UNIT 3: Diversity and pluralism – How can people live together peacefully?

UNIT 3: Diversity and pluralism

How can people live together peacefully?

This unit focuses on three key concepts: diversity, pluralism and democracy. It explores some of the links between them to support students in developing the attitudes and skills they need in order to participate in a pluralist, democratically governed society.

Pluralism refers to a basic quality of modern societies, where a wide (but not all-encompassing) range of religious and political beliefs – diversity – is accepted and where the ideal societies envisaged by different political parties may be incompatible with each other. For example, citizens who belong to radical socialist parties strive to achieve a society which would be completely alien to citizens of a right-wing, capitalist persuasion. In pluralist societies, the general influence of many traditions and values, including religious belief, has waned. Individuals can, and must, work out for themselves which values they adhere to and how they wish to live their lives. Pluralist societies therefore pose a challenge: individuals may enjoy a greater degree of personal liberty than ever before but, on the other hand, they need to work harder to bargain for agreement and compromise, without which no community can survive. This raises the question as to which political system can provide the best framework for the organisation of decision making in an open, pluralist society.

In an authoritarian system – one-party rule, theocracy, or even dictatorship – this problem is solved by giving one player (for example, a party or leader) the power to decide on everyone’s behalf what lies in the common interest. This solution meets the challenge of pluralism by evading it – by sacrificing the liberty of the individuals. The potential of conflict in pluralist societies is suppressed, but the price to be paid is a high one: many problems are not solved properly and fairly, as they may no longer be articulated clearly.

In a democracy, citizens basically agree on a set of principles, on rules of procedure and rights that allow them to disagree on many issues, but which also offer the tools to enable them to reach agreement by non-violent means. Viewed in this way, democracy supports peace in pluralist societies by civilising conflict rather than suppressing it. The common interest is something to be worked out together, and bargained for, rather than to be defined in advance by any single party. Disagreement and conflict are normal and by no means harmful as long as their destructive potential is kept under control. In democracy as a form of government, therefore, citizens are accorded such basic rights as freedom of conscience, belief and expression. When citizens use these rights, they will create disagreement and conflict, and they will have to bargain for a solution. To ensure that they agree on the rules of how to handle the conflicts and finally solve them, citizens of pluralist democracies are deemed to enter into a social contract with all other citizens to abide within the social and political conventions of that society.

Such a social contract includes the principle of rule by the majority. For some minority groups, the disadvantage of this is that their own radical vision may never be achieved through the ballot box. On the other hand, such societies guarantee the rights of political minorities to pursue legitimate political ends unhindered by the state. Thus, pluralist democracies always live with the possibility of the election of radical governments, whose members might be inclined to restrict the activities of political opponents. This is why it is important to have legislation for human rights and freedoms built into the constitutions of democratic countries.

Every generation must understand this complex set of challenges in pluralist societies and how they may be met in a democratic community. This includes an appreciation for the unwritten social contract without which no democratic community can survive. Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education can support students to develop the understanding, attitudes and skills that they need in order to participate as citizens.

Teaching about diversity and pluralism

Students following EDC courses should be helped to understand the nature of social, political, religious and racial diversity. They should be helped to understand the complex nature of the challenges arising from such diversity. Given that a good deal of prejudice arises from lack of awareness and understanding, much bigotry can be reduced by means of the rational examination of attitudes in the light of knowledge and the development of empathic reasoning.

Teaching for diversity and pluralism

Students also need to experience democratic discussion in order to learn how to deal with it. Education for Democratic Citizenship should therefore take every opportunity to ask students to express their own opinions on a topic (however minor) and offer justifications for these views. In listening and responding to other students’ views on the same issue, students will develop not only their own analytical and expressive skills, they will also develop basic dispositions of tolerance towards moral and political diversity. They will develop the ability to accept situations of disagreement and controversy, and they will also appreciate the need for compromise, and understand the difference between a fair and an unfair compromise. They should focus on issues and should respect people, regardless of their views and interests.

Through experience of the processes of democratic discussion, students will also learn that open and fair debates demand that certain basic procedures be followed, including:

• all participants with something to contribute should be enabled to do so;
• everyone’s contributions should be listened to with respect;
• participants should attack arguments not people;
• participants should enter a debate accepting the possibility that their own views could be modified;
• adversarial debates, where participants argue from closed positions, are often less helpful than exploratory debates, where the aim is not to “win the argument” but to “understand the problem better”.

This marks out EDC as a subject in which the processes of enquiry and discussion are generally more important than the promulgation of given truths. The implications for teaching are therefore that EDC teachers develop skills to support student thinking rather than dominating it. Research suggests that students only talk more in class when teachers talk less.

UNIT 3: Diversity and pluralism

How can people live together peacefully?