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Schools and cultural difference 313

the modern, universal cultural framework of the schools, are thus implicitly sus-
pected of being primitive and pre-democratic, and for them there can be no
place in a society of free and equal citizens.
A further corollary of this basic orientation is that deliberate, compensatory
support for minorities is not compatible with the principle of equality and equal
treatment of all citizens. Racism and discrimination are to be overcome by an
appropriate form of education, emphasizing republican values, rather than by
recognizing cultural differences. Education for citizenship and political auton-
omy are thus central themes, and it is expected that a citizen brought up with
these enlightened, universal principles will reject racism and ethnic discrimi-
nation. French educational policy and practice are thus guided not by the goal of
instilling acceptance of, and willingness to communicate with other cultures,
but rather the goal of superseding cultural particularism, so that cultural differ-
ences lose their significance.
The traditional republican concepts of Citoyenneté and Civilité are also in-
voked as elements of social measures meant to react to social conflicts in cities
and suburban slums, regional segregation and ethnic stereotyping of social in-
equality (Bourdieu et al. 2002; Dubet and Lapeyronnie 1992). Nevetheless, im-
migrants in France suffer high rates of unemployment, and, statistically seen,
their chances for social advancement are meager. A significant portion of the
children and adolescents have difficult school careers, and even those who ob-
tain higher levels of education must reckon with considerable discrimination in
the labor market. Social marginalization is the fate of many second-generation
immigrants.
It will not be surprising that the basic differences between Canadian and
French education have important consequences on all levels of educational
politics and practice, as some selected aspects of these will reveal.

3.3. Ethnic labeling in schools

In societies with sizable immigrant populations, the existence of and differences
among various ethnic groups become topics of conversation, so that the society
comes to postulate a number of distinct communities, each having a distinct his-
tory and culture, either claimed by the community or attributed to it by the
others. The creation of ethnic differences and identifications is thus a social pro-
cess, and schools are among the social participants. In Germany it can be shown
that the social discrimination of pupils from immigrant backgrounds is a topic
around which ethnically flavored group identities develop, finally being claimed
as a positive point of reference in the groups’ collective identities (Bommes and
Scherr 1991; Tertilt 1996). Similar phenomena have been reported in France. In
French schools, however, manifest symbolic references to religion or ethnicity
are treated as illegitimate, so that ethnic symbols and labellings acquire an ad-