Intercultural Education in the Post-Primary School - National Council ...

INTRODUCTIONEducation is therefore an education in freedom–freedom frominherited biases and narrow feelings and sentiments,as well as freedom to explore other cultures and perspectivesand make one’s own choices in full awareness of availableand practicable alternatives.(Bhikhu Parekh, 1986)WHAT IS INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION?At its core, intercultural education has twofocal points:• It is education which respects, celebratesand recognises the normality of diversityin all parts of human life. It sensitisesthe learner to the idea that humans havenaturally developed a range of differentways of life, customs and worldviews,and that this breadth of human lifeenriches all of us.• It is education which promotes equalityand human rights, challenges unfairdiscrimination and promotes the valuesupon which equality is built.Intercultural education is a synthesis of thelearning from multicultural educationapproaches and anti-racist educationapproaches which were commonly usedinternationally from the 1960s to the1990s. Ireland has long had an experienceof ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religiousdiversity. This can be seen, for example, inthe way in which bilingualism in Gaeilgeand English has played an important partin Irish life as well as in the long-standingpresence of the Traveller community and ofminority religious groups. In recent yearsthis diversity has been added to throughimmigration. Different words like‘multicultural’ and ‘intercultural’ have beenused in recent years to describe the changesthat have been happening in Irish society.Common to them all is the idea of‘culture’. Both these terms describe asituation where there is more than oneculture in a country. While the term‘multiculturalism’ is sometimes used todescribe a society in which differentcultures live side by side without muchinteraction, the term ‘interculturalism’expresses a belief that we all becomepersonally enriched by coming in contactwith and experiencing other cultures, andIntercultural Education in the Post-Primary Schooli