Rapporto finale/ Final Report (ITA-ENG) - Casa di Carità Arti e Mestieri

THE VARIOUS TOPICS FOR DIALOGUE ON DISCRIMINATION
AND INTOLERANCE
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While the underlying problems were fairly similar across the various contexts, the places and young
people involved were, instead, a very diverse assortment (public and private schools, vocational
training centres and a youth detention centre). This resulted in an extremely variegated set of topics
to be addressed and methods to be adopted to analyse the many-sided issue of discrimination.
In the early stages of the project, one issue that was identified as a central concern in all four countries
was the analysis of social reactions to discrimination, i.e. the behaviour of pupils, teachers, head
teachers, family members and the group, observed at school when aggressive incidents associated
with racism and xenophobia occur. This very important question was, however, difficult to investigate
in practice and therefore only marginally addressed. Nonetheless, it remains a fundamental issue
which could be reconsidered in similar projects in future, in order to look closely at how the various
educational contexts deal with the problem of discrimination.
The issue in question was mainly addressed by exploring two thematic threads, which can be
“classified” a posteriori according to the type of approach. On the one hand, the issue was examined
from a cultural and geopolitical perspective. This approach focused on ethnic and religious differences
and the way these affect the definition of stereotypes and perceptions about other people and their
world. It also examined aspects of political and institutional discrimination and ways in which the
different kinds of discrimination prevent the full exercise of citizenship rights and co-existence.
On the other hand, it was addressed from the interpersonal perspective, in terms of how people
experience and are subject to different forms of intolerance. Stories of people’s own experiences –
as victims or direct witnesses – were an important channel through which to foster dialogue on the
various types of intolerance among young people. This approach examined the impact of the various
forms of verbal and non-verbal interpersonal communication on relations between people, and their
power to convey messages of tolerance or intolerance. In the majority of contexts the pupils found
this to be a particularly interesting aspect, and were strongly affected by their peers’ experiences
of discrimination and fears. The outcomes of this approach were judged to be excellent, since the
majority of pupils had experienced discrimination either personally or indirectly and reporting their
experiences had a strong impact on the group.
The issue was examined from both perspectives in most of the contexts, although there were some
differences from country to country and in some cases with the emphasis on one perspective rather
than on the other.
In France, for example, more attention was paid to the cultural and geopolitical approach, especially
by reflecting on current political affairs, the rise of xenophobic right-wing political parties in a number
of European countries (this was done by working on scripts for plays concerned with the success of
Le Pen in the 2002 presidential elections) and institutional discrimination (such as the previouslymentioned
EREAs - separate education establishments for children with learning problems, which
result in pupils being somehow branded for life, discriminated against by the school and by their
peers). Much attention was also paid to discrimination at the workplace and even in sports (including
at amateur level), in an effort to understand whether and how young people experience discrimination.
In Germany the accent was more on exploring the dynamics of interpersonal conflicts and social