead of becoming actively involved in learning and in school matters. In some cases, the only persons who are not speaking Turkish are the Belgian teachers. Schools of that type are “culture-preserving”, but have a negative image in society and lead to a life of unemployment, segregation, and permanent lower socioeconomic status. The attitudes and the practices of the Moroccan parents are quite similar to what we found among the Turkish parents. The position of young Moroccan-Berber women who want to succeed in the immigration country may be more difficult than in the Turkish community, in that Moroccan young women have to fight for success. Often, their achievement is strongly hampered by the reactions of the elder men, who want to keep young women under tight control. A number of young women who graduated from higher education told researcher Cammaert that they almost never experienced racism or discrimination in the implementation of their school career from the Belgian side. The real enemy of their success, they said, had been their own people, especially older, conservative men (Cammaert, 1992). In both the Turkish and the Moroccan cases, cultural dimensions - to be more specific, ethical and religious prescriptions and practices - impair the school career of young women in a direct or indirect fashion. It is not schooling per se that is rejected but the idea of women wanting “to make it” in “the immoral outside world”. Young men do not have to overcome this kind of barrier. The far reaching transformation of the immigrant youth does not expunge, however, their Turkish-national, Berber-ethnic, or Spanish-ethnoregional identity. Their national or ethnic identity refers to their foreign origin and is genealogically traced and constructed through their parents. They use some culture traits, such as being Muslim, or being more “warm” and more family-minded than the surrounding Belgians, to demarcate themselves from the majorities. Most of these traits have no secondary character (Ogbu & Gibson, 1991), although some cultural emblems may evolve in that direction. Hermans, another researcher of the project and a contributor to
“Multicultural Society” and the School
17
this issue, reports that Moroccan young men who have been successful in their school career and enrolled at the university tend to know much more about Islam than their less successful counterparts, although the latter are more apt to use their almost empty Muslim identity as an ethnoreligious marker vs. the surrounding world of the majority, even though they are not strong believers nor active members of any religious community (Hermans, 1992).
The Teachers and Educational&
Three researchers, after working with the immigrant youngsters of the sample, switched to the study of their teachers with whom they were already acquainted. The majority of the cases were Belgian teachers employed in the francophone educational systems of the Brussels area. Some cases were also selected in the Flemish areas of Limburg and Antwerpen. The three researchers reached quite similar conclusions (Roosens et al., 1993). With a few exceptions, teachers who have to work with Spanish youngsters report no problems at all. Neither do the Psycho-Medical-Social Centers. Quite to the contrary, Spanish youngsters are depicted as kinder and more grateful than the Belgians. We obtained the same reaction with respect to the successful Turkish young women in the elite schools. Attitudes are radically different in the concentration schools, where the overwhelming majority of teachers are firmly convinced that the parents of Turkish and Moroccan children do not care at all about the school performances of their sons and daughters. Very many teachers in concentration schools have given up and seem to be burned out. Some think that their pupils are not interested at all in learning, while others think Moroccan boys are smart enough to perform well, but seem to be more interested in girls, disco bars, and motorcycles than in learning. More moderate educators blame language difficulties for the failure of their students. The overwhelming majority of the teachers have never had any contact with their pupils’ parents or families. Even after very many years, their representations about their pupils and their backgrounds are full of phantasies that have never been tested against reality. Though only a couple of young people reported racist attitudes or behavior from their teachers’ side, we noticed that strong ethnocentric feelings are thriving among quite a number of the teaching staff, but these feelings are not conveyed to the students. The point we want to make in the present contribution is that teachers have strongly embedded convictions about the school performance level their pupils have to reach. Unavoidably in the system as it functions today, these norms are entirely those of the Belgian schools for Belgian children. Formal education as a complex scheme of eliciting interest and feelings, of learning and assimilating, is put to work along the lines, and following the rules, of Belgian education. New orientations stimulating intercultural education and school desegregation have been formulated as late as 1991 by the Flemish School Authorities (Leman, 1993). Bicultural and intercultural education is just beyond the experimental level. The most advanced and - by Belgian norms - avant-garde system of bicultural education is the Brussels Foyer system. Children from ethnic minorities are put through a system of two
18
E. ROOSENS
years of kindergarten and six years of primary school in which the mother tongue as the language of learning (Ll) is progressively, over the years, first joined and then gradually replaced by the local school language (L2), followed by a second local language (L3) so that youngsters are expected to do well in three languages. This way, children start to be fluent and to study in their own language, which seems to be a much better starting point than sudden immersion in L2. Besides, youngsters who are able to use three languages have a major advantage in an international city like Brussels, which has a concentration of diplomats, international business people, and international organizations similar to the circles of Washington, D.C. (Leman & Byram, 1990). But even these successful innovations, which take immigrant languages and cultures into account, obey the overwhelming logic of almost all the school systems with which we are familiar: despite the preserving and valuing of the mother tongue, this type of education is also focused primarily on the functional insertion of these youngsters in the surrounding majority society. That many secondary schools offer optional courses of religion, language, and culture of the countries of origin does not constitute a counterbalance. Moreover, the Moroccan and Turkish teachers who are brought to Belgium by their respective embassies are ill-adapted to the local system and are seldom integrated into the autochthonous teaching team. Even The Netherlands, which proclaimed itself a multicultural and a multi-ethnic society already in 1981, re-oriented the school curriculum towards direct job preparation once the number of unemployed immigrant youngsters became a major problem. “Success” is the measure, and success is itself measured with local standards. The same applies to the Dutch Opstup intervention, in which immigrant mothers are trained to socialize their young pre-school children for successful learning (Eldering & Vedder, 1992). There seems to be something unavoidably Eurocentric about the dominant paradigm that nobody, not even the most multicultural-oriented, is so far able to cope with. Overwhelming masses of research on the school problems and differential school results among majority and minority youngsters, both in the EU and the U.S.A., take it for granted that autochthonous formal education is the main road to success or even to earning a decent living (Eldering & Kloprogge, 1989; Eldering & Vedder, 1992; Eldering 1993; Eldering & Leseman, 1993), and that there is no other way available. Consequently, researchers are convinced that the reasons for differential failure and success among the ethnic categories and groups should be detected and acted upon. The hypothesis that instantiated attention given to the school work of their children is one of the main factors of success seems to be increasingly confirmed. Verhoeven (1993) even considers it as proven that the pre-school input of training given by the parent(s) has an influence on the school performance of the children. What really exists, out there, is not a society offering an education system leading to a multicultural society where people with different cultures would live side by side as cultural equals, as the term “multicultural” suggests. Cultures and their most important constituent, languages are not treated as equals, either. All the elements in culture that are rational - that can be discussed in terms of more and less efficient - tend to undergo a process of quasi-natural selection in which the strongest (with respect to efficiency) survive while the others are deselected. There can be only be one winner, or so it seems. It is not by chance that this field of rationality is immediately connected with material
“Multicultural Society” and the School
19
culture. There are not fifty ways to build an airplane that flies and can fly at a competitive price. There are not many cultural styles that can achieve this. To put it in the words of Hannerz (1992, p. 18): “Nature, of the non-human made kind, is really out there, and some ideas people may have about it serve them better in dealing with it than others.” The same applies to the production of all goods and most services. Moreover, the ways to acquire scientific and practical skills are themselves competitive in a similar fashion. Parents know it, youngsters smell it, teachers and educational specialists realize it. Producing material goods and services are, of course, cultural issues: ways of dealing with the material and social world that, historically, were generated in a specific cultural climate and that largely influence family patterns, man-wife relationships, expressive, artistic and religious dimensions of culture. A number of culture traits, however, do escape both rationality and the processes of competitive production. These cultural elements can be further cultivated, mostly as loose material. In these fields of culture, exchanges can take place and be encouraged. Societies like the EU and the U.S.A., then, are multicultural in that they tolerate and make possible the cultivation of differences in private life and in spare time activity. But most branches of formal education, language included, are not located in that field of culture. Paradoxically, “multicultural society” seems a word that political leaders and policy makers prefer to the term “multi-ethnic society”, although it is what the latter concept covers that they are mostly talking about. The expression “multicultural society” can be considered a diplomatic expression, a kind of compromise. It dodges the question of the cohabitation of an autochthonous majority with diverse ethnic groups of newcomers who refuse to be naturalized while still claiming equal rights. This undesirable “anomaly” is somewhat evened out by using the term “multicultural” in a hazy manner. The term “multicultural” can signify folklore, arts, cuisine, music, dress, religion, etc. and does not necessarily sound divisive. People can take part in a lot of cultural events and happenings, stemming from several heritages. The word “multi-ethnic” does not allow for this overlap and vagueness for it divides the population into distinct categories and groups. Moreover, in many countries of Europe, especially in France and the Southern States, the word ethnic reminds one too much of “blood”, Nazism and racial issues, to be widely used in everyday discourse. Concluding Remarks When the children of immigrants (the so-called “second generation” immigrants, though most of them never migrated) are forced by law to attend school until age 18 and are required to study in the language of the region of immigration, the outcome in terms of objectifiable culture will be very different from what still remains of the initial culture of immigration of their parents. It is, of course, possible to represent the acquisition of a second and even of a third language (or “L2” and “L3”) as a process of addition and not of subtraction, not as a loss of the first language (or “Ll”), but one cannot use two or three languages at the same time. And, if by law and other local regulations a person is forced to use L2 or L3 most of the time, starting from age 6, his/her system of meaning and its externalizations will be forced in the direction of the local mainstream. This is precisely why the two main “linguistic communities” of Belgium have institutionalized the use of their respective languages.
20
E. ROOSENS
Proficiency in the local, official language of education is enormously important throughout the career of the youngsters. Children who do not as well in native language will get off the track very soon in secondary or even in primary education. Higher education will be entirely excluded. Even the best-intentioned and most liberal programs in “bicultural” education in the Brussels area like the so-called “bilingual” programs in some parts of the U.S.A. all lead to the predominant use of the local, autochthonous language. Education as it operates today is contributing to the coming about of a de facto multiethnic society in which ethnic or ethnonational origins are preserved and considered important. As not all ethnic groups are equally “successful”, this multi-ethnic society is, and will remain, socioeconomically stratified, with all the potential conflicts builtin into such a setting of inequality. Allochthonous languages may stay alive and so may elements of imported religions and cultures. Symbolic ethnicity may flourish, but “initial” immigrant cultures, considered at the fictional zero degree of entry into the immigration country are eroded and eaten away, disappearing into a new cultural plurality, which is overwhelmingly inspired by the cultural developments occurring in the dominant groups of the dominant States of the present world. These groups happen to be the same ones who invent, design, and produce the goods that are so attractive to the immigrants (of “the first generation”), that they leave their home, kin, and family to spend the best years of the lives in a country to which they will never belong.
References Cammaert,
M.-F. (1992). Fighting for success: Berber girls in higher education. In E. Roosens (Ed.), The youngsters in Belgian society (pp. 83-102). Berlin: Migration. Eldering, L. (1993). Cultuurverschillen in een multiculturele samenleving. Comenius, 49 (Spring), 9-26. Eldering, L., & Kloprogge, J. (Eds.) (1989). Different cultures, same school: Ethnic minority children in Europe. Amsterdam/Berwyn: Swets and ZeitlingerISwets North America. Eldering, L., & Leseman, P. (Eds.) (1993). Intervention and culture: Preparation for Literacy. The Hague: Unesco Publising. Eldering, L., & Vedder, E. (1992). Opstap: Ben opstap naar schoolsucces? Amsterdam: Swets & Zeithnger. Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. New York: Columbia University Press. Hermans, P. (1992). De inpassing van Marokkaanse jongeren in Belgie. Een vergelijkend onderzoek bij geslaagde en niet-geslaagde Marokkaanse jongens. Leuven: Department of Anthropology, doct. dissertation. Leman, J. (1993). Hoe de scholenslag winnen? Beleidsperspectieven inzake onderwijs aan allochtonen in de Vlaamse Gemeenschap. Tijdschrift voor Onderwijs en Onderwijsbeleid, 151-164. Leman, J., & Byram, M. (Eds.) (1990). Bicultural and trilingual education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ogbu, J., & Gibson, M. (1991). Minority status and schooling: A comparative study of immigrant and involuntarv minorities. New York/London: Garland Publishing. Roosens, E: (1989). Creating ethnicityr The process of ethnogenesis. Newbury Park/London/New Delhi: Sage Publications. Roosens, E. (Guest Ed.) (1992). The insertion of ahochthonous youngsters in Belgian society. Berlin: Migration. Roosens, E., Cammaert, M.-F., Hermans, P., & Timmerman, C. (1993). Beefden van immigruntenkinderen bij leraren. Brussel: Diensten voor Programmatie van het Wetenschapsbeleid. Verhoeven, L. (1993). Literacy development in a multilingual context. In L. Eldering & P. Leseman (Eds.), Early intervention and culture: Preparation for literacy (pp. 173-193). Unesco Publishing, Netherlands National Comission for Unesco. insertion of allochthonous
“Multicultural Society” and the School
21
Biography Eugeen Roosens is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and Extraordinary Professor at the UniversitC Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve. He has been appointed P. P. Rubens Professor for the academic year 1989-1990 at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been repeatedly visiting Professor at this Institution. E. Roosens has done extensive fieldwork among the Yaka (Zaire) and in the Huron Nation of Quebec, as well as in Geel, Belgium. Since 1974 he has directed the project “The Cultural Identity of Ethnic Minorities”, a long-term fieldwork project by a team of scholars which operates in several countries. He is the author of, infer alia, Creating efhnicify: The process of ethnogenesis (Sage, 1989) and Mental patients in town life: Gee1 - Europe’s first therapeutic community (Sage, 1979), a book published in five languages, including Japanese.
1
HOW MULTICULTURAL IS THE SCHOOL IN “MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY”? A BELGIAN CASE STUDY EUGEEN
ROOSENS
Department of Anthropology (Cimo), Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
Abstract The competition for efficiency that governs the production of goods and services throughout the world is in part determined by the structure of the non-man-made material world. Not all techniques are equally efficient. Formal education in complex societies is trying to stay attuned to the system of production and the labor market. The compulsory use of languages and the school curricula are powerful tools which regulate the distribution of culture and the hierarchy of ethnic groups in multi-ethnic societies. Most elements of immigrant culture which are not in harmony with the school culture or with the preferences of the labor market are eroded. What is emerging is not an egalitarian “multicultural society” in the true sense of the word but a stratified multi-ethnic society with a flourish of cultural ethnic markers.
Introduction The expression “multicultural society” covers a diversity of ideologies, power relations and agendas in both the European Union and the United States of America. Politicians, activists, policy makers, teachers, experts and social scientists all use the term in widely different contexts. Learned discourse and ethnic rhetoric are almost inextricable. Authorities in most EU countries agree that today’s society is multicultural and that education must reflect this reality and prepare young people to live in a multicultural society. When one looks at the facts and not merely at the words, however, one wonders if the term “multicultural” is not somewhat misleading. Neither parents of immigrant children, nor the children themselves are de facto, in their praxis, acting toward the survival of different cultures; neither are the schools nor the authorities; nor do most experts of education. The overwhelming majority of the actors seem to be moving in the direction of an internally diversified monocultural society, adorned with the remnants 11
12
E. ROOSENS
of alien life styles and flourishes of symbolic ethnicity. The logic of material culture, rejected as outdated and passe’ in the writings of a number of social scientists, could well be a very real driving force. What the expression “multicultural society” signifies depends on the meaning attributed to the term “culture”, in the first place. In the debate about culture, my own position comes very close to the view developed by Ulf Hannerz in his remarkable recent book (1992) Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. In industrialized or complex society, and especially in urban settings, a set of meanings and their externalizations (or culture) never constitutes one single holistic system, like the cultures of rural villages as described by Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, and so many other anthropologists. In today’s states, cultures are always fragmented into subcultures and diverse cultural perspectives. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find out how much people belonging to one the same ethnic group and claiming one identical culture tradition really have in common. The culture of a given ethnic group or ethnonation (like the Flemings in Belgium) is never a clearly delineated package: there is always a multitude of subcultures. The modern media, disseminating information and meaning from all over the world, have largely contributed to increase that cultural diversity. But even considered in this relativizing perspective, many cultures can be experienced and studied as distinct, so that a state in which populations with different cultures cohabit as equals, reproducing equivalent cultures, is not a utopia. The immigrants with whom we work, mostly hailing from rural areas or small towns in Spain, Morocco or Turkey where the local culture is more holistic than in Brussels, have to surrender a number of their culture traits if they want a job in the host country. Their home space and social environment will be entirely different and so will their daily routines, time schedule, work regulations, etc. Even if they stay together and form neighborhoods and networks of their own, keeping in touch with their country of origin, cultural transformation is considerable (Roosens, 1989). Immigrants, however, do not differ from autochthons in that they change sets of their “initial” cultural system or become internally diversified. In the context of complex societies, everybody does. It is the general direction of change that makes the difference. In Belgium, as in all industrialized countries, a “cultural apparatus” does exist (Hannerz, 1992) that controls the flow and the distribution of culture. For all the freewheeling culture change occurring both in the Flemish and French-speaking parts of Belgium - not to mention in bilingual Brussels -, some aspects of the culture are strongly institutionalized and kept tightly under control. The institutionalization of the use of languages and of formal education are two major tools of this controlling apparatus. Both tools are exclusively in the hands of the majority. It is a similar power position of the majority that the “English only” movement is defending in the U.S.A. In our view, the use of a particular language in all possible routines of daily life is one of the few pervasive, uniforming, and culture-preserving elements in complex societies. Six researchers of the Leuven Centrum voor Interculturalisme- en Migratie-Onderzoek (CIMO: Center for Interculturalism and Migration Research) have, in projects involving three to six years of field research (19881993), followed 240 cases of immigrant youngsters in the transition phase between the last year of secondary school and higher education, or between the school and the Brussels and Antwerp labor markets. The research focused on school and family contexts as loci of preparation for adult life in
“Multicultural Society” and the School
13
terms of culture and ethnicity. The young people belonged to the Moroccan, Turkish, and Spanish immigrant communities in Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp (Roosens, 1992). According to the official sources, 79.399 Moroccans, 19.310 Turks, 25.710 Spaniards and 717.339 Belgians were living in Brussels in 1990 (Leman, 1993). Three female researchers worked with three groups of forty young female students; three male researchers with three male groups. Each group was composed of at least twenty young people who achieved the highest scores in the best schools and twenty youngsters who, by educational standards, failed in the worst fashion in the worst “concentration schools” (schools with a student population of more than 50% immigrant ethnic minority youngsters). Additionally, three researchers of the same team, after working with the students, spent several months of field work among a selection of their teachers (Roosens , Cammaert , Hermans, & Timmerman, 1993). In this chapter we would like to address two questions: What kind of reality in social life does the expression “multicultural society” stand for? And what contribution does the school make to the coming about of multiculturality in the light of what the main actors in education with whom we have been working reulZy do?
Research Results and Discussion The Immigrant Parents and Their Sons and Daughters
Although the opinion is widespread among teachers in concentration schools that the lack of interest in the studies of their children is one of the major factors causing failure of numerous ethnic minority youngsters, the high expectations of almost all the parents in our sample were striking. As far as verbally expressed expectations are concerned, it is strictly impossible to make clear distinctions between parents of Moroccan, Turkish, or Spanish origin. Although many among them are practically or fully illiterate, they all consider the school and the education system as the main road to a successful life for their children. Parents hope their children will become wealthy professionals, like lawyers, medical doctors, or highly-achieving business people. Most parents explicitly stated that they expect, as a minimum, that their children will obtain a better position than they themselves were able to do. This general principle is widely accepted, whatever the cultural or ethnic background of the parents. It is striking that success is spontaneously seen as success in terms of the immigration society. Nobody looks back to the roots when social success and promotion of the children are at stake. Success is not defined in an alternative way, or in terms of a cultural style of the country of origin. When looking at what people really do in the concrete cases of their own children, a number of distinctions are to be made among the subjects of our different target groups. The Spanish parents of our sample, although working people with very little schooling, want their children to obtain the maximum. Spanish parents are extremely well organized in parents’ associations. They look for the “best schools”, which they define as Catholic schools with high academic standards, “schools without foreigners”, in which no Turkish or Moroccan children are present. As a general rule, parents ignore
14
E. ROOSENS
the advice given by school psychologists and teachers when it comes to selecting general (high level), technical (medium level), or vocational (lower level) secondary education. They almost all try to send their children to the highest level. Researchers often heard the remark that Belgian teachers and school psychologists are racist, directing children of immigrant workers to the lower levels of the educational system and holding them back. Although some Spanish children fail, almost all of them get maximum educational opportunities thanks to their parents’ strategy. Especially in the years of our research (198&1993), very many Spanish parents saw the educational opportunities offered to their children as the most important emigrant asset when they compared their own socioeconomic situation with the situation of those who had stayed behind in the country of origin. The economic situation of Spain has dramatically improved since the time of France. Very many Spaniards who migrated to the North are no longer fully accepted by their community of origin, when they visit or return “home”. With the passing of time, they have become “the Belgians”, who fled when the situation was poor, and who return now that life is again enjoyable. Moreover, very many Spanish immigrants are struck at the immigrant’s most sensitive spot: all what they have been suffering seems to have been in vain, as those who stayed behind are driving comparable cars, have decent housing and dress equally well. The emblems and markers of success immigrants used to display have lost their distinction. There only remains one exception: the schooling of their children. Good schools are difficult to come by and expensive in Spain, while they are plenty and free in Belgium. Good and inexpensive schooling, then, seems to be the only major asset left. It might be simplistic to explain the remarkable alertness of the Spanish parents in school matters by this single factor. Just like most other immigrants who came to the North, Spanish parents are self-selected people who were not satisfied with their material and/or social conditions in their region of origin. Although the overwhelming majority of first-generation immigrants we came across in the last twenty years said that they intended to go home one day, “where they really belong”, they all hoped for a return with considerable improved material means and enhanced social status. At the beginning of the migration career, they hoped to be able to return after a few years of hard work and money making to start a small business or to move up to a higher professional position. Enhanced prestige and social status - the difference between a successful immigrant and those who stayed behind - were always expressed in terms of conspicuous goods imported from the North. Martin, a member of our research team, studied more than 80 Spanish families who migrated to Antwerp twenty to thirty years ago. Despite their “modernistic” aspirations for their children, their communities constituted a true replica of their country of origin, reflecting the ethnoregional divisions of Spain. Even after all those years, only a few of the first generation immigrants were able to speak Flemish. Almost everybody stayed strongly oriented toward the region of origin. This basic identification did not conflict, however, with the “modern” orientation parents chose for their sons and daughters. Spanish parents differ from their Turkish and Moroccan counterparts in that they push both their daughters and their sons almost equally to achieve as much as possible. Even though daughters are expected to do household chores and boys are free to go out in their spare time, the differences are not striking. The target Spanish parents set is very unambiguous: “go as far as you can go”. The consequences in terms of culture or cultural elements - as technically defined - never
“Multicultural Society” and the School
15
arise as a possible source of conflict or an impediment for the career of the children. Many parents realize that their children are bound to “develop away”, to “outgrow” the milieu of the parents, but the choice in practice does not seem difficult to make. Education is perceived as an instrument of evolution, of getting away from the lower to the higher, and this “higher” is inevitably defined in terms of the elite school, reflecting the upper middle-class subcultures of Belgian urbanized society. Speaking strictly in terms of culture, the parents are prepared to sacrifice quite a lot. The Spanish parents are especially demanding of their children. They not only tell their children that school performances are important; most parents also keep their sons and daughters under daily surveillance, not permitting them to leave the house before they spend a considerable time with their studies. Although we never conducted a formal comparison with Belgian parents, we have the impression that Spanish parents act more rigorously in this respect than many of their Belgian counterparts. They push their children to conform absolutely to the school requirements, and instill guilt feelings, if necessary. By doing so, they contribute powerfully to the transformation of their children’s culture. Their children are not simply “moving upwards”, going from a worker’s subculture to the middle-class or higher-middle class subculture, but are moving in the direction of a Flemish or francophone middle-class life-style. Parents act spontaneously in the direction of a maximization of success, whatever the culture transformations involved. We are not suggesting here that the immigrant parents have a choice to act differently if they want their children to be “successful” in later life. There is no other way out. Everything starts with the language used in schools. Children who have problems with the use of the official school language have trouble in all other fields of education. The only way to maximize their chances is to attend a school where there is no concentration of foreign pupils, so that immersion in the autochthonous language and local competitive performance are possible. In this way too, young people can establish local connections and friendships and integrate into the social networks of their peer group. “Successful” youngsters are highly acculturated and almost assimilated, strictly culturally speaking. Despite this far-reaching cultural transformation, the Spanish youngsters of our sample all stay ethnonationally “Spanish” in an outspoken fashion. Their national, ethnonational, or ethnic identity leaves no doubt. Some youngsters - a small number even strongly identify with Spain and intend to “go back to their country of origin”, even though they were born in Belgium. (Most of these returnees to Spain emigrate again because they are not able or willing to conform to a number of local cultural practices or traits. See Roosens, 1992.) A minority of youngsters feel “bicultural” and enjoy playing with “the two systems”, while a number of their peers seem to be uncomfortable with “sitting in between”. Half of the young people of our target group made clear that they felt very close to the subculture of their Belgian peers. Visibly, ethnonational identity can be combined with various cultural self-definitions and various cultural styles. But becoming successful or even surviving in a decent fashion does not allow pluriformity in most fields and routines of daily life. Youngsters have no choice if they want to make it. Almost all Turkish parents in our target group express the same attitude towards education: at the level of principles, education is seen as the single most important way to betterment for their children, at least for their sons. Similar perceptions have been
16
E. ROOSENS
growing in the rural area of origin in Central Turkey. So much so that competition to enter the “good schools” in Turkey compares with the entrance examination struggle in Japan. As far as culture orientation is concerned, it is striking that the best schools with the highest reputation in Turkey are institutions where the languages of learning are either German, English or French. Turkish immigrant workers in Belgium have no other choice than do the Spanish. Although there is no difference to be found at the general level of attitudes, Turkish parents do differ from their Spanish counterparts. Turks will not encourage their daughters in the same way as they do their sons. Moreover, Turkish parents are less familiar with the Belgian school system than the well organized Spaniards. And even if they were, they would not be able to get their children accepted in the better institutions, as these schools avoid enrolling nonEU immigrant children. Until now, any significant number of non-EU pupils of the immigrant (ethnic minority) type tends to devalue the school’s reputation in a fatal way. Once the number of these immigrant youngsters rises, Belgian parents and even parents of other EU children withdraw their sons and daughters. The school and teachers lose their status, if they ever had any, and the school is doomed to become a “concentration school”. Immigrant youngsters, therefore, become segregated in this type of school. As Timmerman describes in Chapter 2 of this issue, young women cocoon themselves, dreaming of their future marriages, instead of becoming actively involved in learning and in school matters. In some cases, the only persons who are not speaking Turkish are the Belgian teachers. Schools of that type are “culture-preserving”, but have a negative image in society and lead to a life of unemployment, segregation, and permanent lower socioeconomic status. The attitudes and the practices of the Moroccan parents are quite similar to what we found among the Turkish parents. The position of young Moroccan-Berber women who want to succeed in the immigration country may be more difficult than in the Turkish community, in that Moroccan young women have to fight for success. Often, their achievement is strongly hampered by the reactions of the elder men, who want to keep young women under tight control. A number of young women who graduated from higher education told researcher Cammaert that they almost never experienced racism or discrimination in the implementation of their school career from the Belgian side. The real enemy of their success, they said, had been their own people, especially older, conservative men (Cammaert, 1992). In both the Turkish and the Moroccan cases, cultural dimensions - to be more specific, ethical and religious prescriptions and practices - impair the school career of young women in a direct or indirect fashion. It is not schooling per se that is rejected but the idea of women wanting “to make it” in “the immoral outside world”. Young men do not have to overcome this kind of barrier. The far reaching transformation of the immigrant youth does not expunge, however, their Turkish-national, Berber-ethnic, or Spanish-ethnoregional identity. Their national or ethnic identity refers to their foreign origin and is genealogically traced and constructed through their parents. They use some culture traits, such as being Muslim, or being more “warm” and more family-minded than the surrounding Belgians, to demarcate themselves from the majorities. Most of these traits have no secondary character (Ogbu & Gibson, 1991), although some cultural emblems may evolve in that direction. Hermans, another researcher of the project and a contributor to
“Multicultural Society” and the School
17
this issue, reports that Moroccan young men who have been successful in their school career and enrolled at the university tend to know much more about Islam than their less successful counterparts, although the latter are more apt to use their almost empty Muslim identity as an ethnoreligious marker vs. the surrounding world of the majority, even though they are not strong believers nor active members of any religious community (Hermans, 1992).
The Teachers and Educational&
Three researchers, after working with the immigrant youngsters of the sample, switched to the study of their teachers with whom they were already acquainted. The majority of the cases were Belgian teachers employed in the francophone educational systems of the Brussels area. Some cases were also selected in the Flemish areas of Limburg and Antwerpen. The three researchers reached quite similar conclusions (Roosens et al., 1993). With a few exceptions, teachers who have to work with Spanish youngsters report no problems at all. Neither do the Psycho-Medical-Social Centers. Quite to the contrary, Spanish youngsters are depicted as kinder and more grateful than the Belgians. We obtained the same reaction with respect to the successful Turkish young women in the elite schools. Attitudes are radically different in the concentration schools, where the overwhelming majority of teachers are firmly convinced that the parents of Turkish and Moroccan children do not care at all about the school performances of their sons and daughters. Very many teachers in concentration schools have given up and seem to be burned out. Some think that their pupils are not interested at all in learning, while others think Moroccan boys are smart enough to perform well, but seem to be more interested in girls, disco bars, and motorcycles than in learning. More moderate educators blame language difficulties for the failure of their students. The overwhelming majority of the teachers have never had any contact with their pupils’ parents or families. Even after very many years, their representations about their pupils and their backgrounds are full of phantasies that have never been tested against reality. Though only a couple of young people reported racist attitudes or behavior from their teachers’ side, we noticed that strong ethnocentric feelings are thriving among quite a number of the teaching staff, but these feelings are not conveyed to the students. The point we want to make in the present contribution is that teachers have strongly embedded convictions about the school performance level their pupils have to reach. Unavoidably in the system as it functions today, these norms are entirely those of the Belgian schools for Belgian children. Formal education as a complex scheme of eliciting interest and feelings, of learning and assimilating, is put to work along the lines, and following the rules, of Belgian education. New orientations stimulating intercultural education and school desegregation have been formulated as late as 1991 by the Flemish School Authorities (Leman, 1993). Bicultural and intercultural education is just beyond the experimental level. The most advanced and - by Belgian norms - avant-garde system of bicultural education is the Brussels Foyer system. Children from ethnic minorities are put through a system of two
18
E. ROOSENS
years of kindergarten and six years of primary school in which the mother tongue as the language of learning (Ll) is progressively, over the years, first joined and then gradually replaced by the local school language (L2), followed by a second local language (L3) so that youngsters are expected to do well in three languages. This way, children start to be fluent and to study in their own language, which seems to be a much better starting point than sudden immersion in L2. Besides, youngsters who are able to use three languages have a major advantage in an international city like Brussels, which has a concentration of diplomats, international business people, and international organizations similar to the circles of Washington, D.C. (Leman & Byram, 1990). But even these successful innovations, which take immigrant languages and cultures into account, obey the overwhelming logic of almost all the school systems with which we are familiar: despite the preserving and valuing of the mother tongue, this type of education is also focused primarily on the functional insertion of these youngsters in the surrounding majority society. That many secondary schools offer optional courses of religion, language, and culture of the countries of origin does not constitute a counterbalance. Moreover, the Moroccan and Turkish teachers who are brought to Belgium by their respective embassies are ill-adapted to the local system and are seldom integrated into the autochthonous teaching team. Even The Netherlands, which proclaimed itself a multicultural and a multi-ethnic society already in 1981, re-oriented the school curriculum towards direct job preparation once the number of unemployed immigrant youngsters became a major problem. “Success” is the measure, and success is itself measured with local standards. The same applies to the Dutch Opstup intervention, in which immigrant mothers are trained to socialize their young pre-school children for successful learning (Eldering & Vedder, 1992). There seems to be something unavoidably Eurocentric about the dominant paradigm that nobody, not even the most multicultural-oriented, is so far able to cope with. Overwhelming masses of research on the school problems and differential school results among majority and minority youngsters, both in the EU and the U.S.A., take it for granted that autochthonous formal education is the main road to success or even to earning a decent living (Eldering & Kloprogge, 1989; Eldering & Vedder, 1992; Eldering 1993; Eldering & Leseman, 1993), and that there is no other way available. Consequently, researchers are convinced that the reasons for differential failure and success among the ethnic categories and groups should be detected and acted upon. The hypothesis that instantiated attention given to the school work of their children is one of the main factors of success seems to be increasingly confirmed. Verhoeven (1993) even considers it as proven that the pre-school input of training given by the parent(s) has an influence on the school performance of the children. What really exists, out there, is not a society offering an education system leading to a multicultural society where people with different cultures would live side by side as cultural equals, as the term “multicultural” suggests. Cultures and their most important constituent, languages are not treated as equals, either. All the elements in culture that are rational - that can be discussed in terms of more and less efficient - tend to undergo a process of quasi-natural selection in which the strongest (with respect to efficiency) survive while the others are deselected. There can be only be one winner, or so it seems. It is not by chance that this field of rationality is immediately connected with material
“Multicultural Society” and the School
19
culture. There are not fifty ways to build an airplane that flies and can fly at a competitive price. There are not many cultural styles that can achieve this. To put it in the words of Hannerz (1992, p. 18): “Nature, of the non-human made kind, is really out there, and some ideas people may have about it serve them better in dealing with it than others.” The same applies to the production of all goods and most services. Moreover, the ways to acquire scientific and practical skills are themselves competitive in a similar fashion. Parents know it, youngsters smell it, teachers and educational specialists realize it. Producing material goods and services are, of course, cultural issues: ways of dealing with the material and social world that, historically, were generated in a specific cultural climate and that largely influence family patterns, man-wife relationships, expressive, artistic and religious dimensions of culture. A number of culture traits, however, do escape both rationality and the processes of competitive production. These cultural elements can be further cultivated, mostly as loose material. In these fields of culture, exchanges can take place and be encouraged. Societies like the EU and the U.S.A., then, are multicultural in that they tolerate and make possible the cultivation of differences in private life and in spare time activity. But most branches of formal education, language included, are not located in that field of culture. Paradoxically, “multicultural society” seems a word that political leaders and policy makers prefer to the term “multi-ethnic society”, although it is what the latter concept covers that they are mostly talking about. The expression “multicultural society” can be considered a diplomatic expression, a kind of compromise. It dodges the question of the cohabitation of an autochthonous majority with diverse ethnic groups of newcomers who refuse to be naturalized while still claiming equal rights. This undesirable “anomaly” is somewhat evened out by using the term “multicultural” in a hazy manner. The term “multicultural” can signify folklore, arts, cuisine, music, dress, religion, etc. and does not necessarily sound divisive. People can take part in a lot of cultural events and happenings, stemming from several heritages. The word “multi-ethnic” does not allow for this overlap and vagueness for it divides the population into distinct categories and groups. Moreover, in many countries of Europe, especially in France and the Southern States, the word ethnic reminds one too much of “blood”, Nazism and racial issues, to be widely used in everyday discourse. Concluding Remarks When the children of immigrants (the so-called “second generation” immigrants, though most of them never migrated) are forced by law to attend school until age 18 and are required to study in the language of the region of immigration, the outcome in terms of objectifiable culture will be very different from what still remains of the initial culture of immigration of their parents. It is, of course, possible to represent the acquisition of a second and even of a third language (or “L2” and “L3”) as a process of addition and not of subtraction, not as a loss of the first language (or “Ll”), but one cannot use two or three languages at the same time. And, if by law and other local regulations a person is forced to use L2 or L3 most of the time, starting from age 6, his/her system of meaning and its externalizations will be forced in the direction of the local mainstream. This is precisely why the two main “linguistic communities” of Belgium have institutionalized the use of their respective languages.
20
E. ROOSENS
Proficiency in the local, official language of education is enormously important throughout the career of the youngsters. Children who do not as well in native language will get off the track very soon in secondary or even in primary education. Higher education will be entirely excluded. Even the best-intentioned and most liberal programs in “bicultural” education in the Brussels area like the so-called “bilingual” programs in some parts of the U.S.A. all lead to the predominant use of the local, autochthonous language. Education as it operates today is contributing to the coming about of a de facto multiethnic society in which ethnic or ethnonational origins are preserved and considered important. As not all ethnic groups are equally “successful”, this multi-ethnic society is, and will remain, socioeconomically stratified, with all the potential conflicts builtin into such a setting of inequality. Allochthonous languages may stay alive and so may elements of imported religions and cultures. Symbolic ethnicity may flourish, but “initial” immigrant cultures, considered at the fictional zero degree of entry into the immigration country are eroded and eaten away, disappearing into a new cultural plurality, which is overwhelmingly inspired by the cultural developments occurring in the dominant groups of the dominant States of the present world. These groups happen to be the same ones who invent, design, and produce the goods that are so attractive to the immigrants (of “the first generation”), that they leave their home, kin, and family to spend the best years of the lives in a country to which they will never belong.
References Cammaert,
M.-F. (1992). Fighting for success: Berber girls in higher education. In E. Roosens (Ed.), The youngsters in Belgian society (pp. 83-102). Berlin: Migration. Eldering, L. (1993). Cultuurverschillen in een multiculturele samenleving. Comenius, 49 (Spring), 9-26. Eldering, L., & Kloprogge, J. (Eds.) (1989). Different cultures, same school: Ethnic minority children in Europe. Amsterdam/Berwyn: Swets and ZeitlingerISwets North America. Eldering, L., & Leseman, P. (Eds.) (1993). Intervention and culture: Preparation for Literacy. The Hague: Unesco Publising. Eldering, L., & Vedder, E. (1992). Opstap: Ben opstap naar schoolsucces? Amsterdam: Swets & Zeithnger. Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. New York: Columbia University Press. Hermans, P. (1992). De inpassing van Marokkaanse jongeren in Belgie. Een vergelijkend onderzoek bij geslaagde en niet-geslaagde Marokkaanse jongens. Leuven: Department of Anthropology, doct. dissertation. Leman, J. (1993). Hoe de scholenslag winnen? Beleidsperspectieven inzake onderwijs aan allochtonen in de Vlaamse Gemeenschap. Tijdschrift voor Onderwijs en Onderwijsbeleid, 151-164. Leman, J., & Byram, M. (Eds.) (1990). Bicultural and trilingual education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ogbu, J., & Gibson, M. (1991). Minority status and schooling: A comparative study of immigrant and involuntarv minorities. New York/London: Garland Publishing. Roosens, E: (1989). Creating ethnicityr The process of ethnogenesis. Newbury Park/London/New Delhi: Sage Publications. Roosens, E. (Guest Ed.) (1992). The insertion of ahochthonous youngsters in Belgian society. Berlin: Migration. Roosens, E., Cammaert, M.-F., Hermans, P., & Timmerman, C. (1993). Beefden van immigruntenkinderen bij leraren. Brussel: Diensten voor Programmatie van het Wetenschapsbeleid. Verhoeven, L. (1993). Literacy development in a multilingual context. In L. Eldering & P. Leseman (Eds.), Early intervention and culture: Preparation for literacy (pp. 173-193). Unesco Publishing, Netherlands National Comission for Unesco. insertion of allochthonous
“Multicultural Society” and the School
21
Biography Eugeen Roosens is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and Extraordinary Professor at the UniversitC Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve. He has been appointed P. P. Rubens Professor for the academic year 1989-1990 at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been repeatedly visiting Professor at this Institution. E. Roosens has done extensive fieldwork among the Yaka (Zaire) and in the Huron Nation of Quebec, as well as in Geel, Belgium. Since 1974 he has directed the project “The Cultural Identity of Ethnic Minorities”, a long-term fieldwork project by a team of scholars which operates in several countries. He is the author of, infer alia, Creating efhnicify: The process of ethnogenesis (Sage, 1989) and Mental patients in town life: Gee1 - Europe’s first therapeutic community (Sage, 1979), a book published in five languages, including Japanese.