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Attempting to answer these
questions reveals that the main purpose of multicultural education is
to prevent racist/cultural abuse, prejudice and violence. If this is
so, the assumption is that if people understand enough why people eat,
dress and talk the way they do and why they are white, black and dusky
brown, they will behave better towards those who are different to
them.
This assumption is only partly
true. Here’s an example. As a young boy growing up in Southern
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) our cook would come and ask for leave to
attend his father’s funeral. A year later the cook would again
request to go to his father’s funeral. How can this be – two fathers?
It would be easy to think the cook was “pulling a fast one”, until one
understands that all the fathers of boys who went through the
circumcision rite with the cook as a boy, are also in his tribal
culture his fathers.
Similarly, I also learned that in
the Ndebele culture to show no threat, a person is required to walk
between two people who are talking to each other, not around the back
of them. Of course, in some cultures this would be very rude. I’m sure
most people could come up with an example of how in one culture an act
is good manners but in another, bad manners. Understanding this would
help us stop showing displeasure and maybe offending and hurting
others.
However, understanding is not
enough. Why are some people naturally polite, respectful and tolerant
and others are not? There are still people, who even though they
understand, will shout derogatory words at people and even attack them
physically merely because they dress differently, have a different
skin colour, smell different or speak another language. Changing
behaviour is not a logical exercise – it needs emotional input. People
need to feel the mental pain to know that their behaviour is
irresponsible. Yes, we can and should punish people who are abusive to
others but this merely treats the symptoms.
Multicultural education is not an
easy task. It has to combat years of negative conditioning and even
bad behaviour passed on by parents and peers. To be effective,
multicultural education has to spend 80% of its time on open and
direct discussion of the difficult sensitive issues of racial abuse
and cultural prejudice and bring them into the open.
Multicultural education is a
field crying out for more study. For example why do we have antiracist
education when we already have multicultural education? You’ll get
a more in-depth knowledge of how a values education approach to
multicultural education could work by reading the e-report
What is
Values Education and so What?
Dr Bill would be delighted to talk at your next conference or event
and give more details on how multicultural education could be more
effective with a values approach. Contact him on
bill@valueseducation.co.uk
Copyright © 2008 Values Education Ltd
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following details are retained. “A values education article from CAVE
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