Raising Awareness and Understanding the implications of living in a multi-racial society

[jampots]

Ds's school has just been inspected by Ofsted - this is one area they have identified as a possible problem for the otherwise excellent school. This is what they say:

"Children behave well; they are courteous, caring and show good respect and tolerance for each other. They are developing good spiritual, social and moral awareness, although their
understanding of life in our multi-racial society is limited because the school does not
provide enough opportunities for learning about different cultures. The school is held
in high regard in the locality. Children make a valuable contribution to the community
through a range of activities."

How could we help to educate our children about actually living in a multi-racial society not just about visiting the Mosque, Temple etc? The village is very "white middle class" on the edge of a very "white middle class" town so in their day to day life a lot of the children dont have the opportunity to experience multi-racial life in the same way as city dwellers.

Do you all celebrate Black History Month in October?

Does your school library consist of a good variety of multi-racial books?

Has your school ever invited in speakers, actors, dancers from non-white cultures?

Just a few thoughts that popped into my head.

no good telling me about Black History in October in bloody November MARS !

as for the others i dont know but will find out tomorrow. Ofsted report was just available today. Will discuss with teh school tomorrow as being a brummie I grew up in the middle of lots of different cultures

The nursery I used to work at had glowing remarks for having black skinned puppets, books about religion/different coloured skins etc.
Noone asked if the puppets were used or the the books were read. But it ticked the right box

Well if you'd asked in September........................

We are also in a very white middle class area and all but two of the children in DD1's class are white. But there is at least one muslim child and last week the whole class watched his parents' wedding video - to link in with their half term topic of celebrations. I thought that was quite creative on the teacher's part (not to mention brave of the parents who lent her the video!)

Beyond that, they seem to include all manner of festivals in Assembly, despite having strong church links. And there are plenty of different coloured faces on the posters and books around the place.

My friend runs a playgroup and has been criticised for not having saris in her dressing up box - although she did point out that none of the staff would have a clue how to wear them properly. But maybe they should ...... Discuss!

well I suppose they could google and spend the Christmas party learning how to do them.... though I imagine OFSTED wouldn't be impressed if the teachers had to recreate their drunken state to put the saris on. lol

The simple thing would be to ask the mother in the video to teach them!

This concerns me too. There are only two children from minority backgrounds in the whole of dd1's school and I know that one of them is a Christian. So multiculturalism is pretty non-existent. We live in a rural village and it simply reflects the demographic of the area. I think the idea of inviting people into the school is great, but it's not the same as living daily with people from other cultures and faiths. My bf at school was Hindu and I am so much the richer for sharing her culture with her.