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 Chapteh, congkak and more… Three days ago, some students might have played traditional games such as these, as part of celebrations for Racial Harmony Day on 21 July. Among older students, some introspection might have taken place as well, in view of the Jakarta bombings just a few days back.
Speaking at Admiralty Primary School, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen had said that schools play an important role as they are a common area where students of different races and religious beliefs come together and learn more about each other and the world they live in. He said: "Will these activities imbue in our students a deep-felt need and passion to preserve the unity and common space that we now share? We won't know until we're tested. Hopefully, we will never be tested."
While I cannot agree more with Dr Ng’s sentiment, imbuing a "deep-felt need and passion" is a tall order, that cannot be achieved through school-wide cultural activities held on several days during the school year (Racial Harmony Day, celebrations for Chinese New Year, Deepavali, Hari Raya etc.). It does help that initiatives such as National Education-driven Learning Journeys, CCM (Conversational Chinese and Malay) and Social Studies all do their little bit towards creating greater awareness of one other's cultural practices (though some may beg to differ). I suspect that for some children, these also represent eye-opening exercises in discovering one’s own culture!
But being aware is just a first step that paves the way for involvement and appreciation.. which will hopefully lead to that "need and passion to preserve the unity and common space that we now share". Nothing like hands-on activities to engage the young, so they may better understand and appreciate the differences in cultural practices, language and so on. Just to name a few:
- Bringing a friend home for a home-cooked meal or having a parent volunteer teach a simple hands-on cooking class
- Bringing schoolchildren into the neighbourhood to test their budding conversational Mandarin and Malay skills
- Organising mini-workshops on various dance forms and crafts that give students a chance to do more than just gaze passively at a tabletop display or dance performance during school concerts
- Keeping a cultural journal either at individual or classroom level ('culture wall') to jot down observations, paste photos and describe experiences, OR setting up a ‘culture corner’ in each classroom with items personally shared by each student
Some schools are already doing some of these, and I feel that even more can be done at classroom and group level. In fact, with the spectre of H1N1 meaning a shift from mass events to more classroom-based activities, there is no better time than now to create opportunities for more meaningful cultural interaction and exposure for our youth.
Do you agree that more opportunities for meaningful cultural interaction are needed in order to foster racial harmony in schools? Do share your thoughts, we would like to hear from you.
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And there lies the lesson for all of us.. not that peace and harmony among disparate peoples is impossible, but it often takes a great and conscious and unrelenting effort -- involving sweat, blood, toil, tears, and more -- to keep the forces of racism, bigotry, religious extremism at bay.