The presence of different cultures in schools: possibilities of dialogue and action. Jurjo Torres Santomé

Curriculum Studies, Volume4, Number 1,1996
The Presence of Different
Cultures in Schools: possibilities
of dialogue and action
JURJO TORRES SANTOMÉ
University of A Coruña, Spain
ABSTRACT This article reflects on schools as spaces for the reconstruction
of reality. If the school is an important part of the strategy to prepare for
critical solidarity and active democratic citizens in society, it is obvious that
it may or may not be successful in so far as the classrooms are converted
into a space where this same society can be submitted to revision and
criticism and where the necessary skills are developed to perfect and
participate in the community. It is not a place to convert the societal groups
and cultures without power into extras of the curriculum or additional
themes to ease our conscience as happens in many of our classrooms when
they develop what I call the "tourist curricula". On the contrary, an
anti-marginal education must revise and reconstruct the knowledge of each
group and culture of the world. It is necessary to construct educational
practices to teach students to unmask the political, historical and semiotic
dynamics that condition their interpretations and expectations and their
possibilities for participating in reality.
The educational policies of most industrialised countries are now opting
for official curricula that stipulate obligatory cultural content, especially
those countries controlled by conservative governments or, in the case of
Spain, a social democratic government. It is curious that this is
happening at a time when, in forums of debate and reflection about
education, one of the important themes for the majority of educational
professionals is how to treat cultural diversity, antiracist and anti-sexist
school practices and the defence of minority cultures without power.
These official curricula tend to propose policies of homogenisation, the
construction and legitimation of a form of "official knowledge" (Apple,
1993), with only one vision and interpretation of reality, which principally
serves the interests of economic, political, military and cultural groups
that have power. However, these are the same governments that, at some
point in time, must admit the reality of different cultures within their
borders. For many of these governments, this recognition came during
the 1960s when an increasing number of social groups organised around
the dimension of race, gender and nationality, began to vindicate their
rights. But despite this, these governments continue to assume that the
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JURIO TORRES SANTOME
only valid and valuable model is that of a young, Christian, middle-class,
heterosexual, slim, healthy, strong, white, male. This image is difficult to
combat unless the meaning and results of what can be called 'new social
movements' are revised (i.e. those movements which in the beginning
were formed around Marxist ideology, which later separated from it in
order to carry out very specific social fights). Such movements, for
example, include: ecological, pacifist and neighbourhood movements; the
defence of ethnic and religious minorities; homosexual and lesbian rights
organisations and animal protection groups.
In this sense, the rapid diffusion of the philosophical positions
under the heading of 'post-modernism', with their emphasis on
'difference(s) favour the concentration on particularisms. This becomes
so ironical that it creates an incapacity to establish relationships and
commitments between phenomena that have important similarities, such
as the problems of unequal opportunities, marginalisation and
oppression. These problems are the fruit of oppression, rooted and
supported by the interests of the most favoured social groups that
control the political, economic, cultural, religious and military spheres.
There results, in the words of Stuart Hall (1992), such a
"hyperabstraction and an excess of theorization" that we forget about the
concrete and more general historical problems. We must not forget that
the fight against marginalisation and oppression can not be carried out in
the form of fragmented tasks, where each social group functioning
around important variables (gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, age)
tries to solve its problems alone.
The key Marxist concept of social class has become of secondary
importance even though it is the category that has coordinated the fight
against the principle forms of exploitation in discourses over justice,
social responsibility, democracy and solidarity throughout this century.
In these new social movements, hardly any interest on the part of the
working class can be observed. Sometimes, it appears as if this social
class no longer exists even though there is an increasing amount of
evidence showing the loss of working place autonomy, increased levels of
proletarianisation and a greater number of easier and shamelessly
produced dismissals.
When class consciousness disappears, it is more difficult to
collaborate with immigrant and ethnic minority groups. The debate about
immigration and the marginalisation of oppressed ethnic groups needs to
be undertaken in the context of economic dynamics and within the
framework of economic exploitation, or a form of democratic racism may
be created. Democratic racists are those citizens that recognise
democratic norms for their group of 'equals' and exclude the rest, with
good conscience. They can be passive in the presence of racist attitudes
which take place in their environment or fall into an application of
democratic norms that favour racist behaviors. The real problems of
emigration, immigration and ethnic communities that do not accept the
established norms are not analysed. The social response is tinted with
26

DIFFERENT CULTURES IN SCHOOLS
corporatism, with obsessions for the physical defence of the territory
and 'acquired rights' converted into privileges. In general, it is necessary
to keep in mind that marginalisation is related to the concept of deviance.
But any norm or scale by which something or someone is measured and
analysed is always a social construction: it is elaborated in one specific
sociohistoric and geographic moment, in the bosom of one concrete
community and in accordance with the economic, cultural, political,
religious and military interests of the social groups that, in this period,
hold the reins of power.
There is an urgent need for a more holistic reconceptualisation as
well as a praxis that favours coordination and negotiation between all
groups including marginal, omitted and social collectives without power.
Concepts such as democracy, solidarity, freedom and justice cannot be
so plurally formulated that they produce antagonistic results or societies
where these values are converted into aspirations difficult to imagine and
achieve. In this sense, the dimension of social class can serve to
coordinate and negotiate the strategies of women's groups, nationalists'
collectives, handicapped persons, gay and lesbian collectives, etc. as well
as respond to the difficult forms of marginalisation and discrimination to
which they are submitted. What present societies need are strategies to
improve their levels of democracy and therefore, to live with differences,
without converting it into exclusion.
Education and the Reconstruction of Reality
The schools are not at the margin of this process. On the contrary, the
same trends and types of analysis shape educational programmes which
reinforce, legitimise, and also contradict, the results of previous
postures. Educational action is political and ethical action, in spite of the
liberal and conservative discourses that want to obliterate this
idiosyncrasy. If the school is an important part of the strategy to prepare
active, critical and democratic citizens in a society that wants to change
in a similar direction, it is obvious that it may or may not be successful in
so far as classrooms are converted into a space where this same society
can be submitted to revision and criticism and the necessary skills are
developed to perfect and participate n the community.
It is not an attempt to convert the societal groups and cultures
without power into curriculum extras or additional themes to ease our
conscience as happens in many of our classrooms when they develop the
'tourist curricula' (Torres Santome, 1993): curricula where the
information about silent, marginal, oppressed and powerless
communities is presented in a deformed manner, with many
superficialities, centred in decontextualised anecdotes. It is a more
generalised form translated into a series of isolated lessons or topics
destined to give students contact with current realities and problems
which do not appear in the principal didactic resources and are
disconnected from the official programme of the school. The tourist
curricula are the result of working sporadically: for example, on one day
27

JURJO TORRES SANTOME
treating such themes as the fight against racial prejudice and on another,
women's oppression, the working class, pollution, war or oppressed
languages. Silenced social situations that are considered problematic in a
concrete society (oppressed ethnic groups, silent national cultures,
social class, gender and age discriminations, etc.) are analysed from
distant, strange or problematic perspectives which do not relate to every
person in the classroom. In addition, it is usually made clear to the
students that solutions do not depend upon anyone in particular and that
they are outside our reach. Often a class of problems is contemplated in a
way which emphasises our incapability to resolve them.
The most frequently adopted tourist curriculum strategies include
the following:
(a) trivialisation: the study of culinary customs, folklore, way of dressing,
holiday rituals, the decoration of houses, etc. from a tourist perspective;
(b) the souvenir, or exotic treatment of information with a quantitative
present of little importance in available didactic resources;
(c) disconnection: the separation of diversity into 'the day of ...', when
these types of social problems are considered on a specific day and
sometimes in only one subject; and
(d) stereotypification: the stereotyping of people and situations to justify
marginalisation.
It is a fact that some classes of curricula are based upon distortion,
deforming or hiding the history and the origins of these communities that
are the object of marginalisation and/or xenophobia. This is the most
perverse case of curricula treatment, since it tries to construct a history
'made-to-suit' and makes situations of oppression appear 'natural'. It
explains that, if oppressed or marginal groups exist, it is due to their
genetic inferiority, to laziness, to innate badness, etc. It is also possible to
resort to explanations of marginalisation based upon the family structure
of these populations, in that they still maintain barbaric customs,
inadequate lifestyles, etc.
One of the most sophisticated forms of distortion is the
'psychologisation' of racial and social problems, that is, attempting to
find the explanations of marginal situations based on analyses centred
upon individuals or interpersonal relations, without taking social
structures into account. In this way, not long ago, it was common to claim
that the marginalisation of black people was due to their deficient genetic
base and/or lower intelligent quotient. In this form of distortion, the
attention is never placed upon the power structure which causes
marginalisation or the political, economic, cultural, military and religious
conditions that explain these situations of oppression.
Neither can we continue using modalities of curriculum treatment
sustained by hierarchical visions of 'superiority' placing some cultures
above others. This is something seen in schools which emphasise the
deficits of oppressed people and cultures, portraying them, for example,
as very poor and incapable of getting ahead without us, their saviours
and redeemers. They are considered uncultured, ignorant and backward
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because the criteria used to measure them are always those which the
dominant and colonial groups impose. The dynamics of exploitation,
pillaging and colonisation to alter their lifestyles and values and so
facilitate their domination are not emphasised. In this form of curriculum
work, it is frequent to hear such words as 'donation', 'sacrifice' and
'charity' in relation to the people of the Third World, while others, such
as 'justice', 'solidarity' and 'equality' hardly appear.
A democratic and non-exclusive education should not fragment
cultural content to reflect only the history, traditions, products and
voices of the hegemonic social groups with economic, political, social,
military and religious power or what is generally referred to as European
culture. On the contrary, an anti-marginal education must revise and
reconstruct the knowledge of each group and culture of the world.
It should not be forgotten that assimilationism has been the most
frequent educational strategy to solve questions of cultural diversity. It is
a strategy that continues to be employed even though it is now more
hidden. For example, when a core curriculum is legislated, as in the case
of Spain, the schools are forced to study the same cultural content, which
is a new form of neo-assimilationism. The core curriculum is not the
result of debate and consensus among all cultures and groups, but a
programme elaborated with hardly any discussion and imposed upon
citizens. A core curriculum arising from, and directed to, a democratic
and just society should be the consequence of public participation,
solidarity and commitment among the different communities and social
groups and the different alternatives proposed by them. Schools should
be forced to incorporate the history and experience of women, silent
nationalities, ethnic minorities and oppressed social groups. As Michael
Apple (1993, p. 62) emphasises, "a 'common culture' can never be an
extension to everyone of what a minority mean and believe".
However, the official culture of the majority of Western
governments, through the promotion of the core curricula, only values
knowledge pertaining to the capabilities of the working-aged masculine
world. A glance at the textbooks permits us to observe numerous silent,
hidden perspectives and realities. In these textbooks, the disfiguration of
the working class is obvious. A manipulated 'theory of consensus' does
not depict the history, culture and reality of why working struggles were
indispensable to counteract exploitation (i.e. schedule excess hours and
abusive rhythms of work, low salaries, poor living conditions, absence of
participation in the management of the business, etc.) or how to
introduce changes in society, in the long march toward a more
democratic, equal and free society.
In Spain there are also other inadmissible silences. One example is
that realistic data on the rural and fishing cultures can hardly be found,
which is somewhat ironic, keeping in mind that Spain is a country with
many kilometres of coast and a high percentage of people living in rural
areas. Other omissions include children, adolescents and senior citizens.
Therefore, young people do not know the significance of being young, a
29

senior citizen, or of the cultural peculiarities that they produce, contest
and resist (e.g. comic books, rock music, fashion, etc.). Also omitted as
specific foci of attention are: ethnic minorities without power, the
national culture, the Third World, the poor, the voices of homosexuals
and lesbians and mentally and/or physically handicapped people.
In general, it can be affirmed that the culture with which schools
work, is reduced to what is called 'Western culture' or more precisely,
'Eurocentrism'. The history, tradition, products and lifestyles of such
large continents as Africa, Asia and Oceania are not considered other
than in a stereotypical form from the perspective of the power structure
of the more industrialised countries.
Every anti-discrimination curricular project should provide
sufficient information for students to gain insights into the causes of
violence and marginalisation and, in this way, the implications of their
achievements in quality of life to the detriment of other more distant
peoples and cultures; and information that permits a glimpse of hope for
a better world. The history of humankind is filled with examples that
contribute to optimism, to victories over injustice, the conquest of
liberties. For this reason, it is important to emphasise and analyse the
social conquests that countries and social groups have achieved through
an appropriate analysis of the practices to confront forms of oppression
and domination.
This attention to social collectives with silent and manipulated
voices does not mean simply adding more content to school programmes,
since they are presently overworked. Something that is typical in many
teaching and learning practices, such as the situation of women, the
history and present situation of gypsies, the hunger of the Third World,
unemployment, etc., are additions to textbook contents. These themes
are usually presented in an isolated form not clearly connected with the
rest of the course contents, nor are they explicitly evaluated or taken into
consideration in the final course evaluation.
In order to treat these silent and marginal cultures appropriately, it
is necessary to redefine the present culture, taking into consideration the
silent voices of nations, collectives and social groups. This is a task that
surpasses the curriculum proposals of an additive character and one
which is normally limited to the social sciences, especially to history. All
areas of knowledge need to be revised and their contents updated to
incorporate these dimensions and absent voices. By adding these themes
to existing courses, rather than restructuring them, it frequently appears
as if new topics permit the continuation of conceptions of the hegemonic
social groups to maintain their situation of power and privilege in this
sociohistorical moment. This is especially true with dates, perspectives
and theories that cannot be easily silenced since the mass media put
them easily within reach of the majority of the people within society. One
example of this additive approach was the initiation of evolutions
theories in biology textbooks, evolution was only one lesson more. In this
lesson, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution are explained in a
30

superfluous and anecdotal form. But in the rest of the lessons from the
same textbook, in all themes when evolutionism could compete with
creationism, creationism is continued as the exclusive perspective and
therefore, the only valid one. As a consequence, the theory of evolution is
reduced to anecdotal information, so as not to restructure the entire
vision of science in all of those questions having to do with this theory.
Another example is the case of Eurocentrism of 'chauvinistic
Westerners' which affects such fields of knowledge as mathematics and
the physical and natural sciences where the hegemonic perspective is
catalogued as realms of objectivity, disinterest and neutrality. In this way,
it is concealed that inventions and discoveries considered as Western
achievements were actually those of the Chinese and some Arabic
countries, hundreds of years ago for, for example, in the field of
agriculture: the iron plough, the multitube seed drill; in the area of
astronomy and cartography: the recognition of sunspots as solar
phenomena, quantitative cartography, equatorial astronomical
instruments; in the field of engineering: cast iron, water power,
suspension bridges, the driving belt; in domestic and industrial
technology: petroleum, natural gas, paper, the magic lantern, porcelain,
the umbrella, chess, brandy and whisky, paper money; in the field of
medicine and health: the circulation of the blood, diabetes, immunology;
in the area of mathematics: the decimal system, negative numbers,
decimal fractions, using algebra in geometry; in magnetism: the first
compasses, magnetic remanence and induction; in the physical sciences:
seismography, spontaneous combustion and phosphorescent paint; in
the field of transportation and exploration: the kite, the parachute, the
rudder, masts and sailing; in sound and music: the large tuned bell, the
first understanding of musical timbre; in warfare: chemical warfare,
poison gas, smoke bombs and tear gas, the crossbow, gunpowder, guns,
cannons, mortars and repeating guns (Temple, 1987).
A 'silence of women' was caused in a series of 26 episodes produced
by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in 1990 and 1991 entitled
They Made Our World.It was an attempt to study the life and work of
those people who made significant contributions to the development of
the world. Altogether 28 individuals were selected, all of whom were men
born in Europe (no one in Spain) and the USA: Francis Bacon, Isaac
Newton, Joseph Priestley, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, Michael Faraday,
James C. Maxwell, Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, Edward
Jenner, Louis Pasteur, James Watt, George and Robert Stephenson,
Alexander Graham Bell, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Henry Ford, Wilhelm
Rontgen, Guglielmo Marconi, John L. Baird, Leo H. Baekeland, Albert
Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Alexander Fleming, Ernest Rutherford,
Alan Turing, and Thomas Edison (Reiss, 1993, pp. 18-19). The vision of
science with which students are in contact usually appears with
ahistorical tints, at the margin of social, political and cultural contexts. It
is hardly made clear that the people who do research are conditioned by
the context in which they live and in addition, by their own
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preconceptions, prejudices and expectations. All fields of scientific
research are influenced by interests, values, suppositions and beliefs. A
knowledge of dimensions such as the gender of who is doing the
research, their religious beliefs, ethnic origin, values, political
commitments and the origin of financial support, is necessary to
understand the majority of the results and lines of research. Such female
researchers as Diane Fossey, by introducing her own experience as a
woman, revolutionised the study of animal behaviour when living with
gorillas in the volcanoes of Virunga, Rwanda. In this way, she was able to
revise the predominant explanation up until that time which gave the
passive role to the female in the reproduction of the species.
No one can deny how the military interests of such countries as the
USA, United Kingdom, Germany, etc. conditioned the development of
science. As a result, we now have arms of destruction that can annihilate
the life of the entire planet. The sophistication of death machines has
reached limits unimaginable in science fiction. However, we still have not
resolved such problems as hunger, pollution of the planet, the origin and
treatment of numerous illnesses or the use of alternative forms of
non-contaminating energy.
Narcissistic Eurocentrism is also visible in the field of the
humanities. The literature, poetry, painting and music of many Western
artists, such as, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Gustave
Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Antonin Artaud, Johann W. von Goethe, Isabelle
Eberhardt, Lord Byron, the Marchioness of Alorna, Henri Matisse, Eugene
Delacroix, Paul Klee, etc. are not entirely,comprehensible without taking
into account their oriental influence, an influence which is increasingly
observed in a significant number of Western artists.
At the present time, there are around 300 million people who belong
to nearly 200 different ethnic groups who have their future threatened. In
commercialised curricular materials, these groups do not exist because
their reality is ignored or in some cases these themes are treated in a
circus-like manner. Frequently, the Third World is presented from two
perspectives: (a) as exotic sensual places with superstitious people, who
live in a happy savage state with few daily problems, specialise in magic
and folk medicine and are incapable of constructing scientific knowledge;
and (b) as scenarios of every class of warfare between ethnic groups as a
form of hidden discourse that defines these groups as primitive, without
evolution and therefore, with an innate preference for violence and war.
In general, it is Manichean constructed information, in which an
undervaluation of those people is assumed. A historical continuity never
appears to the readers in which all variables are considered in order to
understand the reason for their underdevelopment, poverty, violence and
options for massive emigration to the 'first' world countries. Perhaps, as
Alber Memmi (1971, p. 155) affirms, "The most serious lack that the
colonialized suffer is to find themselves out of history andsociety"'.
This racist treatment, in summary, is nothing more than a coherent
elaboration and organisation of information with racism typical of
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Western culture from the nineteenth century. Since that time, the method
that has been proposed defends a "form of biologization of social thinking
that makes absolute the different, converting it into a natural
characteristic" (Wieviorka, 1991, p. 84). In this manner, it is easier to
present what is a sociocultural construction as an innate characteristic of
inferiority, and is the most comfortable way to promote social, economic,
political and cultural exclusion.
An education that follows the line of constructing a more
democratic and just society needs to reconstruct curriculum knowledge,
taking into account the points of view of those who belong to silent and
excluded cultures without power. It is urgent to redefine our entire
culture to avoid the deformations that created the dominant, Eurocentric,
masculine conceptions and the visions of the social groups with more
power. In each theme of study, it should be obligatory to take into
consideration the points of view of those who have something to say but
who, until this moment, have not had the opportunity. A similar model of
work, for instance, is that which was carried out by some schools and
intellectuals during 1992 to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of
the 'discovery of America', according to the conception of history of
Spanish hegemonic groups. The objective of whoever decided to carry
out the work of decolonising history, was to reconstruct this historical
event, taking into consideration the voices and reality of those who
suffered the process of invasion and colonisation. It was not Christopher
Columbus who discovered the American continent, since numerous
Indian communities had lived there for thousands of years beforehand. It
was and is necessary to employ a better reconceptualisation from the
perspective of the silent ethnic groups by using the strategy of modifying
institutionalised stereotypes and erroneous conceptions about groups,
collectives, ethnic groups and nations. It is necessary to elaborate new
models, concepts and a new paradigm capable of promoting a more
democratic and just vision of reality, regaining the presence of those who
were and are eliminated from history. A similar task is to attempt to
reconstruct history, like women's movements have been doing for some
time, in order to defend their place in history. It does not just mean
adding new themes, but reconstructing traditional themes while keeping
in mind absent perspectives.
The research about some of these people, ethnic groups, women,
etc., is now becoming important, but we run the risk that this research
will remain in isolated and erudite studies which will only reach people
more sensitive toward these type of topics, and will not force a
reinterpretation of hegemonic discourse. Another risk is that these
studies may be converted into one textbook chapter or appendix without
changing textbook content as a whole. One example of this type of
'additive' approach is what happened with the introduction of the
evolutionist theories in Spanish textbooks. Given the impact of these
theories, the textbooks eventually incorporated the theories of evolution
as only one more topic, but did not re-elaborate the other themes in
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accordance with the evolutionist theory, as mentioned above. There
appeared some reference to evolutionism, but normally it was reduced to
a short biography of Charles Darwin. However, in the rest of the book
creationist positions were promoted. Apparently, the new theory was
justified, but it did not change the hegemonic argument of the Roman
Catholic Church and in particular of the conservative groups that saw a
danger in losing key support for the 'justification' of their privileges and
positions of power.
The support of creationist theories is usually based upon
explanations involving personal intelligence and other innate features. It
is worth remembering that the theory (ecclesiastic parable) of 'innate
talents', as promoted by fundamentalist positions of the Roman Catholic
Church, was used to guarantee all kinds of social, economic and political
stratifications. Even the biblical metaphor of creation (i.e. the creation of
Eve and therefore all women) facilitated arguments to justify male
dominance and female oppression. If scientific arguments stand in
contradiction to literal and conservative readings of religious texts, such
arguments are ignored. These readings tend to defend situations of
oppression and exclusion and postpone solving them until life after
death. When proponents of evolutionist theories appear within the
Catholic Church, (i.e. the French Jesuit Pierre Theilhard of Chardin), they
are silenced by Church censors.
Along this line, it is necessary to remember that the students who
belong to the dominant ethnic group need to keep in mind that they are
members of this group. Not questioning the fact that they are themselves
an integral part of the ethnic group with more economic, political,
military and cultural power, will condition their construction of
knowledge. Only taking into consideration one's own ethnicity, can one
view other ethnic groups as deficient. The 'dishistorisation' of the
construction of ethnic identities facilitates the reproduction of
conceptions and explanations of social behaviour as something innate.
"Only racism permits one to consider as eternal, substantiving it, an
historical relation that began at some point in time in the past", said
Memmi (1971, p. 132) trying to explain some characteristic or real or
imagined peculiarity, in support of the dominant or colonialist group. It is
necessary to remember that this way of thinking, behaving and speaking,
including the language itself, is also explained and legitimated by those
groups with sufficient power to impose them as universal norms. These
behaviours serve to facilitate the access and control of economic and
cultural resources and structures of power. It is necessary to construct
educational practices which teach students to unmask the political,
historical and semiotic dynamics that condition the interpretations,
expectations and possibilities to participate in reality. Apart from the
knowledge learned in schools, the students have previous concepts,
experiences, conceptions of life, expectations and prejudices which have
been learned in their families, neighbourhoods and especially through
the mass media. An anti-exclusive school is one in which all this passively
34

acquired previous knowledge is contrasted, using democratically
constructed and reconstructed criticism and taking account of the
perspectives of social class, gender, sexuality, ethnic group and
nationality.
An anti-discrimination curriculum will facilitate the reconstruction
of the history and culture of silent groups and peoples. In order to do
this, it is essential that the students participate in debates about the
construction of knowledge, about the conflictive interpretations of the
present and, at the same time, force themselves to identify their own
positions, interests, ideologies and assumptions (Banks, 1993, p. 5).
Students should also learn to discern how knowledge is constructed,
disseminated and legitimated; in what way the selection, construction
and reconstruction of knowledge influences personal perspectives,
experiences, presumptions, prejudices, frames of reference and positions
of power; and how to revise the knowledge that surrounds each context.
In knowledge formulation, the identity of the person that is
explaining, interpreting and acting over reality, is influenced by such
factors as one's position of power, gender, sexual preference, class,
ethnic group and age. The identification of the positions of who
constructs knowledge has usually been put aside, which has served to
reproduce arguments with negative effects for women, people of the
Third World, minority groups without power, nations without states (i.e.
those people who claim a nationality not officially recognised as such by
the government of the country of which they are a part) and the working
class. Some of these dimensions are beginning to be taken into
consideration, thanks principally to the efficient coordination of the
vindications of people united in the defence of such perspectives - for
example, the feminist movements' emphasis on how history is written
from a masculine position. Also, the movement of black people and other
such groups have insisted for some time that the partiality and bias of
the hegemonic culture is constructed from white people with power.
However, it is important to note that the additive form of work in
the schools was very positive because it permitted the criticism of the
reproductionist theories which failed to analyse the meaning of what was
occurring in the schools. It was not the Spanish Government that
stimulated the teachers to construct and incorporate topic work on such
themes in the classroom. On the contrary, if today the government talks
about diversity and cross-curriculum, it is due to the praxis of many
teachers who have been successful in linking their classrooms with the
more urgent problems of society (wars, oppressed cultures,
unemployment, drugs, the problems of women, etc.). However, as
intellectual critics, we ought to focus on the detection of our own faults
and learn how to revise them. It is from this perspective that we often
introduce problematic societal questions in 'tourist' form with a certain
superficiality, something sporadic and out of context and with an excess
of optimism.
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Some people thought that it would be relatively easy for students
without a voice and whose culture was continually denied, to suddenly
regain their voice, analyse their own reality and perhaps, transform it.
This excess of optimism causes some teachers to blame themselves and
stop moving forward when their attempts fail. It is essential to
acknowledge that this task is not easy for many reasons and that
understanding is needed in order not to lose momentum. Those who feel
'different' are unappreciated by everyone, and they are very afraid when
suddenly asked to talk about their experiences and feelings. It is
important that they see that our interest in them is serious and that we
are not trying to discover their weak points in order to attack them.
Those who belong to ignored cultures and oppressed social groups
observe that the only way to enjoy the same privileges that the social
groups with power enjoy, is to deny themselves. This denial is described
by Frantz Fanon when, in relation to the people of colonised countries, he
writes: "The colonized person is envious and the colonist does not ignore
it when looking in the other direction, but on the contrary, is bitterly
checking and always alert, for he knows that 'the colonized want to
occupy our position'. It is true that there is not a colonized person who
does not dream at least once a day of the time when he or she will change
position with the colonist" (Fanon, 1973, p. 34). Those who feel different
are converted into mute people by their resentments, fears and doubts.
Since it takes time for the members of such groups to gain confidence,
the best strategy to reconstruct and submit to critical analysis the
injustices and problems of these groups, is not through the dedication of
'the day of...'.
It is necessary that silent and oppressed cultures and the problems
of the working class are presented in such school resources as reference
books, novels and stories, newspapers, magazines, illustrations, videos,
games, decor, etc. As a result, there can arise points of view that
incorporate the reality of diversity, not only in the social sciences, but in
all areas of knowledge. This will gradually build students' confidence in
the teachers and consequently lead to a better understanding of their
true intentions. At the same time, they must be able to see that teachers
are critical of their own advantages and see evidence of their solidarity
and empathy with them. If we admit that school and life must be
connected, as John Dewey said, it is obvious that our own sociopolitical
commitments need to be submitted to a critical revision in the school
with this aim: the detection of our own contradictions and an attempt to
overcome them.
Every social group possesses a concrete knowledge of the reality in
which it participates, that is the fruit of social relations, social and
productive experiences and of the influences of the mass media. It is also
assumed that in this knowledge, doses of partiality and contradictions
can be detected and overcome to the extent that we participate in a
process where our participation, discussion and criticism are assured.
With such a philosophy, the manipulation or reification of knowledge
36

transmitted through textbooks can be counteracted. The establishment
of fixed compartments between academic knowledge (that which only
serves to pass examinations) and social knowledge (that which is used to
understand and solve daily problems) would be eliminated.
Beforehand, however, it is necessary to face one of the principle
obstacles of the dichotomisation of knowledge or the form in which
information is presented to students. Facing reality in the school, by
means of presentations divided into subjects, facilitates the manipulation
of more conflictual realities. It does not help with understanding the
social situations and conflicts of the past or present. Reality appears like
the Tower of Babel, without the possibilities of being understood, due to
an inability to connect the different information with which it enters into
contact. Dislocations are produced with ease between the different fields
of knowledge. Communication is not stimulated and it is not possible for
a dialogue to take place between parts of knowledge even though they
have the same aspect of reality and history as their centre of study.
Useful knowledge and the quality of analysis about concrete realities
depend upon the possibility for dealing with entire issues, the
connections and interactions between parts and the resultant
consequences to the whole.
For many years, an interdisciplinary and integrated form of
curriculum has been emphasised. However, the majority of students have
had to work with a knowledge impaired by a large division of subjects
without any visible connection between them, and on many occasions, a
similar division within the same subject. The fragmentation of knowledge,
typical of many schools, is the consequence of societal and political
fragmentation which has been alluded to before. Fragmenting knowledge
runs the risk of losing contact with reality; it does not favour a
'sensitivity' toward knowledge and its union with daily problems. The
result is something incoherent with a conception of the school as a living
space where students and teachers learn solidarity, to develop objectives
and strategies and to revise their teaching and learning processes.
Committing oneself to an emancipatory education means, to paraphrase
Cameron McCarthy (1990), a critical redefinition of school knowledge
from the heterogeneous perspective and identities to the disadvantaged
social groups; a process that goes further than the language of
'inclusivity' and puts the emphasis upon the relationships and the
plurality of voices as central strategies in the production of knowledge.
It is the mission of schools to help boys and girls understand how
knowledge is constructed. In order to accomplish this, the students need
to have opportunities to research and discover how specific conceptual
models, research strategies, perspectives and prejudices condition the
construction knowledge. They also need to explore how their own
conceptions and options can be biased and limited by their assumptions,
positions and experiences which can reinforce situations of oppression
and marginalisation.
37

Education must contribute to the development of the students'
ability to make decisions, based upon reflection and dialogue; to
construct the skills needed to assure their social participation; to analyse
the political effects of their actions and to act as democratic, responsible,
critical and jointly liable people. The schools have to commit themselves
to the promotion of values, attitudes and behaviours that respect
pluralism and cultural diversity and that make compatible the
enrichment of cultural idiosyncrasies of every people and race while at
the same time, creating solidarity between them. There is, however, a
relation of 'non-synchrony' (McCarthy, 1990) in racial relations, gender,
class, nationality and sexuality in the school as well as in the other
spheres of society. Non-synchronisation is the result of the fact that the
people in schools are not uniform. It is normal to have important
differences in the interests, needs, desires and identities that divide the
different minority groups without power. Such groups do not share a
similar consciousness and perspective in their institutional relations. For
any of the dimensions that are chosen for analysis and praxis, be it race,
nationality, gender, sexuality or handicap, their intersection with the
dimension of social class is going to help us better understand and
propose anti-discrimination strategies. The linking of social class with
other dimensions is not an obstacle to the establishment of unity around
any of the other variables. We have to be conscious that contradictions
and non-synchronies are going to be produced in any of the modalities of
intervention and praxis. As Cameron McCarthy explains (1990, p. 95),
"different race-class-gender groups not only have qualitatively different
experiences in schools, but actually exist in constitutive tension, often
engage in active competition with each other, receive different forms of
rewards, sanctions and evaluation, and are ultimately structured into
differential futures".
A truly democratic society must facilitate the dismantlement,
denouncement and elimination of those forms of oppression, as well as
prejudices and unjust conceptions. Such a society recognises cultural,
linguistic and cultural plurality without converting them into forms of
discrimination. The philosophy of equal opportunities for all children
does not only refer to sitting at a school desk and forgetting about the
important inequalities in access to a worthy job, a home, a culture, health
care and satisfactory living conditions. Neither can the schools be
considered neutral arenas. The teaching staff, resources, school tasks,
modalities of organisation and strategies of evaluation can not be
considered neutral, if the students do not learn to understand clearly the
origins of social, economic and political inequalities of society and the
world in which we live.
An anti-discriminatory education has to recognise the errors of the
past and unveil the way in which the educational system has been one of
the focal points of the politics of assimilation by creating monocultures.
To be conscious of the forms in which the schools are doing these tasks
is one of the first steps to overcoming this politics of partiality and
38

domination. However, it is essential to be conscious of a series of
obstacles in order to overcome them:
(a) The culture of individualism dominates our society and impregnates our
educational work. It is difficultto constructand work in teams.
(b) The culture of excellence and competition promoted in our educational
system will be further reinforced by the Administration's evaluation plan to
be implemented by the 'Instituto Nacional de Calidad y Evaluacion', as
announced in LOGSE (An educational reform law recently passed by the
Spanish Government General OrganicLaw of the Educational System). One
danger of governmental intervention is that it tries to control the
educational system to such an extent that it results in a higher level of
centralisation and the teachers and students are left without any
decision-making authority. The implementation of an interventionist
policy, through a centralised evaluation of the educational system, will
probably produce more homogenised curriculum contents and practices,
while at the same time producing a greater level of teacher
deprofessionalisation.
The promotion of scholastic institution evaluations through
homogeneous examinations to test the level of compliance with the
obligatory contents of the educational system, can result in the end of
school autonomy. At the same time, a similar praxis of control can
indirectly produce a standardisation of textbook contents and curriculum
resources. This is something that goes against a curriculum policy that
respects diversity. Administrative interventions and controls such as
these serve only to benefit the large publishers that control the textbook
market and that tend to include the same cultural contents, with the
same type of information, from the same point of view. The curriculum
materials end up having an exclusive objective: that the students pass
official examinations imposed by the national government. It is also
important not to forget that the modalities of evaluation have a direct
influence upon teaching practices and resources used in the classroom.
(c) The distorted vision of reality that the textbooks transport and the few
sources of information to which the students have access in the schools. The
textbook, like the Trojan horse, is one of the most efficient ways for the
hegemonic groups to perpetuate their conceptions of the world. In these
curriculum materials, like the rest of the mass media, "the area of
symbolic production is not divorced from the unequal relations of power
that structure other spheres" (Apple, 1993, p. 58). However, this too can
be used to dismantle deformed visions and to silence distorted
information. If used by committed and critical teachers, such materials
can be a resource to learn to detect distorted arguments and typical
forms of reasoning used in the manipulation of information. This has
become even more urgent with the resurgence of authoritarian and
neofacist forms, however tinted they may be with populism. When
conservative governments and entrepreneurs work together with more
coordination, democratic practices tend to be reduced to voting from
time to time with the expectation that it is impossible to better and
39

JURJO TORRESSANTOMfc
correct the defects of society. There have been only a few times in
history when it was as urgent as it is in the present, to regain the typical
Utopias of the political left.
(d) The difficulties of introducing and working with the mass media in
classrooms and schools. The mass media has been converted into one of
the most significant instruments of manipulation. Social groups with
power invest large quantities of money to control the mass media and
other spheres of representation in order to reinforce and reconstruct
racial, class and gender meaning in support of their political and
economic interests. In the classroom, we are forced to analyse critically
and deconstruct the popular knowledge produced by the different
television and radio channels and in general by the cultural industries.
This implies reviewing the texts and images about the cultures and
traditions of the community upon which the students base the
reconstruction of their individual and collective identities. According to
Noam Chomsky (1993, p. 31), the schools need to provide students with
"mechanisms of intellectual self defense" in order to be able to defend
themselves from the manipulation of information to which they are
submitted by the mass media and institutions with strong political and
economical interests.
(e) The lack of resources for teacher education in these areas. The
governmental administration of education is not interested in teacher
education and intervention.
(0 The difficulty teachers have in sharing materials, support staff, antiracist,
anti-sexist and anti<lassist experiences due to the dispersion and lack of
coordination of those working in this line of action and commitment. It is
essential to bring up to date and re-arm teachers. As teachers, we need to
regain moral courage and critical capacity in light of the excessive weight
and new attacks of conservative and neo-conservative politics. We need
to make an effort to see with clarity the interconnections between
educational problems and questions and more global political, economic
and cultural processes.
In addition to overcoming the ethnocentrism, racism, gender and class
discrimination that prevail in the majority of schools, education against
discrimination supposes an intervention in other social realms where the
different modalities of discrimination are forged and consolidated: in the
workplace, the mass media, labour, cultural and sanitary policies, etc.
The committed teacher must work with and not for the socially
disadvantaged collectives (McCarthy, 1990, p. 122). Teachers also need to
be committed to the problems of oppressed women and to participate in
workers' organisations because facing inequalities in education implies
intervention in the other social, economic and political realms where
discrimination is also forged.
In summary, it is necessary to regain a political language for
education and coordinate our work within broader strategies in order to
transform society. This implies coordinating forces with other social
40

movements away from the walls of the schools. There are urgent
common problems which must be grouped together. The fragmentation
of our fights around small ghettos and private problems affecting only
few people are inadequate models of analysis. As citizens of a democracy,
we are forced to commit ourselves to define social problems and
formulate multiple proposals to solve them. This is indeed a task which
requires a certain amount of Utopianism. The possibility of imagining new
futures is an indispensable condition in order to transform existing
situations of discrimination.
Correspondence
Jurjo Torres Santomé, Faculty of Humanities, University of A Coruña,
Campus de Elviña, E-5071 ACoruña, Spain.
References
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Age. NewYork: Routledge.
Banks, J. A.(1993) Thecanon debate, knowledge construction, and multicultural
education, Educational Researcher,22,pp. 4-14.
Benedict, R.(1983) Race andRacism. London: Routledge &Kegan Paul.
Chomsky, N.(1993) Crónicasdeladiscrepancia. (Entrevistas deDavid Barsamian).
Madrid: Visor.
Fanon, F.(1973) Los condenados de la tierra.Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica,
4th edn.
Finkielkraut, A.(1992) ElPaís,24de Abril. Suplemento Babelia, pp.11-12.
Hall, S.(1992) Race, culture, and communications: looking backward and forward
at cultural studies, Rethinking Marxism, 5, pp.10-18.
McCarthy, C.(1990) Race andCurriculum, Social inequality andthetheories and
politics ofdifferencein contemporaryresearch onschooling. London: Falmer
Press (Spanish translation in press by Ediciones Morata).
Memmi, A.(1971) Retratodelcolonizado. Madrid: Cuadernos para el Diálogo.
Reiss, M.J. (1993) Science Educationfora Pluralist Society. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Temple, R.(1987) TheGeniusof China: 3000years ofscience, discovery, and
invention. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Torres Santomé, J. (1991a): Elcurriculum oculto. Madrid: Morata.
Torres Santomé, J. (1991b): LaReforma educativa y la psicologizacion delos
problemas sociales in VV. AA. Sociedad, Cultura y Educación.Homenaje ala
memoria de Carlos Lerena Alesón, pp.481-503.Madrid: C1DEand Universidad
Complutense de Madrid.
Torres Santome, J. (1993) Laculturas negadas y silenciadas en el curriculum,
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41

The presence of different cultures in schools: possibilities of dialogue and action. Jurjo Torres Santomé

The presence of different cultures in schools: possibilities of dialogue and action. Jurjo Torres Santomé

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The presence of different cultures in schools: possibilities of dialogue and action. Jurjo Torres Santomé