Assimilation and Educational Achievement of Minority Groups in the U.S.

Abstract

Contemporary political and policy debates in France centre on the discussion of whether Islam and, more generally, the new wave of Muslim immigrants pose a threat to national unity and French identity. We have stressed in this book the resilience of the French republican ideology and its unifying interpretation of integration of minority groups. Religion is a source of group identity, mobilization, and opposition to the mainstream majority, as the radicalization of disadvantages children in the urban banlieue has shown. In the previous chapter, we compared French combative laïcité with the religious pluralism and state approach to religious diversity in the U.S. We emphasized the accommodation policies that have contributed in American public schools to the avoidance of the escalation of religious and cultural conflicts. Religion in the U.S. is not a divisive cleavage as in France, but the privatization of schools has triggered a timely debate about education and religion.