Introduction
Some core ideas in the capability approach
Literacy from a capability point of view
To what extent do French and Norwegian curricula promote minorities’ social and cultural capabilities?
The need for an empowering multicultural curriculum


Introduction

Education is expected to be empowering and transformative for the individual and for society. The use of the human development and capability approach developed by Amartya Sen (2003, 2009) and Martha Nussbaum (2003, 2006, 2008, 2010) in anti-racist education provides an alternative means of evaluation which can help assess the elements that can widen people’s choices and real freedoms in an enabling multicultural environment, and help them build longer, healthier and more creative lives.


Some core ideas in the capability approach

The capability approach seeks to analyse the individuals’ own choices, i.e. what they value and have reasons to value in their own environment. Sen and Nussbaum stress the importance of improving the individuals’ substantive freedoms (their capabilities to function) in order to achieve valuable states of being and doing (also called functionings). The freedom to achieve these particular functionings is influenced by all kinds of factors based on a broader social and cultural context. There are three important types of conversion factors: personal conversion factors (the person’s physical condition, gender, mental skills, literacy skills, personal history and character), social conversion factors (hegemonic social norms and practices within society), and finally, environmental factors (climate and geographical location) (Robeyns 2005: 98; Vaughan 2007: 115). When undertaking anti-racist research, it is essential to analyze how the social and cultural context – in terms of negative stereotypes, group stigmas, and unilateral mainstream discourses and practices – can interfere with the individual’s ability to effectively experience freedom of choice and equality. We will use literacy learning as one example in order to discuss this matter.


Literacy from a capability point of view

In simple terms, one talks about literacy when good reading and writing skills are acquired and critically and effectively used by individuals in order to handle and solve problems for all purposes in human life. As such, it is a major learning aim in any school system: without a good level of literacy the individual is reduced to live a life with less understanding, development and freedom. Literacy thus is an important issue in anti-racist education. A literate person will understand common values within her/his society and the value of her/his own language and culture. She/he may also acknowledge the value of other languages and cultures. In addition, a literate person will use the language(s) in order to increase personal autonomy and nourish a lifelong intellectual process for understanding and acting in the world. Still, literacy is deeply influenced by power structures and particular nation history; this is particularly obvious when dealing with minority groups’ learning. To be a minority group member implies more complex literacy learnings than being a majority member of society.

To what extent does school provide equal opportunities in literacy and in which languages? Taking the contemporary Norwegian school reform as an example, mother tongue training for immigrants is now determined by an assessment of the competency level of the minority pupil in Norwegian. If the pupil has a good level in Norwegian, she/he will not receive mother tongue teaching because it is only given to pupils categorized as “weak” in Norwegian. This teaching policy is based on the will to transmit both Norwegian language and values of the Norwegian society, a position in contradiction with the previous teaching policy of the 80s and the 90s more focused on promoting multicultural literacy. In terms of the capability approach, the present reform reduces the pupil’s capabilities to become functionally bilingual. Families experiencing a depreciation of their own language in the public space can also develop adaptive preferences at home which may result in impoverishing educational strategies where parents talk the majority language in the family environment because they want their children to be “integrated”. An immigrant pupil is therefore likely to experience the need to learn the majority language at the expense of her/his own mother tongue. In other words, too strong a focus on the majority language can lead to impoverished freedom of choice and learning outcomes. This is in contrast with the national Sami literacy learning policy which includes own cultural and language background on the basis that the Sami are now considered as the indigenous people of Norway and granted special group minority rights. Sami’s capability sets are likely to be much broader than the ones of immigrants which are based on assimilative thinking and little promotion of their own cultural literacy (Engen 2010).

Therefore, literacy learning in Norway shows that existing social arrangements don’t fully respect immigrants’ freedom of choice. However, analyzing the societal structures’ influence on the individual’s real freedoms brings to question how to promote them on a more collective level. In fact, it is important to acknowledge language, religion, institutional norms, ethnic belonging and political practices as irreducibly social goods. According to Charles Taylor, they are objects of value that cannot be reduced to individual acts (Deneulin 2006; 2008). They exist beyond individual lives but are endorsed by individuals. A language thus exists beyond individuals but will not survive without being used. In Norway the three Sami languages are threatened because of previous harsh assimilation politics put in place by Norwegian nationals. By 2100 it is also expected that between 50% and 90% of languages in the world will be dying or dead (Skutnabb-Kangas 2002). We can therefore conclude that some structures do not provide the right conditions for human beings to chose valuable functionings and to flourish (Deneulin 2006: 56). How can we then preserve and develop good and long-lasting multicultural structures of living together which promote both individual and collective freedoms of choice? We need to focus not only on individual capabilities but also on the collective capabilities and freedoms that human beings may enjoy as a group in their specific context (Ibid.: 59). This issue is also clearly at stake in anti-racist curricula reforms.


To what extent do French and Norwegian curricula promote minorities’ social and cultural capabilities?

Through my research on anti-racist policies in the curriculum discourses of French and Norwegian civic education, I have concluded that there is a major tension between equality and difference within antiracism. Both values are important because the objective is to promote democratic values common to every citizen and, at the same time, to respect cultural diversity within society. Still, equality is a hegemonic value in both antiracist curricula, stating the need to transmit common values and to give equal learning opportunities. However, it is problematic when the curricula do not provide a careful analysis of the pitfalls of equality (Brossard Børhaug 2008, 2011). If we ask how collective structures at school provide good conditions for individuals to thrive, we can see that there is much indication that the civic education’s major priorities in both curricula promote only a limited set of individual and collective capabilities for some minority members. Because of too strong a focus put on majority group’s interests, minority ways of living become negligible. Therefore, the curricula reproduce the main monocultural public discourse giving minorities a limited and often controversial place in the public space and always in a subordinate position.

The use of culture is an important capacity worth building and consolidating in the educational system because it reinforces the capacity of voice and aspiration (Appadurai 2004). This capacity of aspiration can be considered as a navigational capacity where the more privileged members of society make use of their knowledge, experiences and opportunities in a more effective way than disadvantaged people; a capacity that is nurtured by practice, repetition, and exploration. If it is not well nurtured, the capacity to aspire tends to be more rigid and binary, developing scepticism, violence or too uncritical compliance (Ibid: 69), something which is clearly developing in French and English suburb schools. How does one help disadvantaged pupils to expand their capacity to aspire? There is no simple answer but we need a curriculum which empowers the ones who have less. In terms of knowledge and experiences, the curriculum ought to provide numerous learning settings by which the pupils can reflect on their own life. A monocultural curriculum which is too abstract and does not include the pupils’ concrete life experiences and existential questions, diminishes their ability to claim, define and refine their own ways of doing in a constructive way. A multicultural curriculum as a strong conversion factor is therefore a fair curriculum that gives the possibility to use the pupils’ own voice helping them building self-governance based on self-mobilisation and self-articulation of diverse cultural and social aspirations.


The need for an empowering multicultural curriculum

A fairer curriculum also entails a democratization process which no longer is a process of inclusion of excluded parties into the existing order, but rather a transformation of that order (Biesta 2006: 14). In my opinion, a more equal order of such kind would be based on the recognition of all citizens' diverse capabilities within empowering multicultural structures of living together. On the basis that the curriculum is an example of common structures, one should create a new curriculum in which the school seeks to promote broader cultural and social capabilities and functionings at individual and collective level. How can we then promote empowering literacy for minority individuals? This is an uneasy debate because we need to discuss the need for group minority rights but we also disagree on the extent to which they can support individuals’ real freedoms. Still, it is an essential path to explore if we don’t want to experience once again the tragedy of Oslo or the riots in Europe such as the ones in France, Greece, and England.

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