Roshan Doug: Schools need to focus on what binds us together, not what divides us
Multiculturalism has lost its way, says Prof Roshan Doug
When Britain adopted multiculturalism as official policy in the 1960s, the vision was inspiring: a tolerant society where people of different faiths, languages and traditions would live — and learn — together in mutual respect.
Yet, after decades of well-meaning reform, the cracks are impossible to ignore. In classrooms, staffrooms and playgrounds across the country, the noble ideal of multiculturalism has become rather confusing. Instead of uniting young people under a shared sense of citizenship, it has too often left them uncertain about what it means to be British.
As an education policy adviser, I believe this situation is unhealthy and problematic.
Over the decades, the National Curriculum has expanded to include world literature, comparative religion, and cultural festivals. Textbooks have been rewritten to reflect diversity. Teacher training stress 'inclusion' and 'representation' as the main objectives in education.
The focus has shifted from mutual understanding to avoiding offence. Schools have become hesitant to articulate shared national values or even to discuss difficult topics such as cultural conflict, gender equality or free expression. In an effort to be inclusive and politically correct, we have forgotten to be truthful and honest with ourselves and our children.
Education should be the space where difference meets dialogue. But today’s schools are not about openness and dialogue, but silence and gagging of groups/individuals.
The result? Our pupils are now growing up aware of cultural difference but unsure of moral common ground. They know who they are but not necessarily who we are as a nation. That’s not education, but psychological disorientation.
The sociologist David Goodhart once warned that multiculturalism risks producing 'parallel lives'. Nowhere is this more visible than in many of our schools where through the fear of causing offence, we turn a blind eye to various religious/cultural practices out of sync with British/Western values. Educators avoid the language of nationhood and morality, fearing it might sound exclusionary or old-fashioned. But without shared civic values — respect, equality, freedom of speech, the rule of law — diversity becomes little more than a political buzzword that adds to a moral vacuum.
The 7/7 bombings in 2005 and later incidents of radicalisation revealed the consequences of moral uncertainty. Many of those involved were educated in Britain — products of our schools, fluent in our language, but detached from our collective story. Education taught them literacy, not loyalty.
The answer is not to abandon the multicultural ideal but to create an open society where people exchange concerns about the country and culture without being branded a cultural bigot or worse, racist. Schools should not merely acknowledge identity but help students negotiate it. History, literature and citizenship education should be taught not as boxes to tick, but as spaces to explore the moral and civic questions that unite us. We have to understand that equality is not achieved by isolating communities but by fostering mutual respect and shared responsibility.
Multiculturalism failed not because diversity is bad, but because we mistook difference for division and tolerance for disengagement. True education should do the opposite: it should illuminate common purpose, cultivate empathy and insist on shared values that transcend cultural boundaries.
*Prof Roshan Doug is an educational consultant
