Fascinating stats

On Jim Belshaw’s Personal Reflections the following appeared this morning, though dated yesterday.

Australia’s Global Ethnic Rankings

We all know that Australia is a country of migrants. A short search of Wikipedia shows that, measured by ancestry, Australia is in global terms:

• The second largest Irish, Maori and Maltese country.
• The third largest English country.
• The fourth largest Scottish country.
• The fifth largest Greek, Vietnamese and Dutch country.
• The seventh largest German country.
• The ninth largest Italian country.
• The eleventh largest Serbian country.
• The fifteenth largest Han Chinese country.
• The sixteenth Turkish country.
• The seventeenth largest Indian country.

What do we make of all this? Well, it’s just a measure of diversity.

 

Great resource for Journeys and multicultural education

Last night I watched Who Do You Think You Are? on SBS.

Go there not just for that one, but for the others in this currently ongoing series.

Naturally, too, I commend Inspiring Teachers which begins on Wednesday 6 February, 2008 at 8pm. 🙂

 

Accent on otherness

Yes, this is an excellent supplementary text for NSW HSC “Journeys” [or “Belonging”] but it is more than that: Pauline Webber in The Weekend Australian (September 29, 2007).

THE point at which cultures and ethnicities intersect is fertile ground for the creative arts. Such hybridity has been a riff running through the history of international cinema from the moment Hollywood opened its arms to European Jews fleeing the Nazi onslaught. Globalisation and the convoluted patterns of migration shaping the post-war world have provided film industries everywhere with periodic injections of freshness and originality. Films are made by North Africans in France, Asians in the US, Armenians and Iranians in Canada, Indians and Pakistanis in Britain.

A surprisingly large number of Australian filmmakers are from migrant backgrounds. Just taking a selection from those who have a significant body of work makes a long list: Rolf de Heer, Ana Kokkinos, Tony Ayres, Paul Cox, Alex Proyas, Ray Lawrence, Khoa Do, Clara Law, Nadia Tass, Kriv Stenders, Tom Zubrycki, George Miller and many more…

Excellent overview leading to this conclusion: “Each speaks as one of us but with an accent that puts the emphasis in surprising places. Our cinema can only be the richer for the inclusion of such voices.”

 

James Crawford on No Child Left Behind and ESL

Given that the Australian government is pushing its schools agenda hard, despite the fact it does not actually run any schools, and given that it and its advisers look to George Bush’s America for inspiration, it is interesting to scan the pages of Education Week over there. James Crawford’s June 5, 2007 article A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights caught my attention.

At the core of today’s debates over school accountability lies a contentious question: Does the federal No Child Left Behind Act represent a historic advance for civil rights, or a giant step backward for the children it purports to help?

This argument has divided the civil rights community itself, along with its traditional allies in Congress. One side supports stern measures designed to force educators to pay attention to long-neglected students and enable all children to reach “proficiency” in key subjects. The other side argues that the law’s tools of choice—high-stakes testing, unrealistic achievement targets, and punitive sanctions—have not only proved ineffective in holding schools accountable, they also are pushing “left behind” groups even further behind.

Disagreement is especially acute among advocates for English-language learners, known in the shorthand of K-12 education as “ELLs.” …

… high-stakes decisions about the education of these students are being made on the basis of data generally acknowledged to be inaccurate. Schools with an ELL “subgroup” are being labeled and punished for failure—not because of the quality of instruction they provide, but because existing tests are unable to measure what ELLs have learned.

… Critics of NCLB-style accountability—who now include a substantial majority of educators working with English-language learners—cannot see how such a blunt instrument could produce academic benefits. More importantly, they point to the law’s harmful impact on minority students generally and on ELLs in particular. The perverse effects are well-documented: excessive class time devoted to test preparation, a curriculum narrowed to the two tested subjects, neglect of critical thinking in favor of basic skills, pressure to reduce or eliminate native-language instruction, demoralization of teachers whose students fall short of unrealistic cut scores, demoralization of children who are forced to take tests they can’t understand, and, perhaps worst of all, practices that encourage low-scoring students to drop out before test day.

No one questions that, because of the No Child Left Behind law, English-language learners are receiving more “attention” than ever before. But, as many educational researchers and practitioners can testify, results in the classroom have been far more negative than positive…

… despite its stated goals, the No Child Left Behind law represents a diminished vision of civil rights. Educational equity is reduced to equalizing test scores. The effect has been to impoverish the educational experience of minority students—that is, to reinforce the two-tier system of public schools that civil rights advocates once challenged.

English-language learners, for example, are being fed a steady diet of test-prep, worksheets, and other “skill building” exercises from a menu mostly reduced to reading and math. Their language-learning needs are increasingly neglected by the marginalization of bilingual and even English-as-a-second-language instruction to make time for English language arts items likely to be on the test. Meanwhile, more-advantaged students are studying music, art, foreign languages, physical education, science, history, and civics, getting to read literature rather than endure phonics drills, and participating in field trips, plays, chess clubs, and debate tournaments—all “frills” that are routinely denied to children whose test scores have become life-or-death matters for educators’ careers.

Ironically, in numerous ways, No Child Left Behind is increasing the achievement gap, if academic achievement is understood as getting an all-round education and, with it, an equal chance to succeed in life. True civil rights advocates cannot and must not ignore the reality behind the rhetoric.

See? We can learn from the American experience after all. Let’s hope in this respect at least that we do!

James Crawford may be found on the Institute for Language and Education Policy.

 

It’s our tolerance at stake, not multiculturalism

These days we agonise over such matters as whether a Muslim girl should wear a veil or scarf to school. Much of that agonising is irrational. True, there will be limits. Religions practising nudism (and there are such) would have to argue very hard before they could manifest their beliefs everywhere in public, especially in a school, and if cannibalism were a central tenet to some belief system I doubt the school canteen would oblige. Such extremes aside, there is plenty of room for cross-cultural understanding and mutual respect and tolerance.

Melbourne Lawyer “Legal Eagle” has an interesting post on the subtle knife, referring to the Sikh tradition of carrying a ceremonial sword or knife. Her conclusion is: “It seems to me that a minority of students would wear a kirpan, and that, with a full understanding of Sikh tradition, it can be seen that the likelihood of students using the kirpan in an inappropriate or violent manner would be very low indeed. In this context, it seems appropriate that Khalsa Sikhs should be able to wear a kirpan to school.”

Do you agree?

I do, wholeheartedly.

 

New Australian movie suits “Physical Journeys”

I haven’t seen it yet, but I have read about it in the current Monthly Magazine (article not online). It would seem though that Romulus, My Father would be worth considering as a supplementary text for HSC students doing the Journeys Area Study, particularly with the poems of Peter Skrzynecki, but not only with that selection. School users please note YouTube is probably blocked; try again at home.

On YouTube you will also find a whole series of Director’s Diaries about the movie. This is Day 4:

There is a Romulus My Father website. You may also read Raymond Gaita’s book. See Robert Manne’s review.

 

Interesting cultural policy take on Virginia Tech

I wrote a very long post after the Virginia Tech shootings, reflecting on a range of cultural issues that are also relevant to Australia. While being in favour of gun control, I did not pursue that aspect much.

Korean-American Christian Hyepin Im has since posted on the God’s Politics site. She argues that Asian Americans have been starved of government support because they are seen as “model immigrants”.

There is no denying Seung-Hui Cho was one sick individual whose wild rampage was senseless and tragic. At the same time, I can’t help but mourn and wonder whether or not this tragedy could have been averted if Seung-Hui had early intervention. For too long, Asian American communities have been ignored or left out of policy, program, and funding decisions under the justification of being “model minorities.” Only recently, studies are acknowledging that monolingual Asians and their families are under-served in this country. Such short-sighted decisions are costing many innocent lives, and taking a huge toll on the community and the country. For example, juvenile delinquency for Asian Americans has increased while it has decreased for other groups in the last 20 years. Asian Americans suffer from high suicide, depression, and domestic violence rates.

A very informative post, and possibly relevant here in Sydney.

 

Excellent series on Islam in Australia

Sure, some in the Australian Muslim communities may quarrel over details, while others may not, but I am glad the Sydney Morning Herald has today published a series of special articles on this important and much misunderstood part of the Australian family. See: Islam in Australia: a diverse society finds a new voice by Hamish McDonald.

 

On welfare issues with Korean-Australian students

Introduction

This post has become very long. Written over two days, it has four distinct sections.

— The first part is my immediate response to questions being asked about possible cultural factors in the tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech. It should be noted that I do not aim to “explain” that tragedy.
— Then I present some other posts I have found that take up the same or similar questions. The most significant one comes from a Korean-American pastor.
— In the third section you may read further thoughts based on my own observation of Korean and Korean-Australian students in Australia.
— I conclude with reflections on the need to have a perspective shaped by something more than monoculturalism.

****

 

Mirrored from my personal site…

In today’s Sun-Herald there is a piece by Kerry-Anne Walsh called “Multiculturalism isn’t the enemy.” Unfortunately, given it is an excellent piece, it is not online. It should be. So here most of it is:

…Twenty years ago, a folk festival in Australia was a homage to all things Celtic. It’s a sign of Australia’s extraordinary growth and maturity that the four-day [Canberra Folk] festival now attracts the cream of domestic and international acts and honours the music, dance, arts and cultural life of an extraordinary number of nationalities in the Australian family.

This year, as the poisonous war in Iraq and the turmoil in Afghanistan continue, the music of the Middle East was deliberately honoured.

As his Government readies to whistle up so-called cultural values as an election issue, Howard, if he’d attended, would have witnessed a microcosm of the miracle that is our new multicultural society.

Kevin Andrews, the staunchly Catholic Immigration Minister whose added title of Multicultural Affairs was ditched in January as the government moves to ditch multiculturalism altogether, might also have received divine enlightenment.

Traditional Aussie bush poets performed alongside a wide variety of Middle Eastern music and dance groups. Irish fiddlers jigged and reeled; Aussie bands played bouzoukis alongside didgeridoos. A Sunday morning ecumenical Easter service was themed in the celebration of diversity, with prayers for the narrow-minded, the war-torn, and the bigoted.

The broader political backdrop, in this election year, is an ideological battle over the future of multiculturalism with the government ramping up its “integration” rhetoric as the poll date nears.

Howard explained that dumping “multicultural affairs” from the ministry name and adding “citizenship” expressed “the desire and aspiration that immigrants become Australians”.

Does that mean that the 7 million people from 200 countries who have successfully made Australia home while retaining their own proud heritage haven’t wanted to become Australians?

Why not applaud the successes of our melting-pot society… instead of finding fault and political opportunities?

Multiculturalism didn’t create the Cronulla riots. White and black Australia led the way long before the term “multiculturalism” was coined in the 1970s. And white blokes sitting in radio studios are a bigger threat to racial harmony than a word.

The word “muticulturalism” is now loaded by some politicians and detractors to send the erroneous message that multiple cultures threaten the Anglo one.

They should get out more.

I despair at the anticorrectness correctness that infects the Howard government. They are tossing many a healthy baby out with the bathwater, I feel.

See also Shan Jayaweera, “Sharing two cultures shouldn’t be a test of allegiance.”