Consultations Homepage || Meeting Notes: 17 July 2003
Consultation hosted by the Multicultural Education Committee and the SA Equal Opportunity Commission, Adelaide, 17 July 2003
The meeting was chaired by Professor Jerzy Smolicz, Centre for Intercultural Studies and Multicultural Education at the University of Adelaide. The South Australian Equal Opportunity Commissioner, Ms Linda Matthews, was co-host and guest speaker. It was attended by 32 invited participants. Assisting were Mr Franco Parella, Manager of Education and Training, South Australian Equal Opportunity Commission (notes), Mr Christian Cifuentes, Policy Project Officer, Multicultural Education Committee (who organised the consult), Vincenzo Andreacchio, Senior Professional Officer, Multicultural Education Committee and Ms Omeima Sukkarieh, Community Liaison Officer, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (notes).
In his opening remarks, Professor Smolicz made the following points:
- Diversity
– even and perhaps especially with respect to ‘core values’
– is critical to Australia’s development and success.
“[The many groups represented] could only make a contribution
if they preserve their core values. If they are similar, they cannot
contribute anything, so it is very important that their core values
should be respected. Language, we see language as a carrier of culture
and undoubtedly language is very important.”
- There are
three kinds of racism. We do not deal adequately with the third kind.
(1) Visual racism identifies people by their appearance; (2) Linguistic
racism identifies people by their by accent; (3) Cultural racism –
“a link to discrimination on account of religion”. “So
that is a very important thing that we have to think about and one thing
we have to realise is that religious affiliation is not something which
can be assimilated away. If people think that it can be dissipated through
the main stream it will not, it is for many people a very strong core
value, for many groups and sometimes religion can be stronger and more
permanent than language ... So religion is not something which can disappear
and we must respect it through human rights. It’s not something
which we can wish away.
- One approach
to eliminating racism is to look for commonalities. “Islam
obviously has a great deal in common with Christianity and Judaism and
we have heard a number of speakers who always emphasise belief in one
god. People of the book believe in the prophets and common traits between
believing Christians and Islamic people against secularism and many
international organisations and conferences. The greatest allies were
some Christians and some Islamic people, they were arguing against the
same thing, against materialism, against secularism and against the
spiritual void against that kind of belief that there is some other
reality and that another reality transcends mechanistic world, transcends
this material world.”
- To change behaviour, the first step is to address ignorance, including ignorance of Islam. There is a fine line, however, between providing information and proselytising, or the perception of the latter. “There are two elements that I can detect, one being that the fear of terrorism can lead to paranoia and to a degree hysteria, which is I’m afraid some of our very new problems, and the second problem is still what we said before which is a lack of understanding and knowledge. But this is a difficult dilemma. … So we would like people to know more about every religion. On the other hand we hear if there is too much teaching of one religion it becomes indoctrination. So you have to find a balance between, on one hand, where people label it as indoctrination and, on the other, the knowledge of what it is all about and of course as educators we have to be a leveller in between.”
Commissioner Matthews outlined the grounds of discrimination covered by South Australian equal opportunity law: sex, sexuality, marital status, pregnancy, race, disability and age. Discrimination on the ground of religion is not covered. A proposal to extend the legislation to this ground was opposed by some Christian Churches in South Australia and not pursued by the government. However, the Commission is aware of much behaviour in the community that would amount to religious discrimination. She also mentioned that there is some evidence that people who look visibly ‘different’ are more likely to experience prejudice and discrimination in these times, for example, people of Greek and Italian appearance.
The meeting then turned to the three questions set out in the Isma project flyer.
1. What are your experiences of discrimination and vilification?
Much of the conversation focused on discrimination in education and the unpreparedness of many educators to tackle it effectively. A secondary student noted:
“A lot of the teachers have had no training about Islam or the Arab culture and other groups. They get educated about tolerance and about what they are trying to teach us. But we don’t really have an understanding of what we are being taught, so it’s really hard to understand. There is nothing worse than sitting in a classroom in the afternoon and having your teacher speaking to her young class and they don’t care about what they are teaching. If someone is really passionate about what they are teaching it really comes across a lot better.”
One participant claimed that two kindergartens had refused to enrol a child from Iraq on the pretence that there were no places available. Another participant advised that that was true of one of the kindergartens.
“The family didn’t speak English so there was no way that they could probably tell this was happening. It’s that subtly of discrimination I think in the community that really deeply bothered me at that instance.”
Another participant said, however:
“The priority of access doesn’t accommodate anything like this. It puts children at risk, people who are working and people who are studying and so the priority of access doesn’t accommodate refugees. We can’t even manipulate it to put them under our priority of access and let them in because there is no room in the Children Services Act for that. So we turn families away for that reason.”
Resistance on the part of other parents was mentioned as another barrier to enrolling children of Islamic background in non-Islamic private schools. Happily in this case, that reluctance had been successfully overcome.
“We recently had a Muslim parent who wanted their child to join the kindergarten and they actually excepted the child and the centre to come up against a lot of parental objections and it did happen for a while but we managed to overcome that and it’s going really well and I hope that this is a good lesson to learn from.”
An Education Officer in the Muslim Women’s Association described the following incident.
“I work as an Education Officer for the Muslim Women’s Association and we had an incident recently where the girls who attend an Islamic school where they participate in interschool sports once a week played netball and they won and the girls from the other school refused to shake hands with the girls and made a few comments about their religion and that was quiet upsetting as this happened to eleven year olds.”
“There are occasional incidents of discrimination between students. These did increase following September 11th. They were mostly verbal, but did result in one physical confrontation. Several students also were made to feel uncomfortable while travelling on public transport.”
The racist attitudes of administration staff at a tertiary institution were described.
“There were international students from Saudi Arabia who came to the college wanting to learn English and working in the admin office, the woman at the College called ASIO to come and check on them. I am sure she called ASIO because they were Muslim and wanted to learn English and proceed to learn flying. I was an international student and before coming to Australia each person is checked before they arrive to Australia by the Australian Department of Immigration and so there was no reason to call ASIO. It makes people feel like they are criminals.”
One participant described workplace discrimination.
“There was another incident at Uni where I was fasting and I was working the night shift and I had to take a break for twenty minutes to break my fast and my colleagues could not understand why I had to take a break. Within the system there was no break allowed. … We do have prayer rooms at campus, it’s pretty good and we do have breaks for students but not if you are working there.”
2. What is being done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
Several participants described local strategies of which they were aware.
“I am at a very large secondary school. It’s a fabulous place of work. We have sixty something different cultures and the students actually get on very well together. They are very protective of each other. It’s a comfortable place to work but the issues that we are moving to work with are the parent values and attitudes of parents that come through to the students. We have had incidents on the streets actually where parents are shouting at students from other cultures. So we have actually brought these parents into the school and talked to them about how big people need to behave. It’s actually been quite an interesting exercise in some ways because when it is put in front of them they can obviously see that, whatever their values, are they are going to come through their children and if the children are going to bring them back to school then there are going to be problems.”
“I work at a Pre-school and I can safely say that basically nothing has come into this training on Islam from what we can pick up on but what we have just currently done is educating the children by teaching them about themselves, such as ‘me, myself, who am I, how do I differ from other people in my centre, how am I the same’ and getting the children to observe each other and distinguish between themselves and then compare what similarities they have. Then we progress and we put in a fortnight on each nationality, we get parents in and they cook their food, talk about their culture, reading stories in their own language, discuss where they come from. … I think just saying at school you can’t discriminate is not enough. You have to put programs in place and give the schools the opportunity to do a week or a fortnight learning on other religions and therefore there will be a flow-on effect.”
“We at the Muslim Women’s Association do conduct cross cultural training to schools and that gets quite busy. We have been to many schools but we are still not getting out to enough schools. A lot of schools don’t even know about us or mainly public schools are not contacting us. We also have guided tours of the Mosques. Even though we are contacted on a regular basis from many schools, there are still hundreds of schools that are not contacting us. The fact that we do run sessions, and most of the time the sessions that we run are for students, very rarely do the teachers themselves participate as well. We had one session at a school where we spoke to a group of hundred teachers which was great but we really need to get out more.”
In a comment on the Muslim Women’s Association strategy, one participant observed:
“If we are going to study and understand other religions this has to be supported by educational departments and institutions and has to be singled officially and formally. It has to have a perimeter of this sort otherwise it is dissipated.”
The University of South Australia’s response to each of September 11 and Bali was described.
“When the Bali Bombing issue arose the University sent out an email to all academic staff and administrative staff and by extension to our students association and also to the students who happened to come from Indonesia and said that the staff would be aware that there may be Indonesian students present who would be worried and anxious and they could make arrangements through the University to phone home. As a spin off from that it became quite interesting people began to recognise that we had Indonesian students on campus and found out things for example that there are more Indonesian Roman Catholics than there are the total population of Australia so not all Indonesians are Muslim. So when these incidents arise it is a good learning opportunity. After September 11th we were all instructed to be very careful and conscious that there may be American students or North American students present and that we should look out for them as they might be distraught and upset.”
“I wanted to share one that brought joy to our community for a number of years now and that’s Multicultural Parents Arts Group which is run by the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Participants of this group don’t have to have a language in common, and we have a huge number of parents who come and create mirrors or tapestries or whatever and usually with some theme like cultural food or something like that and parents just love coming. It looks at parents addressing reality through art.”
“Whole school assemblies were held following September 11th and the commencement of the war in Iraq. These assemblies clearly demonstrated the commitment to valuing multiculturalism within the school community and the wider society. The assemblies had a positive effect. The staff and students have had various opportunities to learn about Islam and the cultures of Arabic speakers and express their views. These opportunities have come through Multicultural Education Committee, Access Asia and English as a Second Language teachers’ professional organisation ESLE.”
3. What more could be done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
What more is needed in education?
“When I think of kids working with other kids I think about ways of creating new types of normal, a different kind of normal. For example, it is normal not to celebrate Christmas and it is normal to celebrate Christmas. It depends on who you are and your family. I think sometimes that public education doesn’t see it in that way, that something other than what is normal to themselves is not that normal. So they say we will learn about their way for two weeks but then we will go back to doing it in the way we have always done it. I see that when it is Christmas time and the stuff that is made on the television about not having Father Christmas and things and what that says to me is that Christian beliefs are solely in our public education and they are invisible to us. Last year we went out to look at celebrations and look at presents and we did talk about Christmas and we talked about how some kids celebrate and some do not. One of the kids came up to me and said to me ‘You know some people celebrate Christmas and some people don’t, but I do’ and what he was saying was that that’s ok. That’s what we need to be doing.”
“If schools could perhaps direct the learning of students in such a way that a least students could learn such a simple thing as, that you know Muslims believe in Allah which simply is the Arabic word for ‘God’, while Christian priests praying in Bethlehem use the word ‘Allah’ in our prayer. How many people out there don’t realise that Christians and Muslims believe in the same God, or that Christians could use the word ‘Allah’ in their prayer? ... Basics like that are not being taught at school and that really upsets me. They are focusing on fundamentalism, abuse of human rights and not even going near the basic beliefs.”
“That is a point I often make when I get a chance to talk to the media: that fundamentalism has nothing to do with Islam. People with fundamentalist views are in every religion and people who were not religious as well have come into disputes also. Students are being bombarded by negative images about Muslims and Islam; they do not need it in class. So many schools assist all that stuff sensationalised media hype about Islam. So now let’s get back to the basic of showing Muslim female doctors in a positive light, for example, and I think schools also have a responsibility in doing this.”
The question of whose responsibility it is or should be to ensure these issues are covered in the curriculum was raised.
“We shouldn’t just teach cultural studies here and it should be everyone’s responsibility in all courses. Every single opportunity should be taken up. Teachers are very good unfortunately at saying ‘ah that is their responsibility; cultural studies belong to the cultural studies people and teachers’. They are good at saying it is someone else’s responsibility. Cultural studies are taught maybe a little bit in food and so on but I think that the message we have to get through to teachers and to parents is that it is everyone’s responsibility. So that at every single opportunity we take it up.”
“Teachers said it is not our responsibility to pick up on this. Ultimately if teachers don’t know that some of the teaching resources and material they are using is wrong in the first place and that these stereotypes are just stereotypes then they are not going to pick up on it. Unfortunately the kids do learn this stuff and nobody picks up on it.”
The dangers of inaccurate labelling were pointed out at this stage of the meeting and discussed generally for some time.
“Don’t mix the culture from a country with the culture of Islam. Islam is not a culture. It is a faith. Understand when you are talking about meaning of Islam it is different than the culture, because when you see some of the countries they are practising some culture looking to say it is Islam, which is totally wrong. There is a difference in the practice of culture and the practice of religion.”
“Some people unfortunately can’t distinguish between the act and the religion. That’s the whole point with the stoning of the woman in Nigeria, there were comments coming out about Muslims because of that. But that’s their tradition. That is not the Islamic people, but traditions of that country. But people can’t seem to distinguish between the two, so I think that’s a major issue.”
We asked for participants’ views about making diversity awareness training mandatory as part of every teacher’s training.
“We hear about harassment and bullying and the money that has been put into addressing these issues but this seems to me the perfect opportunity to put some money in from government initiatives to go in some sort of program, that could go to all schools, private and public, and teachers can be trained in looking and educating ourselves and students about protective behaviour, anti-discrimination law, cultural diversity, etc. We should be required to do it because unless we actually do something and develop tolerance in the young coming through and help them learn what discrimination is then we won’t get anywhere. I would support the idea for mandatory training for us all.”
“It is necessary to have mandatory training on culture and religious diversity as a teacher because it is the teachers who also do the discrimination, even union members. It’s just that these people are in a position of power and these people are imparting their views on to the children, therefore I really think we need a mandatory training in different cultures.”
“Anti-racism training should be mandatory. It needs to be flexible enough to incorporate examples/resources about a range of cultural groups. Increased parent participation through art projects has been successful for other cultural groups. At a system's level it needs to be a directive from the CEO so that school leaders ensure it is part of each school's strategic development plan.”
“I think that training also has to include anti-discrimination law. We are told not to discriminate but there is no background or information on it. You have to be seen to be not discriminatory but it has to become part of your teaching. We had a great thing about no discrimination on gender. Well, I think that it has gone further than gender. What about having a similar push to campaign against racial discrimination?”
