Responses of Liberal Democratic Societies to Claims from Ethnic Minorities to Community Rights

Immigrants within European and North American countries, with their different religions and ways of life, pose many challenges to the receiving countries' liberal values and ways of life. These challenges express themselves in the form of cultural conflicts played out within the microcosm of the schools. The paper explores the place of minority rights within two liberal societies and examines how the societies' different procedures and ideology resulted in different outcomes for minority rights. These are examined in relation to two selected court cases involving cultural and religious expression through the wearing of religious or cultural attire in schools which attempted to ban these religious or cultural attire despite claims that these 'dress' or attire constituted a religious requirement or an intrinsic aspect of a way of life. The first case involves the wearing of headscarves (called foulards) by Muslim school girls in France, while the second case involves the wearing of a turban by a Sikh pupil. Attempts are made to discuss broader issues of cultural minority community rights within liberal democratic and human rights frameworks.     

Inclusivity and moral technology: ethical dilemmas in English

This paper explores the issues of inclusive education and moral technology in the curriculum domain of English. In particular, the paper problematizes issues of cultural diversity, culturally critical orientations totext in the postmodern classroom, and the ethical decisions English teachers face in developing an inclusive curriculum. Reference is made toresponses of adolescents to short fiction collected in a recent research study.