Human Rights and Wrongs

Tolerance Education, or should that be Education promoting Respect and Diversity?

I went to my last side event at the OSCE HDIM yesterday. It was run by the OIDHR Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Programme and involved a number of very interesting speakers.
The panel was made up of Stacy Burdett from the Anti Defamation League, Jolanta Ambrosewicz from the University of Krakow and Majella o'Shea fom the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment in Ireland.
Again, I don't want to regurgitate the presentations and discussions, but rather highlight some points that made me think.
First, a bit of background. The Anti Defamation League has a 'World of Difference' Institute which 'provide hands-on training to help children and adults challenge prejudice and discrimination and learn to live and work successfully and civilly in an increasingly diverse world.' This was described in some detail and sounded a very promising way of raising awareness in children and adults about prejudice and intolerance. It also aims to teach skills to those involved to change them from passive bystanders to activists, directly challenging prejudicial atitudes and helping to change them. There are also many publications that are widely distributed in the USA.
Ireland's Council for Curriculum and Assessment has also been very active in raising awareness about the need for intercultural education. Their most recent publication aims to enable children to respect and celebrate diversity, to promote equality, and to challenge unfair discrimination. It's fascinating and I'd encourage as many people to read it as possible.
Some major issues and challenges were raised:

• If you can teach a child to be secure with his or her identity and develop self-confidence he or she will feel no need to denigrate others.
• School is a place where children start to learn about social systems and behaviour. If we can teach respect for diversity at an early age, this should lead to intolerance of prejudice further along the line.
• When introducing such concepts into schools they are not always welcomed. Teachers are not always comfortable tackling issues such as racism so guidelines should always be accompanied by training to give teachers the necessary skills.
• Other influences that potentially contradict education promoting respect and diversity may come from the children's families. This is a very tricky area because in general awareness raising aimed at parents results in 'preaching to the converted', only those who are already open to such concepts attend the sessions. It was suggested that the channel through which this could be successfully challenged might be the media rather than schools.
• To go from paper to practice requires the concepts involved to be inbedded into curricula and schools to be actively engaged.
• The terminology involved is also a sensitive area. People often talk of 'tolerance education' but this has a passive, almost negative quality to it. We all try to be tolerant people but I suspect minorities want more than to just be 'tolerated'. Active words such as respect convey a much clearer picture of what is involved in intercultural education.

A recurring theme in matters as abstract as 'tolerance' and 'respect' is the need for quantification. How can we assess the effectiveness of education promoting respect and diversity? Is it simply a matter of looking for reductions in hate crimes, or can we find a more positive indicator? Do we need to find an indicator at all? Or is it simply such an obviously good thing that we try to spread its availability regardless?

posted by Becca @ 4:04 pm