Post-Modernity, Education and European Identities

Author(s): David Coulby and Crispin Jones

Source: Comparative Education, Vol. 32, No. 2, Special Number (18): Comaparative Education
and Post-Modernity (Jun., 1996), pp. 171-184
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Comparative Education Volume32 No. 2 1996 pp. 171-184

CARFAX

Education
Post-modernity,
European Identities

and

DAVID COULBY & CRISPIN JONES

Thearticlestartsfrom an analyticaldescriptionof theEnlightenment
Programmewhich
it equateswith modernity.It raisesthe questionof the extentto whichthisProgrammehasfoundered
or come to an end. It explainsthe importantcritiquethat post-modernism
offersof Enlightenment
knowledgeand the relevanceof this to educationsystems.It thengoes on to considerthe notionsof
Europeand of Europeans.It suggeststhat this terminologyhas as much to do with socialinclusion
and exclusionas with geography.It then criticallyexaminesthepossibilitythatfracturedsystemsof
It concludeswith an examinationof the
educationalstructuresare a manifestationof post-modernity.
to schooland universityknowledgesystems.It highlightsthe
relevanceof theoriesof post-modernism
conflictbetweendiverseknowledgeand cultureand centralisingstate curricularsystems.
ABSTRACT

The Collapse of Modernity?

Education was one of the key elements of the Enlightenment Programme. A belief in the
efficacy of education and in the desirability of its universal application formed one of the
programme'searly and key tenets. Subsequently, it was through educational institutions--the
universal national elementary school and the expanded and upgraded university--that its
wider beliefs and practices were to be spread across Europe and beyond in the course of the
nineteenth century.
The Enlightenment Programme may be characterisedas originating in the politics and
philosophy of late eighteenth-century Paris and in the economics, philosophy, engineering
and science of Edinburgh, Manchester and London of the same period. Since it was this
programme which is so closely connected with the origins of modernism, it is worth
investigating in some detail the core beliefs which, along with education, it so eloquently
advocated. Obviously the attempt to synthesise the writings of the philosophesand Rousseau,
of Adam Smith, Hume and Bentham, the political practice of the revolutionaries, the
engineering triumphs of Watt and Stephenson and the economic practice of the worlddominating cotton mills can be nothing other than preliminary(Hobsbawm, 1975). Nevertheless, there are clearly distinguishablecommon beliefs within a whole range of the activities
of the Enlightenment Programme.
That the programme itself achieved such success and momentum links it to the notion
of progress. Humanity was seen as progressingthrough history and this progress was seen as
speeding up towards an ever improving future. The Enlightenment Programme was revolutionary in its intolerance of anything which stood in the way of this progress. For many
intellectuals and artists, the march of Napoleon's armies across Europe and Egypt, sweeping
away antiquated institutions and traditionalist obfuscation represented the embodiment of
this progress.
Correspondence to: David Coulby, Education and Human Sciences, Bath College of Higher Education, Newton
Park, Newton St Loe, Bath BA2 9BN, UK. Crispin Jones, Culture Communication and Societies, Institute of
Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK.
0305-0068/96/020171-14

$6.00 @ 1996 Carfax Publishing Ltd

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172 D. Coulby& C. Jones

Key to this progress was the success of science. Science was both a total explanation and
a key to human betterment. The truths of nature and of the universe were seen to be
increasinglycomprehensible to systematic scientific investigation and explanation. The condition of humanity and of the individual could be improved by the application of science to
labour and manufacturing.More problematically,the methods of science could be applied to
the understanding of society and politics and to the practice of government or warfare.
Educational institutions were needed both to spread scientific knowledge more widely and to
encourage-in Prussia, Scotland and France rather than, at this early stage, in England-its
further development.
The Enlightenment Programme strengthened and propagated the notion of an individual, single identity which Weber (1930) linked also to Protestantism.Individual destiny was
celebrated in the egotistical sublime of Wordsworth or Rousseau and in the heroic achievements of industrialists, soldiers or even artists. Coleridge and Blake dramatised and
celebrated the eschatological struggles towards individual identity. Furthermore,individuals
were now citizens, which not only implied persons with human rights but also active political
identities in relation to the state. Equality, perhaps the most dangerous of the three
revolutionaryslogans, insisted that humanity need no longer be stratified,and that individuals could determine their own worth. Education was an important component of this
reconceptualisedversion of identity. It comprised the mechanism whereby the full potential
of each individualmight be realised and celebrated.Rousseau is again a key figurehere, along
with Pestalozzi and Humbolt. For the Enlightenment Programme, identity became destiny.
Associated, fatally, with the Enlightenment Programmewas the emergence of the belief
in nations. The nation was seen to have fixed geographical boundaries, to contain one
identifiable language and culture, to be itself part of a progressive history through its
emergence, liberation, unification or conquest, to be identical with the state and to be, in its
initial and so many subsequent formulations,in danger (Renan, 1990; Sharma, 1991). From
Danton to Woodrow Wilson, this strange idea was a presupposition of the politics of the
Enlightenment Programme, contested only by those traditionalvoices retrospectivelyrisible
in believing Italy to have been merely a geographicalexpression.
If the institutions of traditionalism had been the monarchy, the agriculturalcountry
estate and the Church, those of the Enlightenment Programme were, in addition to those
associated with education (now replacing many of the functions of the Church), constitutional government and the industrial factory. Although the geographicalexpansion of the
Enlightenment Programme was by no means limited by these institutions, it was the
development of educational institutions which both symbolised its arrival and ensured its
continuation in the absolutist empires of Austria and Russia and the Prussianmonarchy. The
restoration of 1815 made little impact either on the French educational system or on the
ideological success of the Enlightenment Programme.
The Trinity experiment was the triumphant culmination of the Enlightenment Project.
Through science, an international research team at Los Alamos had controlled the movements of the atom; through science a democratic, constitutional state had created an
unimaginably destructive weapon and had utilised it to end global conflict apparently, in
1945, indefinitely. Academics and scientists, had now incontestably changed the world
(Rhodes, 1988). The Enlightenment Programme had successfully controlled the destiny of
humanity. Yet this success lay in the discovery of a deadly nuclear technology. The
Enlightenment Programmehad developed the science and the educational institutions which
could create this technology but it had failed to generate the governmental, moral and
philosophical systems which might have controlled it. Whilst humanity might be in awe of the
final achievement of the Enlightenment Programme, it would also be in fear for its survival

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Post-modernity,Educationand EuropeanIdentities 173

as a consequence of this scientific progress. After the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
the Enlightenment Programmewould never again receive universal or unhesitating endorsement. And in this hesitation lies one of the sources in which the post-modem critique
originated.
Post-modernity can be viewed in two ways: as a period in human history or as a group
of theories which, taken together, are a critique of the Enlightenment Programme, of
modernity. In the first of these ways, human history is taken as being divided into broad,
identifiable periods. Medievalism is seen as being supplanted by the Renaissancewhich itself
was succeeded by the Enlightenment Programme and modernity. Whilst this periodisation
may be a helpful and almost indispensable tool for historians, it is itself a product of
modernity and can easily be misused for various progressiveinterpretationsof history. From
this periodisation view, at some point after 1945, human history entered a new phase, that
of post-modernity. Indeed, some writers are more specific: Jencks (1984) dated it as
beginning on 15 July 1972 at 3.32 p.m. in the USA, when the first units of the Pruitt-Igoe
housing estate in St Louis, were blown up, its modernist design being seen as total human
failure. This article does not view post-modernity in this way. This is partly because of a
wider rejection of periodisation and partly because, unlike Jencks (1984) and others, we see
it as being both difficult and unnecessary to identify the exact point or sequence of events
after 1945 at which modernity came to a halt. But it is rather more because the Enlightenment Programme itself seems neither to be exhausted nor generally discredited. Certainly it
has for the past quarter of a century been subject to a wide range of vigorous critiques and
denunciations. The authors would wish to associate themselves with many of these. Nevertheless, the programmeitself has neither been renounced nor replaced in academic, scientific,
political or, least of all, educational terms.
Whilst post-modernity might not be helpful as a chronology or mode of periodisation, as
a cultural and paradigmaticcritique it carriesgreat force, not least with regardto education.
Elsewhere, this critique has been analysed as being composed of at least three strands: the
feminist critique, the culturalistcritique and the class critique (Coulby & Jones, 1995). Whilst
at least the latter of these had been well stated a long time before 1945, it is since then that
the three critiques have been generally substantiated. It is also in this period that their
combined weight has been felt.
It is the feminist critique which has had the most undermining effect on modernist
knowledge because it dissociates from it half of humanity. The feminist critique reveals that
history, culture, science and technology are, fallaciously, seen to be the exclusive products of
men and, furthermore,are so presented within the curriculaof schools and universities.From
this perspective, modernist knowledge is flawed in at least three ways. Firstly, this knowledge
itself is incomplete since it values disproportionatelythose areas of activity and research
which have been conducted primarilyby men. Secondly, the criteriawhereby knowledge is
defined are biased towards the selection of work produced by men. Thirdly and consequently, within the various areas of knowledge the selection of materialis biased towards that
produced by men.
The culturalist critique is similar in its form to that made by feminism. Modernist
knowledge, as a component of the nationalistic Enlightenment Programme, is White, Western knowledge. It relegates the knowledge of other cultures to exoticism, superstition or
folkways. It only recognises academic, scientific and cultural achievement within a few
countries. The activities and achievements of the rest of humanity are effectively ignored,
patronised or belittled within modernist knowledge which is chauvinistic and nationalistic as
well as Eurocentric. There are again at least three ways in which this view of knowledge is
flawed: it is incomplete since it includes predominantly those activities and achievements

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174 D. Coulby& C. Jones

which have derived from Europe; the criteria whereby it is defined are biased towards the
selection of work produced by White people; and consequently, within the various areas of
knowledge, the selection of material is biased towards that produced by such people,
particularlythose from Western Europe. The culturalistcritiquehas shown the ways in which
modernist knowledge does not recognise the learning, culture and science generated
outside Western Europe and its offshoots in North America. Furthermore, it does not
acknowledge the major contributions to Europe's own knowledge and culture which were
made by other traditions.Finally, modernist knowledge conceals ratherthan revealsthe links,
for example, between the Enlightenment Programme and the worst excesses of slavery and
colonialism.
The third critique of modernist knowledge is derived from class. Marx, who both
belonged to the Enlightenment Programme and was also one of its major critics, explained
that
The class which has the means of materialproduction at its disposal, has control at
the same time over the means of mental production ... The ruling ideas are nothing
more than the ideal expression of the dominant materialrelationships,the dominant
material relationships grasped as ideas ... . (Marx in McLellan, 1977, p. 176)

The fashionable tastes of the privileged classes are still cheerfully reified by academics into
artistic, literaryor philosophical value systems. Schools and universities are the sites of the
marketing and recommodification of cultural products from critical theory to information
technology.
These critiques and others, taken together, have shaken the entire edifice of modernist
knowledge. Post-modernism is the culmination and the aftermath of these three critiques.
Post-modernism has gone beyond cultural relativism to epistemological relativism (Feyerabend, 1978a,b). No truth system is seen as superior. Identity is no longer single and heroic
but fractured and even indiscernible. Individual taste and discriminationare prized, eclecticism encouraged and all canons subjected to furious attack. Modernist knowledge no longer
now carries any widespread legitimacy. However, this cannot yet be regarded as a historical
process with modernism graduallybeing superseded by post-modernism. In terms of knowledge and culture the proponents of modernism and post-modernism are currentlyengaged in
a conflict which, in Europe at least, has taken on both a political and educational form. For
education, this conflict is most visible in terms of the impact of the market and/or central
political decision makers on knowledge choices and subsequent curricularreform. It is by no
means clear in either educational or wider terms that this conflict has yet been resolved in
favour of post-modernity.
The three books so far published in English in an explicit attempt to link education
systems to post-modernity (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991; Usher & Edwards, 1994; Coulby &
Jones, 1995) have not so much focused on a new historical epoch but rather on the way in
which the critique can be expanded to help in understandingcurrenteducationalpractice and
the way in which this might be developed. These texts and others have utilised the often
complex, abstruse and introvertedliteratureassociated with post-modernity and either tried
to make it more readily accessible to educationalists or utilised it to assist in understanding
contexts, institutions, processes and curricula.This is the approachfollowed in the remainder
of this article which attempts to demonstrate how such approaches can cast fresh light on
familiareducational topics. As a startingpoint in this, it is necessary to clarify the European
context within which such debates about education and identity are placed.

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Educationand EuropeanIdentities 175

Post-modernity,
Europe and the European?
As the European Union (EU) expands and consolidates, it poses significantdifficultiesfor the
educational systems of its constituent states. One of these difficulties is how they can
maintain national identities and, at the same time, enhance a sense of EU or European
identity. Phrases such as 'our common European home' and 'the European house' abound.
What is happening here is a classic case of the Enlightenment Programmeswimming against
the tide of reality, a misplaced desire to place a seemingly rational, scientific order onto a
shimmering diversity. European identities, European peoples, their locations and their
histories have never been so simple a construct as many modernist Europhiles would claim:
indeed, many might find the pluralities in the previous clause difficult to comprehend.
Moreover, this sense of pasts, however defined, is itself being eroded, for, as Jameson (1988,
p. 29) noted, he could show
the disappearanceof a sense of history, the way in which our entire contemporary
social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past, has
begun to live in a perpetual present and in a perpetual change that obliterates
traditions of the kind which all earlier social formations have had in one way or
another to preserve.
So, just as education systems struggle to define the nature of their state, its history, its
membership and make such information availablefor children, so the same systems have to
make sense of a European 'state', its history and its membership. And just as many EU and
other European state educational systems have retreatedinto a modernist hegemonic version
of the past and the present (Jones, 1992), so might they in relation to Europe (Osler et al.,
1996). It is thereforecrucial for education systems in Europe (and of course elsewhere, if they
think Europe important enough) to be clearer about the nature of this Europe they are
encouraging their pupils to learn about. Put simply, where is Europe and who is a European?
The boundaries of the EU are clear, those of Europe far less so. The conventional view
is found in a British school atlas of the late 1830s:
According to the decisions of modem science, Europe is bounded on the south by
the Mediterraneansea, on the west by the Atlantic ocean, which includes the Azores
Islands and Iceland; Greenland being considered a part of North America. In the
north, its boundary is the Arctic ocean, comprehending the remote islands of
Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. Towards the east, the limits of Europe seem even
yet to be inaccuratelydefined. Its natural and geographicalboundaries might easily
be obtained by tracing the river Ousa from its source to its junction with the Belaia,
thence along the Kama to the Volga, which would constitute a striking natural
division, to the town of Sarapta, whence a short line might be carried due west to
the river Don, which would complete the unascertained line of demarcation. But
this great outline, through the petty governments under the dominion of Russia,
science has hitherto been prevented from adopting. (Russell, c. 1838, p. iii)
On the surface, this is clear enough. It seems sensible, it even appearsscientific. But actually
it is no more than a series of lines drawn for operationalreasons, defining 'us' as opposed to
'them'. Since the word was first used in Ancient Greece, to distinguish the mainland Greeks
from those in the islands, Europe has mainly been used operationallyto exclude and confirm
certain types of inclusion. At the same time, spurious scientific concepts have been used to
sustain such definitions, such as the concept of the continent of Europe. Across Europe,
pupils learn that Europe is one of the five (sometimes six) continents, namely Africa,
Antarctica,Asia, Australasia,North and South America. For much of the nineteenth century

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176 D. Coulby& C. Jones

~-2L2~T

------------------------------O0

FIG. 1. Europe at the centre of the world.

there were only four, namely Europe, Africa, Asia and America (Russell, 1838) and before
the European 'discoveries',three, Europe, Africaand Asia. It is the Ancient Greekview of the
world writ large. The interesting question that follows from this is the origination of these
concepts, these lines on a map.
Maps are fascinating objects (Berthon & Robinson, 1991). Scientific and neutral at a
first glance, they are highly politicised constructs (see Fig. 1). Most maps used in the schools
of Europe, still place Europe at the centre of the world and use a projection that magnifies
Europe and diminishes much of the rest of the world.
The maps of Europe also draw lines that contain many ambiguities. In particular,the
eastern boundary is extremely vague, with some countries, for example Russia and Turkey,
being partly 'in' and partly'out' (accordingto UK Prime MinisterJohn Major). The question
that needs to be asked here is one about the principlesbeing used for inclusion and exclusion.
A study of European maps down the centuries reveals that Europe still remains, in broad
outline, the same part of the globe as eleventh-century Christendom. It is a revealing clue.
Christianityis the key to an understandingof Europe's location. So much so, that not only
do politicians talk about Christian and European culture as if they were co-terminous, but
many European education systems reflect this as well. Thus, it should not have come as so
much of a surprisewhen, in the break up of former Yugoslavia, Serbian leaders talked about
defending Europe from Islam and many Europeans discovered that Muslims had been an
abiding presence in Europe for centuries. Nor should it come as a surprise that Turkey's
attempts to join the EU continue to be rebuffed.
This ideological and narrow definition of European boundaries is taught in many of the
schools of Europe. It no doubt becomes more strident in the states along the eastern
boundaries, as they seek to define themselves and others as in or out. It also raises the second
major element of this definitional muddle, namely, if we are not sure where Europe actually
is, how can we be sure of who is a European?From the above discussion, it could be argued
that this is more a matter of baptism than location. If Europe is Christian, then Europeans
are Christians. 'Non-believers', itself an interestingphrase, are the Jews, the Muslims and, in

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Post-modernity, Education and European Identities

177

some cases, the Rom. Their persecution is therefore not an aberrantpart of history, it is an
aspect of the formation of the fragile European identity.
Of course, it is not as simple as a Christian-the rest divide. Over the centuries, other
categories have been adopted, albeit usually in conjunction with the Christian as European
definition. From an early period, non-Christians were seen as not only being religiously
and culturally different from 'real Europeans' but also physically different too. Christian
Europeans could tell 'just by looking' who was different. The alien could be identified on
sight, thus making the simultaneous act of identity formation and persecution easier when
Europe at last realised that some of its inhabitants, although Christian, were not White.
This history is well illustrated in the English language. The OxfordEnglish Dictionary
(Murray, 1933), in its definition of 'European', quotes three related meanings.
(1) 'Belonging to Europe, or its inhabitants' (first used in 1603).
(2) 'Taking place in, or extending over, Europe' (first used in 1665).
(3) 'A native of Europe' (first used in 1632).
The dates of first recorded use are not without significance, reflecting the increasing
European investigation and conquest of the wider world. Interestingly, in the 1972 Supplement (Burchfield, 1972), a further meaning is added, relating to the third one.
(4) 'Person of European extraction who lives outside Europe: hence, a white person,
esp. in a country with a predominately non-white population' (first used in 1696).
Lest it be thought that dictionariesare above political correctness,in the second edition of the
dictionary (Simpson & Weiner, 1989), the most esteemed of English English, only the first
two definitions had survived. A new third one had appeared, referring to new European
institutions, first used in 1952. The ones that had disappeared seem to be the result of an
anxiety about the past rather than a concern for lexicographicalaccuracy.
This common sense definition of a European is still broadly maintained. It has been
made more confusing with debates about the nature of citizenship: national, EU and
European (Osler et al., 1996). Yet it relates back to aspects of the EnlightenmentProgramme
which thought in terms of the congruence of citizenship and identity. And just as many
European states' education systems argue for the existence of a fictitious co-terminal
nation-state, the citizens of which are of one nation as well as one state, so they also
frequently construct a fallacious ideal typical model of a European citizen.
The European version of this model is straightforward.He (for it is still often he, bearing
out VirginiaWolff's assertion, (discussed in Dunmore, 1995), that women have no nationality because of their lack of political and legislative power within states) is White, Christian,
tolerant and rational and a model of sensible democratic citizenship. It is a wonderful but
completely fictitious model. It nevertheless retains considerable power and is frequently
appealed to in debates about the nature of the European. However, one of the features of the
contemporary EU is that life for many of its citizens is far removed from being subject to
these virtues, with xenophobia, narrow nationalism and racism on the increase (Council of
Europe, 1980; Commission of the European Communities, 1993).
A post-modern reading of the realities of citizenship in Europe would point towards an
acceptance of plural identities. A European can be White or Black, Muslim or Jewish and
have other legitimate identities too, such as being African and European, Indian and
European and so forth. Examples of this acceptance are increasing, with a particularly
interesting discussion coming from Ireland (for example, Heaney, 1995). Just as Europe is an
operational definition subject to almost infinite adjustment, so is the definition of European.

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178 D. Coulby& C. Jones

Currently, it is mainly used to exclude: reconsidered, it could be used to include. Without
such a change, the rejection continues, at all levels of society. The English language
equivalentsof alien, outlander, outsider, foreigner,visitor, immigrant,newcomer, non-native
and stranger (and there are many more offensive terms) are applied to fellow Europeans
without qualm in everyday discourse, in schools and in the wider society. Without greater
clarity, divisions in the definition of the European identity are likely to persist and intensify.
This article argues that in order to present a European education to young people, they
need to know that the boundaries of Europe are constructed and manipulated. The reasons
for this, historical and contemporary,need also to be explained. Furthermore,young people
(and those who teach them) need to know that plural identities are the reality for most
Europeans, despite the desire of many individualEuropean states and their education system
to deny this. Both these potentially confusing areas contain within them, if untackled, the
potential for the denial of a wide range of human rights, including educational ones (Gundara
et al., 1994). Such a perspective implies a more pluralistic approach to a whole range of
educationalissues, notably those concerned with structuresand curricula,the concerns of the
remainder of this article.

Taxonomising Diversity?
Diversity of educational structurehas usually been seen as part of a traditionalisteducational
agenda. Yet the Enlightenment Programme, with its emphasis on achieved equality, has
always found choice and diversity difficult, as the previous paragraphshave indicated. The
failure of its centralising, seemingly rational attempts to categorise and organise everything
and everybody for the betterment of humanity has, ironically, left the reactionaryand the
conservativeto defend what was called diversityand choice but which was often actuallythe
defence of diversity and choice only for the dominant 61ite.
Thus, for much of the last 100 years, progressiveeducationists in Europe and elsewhere
have expended much energy in attempting to ensure that within each national context,
children should attend one type of elementary school and one type of secondary school.
Perhaps its classic embodiment is the famous US Supreme Court judgement, Brown vs
Topeka, which, in attemptingto end radical segregationin US schools in the 1950s, justified
under the earlier 1896 Plessy vs Ferguson 'separatebut equal', decision, stated that separate
schooling systems were 'inherently unequal' Hailed as a benchmark decision, it actually
resulted in greater segregation of the system, as White people fled the cities to live in school
board areas with far fewer Black children. In similarways, attempts to introduce comprehensive education within European education systems have led, if anything, to greatervariations
of structure as powerful interest groups resist, retreat and reformulate their educational
preferences. For example, the move to end tripartite systems in some English Local Education Authorities and in the Berlin Land has led to a four-strandsystem, the new comprehensive system running alongside the old tripartitestructure.
The dilemma is one between, amongst other things, egalitarianprovision and parental
choice or, in a sense, between collectivism and individualism, between modernist universalism and post-modern relativity. Such polarities are, however, themselves partly a modernist
perspective. In general, they have failed to recognise a pluralistreality and, in so doing, have
moved the debate away from the more serious concern, namely the relative potentials of
existing and potential varieties of educational structureto bring about educational fulfilment
for individuals, families, communities and states.
All European education systems face these contradictionsand attempt to deal with them

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Post-modernity,Educationand EuropeanIdentities 179

in different ways. All such attempts have led to differentiatededucation systems, even within
the supposedly comprehensive systems set up by the former Soviet Union in its constituent
republics and subordinated satellite states. However, although all European education
systems do differentiate, they do so in different ways. Each element in each system has,
therefore, to be examined in its individualcontext. Similarly,evaluationof effectivenessneeds
careful examination, as one person's effectiveness may be seen as another person's oppression. Other factors in evaluatingsuch differentiationare whether it is imposed, embraced
or demanded and the degree of either separation or segregation that the state allows within
its education system. By 'separation'it is meant that the differentiationmeans parents/groups
choose or have access to an appropriate form of different educational provision and by
'segregation'it is meant that the state decides on the appropriateform of differentprovision,
with or without the consent of the parents/groupsconcerned. This can be made clearer if
some of the bewilderingrange of differentiationsadopted by education systems are examined.
Education systems can be differentiatedin some or all of the following ways (Coulby & Jones,
1995).
(1) By age-compulsory, post-compulsory, adult and continuing education and education for the elderly.
(2) By attainment-elite educational institutions, such as grammarschools, lyceesand
gymnasia and adult and technical education as against universities.
(3) By attendance-boarding/residential or day institutions, part-time or full-time and
daytime or evening.
(4) By behaviour-separate educational institutions or classes for pupils perceived as
disruptive or separate provision for those convicted of crime.
(5) By contact-classroom or correspondence/radio/TVand distance learning.
(6) By curricula-for example in educational institutions with an agricultural,technical
or other vocational specialism, or military education.
(7) By disability/specialeducational need-'special' educational institutions for pupils
and students with disabilities that make it inappropriate, in the view of the education
authorities, for them to be within mainstream educational institutions, classes or curricula.
(8) By language-educational institutions using one national language and other
educational institutions in the same system using another national language or other languages.
(9) By location-there are frequently differences between educational institutions in
prosperous and poor areas, even though both are funded by the state. Educational institutions in rural or urban areas are again frequently different in their resourcing and curricula.
(10) By nationality-although often seen in terms of religion and/or language, this
category could apply to those educational institutions set up to educate refugee and asylum
seeking students apart from the mainstream state system.
(11) By gender-separate schools or different curricula for boys and girls or men and
women.
(12) By 'race'-segregated educational institutions, both de facto and de jure.
(13) By religion-religious educational institutions/secular educational institutions; in
addition, different educational institutions for differentreligions or denominations within the
one system.
(14) By wealth-state or private educational institutions.
This list is not meant to be exhaustive, nor are the categories mutually exclusive of one
another. What is clear, is that the range of possible differentiationis large and that much of
it is maintained at the expense of those within certain parts of it. Whether this is a good or

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D. Coulby & C. Jones

bad state of affairsmay be argued but no European education system has, in practice, been
able to avoid differentiation.
This partly helps to explain how, more recently, when there have been muted attempts
to bring the same sort of regularityto the schooling systems of the EU, such attempts have
been quicklynipped in the bud by the individualstates. Indeed, if the insights affordedby the
post-modem critique are accurate, the trend is likely to be for greater differentiation,
hopefully examples of separation rather than segregation. However, separation, that is
separation by choice, always raises the issue of whose choice; in other words, how are the
educational rights of the child protected as against those of the parents and/or the relevant
community?
The dilemmas that the individual states face in these respects are grave. If they support
increasingdemands for separateprovision, the stabilityof the state may be threatened. If they
refuse to agree to demands for greaterseparation, they may face internal dissent and, again,
the internal stability of the state may be threatened. The dilemma cannot be avoided and,
within the EU at any rate, the next decade promises to be one of rapid educational change,
with the individual states being squeezed both from above by the EU and other international
groupings and from below, particularlyin relation to demands emanating from the increasing
redefinitionof the concept of a Europe of the nations. Individualeducation systems' attempts
to deal with this reveal no clear trend, as Osler et al. (1996) revealed in their survey of
European trends. It is currently unwise to predict which way debates about structureswill
develop and what educational structureswill consequently evolve. However, the analysisdoes
suggest that greaterdifferentiation,in general, is more likely than less. Similar debates are to
be found in relation to the knowledge that informs educational systems' curricularpractice;
this is the concern of the final paragraphsof this article.
Towards a Post-modern Curriculum?
It is with regard to the school and universitycurriculumthat the theories of post-modernity
have their most obvious salience. This is not least because many post-modernist theories are
actually critiques of knowledge. Given this, it is surprising that the originators of these
theories themselves paid so little attention to education and that educationists in their turn
have been slow to see the importance of post-modernity.
Unfortunately this is not quite so simple a matter as explicating a post-modern critique
of modernist school and university curricularsystems. Despite the power of the Enlightenment Programme and the centrality of education to its success, there have been many
survivalsof traditionalistknowledge within European curricularsystems. Obviously enough,
these focus around religious influence, mainly Christianity,unsurprisinglygiven the analysis
proposed above. Churches retain control of a proportion of higher education in The
Netherlands, England and Belgium. Religious education is a compulsory subject in the
schools of England and Wales, as is a daily act of collective worship. In Poland and Lithuania
the Church exerts huge pressures on the educational system.
Beyond religion there are other traditionalist survivals in the European curriculum.
Sometimes these centre around the way in which educationists have sought to make schools
into a replica of an idealised community. Grundvig's visionary advocacy of the folk high
school has been influential well beyond Denmark (Carlsen & Borga, 1993). Folk songs and
dancing, a sense of community and companionship and commitment to higher traditional
ideals, sometimes religious sometimes secular and the attempt to make the school into a
Gemeinschaftin defence against the encroaching Gesellschaftof modernity; this vision of the
school curriculumhas been influentialacross the Nordic countries and in Germany. They are

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Post-modernity, Education and European Identities

181

currentlyone of the defining philosophies for the reconstitution of the curriculumin Latvian
schools. These threads in the traditionalist curriculum can all too readily be woven into
the Enlightenment Programme,particularlyinsofar as it concerns nationalism. Both religious
studies and the community curriculumcan be utilised to demonstrate the moral rightness of
state decision making or, alternatively,but not exclusively, the identity of the state with the
folk and the community, at its most fallacious, with the nation.
The post-modem critique, then, although directed primarilyagainst modernist knowledge, cannot, at least in educational terms, be understood without an awareness of these
traditionalistcurricularsurvivals.The modernist knowledge system consists of a set of beliefs
and assumptions which are widely held and the school and university curricularselection
criteria have followed from them. Five of the elements of this system may be identified as
relating to the formation of European curricula. Firstly, there is a commitment to the
ineluctable progress towards the ever greater and wider acquisition of an ever increasingly
accurate human knowledge. Secondly, it is primarilythe natural sciences which are seen as
both the true method and the important subject matter of knowledge. Thirdly, there is a
commitment to technical or professional relevance within this knowledge system: it aspires
not only towards truth but towards usefulness and, ultimately, towards practicaleffectiveness
in the place of work or the place of warfare.Fourthly, there is a lack of contention or conflict
regardingboth the subject matter and organisation of the school and university curriculum:
academic subjects are taken at face value and their artificialdivision of human knowledge is
taken as epistemologically and pragmaticallyvalid. Fifthly, as illustratedin detail above, it is
assumed that children and young people will have differentialpossibilities of access to this
knowledge: this may depend upon their social class, gender, culture or (compounding and
legitimating these categories) perceived intelligence. This modernist knowledge system has
been so taken for granted, until the post-modernist critique, that it was hardly identifiable as
such. It had become confused with the whole of human knowledge. In particularit is almost
unquestioned in its role in the formation of European curricular systems which have
functioned to reproduce not only its content but also its uncontested supremacy.
The links between modernist knowledge and the capitalist workplace go beyond the
stress on technology and practicality,which, indeed, have never been overwhelmingthemes
of curriculum selection, certainly not in the UK, though they are important to a greater
extent, in different ways, in France and Germany. Modernist knowledge is stratifiedaccording to the perceived importance of the particularsubject. Whilst the position of a particular
subject within the hierarchymay well vary over time, the hierarchyitself will endure. There
is no conception of an unstratified egalitarianism of knowledge. The psychology which
accompanies this el1itistepistemology is comfortablycongruent. People are regardedas having
innate differentiated abilities. These abilities then equip them to succeed at a particular
subject within the hierarchy.There is a parallel stratificationbetween people and knowledge.
This stratificationis itself suited to or, more strongly, is the function of workplacesand places
of warfarewhich are organised according to a highly stratifieddivision of labour and reward.
Human identity is shaped according to notions of unchangeableintelligence into the study of
particular knowledge areas and thence into suitability for a particular position in society.
School and university curricula and assessment schemes perform the function of shaping
identity within these congruent, modernist views of society, psychology and epistemology.
These processes are invisible to those whose identities are thus shaped. Modernist knowledge
is anyway unapologetic since the illusion of organic unity between theories and between
theory and policy, is key to its holistic project.
One of the most pervasive of the post-modernist critiques, the one which has most
influenced curriculardebates and the one which has aroused the sharpest hostility, is that

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182 D. Coulby& C. Jones

which concerns cultural relativism. In a way this is not the most far-reachingstrand of the
critique which might be better representedby epistemological relativismor by those directly
opposed to the ideals of the EnlightenmentProgramme.Whilst the feminist critiquehas been
pushing at a partly open door, since even among curriculum formulators there are some
women not entirely beguiled by the Enlightenment Programme,the cultural relativistshave
found fewer supporters within the epistemological establishment. It is the post-modernist,
cultural relativist critique which most directly addresses that heterogeneity of European
identities which is one of the themes of this article.
Culturalrelativismassertsthat individualswho are the product of a particularculture are
incapable of judging the value or validity of products and practices of individuals within a
different culture. Its proponents insist that no group can claim to have produced belief
systems, family practices, technical or cultural productions and modes of scientific, astronomical or medical explanation which are in any way inherently superior to those of other
groups. It should be said that the authors are divided on the absolute salience of this central
tenet of relativism. In a sense this does not matter: the astonishing cultural heterogeneity of
the actual population of Europe would itself be an argument for a much more relativistic
approach to the school and university curriculumwithout any resource to argumentationin
terms of truth claims. Thus, if culturalproducts and practices are to be regardedas of equal
value and validity, whether in deference to the diversity of Europe or to the critique of
cultural relativism, this has important implications for the criteria whereby school and
universitycurriculaare determined. Curricularselection is culturalselection. Those members
of the epistemological establishment with the authority to implement this selection have all
too often chosen exclusively from their own national culture or that of the holistic, modernistic European knowledge system.
The current trend in Europe, however, is towards curriculum homogenisation at the
state level, which in turn could lead to greater heterogeneity at the European level. This
process of homogenisation has at least three components: national curricular systems,
the European theme and the discovery/invention of national traditions in emergent and
re-emergent states. The National Curriculumin England and Wales represents perhaps the
most rigid example so far of the shift towards curricular centralism. Even in its revised
post-Dearing version (Coulby & Ward, 1996) it is highly prescriptivewith regardto the way
knowledge is organised: subjects, the epistemological hierarchy-English, mathematics and
science as core subjects for all ages-and its mode of evaluation-national testing at four key
stages. Even the subject matteris specified in clear detail. Whilst the levels of prescriptionand
specificity are now no tighter than previously centralised curricularsystems such as those of
France, Norway (Royal Ministry of Church, Education and Research, 1994) or Ireland, the
rigour of its implementation, with regular school inspections accompanying national testing,
displays a distinct shift. That this shift is also one back to a traditionalist and modernist
curriculum, which is profoundly ethnocentric and overtly nationalistic, has been demonstrated elsewhere (Coulby & Bash, 1991).
The implementation of the Maastricht Treaty and the associated development of the
SOCRATES programmehas meant that the EU has expanded its influence from higher and
vocational education and language teaching into the whole of the school and university
curriculum.Understandably,what the SOCRATES initiativewill be encouragingat all levels
and in all its protocols is the European theme. As discussed above, this theme is highly
problematic. The language programmes of SOCRATES privileges the official languages of
the community over the smaller national languages and over those of urban minority groups
who frequently speak important world languages. The European theme implies a common
European identity, culture, history and scientific programme. Although the EU documen-

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Post-modernity,Educationand EuropeanIdentities 183

tation does not explicitly confuse Europe with the Union, this identificationis all too readily
made in schools and universities. Does the European theme include the histories, science and
culture of Turkey, Lithuania or Malta? The latest tranche of documentation does mark a
change in that the European theme is no longer always explicitly linked to Europe's place in
a wider world. SOCRATES marks another step on the road to the triumphalistEurocentric
curriculumwhich sees (Western) Europe, isolated in pristine perfection, unilaterallycreating
human science and civilisation in the face of the armed and implacable opposition of various
barabaroi.The hidden histories and cultures of less powerful nations will be all the more
easily hidden in this bland self-satisfiedEuropeanisation:the Edinburgh Enlightenment, the
Cordoba caliphate, Norman Sicily, etc. The European theme is increasingly becoming a
barrier against the children and students of Europe understanding the nature of particular
nations and of the wider world.
Hobsbawm (1962) identified the great European powers in the act of nation building.
Here is Italy:
At the moment of unification, in 1860, it has been estimated that not more than 2.5
per cent of its inhabitants actually spoke the Italian language for the ordinary
purposes of life, the rest talking idioms so different that the schoolmasters sent by
the Italian state into Sicily in the 1860s were mistaken for Englishmen. Probably a
much largerpercentage, but still a modest minority, at that date would have thought
of themselves primarilyas Italians. (Hobsbawm, 1962, p. 89)
Schools and universities, as the quotation indicates, were the central institutions of nation
building. This was not only in terms of language teaching but also in the creation and
reproduction of national heroic histories, sacred landscapes, progressive sciences and so on.
This process can currentlybe watched in its early stages in newly emergent and re-emergent
states. Latvia is discovering and rediscovering the folk dances, folk songs, epic poems and
European identity which its rulers believe the school and university system will be able to
employ in order to confuse the state with a nation (Lieven, 1993). This state sees its history
and its future affiliationsto be with Europe, indeed with the EU, just as the previous Soviet
Republic saw its past and future in relation to Russia. In either case the cultural diversityof
the territory and not least the rights of its various language groups have been the casualty.
The population of Europe is heterogeneous in both its national diversity and its urban
diversity. Post-modernism offers insights into the limitations of the Enlightenment Programme and into the difficult heterogeneity of human knowledge. There is a possible
congruence here. If the epistemological establishment could take note of the insights of
post-modernity, the opportunity is there to bring the knowledge taught in schools and
universities more into harmony with the actualities of European diversity. At present the
trend appears to be in the opposite direction. Faced with anti-sexist teaching and multicultural education the epistemological establishmenthas retreatedinto a traditionalist/modernist
fortress. Europe is left in the grip of the conflict between fissiparous knowledge and culture
and fusile curricularsystems.
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