It corresponds to a positive and proactive proactive to prevent racism and xenophobia, and more specifically behaviors of exclusion, avoidance and closure, as well as attitudes of contempt, devaluation, denigration and discrimination that stem in particular from individual and/or collective fears of increasing diversity.
It’s a positive approach in that it raises children’s awareness of others, with their respective diversity, and encourages them to adopt values, modes of behavior and tools that will give them a taste for successful multiculturalism.
It’s a proactive approach in the sense that it empowers children, encouraging them to co-create themselves, in a dynamic way, a successful living together in diversity.
It’s an education that proposes going beyond the perspective of prohibitions and rules of tolerance, and focusing on the pleasure of the practice itself.
Education in intercultural skills aims to boost children’s and young people’s self-confidence and ease in a culturally heterogeneous environment. It also aims to make them aware of the importance of cultivating open identities in order to avoid murderous identities*.
It includes the learning of specific “savoir-être” (attitudes based on shared human values) and “savoir-faire” (behaviors conducive to peaceful intercultural relations, without violence), as well as an awareness of the realities (we are all human beings, equal in rights and consideration, living a growing multiculturality, sharing the same place to live and the same land).
* Title of one of the key books by Lebanese-French author and essayist Amin Maalouf.
See also the definition of intercultural skills, Education for a culture of peace (ECP)
Citations and references :
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Communicating interculturally means:
Sharing who we are and what we know, our similarities, differences and antagonisms, in order to break down the barriers of strangeness, to recognize and better know ourselves in and through the Other, to enrich and appreciate each other, to open the doors of brotherhood together.
Robert Galisson, “Problématique de l’éducation et de la communication interculturelles en milieu scolaire européen”, 1997.
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Modalities of pedagogical intervention (in cultural competencies)
– Help manage misunderstandings between cultures
– Encourage the discovery of similarities and the acceptance of differences
– Transcend particularisms
– Value positive attitudes
– Act on behaviors and attitudes (knowledge, know-how, interpersonal skills).
Denise Lussier, Ph.D., Université, McGill (Montréal)
Canadian Centre for Interuniversity Research Immigration and Metropolises