(NAME-MCE) Reflections on the Future of NAME

[Cathryn Teasley Severino]

Dear Christine,

I cannot express to you enough appreciation for your taking the time  
and making the effort to write and share such a sincere and  
eye-opening missive. All these years (since 1994 or so) I have  
remained on the periphery of NAME, which is why this kind of "insider"  
information comes as news to me. But despite my marginal involvement,  
I have caught the occasional glimpse of NAME's internal struggles and  
conflicts. Such conflicts, as you obviously already know, are not only  
natural when people converge around issues, but are even creative: if  
handled respectfully and nonviolently, our necessary attention to  
these kinds of values-loaded conflicts can lead to new realizations,  
resolutions, and outcomes (Johann Galtung [1996] has a lot to say  
about this creative aspect of conflict [http://www.transcend.org/]).

I see your reflection here as attempting to do just that: to open up  
this highly significant controversy to a more broadly-based process of  
deliberation, and to new outcomes (even though the ultimate decisions  
rest with the board members). All I can say in response, and from  
afar, is that *all* social markers of group identity and difference  
(race, sexual orientation, age, class, gender, ability, language,  
religion, ethnicity, stature, weight, etc.) *must* be addressed in  
multicultural education. The reasoning here is that such markers, as  
scholars such as Cameron McCarthy (1998)  
[http://www.tc.columbia.edu/calendar/index.htm?EventID=5674] or Amy  
Gutmann (2003)  
[http://www.tc.columbia.edu/calendar/index.htm?EventID=5674] ably  
point out, can lead to group identity, and identity is, in essence,  
*cultural* .

Anyway, thanks so much, Christine, for this carefully and respectfully  
thought-out call for debate.

-Galtung, J. (1996). _Peace By Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict,  
Development and Civilization_. Oslo: International Peace Research  
Institute.
-Gutmann, A. (2003). _Identity in Democracy_. Princeton University Press.
-McCarthy, C. (1998). _The Uses of Culture: Education and the Limits  
of Ethnic Affiliation_. New York: Routledge.

(In case anyone is interested, I am white and was born in 1961 and  
raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am of Italo-Anglo and  
middle-class extraction, and was brought up Catholic but am now  
atheist. I attended UC Berkeley as an undergrad and majored in  
sociology and then as a grad student of education. I then taught  
English as a second language to immigrant students in an elementary  
school in Calif for some years, and in the meantime married a Spaniard  
and later moved to north-western Spain in 1991, where I have lived  
ever since. I am now trying to finish writing my dissertation in  
Spanish on critical anti-bias teacher education. My distance with  
respect to NAME is mainly physical (I live too far away), but probably  
also ideological, although this does not mean that I by any means  
underestimate the valuable, evolving project that NAME represents.  
Much of the info sent my way through NAME has been highly relevant to  
my own work here in Spain -- I teach one course on Peace Ed. and  
another on School Administration to prospective teachers and social  
workers in the educational field, and I fully integrate multi- and  
cross-cultural issues into my pedagogy.)

Un saludo colectivo,

Cathryn

We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.
-Anaïs Nin
...............................................................................
Cathryn Teasley
Adjunct Professor (Profesora Asociada)
Depto. de Pedagoxía e Didáctica
Facultade de CC. da Educación
Universidade da Coruña
Campus de Elviña, s/n
15071   A Coruña   Spain
Tel. 981 16 70 00, ext. 4659
http://www.udc.es/dep/pdce/Cata/CV_Cata.htm
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