I'm currently taking this course as mentioned above. This course aims to help new teachers to adopt a social perspective of issues related to teaching. Anyway, the reason why I'm posting this up is because I think it deserves to be posted since I spent so much effort on a 500 word essay. Just read it for extra GK yah...
In 2003, a local English-language newspaper, The Straits Times, carried a series of articles highlighting the phenomenon of insufficient interaction across racial boundaries in Singapore schools (please refer to Davie (2003) as an example). Discuss two major ways in which you as a teacher may try to deal with this phenomenon in your classroom teaching or through co-curricular activities.
In a school, the role as a teacher is instrumental in encouraging more inter-racial interaction. Teachers act as a catalyst to impress upon these young minds that even though they are of different races in a common space, they are of one identity – Singaporean. Hence, I would like to suggest two major activities a teacher could do to encourage more inter-racial interaction.
Firstly, the teacher should encourage inter-racial interaction by enhancing their knowledge about the ethnic festivals. At the start of the academic year, the teacher should create a common identity for the class so that everyone (of different races) will feel a sense of belonging to the class. The students will decide on the class identity but it must have an over-arching theme of “Acceptance”. This is to nurture a spirit of respect and acceptance towards diversity. The teacher should also split the class into different groups, ensuring that each group has at least one non-Chinese student. The rationale for doing so is to prevent any occurrence of the ‘birds of the feather’ phenomenon. With each ethnic festival approaching, the teacher will assign each group with different responsibilities to research upon, for example, the significance of Chinese New Year, practices and superstitions. Each group will then present their assigned tasks to the class. Through student participation, it is hoped that they will have a greater understanding of their counterparts’ beliefs, customs and practices, thereby creating more conversation topics across races. To further enhance interaction, the teacher should organize home visits during the festive season so that the students will understand how each race celebrates their festive seasons. This also allows parents to forge better relationships with parents of the other races. Through this activity, it is hoped that students will eliminate any stereotypes or stigma they may have of the other race. Once this is accomplished, the students will begin to accept one another, thus strengthening their common class identity, as well as being Singaporean.
Secondly, the teacher in-charge of a co-curricular activity should organize a camp for the students. The duration of the camp should be long enough for the students to establish stronger friendship bonds. The theme of the camp will be focusing on “Team-Building”. Likewise, the students will be divided in groups, each group comprising of at least one non-Chinese. At the start of each day, the students will recite the pledge, and the teacher has to explain that in this co-curricular society, we are pledging ourselves to be one united people, accepting and respecting of one another’s culture. This is crucial especially when co-curricular activities are instrumental in nurturing students’ character and moral development. Through the team-building activities, students have to go through mental and physical challenges, which require a high amount of sharing, giving, co-operation and communication from one another. In this way, they will learn how to help one another, despite of their racial differences. At the end of the camp, the students will affirm one another for the special qualities they have. This is to help them realize that even though they have different talents, each one of them is important to the success of their society. Hence, whenever the need arises, we should put up a united front, helping one another, strengthening our common identity of being Singaporean.
