The extension of the education system has been implemented, both in the classic European state-nations and in postcolonial foreign countries, as a monoculturalization project, according to the book “Multiculturalism, Interculturality and Education” by Professor Gunther Dietz, of the department of Social Anthropology. The book, published by Universidad de Granada press, maintains that, even in societies exclusively made up of emigrants, such as the US, the assimilatory policy of the melting pot resorts to a hegemonic monoculturalism strongly rationalized and generalized.
The author of the book quotes Outlaw to point out that “with the passing of time, formal education has become one of the main measures to classify and consider the transmission of the defined and unified systems of cultural understanding to future generations for those in charge of the continuous formation and preservation of the American state-nation. These efforts have successfully generated an hegemonic monoculturalism assimilating different European ethnic groups to a unified America, starting from the appropriation and explanation by each person of appropriate identities and loyalties according to their position in the (political, economic, cultural) hierarchies, racial and generalized .”
Professor Gunther Dieitz tries to analyse interculturalization in this book both in a diachronic and synchronic way and maintains that the origins of the intellectual discourse “go back not to demographic changes, but to the impact of the so-called new social movements in the identity policies in force in contemporaneous societies.”
According to Gunther Dieitz, “the invention and later standardization of the so-called “national languages” has turned out to be one of the most effective mechanisms to create cultural intimacy. Therefore, the monolinguism process is an accurate sign of the advance of nationalizing nationalism.”
Further information: Prof Gunther Dietz.
Department of Social Anthropology. Universidad de Granada
Phone number: 958 246 343. E-mail: gdietz@ugr.es
