1 Introduction
Global migration, the rise of populist nationalism, and the quest by diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups for recognition, civic equality, and structural inclusion within their nation-states have complicated the attainment of citizenship in countries around the world. In a number of nations, including Canada (Joshee & Thomas, 2017), England (Tomlinson, 2009), and France (Bozec, 2017), populist nationalism and a push for social cohesion have arisen in response to globalization, migration, and “super-diversity” (Vertovec, 2007). Nations in Europe such as England, the
The challenges of inclusion and citizenship within Western nations have been manifested in recent years by the conflicts between police officers and communities of color and the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) in the United States (Taylor, 2016), the large number of people from nations such as Syria and Iraq who have fled their homelands seeking refuge in European nations, and the terrorist attacks that occurred in cities such as Paris and San Bernardino, California, in 2015, and in Manchester and London, England, in 2017. The xenophobia that has targeted immigrants and mobilized angry populist groups in a number of Western nations was among the factors that led to the passage of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, the popularity of conservative political leaders such as Marine Le Pen of the National Front Party in France, and the election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president. These developments and events have stimulated renewed, contentious, and polarized political discussions and debates about the extent to which Western nations can and should structurally integrate diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups into their nation-states and provide opportunities for them to become fully integrated and participatory citizens in the polity (Bawer, 2006; Murray, 2017).
2 Citizens within Democratic Nation-States
Citizens have certain rights and privileges within a democratic nation-state and are entitled to its protection. They are also expected to be loyal to the nation-state. This minimal definition of citizen lacks the thickly textured and complex discussions and meanings of citizenship in multicultural democratic nations that have been developed by scholars such as Kymlicka (1995, 2017), Gutmann (2004), and Gonçalves e Sliva (2004). These scholars state that citizens within democratic pluralistic nation-states should endorse the overarching ideals of the nation-state such as justice and equality, be committed to the maintenance and perpetuation of these ideals, and be willing to take action to help close the gap between their nation’s ideals and practices that violate those ideals, such as racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination and economic inequality. Bosniak (2006) also describes multiple dimensions and
In this article, I describe a typology of citizenship that consists of (a) failed citizenship, (b) recognized citizenship, (c) participatory citizenship, and (d) transformative citizenship (see Table 1.1). Marginalized and structurally excluded ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups experience failed citizenship because they are denied many of the rights of full citizenship and consequently develop complex identities and ambivalent attachments to the nation-state. Individuals and groups who are not structurally included within the political and cultural systems of their nation-state lack political efficacy and consequently participate at low levels in the political system. They often do not vote because they believe that their votes will not make a difference and that politicians don’t care about them. Most have negative views of politicians (Cohen, 2010).
Citizenship typology
| Failed citizenship |
| Failed citizenship exists when individuals or groups who are born within a nation or migrate to it and live within it for an extended period of time do not internalize the values and ethos of the nation-state, feel structurally excluded within it, and have highly ambivalent feeling toward it. Individuals who experience failed citizenship focus primarily on their own needs for political efficacy, group identity, and structural inclusion rather than the overarching and shared goals of the nation-state. Their allegiance and commitment to the nation-state is eclectic and complex. |
| Recognized citizenship |
| Recognized citizenship exists when a state or nation publicly recognizes an individual or group as a legitimate, legal, and valued member of the polity and provides the individual or group full rights and opportunities to participate. Although recognized citizenship status gives individuals and groups the right and opportunity to fully participate in the civic community of the nation-state, it does not require their participation. Individuals who have state-recognized citizenship status participate in the polity at very different levels, including nonparticipation. |
| Participatory citizenship |
| Participatory citizenship is exercised by individuals and groups who have been granted recognized citizenship by the nation-state. It takes place when individuals with citizenship rights take actions as minimal as voting to influence political decisions in their communities, nations, and the world to actualize existing laws and conventions. An example of participatory citizenship is the action taken by civil rights groups to enable African Americans to vote after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson on August 6, 1965. |
| Transformative citizenship |
| Transformative citizens take action to implement and promote policies, actions, and changes that are consistent with values such as human rights, social justice, and equality. The actions that transformative citizens take might – and sometimes do – violate existing local, state, and national laws. Examples are actions taken by transformative citizens such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks that violated national laws but helped actualize values such as human rights and social justice and eliminate institutionalized discrimination and racism. |
Individuals and groups that are recognized citizens are structurally integrated into the nation-state, have strong identifications with it, are publicity recognized and validated as citizens, and have the opportunity to fully participate in the polity. I maintain that institutions and structures within nation-states need to enable marginalized and structurally excluded ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious groups to attain recognized and participatory citizenship to create democratic and inclusive nation-states, actualize social justice and equality, and help the diverse groups within the polity to develop thoughtful and reflective national identities and attachments. Policymakers and educational leaders within nations that are grappling with diversity and citizenship need to realize that individuals and groups that are structurally excluded may not be peacefully apathetic and that structural exclusion produces alienation, resistance, and insurgency. Failed citizenship is antithetical to a fully functioning democratic, inclusive, and just nation-state.
In the second part of this article, I describe ways in which schools have contributed to failed citizenship by using assimilationist approaches to civic education that required minoritized students from diverse groups to deny their home cultures and languages. I then describe how schools can reduce failed citizenship by implementing transformative approaches to civic education that will enable marginalized and structurally excluded groups to become recognized and participatory citizens who are fully integrated into the polity while retaining significant aspects of their community cultures and languages. I also describe ways in which schools are limited in the extent to which they can reduce failed citizenship. I conclude this article by depicting the limited but significant effects of schools.
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The typology described in this article is a Weberian conception because the four categories approximate but do not describe reality in its total complexity. The categories are useful conceptual tools for thinking about citizenship socialization and citizenship education. Although the four categories are conceptually distinct, in reality they overlap and are interrelated in a dynamic way. For example, individuals must be recognized by the state as legal and legitimate citizens before they can become participatory citizens who can take actions such as voting on political candidates or referenda. However, as illustrated in Figure 1.1, failed, recognized, and participatory citizens can all take transformative actions to make fundamental changes within the nation that promote social justice and equality. Individuals and groups do not have to be recognized citizens to take transformative citizenship action. The African American college students who sat down at a lunch counter reserved for Whites at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, had few citizenship rights but were able to effectively protest racial segregation laws.
The interrelationship of the types of citizenship. This figure illustrates how the typology of citizenship described in this article is a fluid and complex concept. The four categories of citizenship are interrelated rather than discrete and distinct
The four types of citizenship conceptualized and detailed in this article can be used to describe and analyze the civic behavior of any racial, ethnic,
Individuals and groups who experience failed citizenship may become recognized citizens if the polity provides them with increased recognition and structural inclusion. Recognized citizens may become participatory citizens in various phases of their lives. Failed, recognized, and participatory citizens engage in transformative citizen action when they work to promote policies, actions, and changes that promote values such as human rights, social justice, and equality. This action may disrupt existing customs and laws.
3.1 Noncitizens and Citizens
I am making an important distinction in this article between action taken by individuals who are citizens to influence and shape policies in the polity and action taken by noncitizens. Kymlicka (2017) argues compellingly that citizenship theorists should distinguish civic education for citizens and noncitizens because they should have overlapping but distinct aims. The focus of civic education for noncitizens should be on expanding their human rights. Civic education for citizens should include human rights but emphasize helping individuals from diverse groups learn how to become fully participating citizens in the polity while retaining important aspects of their home and community cultures. Kymlicka is concerned because some citizenship education theorists view national citizenship as increasingly obsolete because of global migration, the weakening of national borders caused by globalization, and the increasing recognition of the influence of supranational bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO. In the conceptualization of the types of citizenship in this article, individuals who are noncitizens can take actions that foster human rights and that may violate existing laws and customs. However, I do not classify these individuals as engaged in transformative citizenship because they are not citizens. Rather, I classify their actions as transformative civic action.
4 Balancing the Needs of the Polity and the Aspirations of Minoritized Groups
One of the challenges of diverse democratic nation-states is to provide opportunities for different groups to maintain aspects of their community cultures
To create a unified and cohesive polity, both marginalized groups and the nation-state must negotiate and make concessions. The state must be willing to provide recognition for marginalized groups such as incorporating aspects of their cultures and symbols into the nation’s master narrative and legitimizing their home and community languages. Minoritized cultural and language groups must be willing to learn and speak the lingua franca of the nation-state, understand its constitution and laws, and develop patriotism to the nation that is “manifest in collective rituals that express pride in one’s country” (Banks et al., 2005, p. 23). However, patriotism is a double-edge sword because “it comprises both positive and dangerously negative attitudes. In the name of patriotism, intolerance toward dissent groups has been propagated, freedom of speech restricted, and an arbitrary consensus imposed” (Banks et al., 2005, p. 23). Consequently, the teaching of critical patriotism should be a priority in schools in democratic multicultural nation-states, which consists of reasoned and reflective loyalty (Malin, Ballard, Attai, Colby, & Damon, 2014).
5 Recognized, Participatory, Failed, and Transformative Citizenship
I conceptualize recognized citizenship as a status that is publicly sanctioned and acknowledged by the state. The state views these individuals and groups as legitimate, legal, and valued members of the polity and provides them with the opportunity to participate fully in the nation-state. This status does not mean that the individual or group actually participates but has the opportunity and potential to participate as fully functioning members of the polity. When recognized citizenship expands and becomes inclusive, the social, cultural, economic, and political systems of the nation facilitate the structural inclusion of marginalized individuals and groups into its major institutions. Consequently, individuals and groups who become recognized citizens have the potential to develop strong attachments, allegiances, and identities with the nation-state or polity.
The attainment of recognized citizenship status gives individuals and groups the right and opportunity to fully participate in the civic community of the nation-state. However, it does not guarantee their participation. Consequently,
Transformative citizens take actions to actualize values and moral principles that transcend the nation-states and national boundaries, such as the values that are articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that were articulated and promoted by civil and human rights leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. The action taken by transformative citizens often means that they must violate existing local, state, or national laws to promote cosmopolitan and universal values. Rosa Parks and the African American students who participated in sit-ins and marches during the civil rights movement of the 1960s violated existing segregation laws when they protested against them. Given the widespread social and economic inequalities within nations around the world, transformative citizen action is required to actualize justice and equality within most nation-states. Transformative citizens share characteristics with the “social-justice citizen” described by Westheimer and Kahne (2004) who “critically assesses social, political, and economic structures to see beyond surface causes” and “seeks out and addresses areas of injustice” (p. 240).
Individuals and groups that experience failed citizenship are denied many of the rights and privileges of citizenship because of their racial, cultural, linguistic, or religious characteristics. They are likely to participate in protest, civil disobedience, and resistance (C. E. Sleeter, personal communication, November 10, 2015). People who experience failed citizenship may also be more likely than structurally integrated individuals to accept and be victimized by the propaganda of extremist groups such as White nationalist groups and the Islamic
6 Citizenship Socialization
Participatory citizenship socialization occurs when individuals who live within a nation-state internalize it basic values and symbols, acquire an allegiance to these values, and are willing to take action to actualize these values and protect and defend the nation-state if it is endangered. Citizenship socialization fails and is unsuccessful when individuals who are born within the nation or migrate to it and live within it for an extended period of time do not internalize the values and ethos of the nation-state, feel structurally excluded within it, and who have highly ambivalent toward it. In this article, I call this phenomenon failed citizenship and will—through the discussion of the experiences of marginalized ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups in different nations—identify factors that cause failed citizenship, political alienation, and ambivalent identities among individuals and groups who feel structurally excluded and politically apart from their nation-states.
These groups often lack political efficacy and experience failed citizenship because they are required to become alienated from their cultures, languages, and communities in order to be viewed and treated as recognized and participatory citizens of their nation-states. Historically in immigrant nations such as the United States, Australia, and Canada, indigenous and immigrant groups have been required to abandon their cultural, linguistic, and religious characteristics in order to be viewed and treated as fully recognized and participatory citizens. They have experienced cultural self-alienation and dehumanizing assimilation that Spring (2004) calls “deculturalization”. Valenzuela (1999) refers to this process as “subtractive schooling” when it takes place in schools.
Individuals and groups that experience failed citizenship frequently develop complex and ambivalent identities with the nation-state and low levels of allegiance to it. They usually participate at minimum levels in the political system of the state. Although excluded racial, cultural, linguistics, and religious groups usually have identities with the nation-state, their identities are complex and multidimensional because they have strong identities with their cultural communities and sometimes with their original homelands. Because of both their marginalized status and multiple identities, they often focus on their particularistic goals and issues rather than the overarching interests and goals of the nation-state. Their first and primary identity is their ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic, or religious group rather than the nation-state. They focus primarily on their cultural needs and empowerment rather than the universal priorities of the nation-state in order to attain the cultural capital, recognition, and power required to attain structural inclusion and participate in equal-status interactions with dominant and mainstream groups.
Sizemore (1972) hypothesizes that excluded groups within capitalist nations must acquire power and economic capital before they can attain structural inclusion and engage in equal-status interactions with mainstream hegemonic groups. Sizemore’s conceptualization indicates that excluded and marginalized groups will not attain recognized and participatory citizenship status until they have acquired what Collins (2000) calls the “power of self-definition” (p. 97). Intellectual and political leaders of indigenous groups such as the Maori in New Zealand, Native Americans in the United States, and the Kurds in Turkey view the attainment of cultural integrity, autonomy, and self-determination as essential for their citizenship participation in the polity. These groups view their citizenship as dual and multidimensional—they are citizens of their indigenous lands and “nations” or territories as well as citizens of the polity.
Kymlicka (2011) maintains that “multination states” that have national groups such as Native Americans in the United States, the Maori in New
Historically, the Western immigrant nations such as the United States and Australia did not make provisions for multidimensional conceptions of citizenship that included strong identities and attachments to community cultures or to “nations” or territories within the nation-state. Indigenous and immigrant groups were required to become alienated from their home, community, or territorial cultures in order to become valid, recognized, and participatory citizens of the nation-state. However, citizenship should be expanded to include cultural rights and self-determination in addition to civic, political, and social rights (Banks, 2008, 2016, 2017). Ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups should not have to experience self-alienation or deculturalization to be recognized, participatory, and full citizens of the polity.
7 Factors That Lead to Participatory Citizenship
When participatory citizenship occurs, the social, cultural, economic, and political systems facilitate the structural inclusion of marginalized individuals and groups into the nation-state and its dominant institutions. Consequently, individuals and groups who attain recognized and participatory citizenship can develop strong attachments, allegiances, and identities with the nation-state or polity. Individuals and groups within a nation-state who are recognized and participatory citizens speak the official language or languages of the nation; have cultural values and behaviors that are idealized, valued, and publicity recognized within the nation; and can fully participate in the public and civic cultures of the nation-state. They can also exercise considerable power in the political system.
The successful and dominant groups in most nations usually view themselves as the founders of the nation even though there may have been indigenous groups living in the territory in which the nation is now located. Recognized and participatory citizens have strong identities with the nation-state and view their culture and the culture of the nation-state as synonymous. In the Western immigrant nations such as Australia, Canada, and the United
Recognized and participatory citizenship groups that exercise the most power within a nation-state tend to view their interests as identical to those of the polity and the “public interest” and the interests of minoritized and marginalized groups as “special interests” (Huntington, 2004; Schlesinger, 1991). Political dominant groups also tend to marginalize the interests of groups such as Mexican Americans and American Indians by labeling them identity groups. The ways in which they describe identity groups suggest that only marginalized groups such as Mexican Americans, African Americans, and other minoritized groups are identity groups. Yet as Gutmann (2003) insightfully points out, mainstream groups such as Anglo-Americans and the Boy Scouts of America are also identity groups.
8 Diversity and Failed Citizenship in Different Nations
Ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups that experience failed citizenship exist in nations around the world—including the Kurds in Turkey, Muslims in France, the Uyghur people in China, and the Chechens in Russia. I recognize that the Kurds in Turkey as well as the Chechens in Russia seek political self-determination, independence, and nationalism. However, I view them as experiencing failed citizenship within Turkey and Russia because they are prevented from attaining recognized and participatory citizenship and consequently are not able to function as full citizens in the polity.
Failed citizenship is a fluid and complex and not an absolute concept. In other words, some groups experience failed citizenship barriers at greater levels than others. The position of the Chechens in Russia is an example of a very high level of failed citizenship because the Chechens are seeking separation from Russia to form their own nation. In Australia, the Aborigines have a high level of failed citizenship whereas the Greeks have attained significant levels of structural and civic inclusion into Australian life.
The citizenship status of African Americans in the United States has both failed and participatory citizenship characteristics. Their situation is multifaceted and intricate. In many ways, African Americans are structurally integrated into the political, economic, and cultural institutions of the United States and are recognized citizens. However, they have not attained full citizenship
Social class significantly influences the citizenship status of African Americans, as Wilson (1978) perceptively points out in his important and controversial book, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. Although African Americans do not enjoy full citizenship rights in the United States primarily because of institutionalized racism and discrimination (Feagin, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2004), social class mediates the effects of race. The higher their social class, the more political, social, and cultural opportunities African Americans have. However, regardless of their social class, race still remains an intractable barrier. The racial microaggressions that many middle-class and upper-middle-class African Americans experience indicate that social class mobility reduces but does not eliminate racial categorization and stigmatization (Feagin, 2000). In her moving and eloquent commencement address presented at Tuskegee University in 2015, former First Lady Michelle Obama describes some of the painful racial microaggressions she experienced after Barack Obama became president of the United States (Obama, 2015).
The experience of Muslims in France is a significant and complex example of failed citizenship. Since the 1960s and 1970s, the French have dealt with immigrant groups in ways distinct from the United States, Canada, and Australia. La laïcité is a highly influential concept in France, the aim of which is to keep church and state separate (Bozec, 2017; Lemaire, 2009). La laïcité emerged in response to the hegemony the Catholic Church exercised in France over the schools and other institutions for several centuries. A major goal of state schools in France is to assure that youth obtain a secular education. Consequently, just as Catholic students may not wear a crucifix, Muslim students in French state schools may not wear the hijab (veil) or any other religious symbols (Bowen, 2007). In France, the explicit goal is assimilation (called integration) and inclusion (Castles, 2004). Requiring immigrants to surrender their languages and cultures to become full citizens of France contributes to the development of barriers that result in failed citizenship.
9 Schools as a Factor in Failed Citizenship
Assimilationist conceptions of citizenship require individuals and groups to give up their first languages and cultures to become recognized and participatory citizens in the civic community of the nation-state. These conceptions are major factors that result in individuals and groups experiencing failed
Research recently done in South Africa suggests that not only can ethnic and national identity be compatible, but they can be mutually supportive … James Gibson (2004) found that the correlations between ethnic and group identification and the importance and pride associated with being a South African were universally positive, arguing against the hypothesis that strong group identification is incompatible with strong national identification. (p. 94)
The scholarship of citizenship theorists such as Kymlicka (1995), Young (2000), Gutmann (2004), and Ladson-Billings (2004) indicate that students from cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religiously diverse communities will find it difficult to develop strong commitments and identities with the nation-state if it does not reflect and incorporate important aspects of their ethnic and community cultures. Gutmann calls this phenomenon “recognition” and argues that students need to experience civic equality and recognition to develop civic commitments and allegiance to their nation-state. The young men who were arrested for the bombings of London’s transport vehicles on July 7, 2005, were British citizens who grew up in Leeds but apparently had a weak identity with the nation-state and non-Muslim British citizens. Citizenship education theory and research indicate that recognition and structural inclusion are required for marginalized groups to develop and internalize a deep commitment to the nation-state and its cultural values and become full
Historically, however, schools in the United States—as well as schools in other nations such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and China (Banks, 2004; Postiglione, 2009b)—have alienated marginalized students from their histories and cultures when trying to make them citizens. Nation-states tried to create unity by forcing racial, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minoritized groups to give up their community languages and cultures to participate in the national civic culture. These actions have resulted in significant failed citizenship in various nations. In the United States, Mexican American students were punished for speaking Spanish in school, and Native American youth were forced to attend boarding schools in which their cultures and languages were eradicated (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). “Kill the Indian and save the man”, a statement made in 1882 that is attributed to Captain Richard Henry Pratt, epitomizes the assimilationist goals of the boarding schools to which American Indians were sent in the United States (Peterson, 2013). Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, which was the first off-reservation boarding school established in the United States for Native Americans. Some teachers used soap to wash the mouths of Mexican American students who spoke Spanish in schools in Southwestern states such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. First Nations students in Canada were sent to boarding schools in which they experienced forced assimilation and their languages and cultures were eradicated (Barman, Hébert, & McCaskill, 1986).
Aboriginal children were taken from their families and forced to live on state missions and reserves in Australia (Broome, 1982), a practice that lasted from 1869 to 1969. These children are called “the stolen generation”. Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, issued a formal apology to the stolen generation on February 13, 2008. In China, Tibetan students were sent to boarding schools where their culture and language received little recognition and were marginalized (Postiglione, 2009a). To embrace the national civic culture, students from diverse groups must feel that it reflects their experiences, hopes, and dreams. Institutions such as schools cannot marginalize the cultures of individuals and groups and expect them to feel structurally included within the nation and develop a strong allegiance to it. When institutions such as schools, museums, and courts marginalize the cultures of minoritized and stigmatized groups, they create alienation and failed citizenship. Civic educators within multicultural nation-states should realize that many students from diverse groups are negotiating multiple and complex identities and require cultural recognition and rights as essential parts of their citizenship identities (Abu El-Haj & Bonet, 2011).
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The school can help reduce failed citizenship and enable students to acquire structural inclusion, political efficacy, and civic action skills by implementing transformative citizenship education. In the next sections of this article, I describe four interventions that can be used to actualize transformative citizenship education in schools: (a) social studies teaching, (b) culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy, (c) civic action programs, and (d) ethnic studies teaching.
10.1 Social Studies Teaching
An important goal of civic education should be to help students from marginalized groups become recognized and participatory citizens by attaining a sense of structural integration and inclusion within their nation-states and clarified national identities (Banks, 2017). Research indicates that the content and methods of school-based civic and multicultural education can promote structural inclusion. Research by Callahan and Muller (2013) indicates that the civic knowledge that students attain and the high levels of social connection within schools increase the civic efficacy and political participation of immigrant students. Consequently, courses that teach civic knowledge within classrooms and schools that promote high levels of social connection among students can help them develop a sense of structural inclusion. Research also indicates that social studies coursework can increase the political participation of students who have immigrant parents. Research reviewed by Obenchain and Callahan (2015) indicates “a direction association between the number of social studies credits completed and the probability of voting among children of immigrant parents” (p. 127).
Theoretical and empirical work by civic education scholars such as Parker (2003) and Dabach (2015) provide compelling evidence that visionary schools and teachers can help marginalized students increase their sense of civic inclusion and belonging within their communities and nation-state. Parker (1996, 2003) advances a theory and a teaching strategy—deliberation—for deepening democracy in schools and society, enhancing citizen participation, and extending democracy to cultural, ethnic, racial, and linguistic communities. In a two-year qualitative study, Dabach identified a teacher who humanized the experiences of undocumented families and students by using deportation narratives that actively engaged marginalized students in her civic classroom.
10.2 Culturally Responsive and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
The research on culturally responsive teaching by scholars such as Ladson-Billings (1994), Au (2011), Lee (2007), and Gay (2010) indicate that students of
Au (1980) found that if teachers used participation structures in lessons that were similar to the Hawaiian speech event “talk story”, the reading achievement of Native Hawaiian students increased significantly. Lee’s (2007) research indicates that the achievement of African American students increase when they are taught literary interpretation with lessons that use the African American practice of signifying. Moll, Amanti, Neff, and González (1992) found that when teachers gain an understanding of the “funds of knowledge” of Mexican American households and community networks—and incorporate this knowledge into their teaching—Mexican American students become more active and engaged learners.
A study by Ladson-Billings (1995) indicates that the ability to scaffold student learning by bridging home and community cultures is one of the important characteristics of effective teachers of African American students. Paris (2012) contends that culturally responsive pedagogy is necessary but not sufficient. He maintains that effective teaching strategies for minoritized students should not only be responsive to their cultures and languages but should also help them maintain or sustain important aspects of their languages and cultures while they are learning the knowledge and skills required to function effectively in the mainstream culture. Paris calls this strategy “culturally sustaining pedagogy” (p. 93). He writes:
The term culturally sustaining requires that our pedagogies be more than responsive of or relevant to the cultural experiences and practices of young people—it requires that they support young people in sustaining the cultural and linguistic competence of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural competence. (p. 95)
10.3 Civic Action Programs
A number of researchers have created and implemented youth participatory action research (YPAR), service learning, and community-action projects that have enabled students from diverse groups to increase their academic knowledge, political efficacy, and political participatory skills (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Mirra, Garcia, & Morrell, 2016). When students participate in
10.4 Ethnic Studies Teaching
Students from cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religiously diverse communities will find it difficult to develop strong commitments and identities with the nation-state if the institutions within the nation such as museums, libraries, schools, and other public sites do not reflect and incorporate important aspects of their ethnic and community cultures. The incorporation of ethnic studies into the school curriculum is an effective way to help students from diverse groups experience a sense of structural inclusion as well as improve their academic engagement and achievement. In her review of studies on the academic and social effects of ethnic studies, Sleeter (2011) concluded that “there is considerable research evidence that well designed and well-taught ethnic studies curricula have positive academic and social outcomes for students” (p. viii).
More recent studies have revealed the positive effects of ethnic studies teaching on student academic engagement and achievement. The Mexican American Studies program that was implemented in the Tucson, Arizona, school district was designed to help Mexican American students attain a sense of inclusion within the curriculum by providing a history of the United States that gave their culture and history visibility and recognition (Cammarota, 2007). Another aim of the course was to increase the academic engagement and achievement of Mexican American students, which the developers of the program assumed would be attained by the visibility given to Mexican American history and culture in the curriculum. Cabrera, Milem, Jaquette, and Marx (2014), in a rigorously designed study of the effects of the program, found that it had positive effects on the academic engagement and achievement of the students who took the course. The program evoked a chorus of criticism from influential conservative politicians in Arizona in part because it viewed the history of institutionalized discrimination and racism in the United States
Dee and Penner (2016) examined the effects of an ethnic studies course on several variables related to high school persistence and academic achievement such as attendance, grade point average, and credits earned. Their sample consisted of 1,405 ninth-grade high-risk students in the San Francisco Unified School District. They concluded that the ethnic studies course had “large positive effects on each of [the] student outcomes” (p. 3). The researchers think that the teachers’ use of critical pedagogies and culturally responsive teaching in which they incorporated the cultures of their students were important factors that contributed to the success of the ethnic studies course.
11 The Limited but Significant Effects of Schools
In maintaining that schools can facilitate the structural inclusion of marginalized students and therefore reduce failed citizenship and the barriers it creates, I am keenly aware of the limitations of schools and the claims made by their revisionist critics. In 1972, Greer published a scathing critique and revisionist interpretation of schools that argued that the belief that schools taught and exemplified democracy was the “great school legend”. The schools not only did not teach or promote democracy, argued Greer, they perpetuated social class stratification and reinforced the class divisions within the larger society. Bowles and Gintis (1976), in their erudite and complex Marxist analysis of U.S. schools, reinforced and extended Greer’s thesis. Anyon (1996) also described the significant ways in which schools reflect the social, economic, and political contexts in which they are embedded.
Although he describes the limitations of schools, Noguera (2003) views schools as vehicles for change and transformation. Noguera’s background as a sociologist compels him to conclude that schools are limited by their social and political contexts. However, his experiences as a teacher, parent, and school board member are the source of his strong belief that schools can transform the lives of students and promote equality and social justice. In his book, City Schools and the American Dream: Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education, as well as in his other articles and books, Noguera’s hopeful and inspiring work helps restore our faith in the ability of schools to create possibilities for students who are victimized by failed citizenship. Noguera argues that schools in low-income communities are desperately needed by the students and communities they serve. Consequently, they are essential for the realization of social justice, equality, and successful citizenship socialization.
The narrow and assimilationist conceptions of citizenship education that are normative in most nations in the world are causing many individuals and groups from marginalized and structurally excluded racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups to experience failed citizenship (Banks, 2017; Banks, Suárez-Orozco, & Ben-Peretz, 2016). Minoritized and immigrant individuals and groups have nuanced and complex identities with their cultural communities and nation-states that require that multidimensional conceptions of citizenship be implemented within nations and schools. The nuanced, complex, and evolving identities of the youth described in studies by researchers such as Abu El-Haj (2007) and Nguyen (2011) indicate that assimilationist notions of citizenship are ineffective today because of the deepening diversity throughout the world and the quests by marginalized immigrant, ethnic, cultural, racial, linguistic, and religious groups for cultural recognition and rights.
Schools need to work to reduce failed citizenship by implementing transformative civic education programs that promote multicultural citizenship (Kymlicka, 1995, 2017) and recognize the right and need for students to maintain commitments to their cultural communities as well as the nation-states in which they live. Global migration, the quest by marginalized groups for self-determination and efficacy, and the rising populist nationalism and xenophobia in nations around the world require a reexamination of the ends and means of citizenship education if it is to promote structural inclusion and civic equality and reduce failed citizenship and its barriers that prevent minoritized students from becoming recognized, participatory, and transformative citizens.
Acknowledgements
I presented versions of this article at the annual conference of the Korean Association for Multicultural Education (KAME), April 30 through May 2, 2015, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea; in the Education, Equity, and Society (EES)
Author’s Note
This chapter originally appeared as Banks, James A. (2017). Failed citizenship and transformative civic education. Educational Researcher, 46(7), 366–377. doi: 10.3102/0013189X17726741 Reprinted here with permission from Sage Publications. The exclusive rights of this chapter are owned by Sage and permission for any further reuse must be obtained from Sage.
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