Mandatory Blog: 1. A reflection of your own experiences of culture and identity in relation to education

Mandatory Blog: 1.     A reflection of your own experiences of culture and identity in relation to education

My schooling experience in the Blue Mountains was shaped by my private education at the Catholic co-ed school, St. Columba’s. When Ho (2011) posed the question in her study ‘Respecting the Presence of Others: School Micropublics and Everyday Multiculturalism’, “So how Culturally diverse are Australia’s Schools” (p.606) I couldn’t help but recognise the limited culture exchange at my school and feel slightly ashamed at the lack of multiculturalism. My experience of multiculturalism heightened greatly as I found university to be the best sight for a ‘micropublic’ (p.605) promoting cultural connectivity and exchange. My peer group diversified ethnically and I was participating in cultural traditions that made me reflect and grow my own sense cultural identity. It saddens me that this exchange had not happened earlier in high school, as my Catholic school reiterated Ho’s findings that “private schools are not structured to represent the full diversity of society”(p.609). Reflecting on my schooling experience I am unhappy that I did not contribute to Rizvi’s discourse of Cosmopolitanism promoting the “greater need of intercultural understanding and communication” (2008, p.111).

I found myself relating to McIntosh’s paper of White privilege (1988) as she describes her school as giving her no training in “seeing myself as an unfairly advantaged person” (p.2) and I reflect on this being due to the lack of cultural diversity at my high school. In addition to this I can now see myself being apart of the ‘white flight’ movement that creates highly concentrated mono ethnic cultures (Ho p. 614).  The reasoning for my concentrated ‘white’ culture of schooling was not due to a fear of migrant groups, but due to the geographical location and population of the Blue Mountains. Through reading Ho’s paper in a self-reflective context I think that even though my schooling did not promote cultural exchange, which I think is a shame for the cultural growth of its pupils, it did not hinder my ability to “understand and negotiate cultural difference” (p.616). This is just my personal reflection; I cannot speak on behalf of my classmates but I have not found that my experience of mono cultural schooling has affected my ability to appreciate cross-cultural communication in my life now.

Resources:

Rizvi, F. (2008) Education and it’s Cosmopolitan possibilities, Transforming Learning in Schools and Communities, London, Continual International Publishing Group, pp.102-114

 Ho, C 2011, ‘Respecting the presence of others: school micropublics and everyday mutliculturailsm;, Journal of Intercutlrual Studies, pp605-615

McIntosh, P (1988) “White privilege and male privilege: A personal Account of coming to see correspondences through work in Women’s Studies, Wellesley College Centre for Research in Women p. 2