Models of Education
for Children with non-German Mother Tongue
1.2 Bicultural Pedagogy - the Bavarian Model
1.3 Multicultural Education
2.2 Intercultural Learning - the Integrative Aspect
If intercultural learning takes place in democratic societies, it will have to be based on democratic principles. One key idea in this respect is certainly equality in education: and this has to include children with another mother tongue. Only if a society has internalised democratic principles, will they be reflected in educational institutions.
All systems show the tendency to remain the same, to resist change, and to meet new developments with suspicion and reservation. This trend to stick with the "old" can result in various strategies such as hiding the discrepancies, belittling them, or simply ignoring new facts and situations in order to evade the difficulties and efforts of restructuring the pertinent part of the system.
This tendency can also be observed with regard to minorities where it takes certain numbers to make a new situation visible. And only then do the people in charge feel any need or pressure to act on the given premises.
Essinger (1987, 43) quotes a Dutch participant at a seminar on Intercultural Learning as having paraphrased the attitude of the education board towards changes and experiments thus: "Don’t touch the system. Change something but not the Dutch School System." Traditional school systems are ethnocentric and monocultural, therefore this proposition defies substantial change and only wants to reorganise the surface on the old pillars.
At the end of the sixties Pedagogy started to react on the steady increase of children with another mother tongue in our schools. First their presence was seen as a disturbance. Therefore, it seemed logical to reform or change the disturbing element (as, obviously, it could not be removed) to make these children fit our school. The school system remains unchanged. Measures that are exclusively aimed at the persons "causing the disturbance" have been called "compensatory education". They have been criticised because they lead to a loss of identity of these children, and in the given case also to the loss of their mother tongue.
In concrete terms this kind of pedagogy (sometimes called deficit pedagogy or assimilation pedagogy) refers to measures which are directed exclusively at children with non-German mother tongue with the principal aim of addressing their deficit: namely their lack of competence in German. Socially this sometimes led to segregation and concentration of these children in special classes, but even if they stayed in regular classes the teaching was generally monocultural and directed towards the majority of Austrian pupils.
1.2 Bicultural Pedagogy - the Bavarian Model
The positively innovative aspect of this model is that competence in the mother tongue is clearly encouraged and the cultural identity of the children of migrant workers is seen as the paramount issue. The mother tongue is seen as the basis of the development of the second language, a growing stability of personal identity as well as the ability to integrate into the new society.
What remains problematical is the segregation of these children as long as they do not speak enough German. There is the danger of seeing education in the mother tongue mainly as a tool to enable them to return to their native countries and as an obstacle on the way to integration and participation in social life.
It was argued that this kind of bicultural education serves the intention of the employers, who can most easily make foreign workers redundant. Generally this type of education seems not critical enough of our own society and the effect might be as compensatory as the above position. (Cf. Friesenhahn 1988, 18-34)
If we understand this to mean simply a co-existence of cultures, a side by side positioning of two entities that do not interact, then this model lacks significant features. It is not enough to take notice of the other culture, nor will it do to propagate the traditions of one's own culture without a critical attitude.
2. A New Paradigm
Although the organisation is still based on bicultural pedagogy, it can - in its essence - already be considered "integrative". The main features are the following:
This model can be considered moderately bicultural. Foreigners and their children will be able to live their lives according to their cultural traditions. At the same time the German population should be won over to such a form of co-existence. This model is moderately bicultural because it expects the foreign partner to integrate into the cultural traditions of the host country, to acquire its language, and to integrate the given social ideas with their own. (Cf. Dickopp 1982, 64)
Criticism was launched against the models discussed above on the grounds that solutions originated with the native children and the only thing left to the foreign children was to balance their deficits as fast as possible. The Krefeld Model, on the other hand, has been criticised because it attempts a solution based predominantly on the needs of the foreign children.
Another point of dispute has been the bi-national classroom, which has no correlation in real life and might fail to prepare the children for their subsequent lives in our society.
2.2 Intercultural Learning - the Integrative Aspect
What is new in this approach is that integration is at the heart of it, demanding a re-orientation of the whole system. Features of genuine integration are:
Integration in schools seems possible only when there is integration of a minority into the society at large.
Intercultural learning means that in addition to our culture there is at least another one, possibly more cultures which should interact. Obviously this cannot be achieved on the level of schools, but must embrace the whole society.
(This page is based on Gauss, Rainer, Anneliese Harasek und Gerd Lau (ed.). 1994. Interkulturelle Bildung - Lernen kennt keine Grenzen. Vol.1: Eine Einführung.)
