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Schools and cultural difference 309

their experiences, thoughts and actions. Instead, it is necessary to take the multi-
plicity of cultural and social influences in individuals’ lives into account, as well
as the individual and collective forms of critical distancing and creative trans-
formations of cultural givens that are characteristic of modern societies.

3. Socio-political aspects and educational models for dealing with
cultural differences

Despite a widespread expectation to the contrary, supported by sociological the-
ories of modernization, cultural differences and identifications have in fact lost
importance neither in the world community nor within nation-states. Such
identifications are not merely holdovers from hierarchical societies, religions,
ethnic and regional traditions that have successfully resisted the pressure of
national leveling. In fact, in modern social conflicts, elements of shared national,
ethnic, racial or religious identification have been introduced again and again as
part of the social dynamic of conflict (Castells 1995). This is true not only of so-
called ethnic conflicts, carried out openly and even violently, but also of social
relations between natives and migrants or majorities and minorities. Even in so-
cieties lacking visible signs of ethnic, national or religious conflict, migrants are
often socially disadvantaged and suffer discriminatory labeling with specific
characteristics. Under these conditions, cultural, ethnic and religious identifica-
tions serve as a kind of collective self-assertion against the situation imposed by
the host society.
Socialization and education in schools are, of course, not insulated from
these conflicts, and it is worthwhile to study how social and cultural identifica-
tions play out within them. To this end we can distinguish three problem areas:

– External social, political and legal conditions (including the economic,
political, and legal status of migrants; dominant conceptions of national
identity; linguistic and cultural policies; connections between cultural, eth-
nic and religious attributions and forms of social discrimination; prevalence
of xenophobic or racial ideologies)
– Within the community, the roles schools assume in the area of conflict over
cultural supremacy (in particular, administratively propagated ideas, norms
and curricula; treatment of language and cultural symbols; policies concern-
ing the composition of classes and of the faculty; relations to the local com-
munity)
– Within schools, how nationality, language, culture, race, ethnicity and re-
ligion are treated in the curricula and in the classroom, and how ethnic, cul-
tural, linguistic, racial and religious attributions influence the evaluation and
encouragement of pupils.