Nationalism or Cosmopolitanism? Two Curriculum Models
A Discussion

Facilitated by Walter Parker, Ph.D.

There are two distinct models of civic and multicultural education that fuel curriculum planning in schools. One is tied to the nation, the other to the kosmou politês—the world community. We can call these nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Civic and multicultural education in the United States (as in most other nations) is geared to the national model, and this is supported, for the most part, by liberals and conservatives alike. James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, “If we do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country” (emphasis added). Notice that Baldwin didn’t say, “and achieve our world.” Civil rights struggles are waged in nations, after all, where state power can be used to force schools and lunch counters to desegregate and to make discrimination a crime punishable by law.

The curious thing is this: Why are we more inclined to think of people as our brothers and sisters the minute they dwell in a certain country, namely our place, but not when they dwell in a certain other country, say Nigeria or Peru or China? “What is it about the national boundary,” the philosopher Martha Nussbaum asks in her book For Love of Country “that magically converts people toward whom we are both incurious and indifferent into people to whom we have duties of mutual respect?”

Don’t we undercut the case for multicultural respect in our nation when we fail to make the case for a broader cosmopolitan respect? This is the question that I hope school boards and curriculum committees will consider in the coming year. To which community of humans should education direct students’ allegiance? Should students learn that they are, above all, citizens of the United States, or should they instead learn that they are, above all, citizens of the world?

Do we want to continue to draw the moral line in the sand at the national border? Perhaps we should, and for good reason. Or, is it time to stop educating students to draw the line there?

This, I believe, is the curriculum question of our time.

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Walter Parker teaches at the University of Washington and chairs the Social Studies Education program. His books include Education for Democracy (2002), Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life (2003), and Social Studies in Elementary Education (2005).