The kind of cultural identity that public schools should promote

If we take a look at and make a search of the educational issues involving and impacting educational practice hundreds of years ago and those impacting the present, we will find a major common issue: What kind of cultural identity should public schools promote. This issue arose in the past, exists at the present including a larger number of related ideologies and philosophies and perhaps, it will still exist in the future. But looking at the present, and seeing the radical innovations and technological advances made in all sectors such as, medicine, industry, and business, it is a following consequent that this kind of changes and others will influence the sector of education too. Therefore, schools, and particularly public schools, must follow a reformed and renewed kind of education that need to provide their students with. Such kind of education adheres to and is based on five main features: (1) social change and intelligence; (2) freedom; (3) collaborative learning; (4) promotion of cultural continuity; and (5) traditional moral values. Next, follows a reflection on the kind of cultural identity that follows and adheres to these features and, that public schools should promote.
To begin with, public schools must promote a cultural identity that is open to social change. If this is achieved then, many positive effects can arise and improve students’ education. Cultural identity reflects culture and since, culture is influenced and based on occurred social changes, it is then a following consequent that public schools should be open to social change. Because, apart from their academic functions as academic institutions that provide the learning of basic skills and subjects, they should apply another function, more fluid, flexible and responsive to social change and problems and therefore, to become multifunctional and multipurpose institutions that create and provide a climate of multiculturalism (Gutek, 2004). This can be achieved, as Gutek supported, if public schools substitute racial segregation to racial integration, develop educational programs concerning major current social issues such as safe sex, drug and alcohol abuse, AIDS and also, if they provide for vocational preparation, health care, counselling and other social needs. The effective application of such kind of functions can produce great social, economic, and educational benefits to students and therefore, can strengthen their cultural identity.

Relative to social change is human and social intelligence. And this is so, because human and social intelligence enables individuals not only to adjust to social change but also to direct it in order to achieve as many social and economic benefits they can (Gutek, 2004). Therefore, it is the school’s goal through the education it provides to students, to develop, exercise and promote such kind of intelligence. And particularly, as Gutek noted, it must be included in the teachers’ role to encourage the development of social intelligence to students and this, can be achieved if they apply to their teaching methods open discussions and permission to share, question and doubt ideas.

Going further, a feature of the kind of cultural identity that public schools should definitely adhere to and promote, is freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of expression and, freedom from religious controls. Because no cultural identity that an individual “owns” can be called even an identity if the individual has no freedom to do anything. The components involved in the educational process, meaning schools, teachers, students and the curriculum, should be places and sources of freedom of thought, of expression and of action. Particularly, teachers and students must be free to teach and learn respectively, without having their freedom limited by arbitrary controls while, the curriculum of public schools must be open to new ideas, subjects and methods of inquiry that will enable students to have the freedom to pose questions, challenge, doubt, make judgments and decisions, developing by this way important and necessary critical thinking skills (Gutek, 2004). Additionally, the students’ freedom to making choices in the future can be assured if they are taught mutual respect and, as Gutmann noted, students must be provided with those opportunities that will enable them to choose among good lives in the future (Cahn, 1997).

But freedom includes another issue relative to religion, which if applied to the educational process it can prevent the kind of freedom mentioned above. Since, different religions exist in today’s world and since, at schools attend children believing in various religions it is therefore, better that public schools be separated from church and hence, from religious dogmas. Because religious dogmas can restrain freedom of inquiry, it is necessary that public schools be free from religious controls and this can be achieved if religious instruction, observances, prayers and other religious issues are excluded from the educational processes in public schools (Gutek, 2004).

A necessary component of the kind of cultural identity that public schools should promote is collaborative or as Dewey called it associative learning, through which students can become responsible, a characteristic necessary for living in a democratic society. What is meant by collaborative learning is that students can cooperate and work together, share their own needs, interests, aspirations and knowledge in order to jointly solve a problem or face an existing situation. By this way, they not only give solution to the particular problem but they also learn how to work as responsible individuals who learn by doing, and as members of a particular group while, this group membership of them is flexible and can change based on their interests (Gutek, 2004).

Public schools should promote a kind of cultural identity that follows and is based on, as Bentham defined it, the principle of utility. This principle assumes that curriculum and instruction can be reformed by the incorporation of new areas of knowledge, of new subjects and skills and, the removal of obsolete ones, making by this way schools more relevant and efficient, producing better effects to students as well as to teachers and, making the curriculum and methods of instruction more relevant to socioeconomic changes that reflect technological innovations, advances and scientific discoveries (Gutek, 2004). In addition to these, as Gutek stated, basic skills such as reading, writing, and calculating can remain as they are but can be taught with innovative methods while, specific subjects such as, history, science, language, literature and mathematics can be reformed and revised by incorporating new developments and insights.

The above reflections on the kind of cultural identity that public schools should promote, presuppose some changes to be done from those holding the reins of the educational process, meaning schools, teachers, students and the curriculum. But there are also some already existing features that must be part of the cultural identity that public schools should promote. Because as with every sector, whether that is industry, medicine or business, similarly with education, you cannot produce changes or improvements without the existence of some underpinnings. You must build and make changes and improvements on those existing underpinnings.
Particularly, through the educational process, public schools can achieve various changes as long as those changes are linked to and reinforce the cultural heritage. It is unconceivable for students not to know and not to be informed about what existed before them, not to know about their cultural heritage. Hence, if public schools want to perform their function better, they must transmit this heritage (traditions, skills, knowledge and, values) to students and make sure that they promote cultural continuity through the teaching of specific subjects such as, language, history, literature, and the arts (Gutek, 2004). But students must know not only the traditions of their own subculture but also the traditions of other subcultures in order that they are given, by this way, the opportunity to understand, appreciate and, love what is good in those traditions (Appiah, 2007). This constitutes also a good way for providing students with a multicultural education.

In addition to these, the kind of cultural identity that public schools should promote must emphasize traditional moral values such as, honesty, fairness, self-discipline, personal responsibility, love of country, liberty and equality. Apart from basic skills and knowledge such as, reading, writing and history, students as Jefferson supported, must be educated also in their rights, interests, and duties as men and citizens and therefore, the goal of education should be to improve not only one’s faculties but also one’s morals (Gutek, 2004).
Democracy’s survival depends upon our transmitting to each new generation the political vision of liberty and equality that unites us as Americans…Such values are neither revealed truths nor natural habits. There is no evidence that we are born with them. Devotion to human dignity and freedom, to equal rights, to social and economic justice, to the rule of law, to civility and truth, to tolerance of diversity, to mutual assistance, to personal and civic responsibility, to self-restraint and self-respect-all these must be taught and learned (Galston, 1998, p.472).

Furthermore, if schools want to teach morality, and help students develop good moral and civic character and therefore, transmit to them a moral foundation, they must expose students to such kind of character and, this can be best achieved if the main instruments of the educational process embody sound convictions. “As Oxford’s Mary Warnock has written. “You cannot teach morality without being committed to morality yourself, and you cannot be committed to morality yourself without holding that some things are right and others wrong”” (Gutek, 2004, p.211). Additionally, if character education is going to be provided to students, it must be depended on the identification and description of exemplars (Noddings, 2006). Therefore, students must have some real persons whose behavior must “watch” in order that they identify, consider and hence, attain by themselves a particular moral value. And the best real persons that can be “offered” as exemplars to students are their teachers, principals and, parents.

In conclusion, the kind of cultural identity that public schools should promote and, that was defined and reflected previously, it can be said is mostly a liberal one, though it adheres some features of Conservatism. Public schools must make reforms but preserve some procedures, processes, features and, underpinnings of existing educational practice. Therefore, they must build on those underpinnings, promote, and provide by this way the best, most suitable and appropriate kind of cultural identity to their students that will accordingly, provide them with the best education as possible.

References
Appiah, K.A (2007) Culture, Subculture, Multiculturalism: Educational Options. In:
Curren, R. (Ed.). Philosophy of Education: An anthology. (pp.255-265). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Cahn, S. (1997) Classic and contemporary readings in the philosophy of education.
New York: McGraw Hill.

Galston, W. (1998) Civic Education in the Liberal State. In: Rorty, A. (Ed.).
Philosophers on education: New historical perspectives (pp.470-480). New York: Routledge.

Gutek. G.L. (2004) Philosophical and ideological voices in education. Boston:
Pearson Education.

Noddings, N. (2006). Philosophy of education (2nd ed). Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.