EDUCATION FOR A TRANSCULTURAL LIFE-WORLD OR FOR A HEGEMONIC NATION? SCHOOLING IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE, IN FRANCE, AND IN CANADA, 1830S-2000S

To understand transcultural education in societies with children from many cultural backgrounds, this essay looks at socialization in colonial-hierarchical settings and uses the analysis of cultural impositions to discuss consequences and needs in present-day immigration societies. The analysis begins with an historical approach to intercultural education. In a first section, focusing on British as well as French and Dutch colonies it analyses memories as reflected in life-writings of colonized resident children in schools run by in-migrant – “third-culture” – imperial administrators and teachers – a remote-control education. Present-day constructs of mono-cultural national values may be equally remote to the life-worlds of many-cultured societies. The second part traces the migration of imperially-educated students and working adults to the (former) colonizer core with India-to-England (late 19th to early 20th century) and Suriname-to-The Netherlands (1960s-2000s) as examples. In a third section, as an exemplary case for today’s multicultural cities, I discuss French-speaking university students from North and West Africa in Paris, i.e. migrant students facing a national/nation-centred/nationalist educational system. In a concluding part, I will interpret present-day Canada’s educational practices in terms of transcultural socialization. How did children and adolescents connect the "facts" learned in educational institutions to their everyday lives -- if they did so at all?