We continue this time on our blog with this series of posts started with the first entry: “Interculturality. An educational project“. Our former student Paula González, continues with the second installment:
“He can’t stay! We don’t have professionals for him…”
“Joseph is an 11-year-old Haitian boy, who arrived in the country days ago and comes to a prestigious school to ask for a spot. Unfortunately, when taking the selection tests, Joseph does not understand Spanish and cannot read what he is asked. The psychopedagogue tries to speak in Spanish, in English; however, Joseph only speaks French. The specialist manages to find some codes that allow Joseph to decipher the math evaluation but could not help with the language test evaluation. When Joseph’s tests were handed over to the management team, it was decided to reject Joseph for not having the suitable staff for this challenge.”
The educational and cultural transformation of the 21st century
“It is a fundamental task of education and our society to transform our region into a diverse, pluralistic, integrated, and intercultural place, based on respect for the cultural values and customs that each person brings with them.”
In 1982, Unesco stated that:
– Every culture represents a unique and irreplaceable set of values.
– Cultural identity contributes to the liberation of peoples.
– All cultures are part of the common heritage of humanity.
– The international community considers it a duty to ensure the defense and preservation of each people. (ISEP, 2013)
Considering these statements, the theme of interculturality covers many aspects, including personal, sociocultural, political, and economic.
The right of people to live wherever they are and “to be” part of a society different from the one they belonged to is the beginning of the task of an intercultural society, but what happens when a child from another language arrives at our educational institution and we don’t understand their language? How do we put this theory into practice? Are we prepared to receive them? Who are or are we responsible for providing them with coverage and the right to be educated in school? Do we have multilingual staff? Do we respect the right to equality? How, within the school institution, can we distinguish the showy success of results, when students are chosen with high-level tests with the purpose of not undermining the high results obtained over time?
By experience, within the school, we realize this. We feel frustrated to see how new members are not only denied entry but also deprived of opportunities, even when these are for the very important socialization process.
The importance of Diversity and Interculturality
The first projects that incorporated the theme of diversity were carried out by the United States in the seventies and in Spain in the eighties. The European Community and the Council of Europe are two organizations that have predominantly worked on the theme of interculturality.
Interculturality, a term used indiscriminately, means from a pedagogical perspective a multiple and dynamic interaction. It is about an education that should be committed to the entire community and not rely on the good results of advantaged and successful students.
For the elaboration of an educational project, political will, equal opportunities, and a powerful and enriching cultural dialogue are required under the principles of a broad, global, and worldwide vision, characterized by public policies with a dynamic conception and positive cultural valuation; with an open school committed to transformation processes and support for immigrants, with prepared teachers, with concrete and real investments to support these special educational needs.
Now, the functions of intercultural education that should be developed point to the transformative, process-controlling, and prospective function of objectives, that is, the realization of a systematic and constructive work, in addition to the creative challenge of improving what has already been done, with the purposes of offering better conditions, equal opportunities, basic and common values among the members of this multicultural community, rescuing and valuing diversity through respect among social actors, becoming aware of opting for good social and individual and collective practices, developing new multicultural proposals to overcome all or most ethnocentrisms, thus favoring a better development of an open and flexible cultural identity that inserts each of the elements proper to each culture.
In the third part of this topic, the different models and programs existing in intercultural education will be presented; however, pedagogical reflection is more than a theoretical reading, rather an invitation to make a reality… an intercultural pedagogy.