“Let us commit to quality education for all of the world’s children. Financing education is the best investment we can make for a better world.”(Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General)
Education helps children in war stay children. These children in war, on a daily basis experience stress response. This trauma decreases brain development. Education and learning can help this stunting, help brain growth and even reverse it.
We talked in class about how only 2% of the humanitarian budget is spent on education. This point is difficult to argue, as more money definitely needs to be spent on education for these children, yet things like clean water, food and shelter must come first.
53% of refugees are school aged children. We need to be thinking about continuing the way we are going as there is a fear that we will “lose” a generation. There is already a divide that is extremely substantial, around 20 years!! Why has it got that far? What needs to be put in place to correct this? It makes me wonder how much of this loss is due to countries putting an emphasis on child soldiers and how much is due to funding.
I found the discussion we had about the text books provided to Afghanistan youth and how the artwork within the curriculum, paired with the pictures were haunting. Hand guns, grenades, kolishnicoffs are put in the math curriculum. Two hand grenades, three pencils, 4 machete, 5 turtles. This use of mixing the every day with the violent, is encouraging a normality for these kids. The world needs to realise schooling carries messages, it’s not a simple input. Conditioning, putting the violent with the normal, is a powerful message in itself. I found the excerpt from the National Race Unity Speech Awards quite symbolic in the same way and the contrast made it quite moving. Again, pairing the negative with the positive, paints quite a picture in the minds of people listening, reading and watching.
Once refugees have relocated, there are many things that need to be in place to accommodate. Accelerated education programmes are aimed at out of school youth, who are unable to join state education. It covers the curriculum at an accelerated pace, covering two years in one year. Its intention is to re-integrate students back into the state system. “The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge, but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.” – Jean Piaget. While I don’t agree with the use of the word ‘men’ in this sentence, I do believe this is important to remember to apply this to refugee education. The ‘stars’ model is something that mirrors this outlook and I have since printed it out for personal use in my teaching. I believe it is important as a teacher to always be considering culture in the classroom anywhere you teach. Cultural safety, cultural team, cultural awareness, cultural respect and cultural sensitivity, all go hand in hand.
In the reading for this lesson, there was a quote that stood out to me, “A responsive teacher is open to learn about their refugee students’ backgrounds and to make every effort to build in students’ prior experiences and histories.” (Salmanzadeh, 2015). The text goes on to state that this should start early in the pre-service teacher phase, which I completely agree with, although I think that this should not just encompass teachers but everyone. In a dramatic and creative context, we can allow the students, like the book Daniel read out in class, to explore their experiences and histories. This can be cathartic for some, but we have to be prepared for the few that may be reluctant to go there. Being respectful and understanding and supporting not just refugee students, but all students that come through your classroom.
The world is driven by ideas. If a battle of ideas is going on, how does that affect education?
References.
Dwyer Family Foundation. (2016). Jean Piaget’s Development Theory: Learning How to Be Smart. Retrieved from: http://dwyerfamilyfoundation.com/jean-piagets-development-theory-learning-smart/
Salmanzadeh., A. (2015). Reaching for the STARS: a critical and culturally responsive approach to meet the educational and socio-cultural needs of refugee background students in Aotearoa New Zealand. Retrieved from website: https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz/bbcswebdav/pid-4584415-dt-content-rid-8609917_3/orgs/CSOC_AE_AK3515/Salmanzadeh%20%282015%29%20Reaching-for-the-Stars.pdf
TheirWorld. (2017). Invest in education for a better world says UN chief Antonio Guterres. Retrieved from: https://theirworld.org/news/how-education-was-big-winner-at-un-general-assembly
Loris blog 
Kia ora Lori,
I really enjoyed reading your blog on refugee education, as it delved deeper into a topic that I was fairly unfamiliar with prior to our lecture. I like how you have contrasted the quote from the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, which has a lot of aspirational sentiment to it, against the statistical realities of refugee education. This alone highlights some of the issues that are present within global attitudes towards refugees.
Looking at the statistics that you have included in your blog, it is difficult to pose solutions to such an enormous problem that affects education on a global scale. However, your focus on being a culturally responsive teacher and understanding your refugee students backgrounds (and all of your students backgrounds) will help you to better connect with and develop teaching and learning strategies to help these students, and will certainly make a difference at an individual level. It will also help your students to better make meaning and sense of their own experiences and histories and to link these experiences to their own learning. This will create an enriching classroom experience not only for refugee students, but for all students in your class, and will allow them to feel comfortable and express their own culture, seeing it reflected in all aspects of your classroom. If you continue to develop these relationships and create these positive learning environments, you and your students will only benefit!
DJ
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