Modernity is characterized by growing mobility, plurality y heterogeneity. That means, that people from all over the world get in touch with each other. Because of exchange processes, ideas, languages and cultures are mixed up and the result are diversity and plural societies. One possibility for uniting people is marriage. With marriage people get multiple identities. Identity is something changeable. We have to create it over and over again, because we fit our social identity to the role we take in group. If two people from two different cultures decide to live together, they need some very hard process of reflexive adaption, because mostly they are socialized very different. The one person who leaves his home country for moving, often feels strange and unoriented for the first time. They loose familiarity and belongings and get some new personality and membership. Reorientation and new identification is some active and creative process. A couple of two people from different cultures you can compare with some artistic Batik, Patchwork or Collage, a big picture made up of different parts, which are networked and depend on each other. This picture is something new. A new culture, because culture is what we create together, some process.
My own family is a good example how marriage can effectuate, related to transnational routes. The decision of my cousin (to marry some Peruvian boy) was the crucial factor for the immigration of almost his whole family. He and his sisters all married Germans and got children with them. These children have a “half-half” identity. They grow up in two cultures and environments and combine the different influences. They are hybrid and cross-cutting-identities. That means, that –in comparison with the parents- the German and the Peruvian culture is not separable in their identity.
Now, in the age of globalization and networking, hybridity is something really common and normal. In the past there also was migration, but not so much, that the society and the institutions have to adapt. The impact of migration is especially visible in schools. There are many new challenges and changes because of migration. Classes have to be organized new, because of the multilingualism of the pupils. Schools must be able to handle the different identities, experiences, and backgrounds. “Rationale Pädagogik” (Bordieu) means, that every pupil needs the same skills and abilities, independent of what “capital” they bring with. Language is one of biggest human-capitals people have. It’s the requirement of every kind of participation. So it’s important for schools to accept and support it. Bi- or multilingualism is a great resource and should be the aim of modern education.
Modern pedagogy has to find some answers and resolutions for all questions and problems you get because of this new transnational society. It´s not enough just to try to integrate pupils, you have to create completely new structures and doing diversity. Global and inclusive education promotes good intercourse with plurality and develop the learning of empathy and tolerance. So cultural education is important to prevent discrimination and misunderstandings among different people.
Since the 1980/90 century Germany tries to reform and modernizes the educational system. Because of the increasing heterogeneity there is some programmatic calls “intercultural education”. This should consider exchange and transformation processes between kids. Modern education and the national curriculum has to be denationalized and opened.
One possibility for modern education in schools is “bilingual teaching”. Especially for children who speak two languages at home, it would be fine to have some Language Maintenance programs. For example in Canada, USA and Sweden there have been such schools for a long time. They know that fluency in the mother language is valuable for the cultural capital and the self confidence of children of migrants. So there is also, beside the bilingual class, so-called “Community participation”. It means that the parents were incorporated too. That’s helpful for integration and mutual understanding. Unfortunately there are no transnational-bilingual education schools in Germany until now. Only some schools (for example in Hamburg or Berlin) already are testing this concept.