such as parks, museums, or wholesome recreational venues. The school s approach is to provide a safe, supportive, and enriching environment to all children, regardless of background. While staff claims to make no distinctions among students, I took note of some efforts they clearly are making on behalf of their foreign students. In the classroom, these include both the integration of culturally inclusive curricular content and bias-free instruction elements of the typical Multi Kulti (multicultural education) approach. Outside of school the staff takes advantage of the strong Turkish family and community systems (Gitmez and Wilpert 1987). For instance, in addition to the typical school-to-home notes and phone calls, individual teachers try to know and maintain personal contact with Turkish parents. Occasional invitations to Turkish homes are seen as opportunities to make contact, as are standing invitations by teachers for Turkish parents to visit the classroom or share a cultural activity with the class. The director described a schoolwide project they had once organized. Wir Kbnnen Viel Zusammen Tun (We Can Do Much Together) was a parent-in- volvement program that, in cooking, dancing, and othe tivities, had as its goal co raising to combat Auslanderj (hostility toward foreigners) project had attendance prob parents working, the neec care, and Turkish parents h ity in German, the effort had to change school relations within the community. In one case, a teacher s in community was great enougl become closely involved w of Turkish boys. Originally : gang to protect against Ge heads who regularly invade munity to beat up Turks foreigners, the group contini cial club, with the German ing as advisor and cultural f the Turkish adolescents. He sive community attitudes atl tors who believe they have; in one teacher s words, that mize their students educatic In Berlin 1 found another gressive action in Frau Adk grade classroom. This involved in a special Turkis biliteracy project that has re funding (Berlin is a city-st; years. The project is in pk the collaborative efforts of Free University of Berlin and the school s administra ers, and staff (personal com: Carol Pfaff, 1991). The prog to both Germans and Turks, must request it. While the ultimate goal German, Adler and the Turl who co-ops with her use wh; coordination to teach both G damentals and Turkish basic: fashion. Bilingual language is the focus, but the team a in the content areas. A pan ment component encourages to come into class to cook, crafts, or other forms of cultu While Adler admits tl measures of achievement m prove, she claims other be: this program. Children receh training in two languages, the improves, and they gain ne' As second- or third-generatk Germany, Adler s Turkish stu little about their own histoi ture. Thus a critical benefit Turkish children as they he 42. Resurgence of Ethnic Nationalism their language used in class and as they see the involvement of their parents grow through the acceptance of Turkish language and culture. They gain a new consciousness and feeling about themselves, says Adler. But the German children benefit as well, she continues. The learning of a second language enhances their learning of German. And the German children gain another consciousness about languages, that is, that another language is just another system of communication, she adds. Adler s hope is that these new attitudes generalize to other forms of diversity with which children must be prepared to live in school and in society. These examples are followed by a less than optimistic postscript, however. Schmidt notes that lack of resources have prevented the development of systematic improvements so far. Now with the Sparpolitik (budget-cutting policy) that has kicked in since reunification in 1990, state and local governments find it even more difficult to fund educational improvements. Moreover, in the current reactionary social climate, educators find it more difficult to carry out alone the changes needed to better include and school Turkish and other foreign children. History, Ideology, Society: The Place of Education Clearly, we need to learn more about each of the cases presented here, and to bear in mind that all things are not equal in any two situations. Still, we can begin to better understand the central problem front this kind of historical comparison. Within this view, three interrelated elements stand out in the California and German cases: ideology, experience, and education. In both cases, a resurgence of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and nation-afrsm can be linked to a standing ideol- gy that rationalizes dominant-group exclusion and persecution of target groups (Arendt 1973). A particular set of beliefs has been constructed through mternal processes of group development and refined over time through external contact with others. Historically, the Germanic people represented a number f different tribal heritages that needed a common identity and cohesion before a nation-state could be built. Race, a narrowly defined blood kinship, pro-vided this organizing principle, which then came to function with other assumptions of group superiority and purity. These ideas have been part of Germany s legacy since its inception as a nation. The atrocities of World War II, the persecution, imprisonment, and genocide of unwanted groups, primarily the Jews, were the logical extreme expression of this ideology, and the events of today represent a return by some elements in Germany to that belief system, however modified in form. In contrast to Germany s ideological headstart, experience preceded ideology in the United States. For example, African slavery in the United States was initially justified on a Christian-heathen argument, but race became the rationale after slaves began to adopt Christianity (Takaki 1993). The enslavement of Africans and removal of American Indians provided the experiential ground in which the official policy of Manifest Destiny was cultivated to justify the territorial displacement and subjugation of Mexicans in the latter half of the last century. The standard cliche that Americans only think through action and doing applies, in that historical subjugation and exclusion of racial and ethnic groups became a key part of a definition of the United States as a nation. Although the development of racial or ethnic ideologies took different routes in Germany and the United States, the common point is that a similar complex of ideas has existed at some level in both places. The identification of an ideology does not mean that a group goes about daily life thinking consciously about a related set of racist or ethnocentric beliefs, plotting how to act on them. Except for the most fundamental elements, most members of a group would not admit holding ideas that have received negative criticism in modem times. The longevity of these ideas depends on more subtle mechanisms including: the popular repackaging of imagery of Romanticism or of the Manifest Destiny of a chosen people with a great calling to fulfill; the official representation of historical events in favor of the dominant group, to the degree that the mistreatment of other groups never really happened or was not that bad, or that victim groups are actually the racists; or in the political revival of earlier, simple solutions to complex issues, a return to an idealized past when we had few problems, and other groups were easily dismissed by decree. Politics is clearly the arena to which elements of racial or ethnic thinking have returned, through the kind of nationalistic imagery, informational selectivity, and emotional persuasion in which politicians are skilled. Beyond similar ideologies, other historical factors in each case have mediated their translation into practice. For example, the U.S. Constitution, with its principles of equality, democracy, and human rights, together with the concept of equal legal protection, is another way of thinking about the rights and recourse due to all, including members of minority groups. Thus, two competing ideologies have been in tension throughout U.S. history, with the result that systematic racial persecution and exclusion have been reduced over time, albeit gradually and largely through the efforts of the persecuted groups themselves. This tension has accounted in part for the periodic expression of the racial and ethnic system of thought, not only in the historical love-hate Mexican-U.S. relationship described earlier but in other phenomena such as racial segregation (after Emancipation), Americanization policy ( ethnic/language difference is bad ), or immigrant bashing ( get rid of them ). The manifestation of this ideology is thus cyclical, coming out at certain times in social discourse, in local and national politics, and in the treatment of target groups. In contrast, German society has been relatively less constrained in the practice of its racial beliefs. Ultimately, World War II and world condemnation were necessary to put an end to the Nazi atrocities. But an externally motivated change of behavior did not necessarily affect deeply seated German beliefs about permissible intergroup relations; they simply have been suppressed. One way of summarizing these different conditions is that Germany has had the more explicit ideology but a shorter history of implementation and now faces external pressures to change. The United States, on the other hand, has applied a less-articulated exclusionary ideology over a longer period of time and with more groups. But the periodic return of exclusionary social phenomena appears to automatically force an internal examination of those historically grounded beliefs that are, by definition, in direct contradiction with essential democratic values. This does not imply an advantage in either nation s quest to redirect its history, for both in- 223 8. ETHNIC FACTOR: INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES temal dialogue and external opinion would appear to be important. On the other hand, internally motivated dialogue and change would seem to be minimum requirements, and a more solid basis for lasting resolutions. The critical point of commonality in these cases is what dominant groups have come to believe about targeted ethnic groups and what is permissible behavior toward them. An education, in the broad sense, in certain beliefs, ideas, and behavior has formed the predispositions of both individuals and groups. But it follows equally that education, or reeducation, is thoroughly implied in the redirection of the habits of the past. The role of education in the present cases illustrates how schools actually have taken responsibility for implementing policies, programs, and strategies that constructively address the group divisions at issue here. The California and German schools studied here feature curricula that incorporate students ethnic backgrounds, instruction that utilizes their cultural knowledge and linguistic skills, and educators concerted attention to the material and social conditions faced by their students. The ends achieved through these school improvement efforts are the enhanced inclusion of all students in the educational process, and the new conceptions of race and ethnic group relations modeled through those efforts. But we cannot assume that formal education can solve all the problems of ethnic group interaction in either California or Germany, especially when reactionary sociopolitical movements have targeted the best efforts of schools for easy solutions. The abundance of uninformed, political, and emotionally charged solutions suggests the potential and critical role of education beyond school fences. Although Proposition 187 surfaced in the political arena, its ideas obviously found support in many other places, including families, the workplace, and the media. Parents an