AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

CULTURE

"The more professional insight one has about culture, the easier it is to abandon simplistic concepts of people from other cultures." Iben Jensen (2007)

Since my father was a teacher (and a wishful dreamer of a fairer world), his passion for meeting new people to hear their opinions, their voices, their way to express, and explain their own ways of seeing life, could not avoid the fact that it was only possible by traveling. And it was not enough to do so during his period of holidays, he wanted to experience living together with different people, and make up his own thoughts by observation and long talks, besides spending a great number of hours reading. He did enjoy very much, to sum up, all the old and new ideas and continuously search for answers, make new questions, and at the end apply new ways of teaching in his own classroom. But, even I spent most of my life in my birth country, I attended many different schools from different communities, and I did not spend more than 5 years in my home community. For that reason, I can say that I share some of the feelings of TKC, as well as some of the benefits and challenges, according to the classification of David Pollock (even I do not fulfill the exact requirements to belong to this definition). For example, I shared the pain of a chronic loss of relationships, but I did develop a great level of empathy. I had the opportunity of meeting many different personalities, cultures within my culture, and I learned that people can react in many different ways depending on their experiences and to listen and try to understand other's behaviors, which gave me as well great communication skills. It can be argued that my case is not comparable to TCK because I spent most of my academic period in my own country. However, I will explain as well through the following paragraphs the reasons why I think that the only difference between TCK and me, is the fact that what Pollock called home country it would be a home community in my case.

Expanded world view vs. Confused Loyalties

Benefit: Expanded World View

Most of the times, I had no contact with cultures from other countries, but there are invisible boundaries within my country that make huge differences between communities in terms of culture: forms of behavior, certain customs, traditions, festivals, laws, history, and even the active existence of other languages (and flags), some of them which origin are entirely different as the common one. The population in Spain is approximately 47.129.783 inhabitants (2007 census), and Spanish, the official language, is spoken by 99% of the population. Even though most of the Spanish population speak and understand Spanish, it is not the mother tongue of all of them, as well as it is not the one that they speak with their neighbors, family, and friends: there are another 9 recognized languages, officials within their communities, that are the ones they use to express themselves in their day today. Obviously, the country as a whole share a common official language, history, national holidays, certain customs, etc, but each community have certain traditions and customs, which are unknown to many people from the other communities, and are specific from each community. And this differences made for a long time in the history (still remaining today) to many people feel the need for the search and recognition of their own identity (which has led to a strong nationalism), strong enough to even claim their own independence from Spain. In this way, we can hear many voices claiming that they do not belong to Spain, and even feel offended when an innocent foreign call them Spanish. On the same line, each educational institution in every community where two languages coexist, gives two options to students: one option where all the subjects are taught in Spanish, and in addition there is one mandatory subject to learn the other language; and another option where all subjects are taught in the other language, except for the subject of Spanish language. Most of the parents choose the second line, as a way to preserve their identity through subsequent generations.

The reason to explain this is to make clear to my readers the context in which I grew up. In most of the places that I have lived and went to school, within my country, I was considered a foreign, and some times I was not even able to get involved in informal conversations in the street with the people of the community, as outside of the educational institutions they were using their mother tongue language between their friends and family (incomprehensible for me). In this way, as David Pollock mention in his book, I realized very soon that people have different ways to see life, philosophically and politically. In the north of Spain, where I spent 3 years of my school period, most of the people were fighting for their independence, and some people were against independentism, and both ideas involved many other factors related to politics and lifestyle. I could compare as well the difference between the view of this matter from the people directly affected (by the fact of living in the community with this conflict), and those who had an opinion about it, from other communities (often people who did not even know anyone from this community or had visited the place). In this way, I learned how many ways one issue can be seen, and which factors can affect them to choose a side.

Challenge: Confused Loyalties

It may seem strange, but if we analyze the fact that some of the communities in Spain that I have lived had a strong patriotism that did not share with each other (as they claimed independence while not feeling a part of Spain), I did not feel identify with their identity and feelings of belonging to, what they called, a different country. Since the reasons were culture (including language), but also a different way as my home community to make politics, I have always felt that the atmosphere was hostile when someone talked about political issues: it turns out that in the surveys that Media showed, my community  was one of those that had a majority of people against the independence of these communities. All this caused serious tensions between citizens, for the simple fact of belonging to one community or another. I felt that I belonged to my home community, the Valencian Community, and on one hand I was rejected sometimes for that exact reason at the other communities, calling me sometimes fascist. But on the other hand, I understood the reasons for the independentism, and I did share with them the opinion of the right to self-determination, so I was rejected as well by many people from my community, by calling me for instance unpatriotic.

Three-Dimensional View of the world vs. Painful view of reality

Benefit: Three-Dimensional View of the World

One of the most interesting things I have observed, as I mentioned above, was the way people viewed one issue, depending on the fact if they lived the dilemma in their own community or knew it only through the Media. And now I know that I would not have this experience, I would not have been able to understand, at the level I do, what people directly affected feels about it. That I am grateful for. The most striking part was that I realized very soon that the people who hated other people neither had a close relationship with one of those that they criticized and hate, nor were able to feel empathy for them or understand the root of the problem (either were open to search and listen other opinions different as the bunch of lies from Media, as I learned to do by living the experience instead as do it through the books or television).

Challenge: Painful awareness of reality

Of course, when someone lives in different countries/communities leave behind people and experiences that allow them to feel closer to the issues and incidents from these places. Specifically, in some areas of northern Spain, there were frequent terrorist attacks by an organization called ETA (which still exists). When I was not living there anymore, although I knew that the Media often used a sensational style for these events, creating much more drama than it was already the fact in itself, I was much more aware and worried these days of how people I knew felt, than the people around me. Our brain has a selective way to choose the information we will pay attention to. As many experiences we have that are relevant for us, we create what I like to call light switches which switches on a light in our brain for every relevant information around us, allowing us to the focus attention on a specific matter. When watching the news, I believe the people who have experienced to live in other countries or communities have more of this light switches that switch on every time they hear the name of this places than any other person. And this is what it happened to me or to any TCK since for us is more important to hear anything that happened over a wider territorial area, or even more able to feel the pain or loss of the others, than someone who does not feel directly connected at anyhow to these places.

Cross-cultural Enrichment vs. Ignorance of the Home Culture

Benefit: Cross-cultural enrichment

Many Spanish had difficulties in guessing which community I come from. When I was younger, that was a problem for me. I observed around me patriotism and a sense of belonging to a specific community that I did not feel completely to any of them. Nowadays I understand that my personality was built up with a sum up of experiences and, what I consider, the positive sides of each community I have been. Simultaneously, as TCK, that arouses special interest to know and pay attention to the events that occur in other parts of the world. That involves as well the fact that it can create a great motivation for children to hear with more interest in the lessons of, for instance, geography and history.

Challenge: Ignorance of home culture

I do not think that in my case that challenge would clearly apply, even I might have missed things such as: how is it prepared the horchata drink, originally from my home community, or what was exactly the main ingredient (chufas, or tiger nut, in English).  I did not get the humor either, or the feeling of crying during the Fallas, where cardboard dolls that have been carefully built by hand throughout the whole year, are on fire in the middle of the city. However, I have been always connected to my country, and I can understand that it is a different way to live this experience for TCK. Maybe their home country is actually very far away from the country they live in, and they do not really have the opportunity to get certain information if is not being talked at home at some point. And it is sometimes not even enough to talk or read about it. We can see that in the following reflection about what TCK learn when they experience living in a different country, which would be in this case in reverse: it is a sentence that Pollock wrote, from Rachel Miller Schaetti, at the beginning of chapter 6, "I am struck again and again by the fact that so much of sociology, feeling for history, geography, questions [about] others that our friends' children try to understand through textbooks, my sisters and I acquired just by living".
(Pollock 2009, p. 87-98)

MULTICULTURAL CLASSROOMS

One of the advantages that my experiences gave me now, is to make a comparison between all the schools I attended to, and I found some weaknesses that I will analyze in this paragraph, related to the theories that we just learned in class. One of the things I am more sad about my childhood is the fact that I did not have the opportunity to live the insights of a multicultural classroom. I grew up in a time where racism and xenophobia were very widespread within the society of my country. And, in general terms, that was expressed in many different ways: there were people agreeing with the expulsion of all persons "not belonging to the Spanish nationality" (I put it in quotes because what they really meant was ethnically Spanish. They meant then, "all the people who had parents born in other countries, or different skin color, even if they had a Spanish passport and were born and raised in Spain"). Based on my experience, their voices were very loud and accepted by most of the population. This way, the parties that promised to carry out their wishes, were the ones that were elected to be in the government, since most people seemed extremely concerned. There was at the time numerous debates at the television and in common conversations, becoming one of the fix-points that Iben Jensen describes in his book Introduction to cultural understanding. On the other hand, there was an opposite opinion, that was promoting a multicultural development thinking, and demand policies that promoted a multicultural understanding, as well as urgent policy measures to protect the immigrants' human rights, since most of them were being violated: including basic needs such as medical care (many were being denied at clinics and hospitals, while for the rest it was a free service offered by the government), security and protection against any discrimination and degrading treatment, and freedom of movement. In my opinion, the arguments of the first position were based on ignorance and fallacies. But as I grew up I observe something that paid my attention too: even for the people who thought that human rights were universal and it had to be applied for everyone, and were feeling for the people who had to deal with the facts happening in my country, some had a way to choose between "they" ("The others", Jensen, 2007) and "the other they". Somehow the people that were coming from África and Asia (from anywhere else but the Arab countries), were being seen as a better people, than the ones coming from the middle east or Arabic countries in África. We can argue (not justify) that this has something to do with the past experiences in the history of Spain, among other facts. And at the same time, I observed a hidden terminology within the Spanish vocabulary: different despective words to name people from specific countries or other words to say instead of the word foreign. These hidden words were being commonly used in different ways: some people were using them aware of what they wanted to express, and in racist/xenophobic jokes; some were hidden within innocent jokes, and some people that were using them simply did not realize of the respective meaning behind it. I personally had a great fight against this little holes that cave deeply into people's mind, and I insisted that it was something important to be raised to awareness, since I believed that language created our thoughts, and our thoughts created our feelings.

Coming back to my school experience, I could observe in the streets adult immigrants (mostly men) from different countries, but not children. And I had only a 2 years experience, during my High School period, with children belonging to Roma community ("gypsies"). In general terms, people had an awful multicultural experience, and this could have been avoided through a philosophy of integration and cultural understanding as part of the academic program.

At this point I would like to highlight some negative common points that I could observe between the schools I have attended in my country:

• Multicultural education was barely provided or provided unsuccessfully to the pupils. Both in theory and in practice: lake of information and activities that could promote cultural understanding and communication. 

• The teachers had not intercultural competence and had not enough knowledge about the culture that represented the minority group of the classroom. 
• The academic program had not included information related to the culture of the minority group, at the program of subjects such as history or literature, even though the minority group had been a part of the history and literature of the host country since 1470. 
• The minority group of the classroom had no knowledge about their own history, but they had to learn what they considered others' history. 
• Cultural/political issues information, where most of the times provided superficially, avoiding to go in-depth or analyze the reasons that could cause it (or encourage us to do it). 

• I barely remember one teacher who encourages us to analyze our own culture from different angles. Some of my collages and I referred to him as the special teacher, different from the mainstream, and most of the adults were labeling him as from the left hand.

• Lake of dialogue and debates. There were some, but I do not think that were enough or being carried out properly. 

As a conclusion I would say that multicultural education is extremely important since the emergent multicultural classes necessarily demand the acquisition of new skills and knowledge and an effort from the professionals to create an environment where nobody is excluded from being a part of their personal and social development.

Since my observations have shown a lack of skills of the teachers involved and a lack of an appropriate program for a bicultural environment, it has awakened in me a special interest to research and find answers for the following questions:

• In a classroom is where all children have the same cultural background: I wonder the way that multicultural education can be introduced in a classroom where there is actually not such a situation, and still be successful. Is it possible to teach multiculturality successfully in a non-multicultural environment? Will pupils get to understand to communicate between different cultures?

• In a classroom where coexist two or more different cultures: I wonder the way that multicultural education can be introduced in a classroom where there exists an environment of tension between the majority and the minority group. Which steps should be taken to promote an intercultural and interpersonal understanding?

I find very interesting the work of David Pollock about TCK, and I think that taking in consideration these aspects that characterize them, to analyze the situation in the classroom, will definitely make a difference in regard to communication, multicultural understanding, and integration. But here I realized as well how important it is to just be aware of the different situations that the country where the children come from, may be going through at the moment, no matter if they remain in the same country but moved to another community, or if they are actuals TCK. In the first case, and taking in consideration my personal experience where I did not have the opportunity to meet with children from other countries, I believe that by acquiring the necessary skills and applying them in the classroom, it may be a great resource for teachers to take advantage of the situation to put in practice a more comprehensive understanding between pupils with differences in their cultural backgrounds, that will probably help them to carry out successfully multicultural encounters in the future. 

Finally, to know about the situation of the country where the children come from also means to know about the country itself when they are not living in their home country, and that implies to dedicate some time to make a little research on the history and culture of all the pupils involved in the classroom. Eventually, I would propose to take this research into consideration as a point to be included in the planning of the content and structure of the classes. In that way, it should always include information and activities that make all of them feel a part of the institution and community they live, teaching theory that gives personal meaning to all of them, interrelating and integrating the different cultures in theory and in practice, and promoting understanding among the pupils.