PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 16
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
1.5 Converting linguistic and cultural diversity into educational capital
The Council of Europe uses “pluricultural” to refer to individuals who belong to two or more cultural groups and
“intercultural” to denote a complex of cognitive, affective and behavioural competences that include:
•
knowledge about other cultural groups, their products and practices, and the ways in which people of
different cultures interact;
•
attitudes such as curiosity, openness, respect for otherness, and empathy;
•
skills of interpreting and relating, for example, interpreting a practice from another culture, and relating it
to practices within one’s own culture;
•
skills of discovery such as the ability to search out and acquire new knowledge about a culture and its
practices and products;
•
critical cultural awareness, that is, the ability to evaluate critically the practices and products of one’s own
and other cultures. 23
In considering how we can bring interculturality into the primary classroom, it is important to avoid the cultural
essentialism that characterizes much popular discourse. Cultural essentialism associates the nation state with a national
language and national culture that are assumed to be shared by all citizens. Trivially, it produces cultural stereotypes
– every French family has croissants and café au lait for breakfast; every Swiss house contains a cuckoo clock. Nontrivially, it can be deployed as a powerful tool of social exclusion – those who do not share the language, beliefs and
practices of the nation have no place in its territory.
People who live together develop common attitudes, beliefs and patterns of behaviour; over time they come to share
a common history; and their common history produces cultural artefacts of many different kinds – works of art in
various media, but also institutions and systems of administration, government and law. At the same time, however,
each of us belongs to multiple sub-cultures, some of them overlapping and others distinct. In section 1.2 we saw how
pre-school children’s action knowledge is shaped by the culture of the home; when they start school, they are exposed
to the cultural practices that shape primary education in Ireland, which may be similar to or different from what they
have already experienced; and in due course they will become members of other cultures – societies, sports clubs,
professions and so on. There is nothing new about cultural diversity, even within apparently homogeneous societies;
what is new is our recognition that education should equip children, adolescents and young adults to recognize,
understand and respect diversity and difference.
This is the message of Intercultural Education in the Primary School, published by the NCCA in 2003:
Intercultural education “respects, celebrates and recognizes the normality of diversity in all areas of human
life” and “promotes equality and human rights, challenges unfair discrimination, and promotes the values
upon which equality is built”.
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Adapted from M. Byram, Multicultural societies, pluricultural people and the project of intercultural education, Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2009,
pp. 6–7. Available at https://rm.coe.int/multicultural-societies-pluricultural-people-and-the-project-of-interc/16805a223c
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