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PUBLIC EDUCATION VOICE Newsletter of the Australian Council of State School Organisations | |||||||
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Vol 2 March 11, 2003 | |||||||
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This Edition's Hot Issue uuuuuu Editorial Public Education Promotes Social
Tolerance Harmony Day 2003▼ JobJuice ▼ ACSSO and Primary
Principals ▼ DEST ▼ Giving Peace a
Chance in the Classroom - from the US
▼ Media Release ▼ ACSSO Affiliates
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War Against Iraq
As this edition goes to press, war against Iraq has drawn steadily more imminent. Whilst ACSSO cannot and does not have a policy position on this major issue, it does wish to make three statements: Firstly, we are concerned that money from education will be diverted to an unfunded and open-ended war effort; Secondly, we are concerned at the media images of war that will impact upon young school students; Thirdly, we respect the right and legitimacy for older students to express their deeply held beliefs as they did in the capital cities last Wednesday.
These matters are briefly discussed in the media release which appears at the end of this edition. Judith Bundy, President | ||||||
Public Education Promotes Social Tolerance The Bali bombing ensured that 2002 is long remembered as a year of
tragedy and trauma for Australians. Our society needs to ensure that 2002
does not also become a watershed in racial or cultural intolerance and
conflict as a consequence of that tragedy. In this, public education has a
key role to play, as it has throughout the last century or more.
Australia is an ethnically and religiously diverse society.
Overseas-born Australians account for nearly 25 per cent of the total
population, a much higher proportion than any other country in the world.
Even in that great “melting pot” of migrants – the United States – only
about 10 per cent of the population are foreign-born. Our society has been enriched by the presence of these different
ethnic backgrounds. One only has to think of the range of food that most
Australians regularly consume or the variety of names in that uniquely
Australian game, Australian Rules Football. However, there are the on-going tensions between religious and
ethnic groups. A national priority is to promote tolerance, understanding,
mutual respect and constructive interaction between the various ethnic
groups that make up Australian society. Education has an important and continuing role in sustaining
social, cultural and religious tolerance. Building mutual respect and
tolerance towards others is critical to assuring all children of the
freedom to choose their futures as adults and to freely participate in
public affairs. It requires the development of values and a way of life
for children that are consistent with sharing the rights and
responsibilities of citizenship with others of different cultural
backgrounds. Public education plays the key role in this task. Public provision
of education is a way to bring children of different backgrounds together
in a learning environment that promotes a celebration of social diversity,
common values and respect of cultural diversity and social differences.
Public provision of a network of local neighbourhood schools
constitutes the physical infrastructure for such an education. The public
neighbourhood school is thus the common school for many different cultures
and reflects the melting pot of society. As the Head of the Inquiry into
Public Education in NSW, Professor Tony Vinson, stated recently: “The acceptance by the system of all comers and the opportunity
afforded for developing mutual understanding between groups is vital to
our times.” Developing social tolerance and mutual respect of different
cultures among children is a difficult challenge. Schools need to discover
and implement processes which can reconcile the valuing of difference with
the need for shared understanding without prejudice and discrimination.
Government schools are in the best position to take up this challenge. It
is hard to think of any other social institution that creates such
opportunities to bring together numbers of young people and promote a
socially tolerant community. Schools segregated by class, religion and race make it difficult
for children to develop a practiced understanding of people of different
backgrounds and to break down barriers of social intolerance. The
recognition and valuing of diversity of background and culture is not a
daily occurrence in socially segregated schools. The idea of restricting the government role in education to funding schools through a system of so-called charter schools would undermine the essential social role of public schools. The research shows that charter schools in the United States have further segregated students on the basis of income level, ethnicity, and special needs. Some charter schools have even been organized around parents’ cultural and religious beliefs. Public funding of schools is not sufficient to deliver the social
purpose of promoting cultural and religious tolerance. The children of
different social groups have to be brought together in the same
institution. Public provision of a network of schools in local
neighbourhoods is one important way of doing this.
Those who would promote competition, selection and exclusion as the basis of our education system would do well to review their approach in the light of the threat to social cohesion created by such events as the Bali bombing.
This article was prepared by Trevor Cobbold, of the ACT Council of P&C's Harmony Day Kits Now
Available to States Harmony
Day, to be held on 21 March 2003, is part of the Commonwealth Government's
Living in Harmony
initiative. Last year
over 1100 schools participated in Harmony Day, and this year’s event is
set to be even bigger!
The Harmony Education Kit provides lesson ideas,
activity sheets, web addresses that students can visit and comes with a
colourful Harmony Day poster. This year two Harmony Day webquests will encourage
younger students to go “on-line” to explore Australia's diversity. Webquests are the latest in
education tools and get young people on the World Wide Web to research a
project, use on-line catalogues and pick up IT skills. Let's
Party The first webquest is for young people
from 8 - 10 years. It asks
them to arrange an "inclusive" Harmony Day party for guests from 12
different cultural backgrounds.
In addition to an Indigenous Australian, guests come from
backgrounds representing the main source countries of new Australian
settlers. Design your Shopping Centre 10 -12 year old Students can learn
more about their own community by using census data from the Australian
Bureau of Statistics 2001 to discover the different backgrounds of people
in their local area. In teams
of four they then design the ideal shopping centre to meet everybody's
needs. Both webquests are found in the Classroom section at
www.immi.gov.au/harmony.
Schools
can order their free, four page Harmony Education Kit, delivered at no
charge, by calling Bob Crawshaw on 0401 718 863.
jobjuice – a new website for school leavers
Recently President Judith Bundy met with Leonie Trimper of the Australian Government Primary Principals' Association in Adelaide, to informally discuss matters of mutual concern. Issues such as resourcing of government primary schools and welfare and support services for primary school students were put on the table. ACSSO is concerned that the infrastructure of too many of our government schools is in need of improvement, and will pursue this in the appropriate places. Each edition of this newsletter will feature a website of national significance. ACSSO works closely with the Commonwealth Department of Education Science and Training on a number of national projects. DEST has a comprehensive website that provides an excellent insight into the kinds of issues that the government is involved with at this level. DEST also offers a subscription service for any individual or organisation that is keen to receive notice of updates as they occur. Visit http://www.dest.gov.au/ to access this site.
Should you not wish to receive this newsletter, email letters@acsso.org.au with the message unsubscribe and the name of your school in the subject line
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