VVTo achieve this result, the essay will consider first the relevant debates, focusing on the debate between liberals and multiculturalists on religion’s place in education and on literature that seeks to define the time-bound qualities of multiculturalism. It will consider then Scottish cultural developments and education policies, looking both at the preponderance of state-funded religious schools and the mandated daily period of “religious observance” within the context of Scottish society’s trend away from religious sectarianism and religion more broadly. In doing so, the paper will find that multiculturalism’s temporal shortcomings are exposed by the Scottish education case study.
I. THEORY
VVPresupposing the value and constitutionality of mandatory public-funded education, liberal and multiculturalist scholars have debated two major policy options tying religion to state-funded schools. The first of these policies considers public funding of religious schools, while the second engages the controversial presence of regular religious observance or meditation periods within both religious and nonreligious state-funded schools. Both are relevant to this paper’s later discussion of religion in Scottish schools. In their broad debate, Audi and Wolterstorff give consideration to both issues within the context of the fundamentals of liberal
es social exclusion, because it has created a psychology of perceiving those with rural hukou as inferior. This is verified by the studies done by the psychologists at Beishida. The psychologists found that when university students who possessed urban hukou were primed that the hukou was abolished through false articles, they became less discriminatory as they showed less social distancing behaviours; conversely when primed that hukou remained, the level of discrimination remain unchanged.2 Hence, their studies confirm that hukou contributes to social exclusion as urban subjects tend to distant themselves from those with rural hukou.
Weber’s second type of exclusion is economic exclusion. In China, it consists of preventing rural migrants from accessing economic opportunities and rewards. In human resource management, this is especially true. In a study conducted in late 2006 in which 12 firms were investigated, it is revealed that the recruitment process is heavily based on hukou. For instance, renting rural migrant workers instead of recruiting allow firms to deny them social security benefits on the excuse that the land possessed by rural migrants provides a safety net.3 Practices such as renting rural migrants ossified the notion among HR managers that rural workers are incapable of specialised jobs.4 Hence, rural workers are reduced to auxiliary positions with no career prospects and with a wage that is 33 to 86 percent of their urban counterparts.5 Evidently, rural workers are denied fair economic opportunities and rewards because of hukou identification.
8882. Susan Moller Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 23.
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followers’ lives, arguing that such a policy enshrines the subjugation and harm of particular groups within the traditional, patriarchal religious social structures and hierarchies.2 This paper will consider multiculturalism’s fundamental presumption of continuity of religious groups and their leaders’ relevance to those they claim to lead. In particular, the essay will analyze Scotland’s shift away from sectarianism and toward secularism with regard to multiculturalist education policies, finding that the empowered, increasingly isolated Christian religious leaders who no longer represent the views of much of the populace. Such a development empowers multiculturalism’s critics and indicates a flaw in its practicality over time, as it calls into question the value of an inflexible system that identifies individuals’ interest in an issue—here education—along a single, religious axis.