A national curriculum must support schools to build social harmony and cross-cultural understanding. Carolyn Rance reports.

Educators and social commentators are calling on the Rudd government to wind back the policies of the Howard era, which promoted a proliferation of ethno-religious schooling and constrained the ability of the public education system to build social engagement. "Funding from the public purse should be limited to organisations that accept the underpinnings of a secular society and base their teachings on reason and science," says Andrew Jakubowicz, professor of sociology at the University of Technology, Sydney. "Religion has its place within schools that wish to promote faith, so long as children understand the way secularism guarantees that a diversity of faith communities can coexist peacefully."

Today's students are growing up in an era when social, political and environmental challenges demand reasoned responses based on international understanding.

The readiness of young Australians to become confident, tolerant citizens of the planet, able to work cooperatively to resolve complex problems, depends in large part on what they learn and experience in schools, says Jakubowicz, who contributes to the education website Multicultural Australia in the 21st Century and is widely published on issues of race, ethnicity and multiculturalism.

"In the next decade, some of our most important resources will be those that emerge from the interaction of our cultures-from what used to be described as productive diversity. Every state has a curriculum that will allow more to be done to foster multiculturalism, but teachers face limited resources. We need a policy framework and curriculum that helps bridge cultural divides and empowers teachers and students to work through difficult issues."

For generations, state school playgrounds and classrooms have contributed to Australia's social cohesion, enabling young people from many backgrounds to socialise and solve problems together. The multicultural policies of the 1980s and 1990s built on the interactions, drawing migrant children, and their parents, into involvement with the wider Australian society. However funding policies in the Howard years led to a growth in monocultural education situations where students with different backgrounds and values have little opportunity to mix in an unforced way.

Jakubowicz says this is inadequate preparation for adult life in a culturally diverse nation. "Attempting to formally teach tolerance is no substitute for social interaction. People don't know anything about people who are different from themselves [if] they never mix with them."

AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos says now is the time for more emphasis on the things that unite rather than divide. "Howard attempted to make multiculturalism a contestable concept, and this eroded social policy as it related to cultural diversity and global citizenry. Australia became more insular, and the proliferation of ethno-religious schooling exacerbated social division rather than ameliorating it.

"We have to ask ourselves what we need to do now. Insularity is not an option."

Multicultural perspectives

Important questions include how schools should be funded and how all areas of the new national curriculum, including history, can reflect multicultural perspectives, says Gavrielatos. "Curriculum is one of the most powerful forces in a democracy. It reflects what a society believes its future citizens should know and be able to do. It provides students with access to the world of work and future study, and it must articulate and progress social and economic objectives."

Changes to curriculum should include increased emphasis on training and support for teachers of languages other than English, he says. "There is a lot of rhetoric about increasing participation in language study, but no serious effort is being made to map out what needs to be done. Recently announced funding for more Asian language teaching is a pittance.

"Australia is no longer an isolated island. We are part of a global village and need to recognise the breadth of culture and language here and the world."

Jakubowicz says social cohesion at home and the ability to constructively tackle global challenges depends on Australia being truly multicultural rather than a series of monocultures.

He believes Howard era policies-designed to bind immigrants closer to the Anglo-Australian middle ground-ironically led to a licensing of prejudice. "If you are told it's all right to feel proud of who you are and negative about groups you see as threatening, then, when vulnerable and different groups turn up, you might feel authorised to get stuck into them."

Rising unemployment and more emphasis on values-based education may bring some children from fee-charging schools back into the state system, but the Rudd government needs to start winding back payments to faith-based schools, even if this proves electorally unpalatable, says Jakubowicz.

"The first principle must be that government and public institutions are secular. Religion can be accepted as a personal, familial and communal area of emotion and belief, but the state must assert the primary role of reason and science as the underpinning of society."

Carolyn Rance is a freelance journalist.