Cultural diversity
actually different and find varieties of shapes, sizes, colour and texture. By the end of the activity a child can pick their own lemon out of a large group – “I think I’ll call mine Keith,” said one pupil. By the end of the lesson everyone has got the idea that, like lemons, people who appear to be similar are not necessarily so. “Although community cohesion work is not top of the agenda under the coalition government, it was key under the previous administration and is still a core part of what we do here at Discovery,” said Anne. “Education is a great way of promoting community cohesion and the Interfaith Explorers resources are very good at demonstrating the commonality between faiths. Getting on together is what we are about at this school and this promotes it. We feel there is a lot of good stuff in it.” While race relations in Peterborough have improved significantly since a low in the early 2000s, community leaders are conscious of the need for vigilance. Ofsted’s last report acknowledged Discovery Primary School’s strength in ‘the weaving in of opportunities for pupils to develop their spiritual, moral, social and cultural understanding.....pupils and carers say that the school keeps them exceptionally safe. Bullying is not tolerated. Pupils say there is very little of any kind.... [including racist bullying].’ So the Interfaith Explorers ethos sits well with the school, which is already recognised by the British Council as an International School for its work on instilling a global dimension into the learning experience of its pupils.
As well as fitting in with this, the Interfaith Explorers resources work across a number of different subject areas, most notably literacy and art, helps teachers pressed for time to deliver the packed primary curriculum. For example, in art, pupils looked at, discussed and used three paintings from Professor Khalili’s Peace Collection that show the three different quarters of Jerusalem as their starting point. Discovery is an Artsmark Gold school and has found discussions on art and design from different faiths really interests the children.
Another Discovery initiative is to choose pupils from different cultures to be a ‘Language Ambassador’ for a week, with one of their duties being to lead an assembly where they talk about their faith and culture.
“With a topic such as interfaith there is little hard data to use to assess our efforts, but what I can say is that, considering some of our white working class families don’t always appreciate the changing nature of the place, we have very few racist incidents, if any,” commented Anne. “Staff here say it’s brilliant and the activities are really good. They pick and choose the ones they want to use.
“We mainly use it, as suggested, at the end of the summer term as part of the pupils’ preparation for senior school life. Obviously it best complements our RE curriculum, but we mould it for our own context and use it across a few different subject areas.
“At the last count, our pupils were speaking 22 different languages between them, so anything we can do to help them respect each other’s cultures and customs has got to be a good thing.”
uwww.edisonlearning.net u
http://interfaithexplorers.com uwww.maimonides-foundation.org
April 2014
www.education-today.co.uk 17 Moseley School - celebrating different cultures
Meanwhile, in the Hall Green constituency of Birmingham, black and minority ethnic groups make up more than half the total population; over five times the national average. Unsurprisingly then, Moseley School and Sixth Form, which draws its 1300-strong student cohort from this area, has a great deal of religious, cultural, social and linguistic diversity to celebrate.
This puts the school at a real advantage when it comes to educating young people about different cultures during lessons in tutor time at the start and end of each day, RE, food technology, performing arts, PSHE, languages and many other subjects. In fact, teachers at multicultural schools will find their students often know more about culture, religion and politics in their family’s country of origin – no matter how far removed the child is from that country - than the most up-to-date text books. That doesn’t mean schools can neglect their responsibility to promote tolerance, understanding and dialogue though. Laura Rainbow, Moseley School’s PR and communications officer says: “Our students get every chance to explore the issues that affect various cultural groups in the UK and abroad. In the month of March alone, we held a training session on FGM, which affects mostly women in African communities, an open dialogue event with an Israel-Palestine peace organisation and our Youth 4 Moseley Muslim-Christian interfaith group held a cake and poetry party. “Give your students regular opportunities to attend sessions with specialist providers – there are tonnes out there who will happily visit your school for free – and the results will be more informed dialogue and a happy atmosphere of mutual understanding. If you can set the dialogue against a backdrop of something fun like sports, film, food or music, so much the better,” she adds.
Lucretia Fields is Deputy Headteacher in charge of pupil welfare and behaviour. She says “Our students are very inquisitive when it comes to learning about other cultures and keen to help others understand their own cultures. In lessons we use the fantastic online translation tool EMAS, which talks or writes in another language. However, our best resource is the students themselves - they are always keen to support others as they learn to communicate between languages.”
Most teachers will agree that the media is a huge influence on the lives of young people. Media studies and English students can be taught to analyse different genres of music, literature and film to look for both obvious and covert stereotyping – something that can pigeonhole different cultures unfairly. Media Studies teacher Angus Weir says: “I ensure that students are creating fair, accurate and positive representations of different cultures, religions and genders in their coursework – they’re marked on this – and they’re taught to deliberately subvert stereotypes. For example, if men of a certain culture have a reputation for sexism towards women, I ensure they are going out of their way to challenge this stereotype and show people it’s not the case. Music, film and TV makers love to over-simplify cultures for dramatic effect and youngsters need to be taught to scrutinise what they’re presented with.”
The school’s RE department has recently started publishing a community newsletter that shares interesting information about different religions, important religious dates, moral stories from different cultures and study tips. This goes to every child in the school, who take it home to parents, many of whom speak Urdu, Arabic, Somali, Romanian and other languages at home. This, along with the school’s magazine, website and translation services were instrumental in getting Moseley’s recent Leading Parent Partnership Award.
Explains RE teacher Sarfraz Hussain: “Parents love it when they get a chance to see what their children are learning about in school and religion is an important influence in many of their lives so this newsletter is proving to be a real winner for us.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40