Multiculturalism in a Global Society
Course Description:
In an era of global migration, managing diversity is an important policy concern for any governments, those of advanced societies in particular. Multiculturalism, as a comprehensive response to cultural/ethnic diversity, was first introduced in Canada in 1971 and adopted in many other advanced societies shortly after that. Since the early 2000s, however, it has been criticized in many European societies for having provoked excessive diversity and/ or fragmentation of society. Such fears among the majority members often take the form of white backlash or inward-looking nationalism, and seem to further threaten the social cohesion. Under such circumstances, can multiculturalism still be an effective policy option? Or is there a more viable alternative to it?
The objectives of this course are to help students (1) to understand multiculturalism as reality/ ideology/ policy, 2) to learn the possibilities and limitations of multiculturalism through exploring a variety of forms of multiculturalism observable in many advanced societies such as Canada, USA, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, etc., and 3) to be able to apply what they have learned to examine multiculturalism in any other society of their interest.
In this fall semester course, we will focus on multiculturalism as reality or policies/ practices so that students can grasp the whole picture of multiculturalism as multidimensional approaches to various types of minorities within the societies.
Course Narrative:
One idea centralized this course many times, and it was to see if places could be considered ‘melting pots’. This phrase has been mostly associated with America, but has been heard of other places where diversity is growing in huge numbers as well. This class was taken to go with Latino Americans as both were 2 units’ courses. This also helped fulfill the MLO3 secondary culture requirement as it included many different cultures instead of just Japan. This class was taught as a seminar style where we focused more on reading materials provided to us weekly and our presentation at the end was a key summary of what we learned in the class. (Final PowerPoint) We were given websites to use to know where to source from, making the searching for information easier to find.
For the final project, we were teamed in pairs of twos, having one country picked for us to discuss the form of multiculturalism has been implemented. Me and my partner happened to been given America as our country. I was really surprised, however, through the research done, there isn’t any specific constitutional affirmation about multiculturalism. This goes the opposite what I thought a ‘melting pot’ was of the mixing of all the races. However, I did find out about dual citizenship, honoring if the US government let me keep my status even if I decided to wed with not a US citizen. There was, however, strong support from US schools showing acceptance of these other cultures as schools are encouraged to have a second language class for students to take if they want to. By having the class available and having an interest from students, it shows how accepting the US is being with other cultures.
In an era of global migration, managing diversity is an important policy concern for any governments, those of advanced societies in particular. Multiculturalism, as a comprehensive response to cultural/ethnic diversity, was first introduced in Canada in 1971 and adopted in many other advanced societies shortly after that. Since the early 2000s, however, it has been criticized in many European societies for having provoked excessive diversity and/ or fragmentation of society. Such fears among the majority members often take the form of white backlash or inward-looking nationalism, and seem to further threaten the social cohesion. Under such circumstances, can multiculturalism still be an effective policy option? Or is there a more viable alternative to it?
The objectives of this course are to help students (1) to understand multiculturalism as reality/ ideology/ policy, 2) to learn the possibilities and limitations of multiculturalism through exploring a variety of forms of multiculturalism observable in many advanced societies such as Canada, USA, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, etc., and 3) to be able to apply what they have learned to examine multiculturalism in any other society of their interest.
In this fall semester course, we will focus on multiculturalism as reality or policies/ practices so that students can grasp the whole picture of multiculturalism as multidimensional approaches to various types of minorities within the societies.
Course Narrative:
One idea centralized this course many times, and it was to see if places could be considered ‘melting pots’. This phrase has been mostly associated with America, but has been heard of other places where diversity is growing in huge numbers as well. This class was taken to go with Latino Americans as both were 2 units’ courses. This also helped fulfill the MLO3 secondary culture requirement as it included many different cultures instead of just Japan. This class was taught as a seminar style where we focused more on reading materials provided to us weekly and our presentation at the end was a key summary of what we learned in the class. (Final PowerPoint) We were given websites to use to know where to source from, making the searching for information easier to find.
For the final project, we were teamed in pairs of twos, having one country picked for us to discuss the form of multiculturalism has been implemented. Me and my partner happened to been given America as our country. I was really surprised, however, through the research done, there isn’t any specific constitutional affirmation about multiculturalism. This goes the opposite what I thought a ‘melting pot’ was of the mixing of all the races. However, I did find out about dual citizenship, honoring if the US government let me keep my status even if I decided to wed with not a US citizen. There was, however, strong support from US schools showing acceptance of these other cultures as schools are encouraged to have a second language class for students to take if they want to. By having the class available and having an interest from students, it shows how accepting the US is being with other cultures.
Multiculturalism_America.pdf | |
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