Multicultural Education, Autonomy, and Cosmopolitan Ethics: How Should We Teach Students to View Their Multiple Sources of Identity?

• In Event: Practice, Ethics and Action: Situated Research Inquiries

Proposal

The goal of this paper is to look at the intersections of multicultural education, cosmopolitanism, and autonomy, and to ultimately argue in support of a cosmopolitan identity education. This is a philosophical study that critiques traditional multicultural education for either promoting superficial homogeneity or creating essentialized differences. Raihanah (2009) states, “...policies of multiculturalism oscillate between these central questions: Should attachment to a particular ethnic group be promoted or curbed? Should a more homogenous culture be nurtured for the entire nation or should a more heterogeneous environment be encouraged?” (p. 65). The answer is that we need a rich middle ground between homogeneity and heterogeneity to demonstrate the complexity of identity. This tension will be explored, and I will argue that cosmopolitan identity education is that middle ground that is needed.

But why cosmopolitanism? Many authors start their chapters and articles with the notorious cosmopolitan quote from Diogenes stating, “I am a citizen of the world” (Ergas, 2020; Hansen, 2010; Hodgson, 2013; Kleingeld & Brown, 2019; Nussbaum, 1994; Roth & Burbules, 2011; Saito, 2010). Another core cosmopolitan image from the Stoics is one of concentric circles with the self as the smallest circle, and the circles around it constituting larger and larger group identities such as family, religion, town, nation, with all of humanity as the largest circle (Chinnery, 2009; Hodgson, 2013; Nussbaum, 1994). But why is this productive for considering debates within education? I will critique cosmopolitanism for its elitist undertones when authors like Saito (2010) discuss both businessmen and refugees as cosmopolitans. Saito (2010) also promotes what I would consider a superficial cosmopolitan education that is lacking in moral depth by only creating awareness of other countries based on international trade and global inequality with the only solution being charity. Experiencing international travel is not essential for cosmopolitan education, and even international travel does not always create a cosmopolitan mindset of perspective-taking, empathy, and deep knowledge and empowerment about addressing global inequality. To support cosmopolitan education, a person does not need to support a world government or learn solely about international trade. The strength that cosmopolitanism brings is the breaking of simple categorization and binaries as well as the potential for moral depth. It emphasizes equal human dignity and overlapping identities of belonging.

The autonomy piece is important to this debate because we are exploring issues of identity and categorization. Autonomy is essential here because students need to be able to learn about the world without key debates and information being kept from them. People are most likely to be aware of internal diversity within their own traditions and perspectives, and a cosmopolitan identity education should intentionally make this internal diversity known about places, cultures, and traditions that one may not be part of. Noddings (1993) argues this, for example, in relation to religious diversity and argues that we need to bring to light the many internal debates within traditions instead of teaching comparative religions in a static way that makes it seem like belief systems are settled and lacking disagreement within. Knowing about the world is also about knowing about oneself as a human on a universal level and on a local level of particular communities and sources of belonging. A cosmopolitan identity education should allow an exploration of identity in a way that students understand how categories that they are born into can define them and how they can define themselves within and across categories as well. Dill (2013) argues that it is problematic with global citizenship education or cosmopolitan education to advocate for global competitiveness and global morality in the same breath and also that we may just be weakening students' identities with a cosmopolitan type of education where identity or morality is fluid and relative, which could translate as meaningless. However, the fact that there are differences across perspectives and traditions does not mean that key moral debates are meaningless. Relativity does not mean a lack of morality. David Wong (2006) talks about pluralistic relativism, which argues that relativity means that different cultures and different people order their values differently, but they are shared values nonetheless. He argues that we would not even recognize moral debates as such if we did not share key moral intuitions and perceptions, even when we find ourselves on opposite sides of a debate. This demonstrates that morality exists, even when we disagree.

Rooted cosmopolitanism (Appiah, 1997; Hansen, 2011; Vinokur, 2018) allows both the universal human and the specific human to coexist. Chinnery (2009) discusses “feminist cosmopolitanism”, Wang (2020) and Tan (2019) discuss “Confucian cosmopolitanism”, and Ma'arif et al. (2020) discuss “Islamic cosmopolitanism”. These are all authors who are wrestling with the tension in the middle of the binary. How can someone be a citizen of the world and a female citizen, a Muslim citizen, a Confucian citizen? A cosmopolitan identity education would be an exploration of this and would include ways to transcend binaries, such as mindfulness (Ergas, 2020). We need ways to explore identities that include language as well as those aspects of oneself that are pre-discursive. Through cosmopolitan identity education, the universal human self comes into conversation with the overlapping identities of multiple selves that are discovered and affirmed through language. This tension, this complexity is what students need to be exposed to and to wrestle with. The goal of cosmopolitan identity education is exposure to information and to deeply question. It is not to impose a worldview upon them but to pose tensions that exist about themselves, their communities, other communities, and the overlapping spaces within and across these communities. What they believe about themselves and their identities has to be respected as an essential part of education that supports the autonomy of the student. The purpose is to share information and to ask about these tensions, not to expect them to adopt a particular viewpoint. This complexity is the cosmopolitan identity education itself and is one capable of breaking the binary of homogeneity and heterogeneity while exploring moral depth and respecting the autonomy of students.

Author

• Katheryn Mary Periasamy Purcell, Indiana University - Bloomington