In 1997 Nathan Glazer declared 'We are all multiculturalists now' in his examination of US educational policies; a claim that seemed even more true in Australia. Fifteen years on, the Australian federal government renewed its multicultural vows, bucking an international trend after a decade of criticisms of multiculturalism. For some, largely from the right, multiculturalism was seen to erode social harmony and national values, demanding a return to an emphasis on integration. For others, multiculturalism represented a problematic response to Australia's complex cultural diversity, seen emphatically in its schools. A plethora of labels have emerged to grapple with these circumstances - post-multiculturalism, intercultural understanding, cultural inclusivity and so on - but they have often emerged out of theoretical debate, not empirical research.
This paper will do three things. First, drawing on data from research in NSW government schools, it argues that the dominant form of multicultural education as practised in many schools, continues to fashion ethnic diversity as a form of exoticism through pedagogies of difference which reify those differences, often pathologizing them through schemas of perception that tend more towards forms of exclusion than inclusion. This multiculturalism is a poor fit with the cultural complexity of nations like Australia. It promotes an unreflective civility that, while providing a gloss of acceptance, may yield little more than a superficial, moralistic discourse about community harmony. Far from achieving a 'cosmopolitan' sensibility, this approach, when tested, reveals the fragility of a multiculturalism that emphasises culture as difference.
Second, it argues that a sustained empirical analysis of schools and their communities also demonstrates an 'ordinary cosmopolitanism' amongst many students and parents. This is not the cosmopolitanism of elites, characterised as practices of distinction through the consumption of exotic otherness, but pragmatic negotiations of difference premised on nuanced understandings of the interplay of sameness and difference, affinities and conflicts. Third, it suggests these understandings form the basis of a reinvention of educational programs that address the challenges of culturally diverse societies. Such a program would focus on developing reflexive civility, an ethos of intercultural 'conviviality' premised not on a utopian cosmopolitan vision, but the formation of a 'cultural intelligence' which develops students' critical capacities for understanding the social relations and cultural complexity of a globalized world.