Teaching and Learning in Multicultural Classrooms

Paul Gardner

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138163935
• eBook ISBN: 9781134124411
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teachers and student teachers wishing to gain a better understanding of the theory and practice of educating children in multicultural classrooms will find this book invaluable.

By integrating the theory and practice of EAL teaching and multicultural education, within an equal opportunities framework, the author clearly demonstrates how the guidance can be implemented directly into the classroom.

CHAPTER 1

Changing perspectives in multicultural education

Educational change rarely occurs because of isolated events and can usually be linked to wider social and economic change; political imperative; technological and cultural innovation, and fresh ways of thinking about how best to organise teaching and learning. This link between education and society, between the needs of the individual and the needs of the wider social world, is now readily recognised and has been made explicit in the introduction to the new National Curriculum (DfEE/QCA 1999a and b: 10).

The symbiotic relationship between education and a society that became visibly more multicultural during the second half of the 20th century is also apparent in the way minority ethnic pupils have been viewed and provided for in British schools. In telling the story of this provision it will be necessary to reflect some parallel developments in political thinking and in social attitudes. In turn, these have come under the influence of the ebb and flow of the economy in the post-war period with concomitant influences on, and by, migration, both within and across the borders of the British Isles. It is not my intention to explore in depth the factors that have caused migration to Britain from around the world. I start from the position that migration was and still is a social and economic fact. My initial intention is to look at how early migration and prevailing social and political attitudes influenced educational provision for minority ethnic pupils and then consider how perceptions of Britain as a multicultural society began to change our views, not only about how the needs of minority ethnic pupils should be met, but also about the general nature of what constituted an appropriate education for a multi-ethnic society. This chapter then charts the development of educational provision by the state for minority ethnic pupils from the 1960s to April 2000, the date on which Government grant for raising achievement of minority ethnic pupils was devolved directly to schools, as part of the Standards Fund.

Migration and change

The history of Britain might be described as the history of a relatively small group of islands that has been shaped by the cultures of settlers from numerous other places. Its earliest inhabitants may have had links with people in the Mediterranean and the Near East (CRE 1996: 7). From the earliest times, waves of migration have brought significant technological, economic and cultural change that has helped shape the people we are today. One of the most significant advances was the knowledge of how to cultivate crops and domesticate animals. This knowledge was brought to these islands by the Celts, who originated in Central Europe, an area now comprising the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and parts of southern Germany (Chadwick 1970: 18–19).

The economic legacy of the Romans, who finally settled in Britain following their third invasion in 43AD is evident in some of our road networks and settlements, among other things. Because the Roman army included soldiers from many parts of its Empire, Roman Britain, like the Britain of today, was a multiracial society (Fryer 1984: 1). Numerous other settlers, including the Saxons, Danes and Normans made significant contributions to the development of our language and culture. We have a history that has provided us with the rich legacy of diversity. It is a fact we sometimes neglect and need to draw more attention to as an important characteristic of our national identity, rather than trying to pretend we are a monocultural society.

The history curriculum in English primary schools deals with the chronology of the arrival of these and other invaders and settlers. However, there is a danger that if the curriculum does not include due recognition of the breadth of migration of people, ideas, goods and technology, from around the world to these shores, it will be reduced to a minimalist Europeanised historical perspective. Fryer (1984) has documented the presence in Britain of African, Indian and other migrant groups and their contributions to British society throughout its history. Teachers and students will need to do their research in order to fulfil all the requirements of the programme of study in history at Key Stages 2 and 3, in particular, the requirement that: ‘Pupils should be taught about the social, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity of the societies studied, in Britain and the wider world …’ (DfEE/QCA 1999a: 105, H2b; DfEE/QCA 1999b: 150, H2b)

Much of this information about our multicultural history has been collated in the relatively recent past, during the 1980s and 1990s. It is perhaps a function of the need to affirm the presence of Black Britons against the insularity of some White Britons who hold erroneous views of their own history. Similarly, feminist scholars and left-wing historians have revealed that woman and working class people, respectively, have largely been ‘hidden’ from history but were, in fact, significant contributors to it (Spender 1982; Thompson 1991; Hill 1991). Through the assiduous work of dedicated people who have asked searching questions, we are in the process of discovering more about ourselves. Fresh findings have implications for the curriculum. As Gaine and George (1999: 68) point out, the ‘curriculum is where a society … tries to embody its own sense of itself’. That sense of self, reflected in curriculum content, is dependent upon whose view is being represented. Clearly then, in culturally diverse, democratic societies there are many groups that have a stake in what the curriculum should look like. The extent to which the National Curriculum is a true reflection of British society is an issue I shall return to in Chapter Two. In the recent past British governments have shown, at best, an ambivalent attitude to migration and at worst, a hostile one. Changing attitudes and accompanying discourses have influenced the development of educational responses to ethnic diversity in Britain.

Migration, economy and racism

What has characterised post-war migration and makes it distinctly different from previous migration is that the peoples who have made Britain their home have come from widespread geographic backgrounds but, like other groups, they have helped to ‘revitalise and transform Britain’ (Panayi 1999). Panayi identifies three phases in this post-war migration. Firstly, labour shortages, following the cessation of conflict in 1945, encouraged the recruitment of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the workforce. Some of these new recruits were already here in displaced people’s camps. Secondly, as the flow of labour from continental Europe and Ireland began to dwindle, fresh sources of labour were sought in the countries of the Empire and the Commonwealth. Many thousands of Caribbean, African and Asian servicemen had fought as British and Commonwealth recruits during the war and Britain was still viewed across vast tracts of the globe as the ‘Mother Country.’ Thirdly, and as a result of racial prejudice, the Government of 1962 took measures to restrict the entry of non-white migrants to Britain. Implicit to this illustration of Panayi’s phases of post-war migration is the tension between, on the one hand, Britain’s changing economic circumstances and, on the other, a racism that has deep historic origins and was, and still is, grounded in erroneous perceptions of colour. The experience of those early migrants and the difficulties they encountered in employment and housing has been recorded in perpetuity by several Black writers of the time. Two such writers were Edward Braithwaite, from Guyana, and Wole Soyinka, from Nigeria. Braithwaite had served in the RAF during the war and his novel, Reluctant Neighbours, recalls his attempts to find work here. In the following extract he converses with an American he has befriended during a train journey.

‘Did you teach college level?’ my neighbour asked.

‘No. Secondary School.’

‘Any problem about your colour?’ he asked.

‘My colour is always a problem. For some people.’ I wondered if he was trying slyly to needle me …

‘Were you the only black teacher in the school?’

‘At that time I was the only black teacher in all of London. Yes. I was quite a phenomenon.’

‘Why didn’t you quit and try another school?’

‘Because I couldn’t afford to quit. It was the first job I’d found after nearly sixteen months of search. It wasn’t the job I wanted, but at least it relieved me from exposure to the tiresome round of rejections.’ (Braithwaite 1978: 44–5)

I shall never forget the effect on me of Soyinka’s poem, ‘Telephone Conversation’ (1970), when I first read it in class at the age of fifteen. It was a similar response to the one I had felt four years earlier when my primary school teacher had read the story of the crucifixion, which included what seemed to me at the time to be a graphic description of the nailing of Christ’s hands to the cross. I could not believe that anyone could be so cruel and inhumane. Similarly, the rejection of the caller in Soyinka’s poem, on the basis of his skin tone, was unthinkable to me. The ironic retort of the male caller to the landlady’s question ‘ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?’ was a response that had been rehearsed by numerous attempts to find suitable accommodation.

These may have been anecdotal instances of racial prejudice but housing and employment statistics show that Black Britons, even today, are more likely to occupy lower quality housing and lower status jobs than White Britons are. Furthermore, whereas these writers were drawing our attention to racism in British society, we are today acutely aware that the problem is a pervasive and sometimes violent one. Even as I write the trial of the neo-nazi bomber, David Copeland, has just ended. Copeland, a member of the National Socialist Movement, was responsible for detonating bombs in Brixton Market, Brick Lane and Soho. The last bomb, in a Soho pub, killed several people. These were tragic events but for every one that hits the headlines there are hundreds more incidents of racial violence around the country that diminish the quality of life in multiracial Britain. Each one is a salutary reminder that we all share in the responsibility for social justice.

The politics of ‘race’

Around the time that Braithwaite and Soyinka were writing of their experience, action in political spheres was premised upon covert opinion as a memorandum to the Cabinet meeting of 30th January 1954 implied:

It would obviously be impossible to discriminate openly against coloured people as such in administration or legislation in the field of employment. After thorough examination of the possibilities the committee have come to the conclusion that it is not practicable to take steps to prevent coloured people obtaining employment once they are in this country. Any action to that end would have to be directed to preventing them or discouraging them from entering the United Kingdom. (Sir David Maxwell Fyfe cited in Panayi 1999: 45)

Towards the end of the 1960s, around the time of the first wave of migration of East African Asians, mainly from the newly independent state of Kenya, the right-wing Conservative MP, Enoch Powell, did more than anyone to popularise resentment against black migrants, in a series of public speeches (Panayi 1999: 141). Since Powell, a succession of anti-immigration and racist speeches by politicians has intermittently fuelled racial tension in Britain. There emerged during this period a network of racist and neo-Nazi groups dedicated to racial violence and the repatriation of Black Britons. The extent to which these groups would go to achieve their aims is documented by organisations such as Searchlight and the ex-Nazi turned ‘mole’ Ray Hill (Hill and Bell 1988).

From the outset there was an ambivalent attitude to Black migration. On the one hand there was a grudging acceptance of those people who were already present, an acceptance born of economic necessity. But on the other, there was pressure to keep others out. No doubt if Britain’s history had been different, the Government of the day would have treated migrants more as ‘gast arbeiter’ (guest workers), as the German Government did, than as British citizens with a right of entry and abode in the United Kingdom. Successive Immigration and Nationality Acts since the 1960s have done exactly what Fyfe’s memorandum suggested in the 1950s. The legacy of this siege mentality is felt even to the present day. Shortly before this chapter was written, 58 young Chinese men and women were found suffocated while in transit, in a container lorry at Dover. For non-white people especially, contrary to what those on the far right of British politics would have us believe, migration to Britain has never been an easy business. If it were, desperate people would not need to risk life and limb to gain entry.

Education policy and practice: assimilate and integrate!

Like housing and employment, early education provision for minority ethnic pupils was equally symptomatic of social and political attitudes. However, in addition to ‘race’, educational provision was also problematised around issues of language and culture, which led to a new variant of racism.

In educational policy, the preoccupation during the 1960s was on absorbing migrant children into British society. Multicultural and anti-racist educationalists have dubbed this period the ‘assimilationist phase’ and trace persistent and damaging stereotypes back to this period of educational and social policy (Cohen and Cohen 1986). In a critique of assimilationism the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA 1983b) identified the following major beliefs underpinning the approach:

• race relations in Britain were mainly good and any problems were caused by right-wing groups;

• the curriculum should reflect British traditions, history, customs and culture;

• all children were the same and difference should be ignored;

• the priority for black people must be learning to speak and write correct English before anything else can be learned.

(ILEA 1983b: 5)

Rapid acquisition of English then was central to educational concerns, as a Government circular at the time indicated: ‘From the beginning the major educational task is the teaching of English.’ (DES Circular 7/65, cited in Swann 1985:192). Swann (1985) noted that at that time, because the acquisition of English was perceived to be the ‘problem’, children from the Caribbean were deemed to have no particular educational need. However, seven years later the DES was recommending LEAs to deal sensitively with the under-achievement of ‘West Indian’ children by providing specialist English teaching. In the same document the department expressed concern at the ‘disproportionate number of West Indian Children in ESN schools and classes in Greater London.’ In 1972 4.9 per cent of pupils in ESN schools were of Black Caribbean heritage whereas they made up 1.1 per cent of the pupil population generally (Tomlinson 1983). Bernard Coard (1971) found that a significant number of Black Caribbean pupils were wrongly categorised as ESN and that once placed in special schools were given a restricted curriculum and teaching approaches, which failed to offer sufficient intellectual stimulation, leading to the construction of those pupils as educational failures.

After repeated expressions of concern on this issue, the Government set up an inquiry in 1979 to investigate the needs of children from all ethnic groups with a particular focus on children of ‘West Indian’ origin. The Inquiry team’s interim report confirmed that urgent action was required to improve the educational achievement of African Caribbean pupils but rejected the language deficit argument. Although it found no single cause for underachievement, it cited a range of causal factors with the major ones being racism, negative teacher attitudes, an ethnocentric curriculum and examination system, poor nursery provision and ineffective school to home partnerships (Rampton 1981: 70–71).

More recently, a review of ten studies concludes that negative teacher attitudes cause unfavourable treatment of pupils of Caribbean heritage and that Black pupils respond by either accommodating or resisting the stereotypes teachers have of them (Nehaul 1996). Irrespective of the individual pupil’s response, conclusions drawn from these studies suggest that the combined effect of teacher attitudes and institutional practices generally hinder the academic progress of many African-Caribbean heritage pupils. Findings from systematic monitoring in one LEA show an alarming deterioration in the attainment of African Caribbean pupils during their schooling. From a position of high attainment in baseline assessments African Caribbean pupils were found to be some 41 percentage points below their starting point by the time they reached GCSE (Gillborn and Mirza 2000: 6).

A year after the 1965 circular Central Government made additional funding available to those Local Authorities where there was a need to: ‘… make special provision in the exercise of any of their functions in consequence of the presence within their areas of substantial numbers of immigrants from the Commonwealth whose language or customs differ from those of the community …’ (Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966).

With effect from 1967 Local Authorities were able to claim 50 per cent of salary costs from the Home Office. Two years later the grant was increased to 75 per cent of costs at local level and remained constant until 1992. The combined effect of Circular 7/65 and Section 11 sent clear signals to Local Authorities about where the money should be channelled. Of all local government functions it was education that attracted the lion’s share. LEAs largely used the grant to employ teachers to teach ‘immigrant’ children English. Throughout its life more Section 11 money was targeted towards the needs of pupils for whom English was an additional language than the needs of African-Caribbean pupils; a fact that drew strong criticism from the Black-British community. Towards the demise of Section 11, Local Education Authorities attracted 97 per cent of all available Section 11 grant. By this time, however, a significant proportion of minority ethnic pupils were born in Britain and the focus had widened to raising educational achievement, with English as an Additional Language (EAL) subsumed to that purpose.

During the 1980s, criticism of Section 11 came from official sources as well as the Black community. Recognising it as a valuable source of funding, Rampton nevertheless identified several drawbacks with Section 11. Firstly, it failed to meet the needs of a sufficiently wide range of minority ethnic groups and excluded second and subsequent generations of Commonwealth heritage people from the benefits of the grant. Secondly, responses to the needs of minority ethnic communities in some areas were far from comprehensive and lacked coordination. Thirdly, in other areas there was political opposition to finding the 25 per cent funding necessary to attract the Home Office allocation. Once money had been allocated Local Authorities were not obliged to identify staff employed under Section 11 and there was no requirement on them to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Dedication
• 1 Changing perspectives in multicultural education
• 2 The curriculum: breadth and balance for all?
• 3 Effective multicultural schools: raising achievement
• 4 Schools in action: two case studies
• 5 The multilingual classroom: language and power
• 6 Partnerships for learning
• Glossary
• References
• Author index
• Subject index