Education and Pluralism: Towards a Democratic Theory of Education in Europe

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges, which modem European states face nowadays, is the rising advance of multiculturalism and diversity within their societies. This situation has broken one of the foundations that inspire the traditional notion of the state: the existence of a culturally homogeneous people. During the last decades, states have implemented different policies directed to achieve the social integration of multiculturalism and, therefore, to guarantee a peaceful coexistence. Nevertheless, how officials of different countries have recently recognized, models of integration adopted hitherto (such as integration contracts) have failed. It is likely, in this context, that an effective social integration of multiculturalism just can be reached through education. How to educate has been the subject of debate and analysis in all the scientific disciplines in which the individual is regarded as the main object of study. Medicine and psychiatry in the realm of the natural sciences, as well as, politics, religion, or law, as social science subjects, have traditionally aimed to educate the individual in order to facilitate his or her successful integration with the political or social reality around him or her.' Aristotelian and Platonic theories from the classical period2 such as the "Mirrors for Princes" from European medieval literature-especially, De Principiatibus by Nicolo Machiavelli -or the Arcana Imperii from the 16th and 17th centuries are good examples of this. Nevertheless, the use of education as a policy of integration - that appears already in the most classical academic literature- faces nowadays with new challenges, as a consequence of the growing religious and cultural complexity of societies. Demands by students and teachers to be allowed to wear Islamic veils or chadors in the classroom, attempts by students to exempt themselves from classes such as religion or physical education, or their refusal to be educated before a crucifix have recently generated some controversy all over Europe. As a solution to cases such as the ones mentioned above, European constitutional courts, as well as the European Court of Human Rights (Eur. Ct. H. R.), had to raise again the traditional question formulated by classical theories of education - and now applied to a multicultural society: in which values and principles must we educate? But, above all, both courts have pondered what the limits should be for any state to educate its citizens, thus raising the issue of indoctrination in the field of education, a problem that appears mainly in the context of a democratic state. However, as in this essay will be shown, the doctrinal and judicial answers to these conflicts have not always escaped the influence of the so-called "liberal theories of education." The solutions contributed by these liberal theories of education may have been useful for the European societies of the 19th century, or even for those in the opening third of the 20th century, as they were relatively homogeneous from a religious, political or cultural perspective. However, and given the plurality of our European societies, we cannot concede their validity nowadays. It is therefore necessary to construct a democratic theory of education in Europe.