The educational politics of identity and category

This paper attempts to strike a new educational path through the politics of identity and multiculturalism by arguing that we need to equip the young with an understanding of how such powerful categories as culture, race, and nation have been constructed. It uses the philosophical position of Simone Weil on the need for roots to establish the importance of learning to judge how the ethical qualities of the categories of identify. It then turns this position against the shortcomings of Charles Taylor's politics of recognition, in its attempt to reconcile liberal individualism with the collective rights. Proceeding into the arena of public policy, the paper applies these philosophical perspectives to the multicultural and anti-racist initiatives of two Canadian provincial Ministries of Education. Finally, it reviews the impassioned critiques of multiculturalism by Neil Bissoondath and Arthur Schlesinger exposing the currents of ethic nationalism which underwrite their position and which again obscure what should be the educational priority of uncovering the political processes, including schooling itself, which give these points of identity their public weight and personal significance. ©Kluwer Academic Publishers.