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.
Categories: Education · Uncategorized
Tagged: Diversity, Education, Intercultural Education, Ireland, Traveller Education
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.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Education, Inequality, Intercultural Education, Ireland
Queen Rania of Jordan delivered a stark message to the World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development, held this week in Bonn, Germany: we are already half way through the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) 2005 -2014. We have little more than 2,000 days left to achieve the goals of the decade.
The conference was told that 97 countries had participated in the global process for monitoring of progress in the Decade. Ireland was one of the very few European countries that had not participated. Many countries (Ireland included) do not yet have a National Strategy on ESD despite the fact that European countries had agreed to develop a strategy by 2007. At the same time, in many countries, progress has been made, and the fact that 50 Government Ministers from around the globe (none from Ireland) had travelled to the conference suggests a commitment to the goals of the Decade is shared by many at the highest levels of government. “The glass is half full”, the conference was repeatedly told; the world has made progress during the Decade and can still achieve more. But the clock is ticking: 2,000 days and counting.
The European Regional Strategy for the Decade (agreed by European Ministers in 2005) can be found on: http://www.unece.org/env/esd/welcome.htm
The draft first report of the Deacde Monitoring and Evaluation Team can be found on: http://www.esd-world-conference-2009.org/fileadmin/download/background/DESD_key_findings_and_way_forward_23March09__4.pdf
UNESCO is the lead UN organisation for the Decade. Their Decade website can be accessed on: http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=27234&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Categories: Education
Tagged: Education, Education for Sustainable Development, Ireland
