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Worksheet
6: Building a multicultural society
Ways
to identify and combat discrimination
- Culture
and Heritage: Levels 7 & 8
- Place
and Environment: Level 5
Aim
- To introduce
students to New Zealand's 1994 Human Rights Act.
- To help
students understand what it feels like to be taunted or ignored
because they are different.
- To focus
on the methods students could use to change their perceptions
of others and to create a more inclusive school environment.
Procedure
Each
student should have a copy of "Anna's Story" by the Race
Relations Office, from the 1994 DecisionMaker Guidebook, Parliament
and government, page 11.
They also should visit the Human Rights Commission website, the
HRC and the DecisionMaker sites about the Diversity Action Programme,
and the Centre for Citizenship Education Directory on Cultural Diversity.
- Discuss
terms 'dislike' and 'discrimination'.
- Read "Anna's
Story": members of the class could take parts.
- Read the
worksheet and discuss the questions. If you can't find a copy
of Anna's story, imagine it, or find another story about people
of different backgrounds living together, or skip it and concentrate
on action suggestions in the Diversity Action Programme.
- Discuss
terms like "desecration of graves", religious and
ethnic intolerance" and "interfaith
- Read speeches
on interfaith, such as by Prime Minister Helen Clark, and act
parts of the people she mentions
- Read the
worksheet and discuss the questions.
Parliament
passed the Human Rights Act, and it came into law in 1994.
The Act makes it illegal to discriminate against people on the
grounds of sex, marital status, religious or ethical belief, race
or colour, ethnic or national origins, disability, age, political
opinion, employment status, family status or sexual orientation.
The
Race Relations Office also must encourage positive race relations
through education. One way of helping to do this is to uncover
the motives behind what actually is happening in situations where
people feel they are being attacked or discriminated against because
of the kind of person they are.
Get
into groups or pairs and discuss the following questions. You
might like to come up with some recommendations at the end of
your discussion session.
- What
is really happening in "Anna's Story," and what
are the Diversity Action Programme and the Interfaith meetings
reacting to?
- What
do you think Anna, and Muslim and Jewish minorities, are feeling?
What could they do about their feelings? Can you suggest ways
they might handle the situation?
- How
do you think Willie Anna's story, and Somali families, are
feeling? What do you think is causing them to feel that way?
- Willie,
and minorities, are trying to get attention from some other
people. Why does he want her to notice him, and they want
others to notice?
- What
do you think the teacher, Mrs Love, and other New Zealands,
did?
- Has
anything like this happened in your class or in your whole
school? If it has, talk about what happened and what you and/or
your teachers did to deal with the problem.
- How
could you make new students who come from different cultures
feel they belong to the school?
Follow
up activities
Identify
a TV show, cartoon, comic or book in which a person is treated
or judged unfairly because they are different.
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