Education Without Discrimination - A Problem of The Whole Society

In recent years, there has been much discussion about the role of intercultural education in shaping students' personalities. And rightly so. The values of education without discrimination are almost entirely moral values. And we cannot talk about education without this dimension of our personality. But education takes place not only in a formal context, in educational institutions, but also at home or in other informal or non-informal contexts. Perhaps more than any other component of education, intercultural education needs to be supported by the family starting with pre school age. Or rather, it starts or should start from there. Most of the time, children end up in a nursery school with ready-made stereotypes. From an early age, we hear from parents comments on ethnic or religious groups, stereotypes, and prejudices. In these cases, the parents are very vehement in their support of denigrating beliefs, condemnable to anyone other than themselves.

No matter how much we want, the school can't make up for it. Today, everything that means preschool learning education is left exclusively "on the shoulders" of the school. In the case of moral education, we speak of a formation of a moral conscience from pre school age, which is justified only in the presence of moral conduct. You cannot limit education without discrimination to a purely theoretical level. The school, starting from the nursery school level, offers daily contexts in which this type of education must be capitalized: from curriculum topics to different disciplines to concrete situations in which students are involved outside of lessons. And we believe that the ones that have the strongest formative effect are the ones in which they actually participate, demonstrating a behaviour typical of a young man educated in an intercultural way. But for that, preschool learning requires teachers who promote values and social behaviours such as acceptance, tolerance, communication, and positive integration and avoid negative labelling attitudes, stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory behaviours, intolerance, xenophobia, and racism. This is, we believe, the first concern we need to consider: the initial training of teachers. In addition to mastering a theoretical background, students must be involved in activities other than teaching: national and international projects, participation in community activities, and involvement in volunteer activities.

Each discipline offers contexts (through certain subjects) for its capitalization and promotion of education without discrimination; however, it is important for the teacher to be able, available, and prepared to develop students' interest in intercultural issues, to develop an attitude toward cultural and intercultural empathy and a refusal to discriminate. On the other hand, the teacher must be a true cultural mediator, who knows his students, capitalize on strategies of knowledge and interconnection within the group, and does not discriminate against a student of a certain ethnicity by isolating him from the rest, who communicate assertively and promotes cultural identity.

In recent years we have understood how important the role of non-formal education is in training a young person, and education for diversity occupies an essential place. It is a favourable context for students to be genuinely involved in activities that promote diversity education. What we want to emphasize is that education without discrimination must be a common effort: of the school, of the family, of the local community. Some families cannot accept that the neighbour is of another religion and judges him, or that he is of another ethnicity and condemns him. This type of education starts early in the family and lasts a lifetime. It is a common effort to form a healthy value system, in which respect for and promotion of human rights becomes an internal resource. It takes permanent knowledge, self-knowledge, and inter-knowledge to reach the formation of an open attitude towards diversity. But first of all, you have to be aware of all this and want to.