Our society is changing faster than our education system

About eight years ago, some colleagues and I noted that the growing numbers of children from ethnic minority backgrounds was not being matched by changes in the textbooks and resource materials available to teachers. School can be a bewildering experience for children at the best of times, but a school environment that has no links at all to the culture of your home is likely to be even more so.

We decided to develop a book of children’s stories that reflected the diversity of Irish classrooms, and so we met with groups of women from ethnic minority groups, collected the stories they told us and had them illustrated by a gifted teenage artist. The result was Stories from Eiriu’s Island, which was published by the CDU in Mary Immaculate College.

Looking back on Eiriu’s Island one of the things that is striking is that the stories in it came from Irish mythology, France, the Traveller community, the Philippines and Nigeria: none of the stories in it were collected from Eastern European ethnic minority groups. The reason is obvious: the stories were collected before the accession of Eastern European countries into the EU.  In the few years since accession, the landscape of diversity in Irish schools has changed dramatically, meaning that even our reasonably recent attempt to provide up-to-date resources has quickly been overtaken by events.

This raises questions about the dominance of unchanging textbooks in the Irish education system, but also about how teachers and schools can work to keep resources up to date. One of the points that we made in Eiriu’s Island was how enjoyable and easy it was to collect stories from parents. Perhaps such school-parent links will provide one of the ways of ensuring our schools reflect our changing society.

How will you mark Anne Frank’s Birthday?

Anne Frank was born on 12 June 1929.  This month will mark what would have been her eightieth birthday.

She began her famous diary on her birthday in 1942.  Her first entry read, “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope that you will be a great source of comfort and support”.  She kept it for the next two years, as her family were forced into hiding from the Nazi occupation.

She confided in her diary over the next two years, telling it about her troubled relationship with her mother, her budding romance with her friend Peter, the constant fear of their hiding place being discovered and the hope they felt that the Allies would win the war and rescue them.  She wrote about her dream of making her mark on the world as a writer: “I know I can write”, reads her entry of 5th April, 1944. ” A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annexe are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but… it remains to be seen whether I really have talent”.  The book she wrote is evidence of her talent.

Her book has been read by millions, who have made an emotional connection with a teenage girl who was killed by racism.  Through it, millions have understood the dangers of prejudice and the violence that can accompany it.  It has changed lives, and probably saved lives.

So how will you remember this remarkable writer on her eightieth birthday, June 12th?

The website of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam contains a number of educational resources on Anne Frank, on World War II and on discrimination: http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=1&lid=2

Is equality a central concept in our school mathematics?

The decision by one of the fringe parties in the upcoming European parliament elections to engage in ‘anti-immigrant’ propaganda highlights some of the challenges for those of us engaged in education.

It shows again that racism enters into public life from many sources: political, economic, cultural and interpersonal.  Since racist messages come from so many different sources in our society, we cannot expect schools to simply ‘teach racism out of existence’.  We all know that schools are often asked to deal with every social issue that arises as if that gives the state the right to opt out of all other responsibility for the problem in question.  Unfortunately, such a strategy will never succeed.

At the same time, schools are not powerless.

Part of the ‘anti-immigrant’ propaganda being put forward at the moment rests upon the manipulation of figures for PPS numbers being issued each year.  The use of such statistics and figures is intended to give veneer of objectivity to such positions.  Although such statistics can easily be questioned and analysed and the prejudice that underpins them can be exposed, this often does not happen in media commentary.  It is left to the listener or reader to decode the statistics and identify the ideology that they conceal.

The capacities to read, decode, and understand the ideological position that is hidden behind statistics is a key part of intercultural competence.  This means we need to link student’s mathematical studies to the politics of real life, and to enable them to see that things that are often presented as matters of ‘fact’ can be used to justify dangerous prejudices.  The same goes, of course, for ’statements of fact’ that are not presented in the form of numbers, but students of post-primary English generally do get the opportunity to learn the skills of critical reading of the media.  Can the same be said for students of Mathematics?

Do we make ‘equals’ a central concept in our school mathematics?

Does Ireland need Freedom Riders?

Those born outside of Ireland now account for almost 10 per cent of the population of Irish primary schools according to figures which became available this week.  This ten per cent is roughly evenly divided between those who are described as nationals of an EU state other than Ireland, and those who are described as ‘non-EU nationals’.  The data is based on estimates by school principals.

This diversity is not spread evenly across Irish schools.  While about a quarter of schools have more than 10 per cent of their population drawn from such minority ethnic groups, as many as 20 per cent have no children from such ethnic minority backgrounds in their school at all.

This data re-emphasises the extent to which the large number of small, independently-operated schools facilitates a segregation within Irish education.  As far back as the 1950s other countries put in place policies to challenge segregated education.  Ireland has never had such policies.  And, while a de facto segregated system has long operated in Ireland at a cost to working class children and those from the Traveller community, it seems that other ethnic minorities are now being added to that list.

In the early 1960s a group of civil rights activists took buses from Washington bound for New Orleans as part of a campaign against racial segregation.  They were known as the Freedom Riders.  Maybe now, fifty years later, it is time for Ireland to at last step on the bus.