Minority Children

In theory there are several ways of dealing with "foreign" children in a classroom. Once you leave the position of deficit pedagogy, an exchange of cultures seems the recognised way to real integration. In what way is there anything like cultural exchange? What do immigrant parents offer in this respect? What do we offer?

Theo Furxer, headmaster:    

Actually, there has been very little in this area. We have been thinking and working in this direction for about fifteen years and there have been strong attempts on our part. Firstly, we have organised several intercultural festivals. The biggest of the kind was in 1992, together with 2 other schools. There were about 500 children that were involved in the activities. Smaller festivals were organised every year, and on parents' day parents bring sweets traditional in their countries.

It seems that Turkish parents are not particularly active; they rather wait and see what they are asked to do and contribute. Parents' meetings with an interpreter have also been organised to explain what is important in our school and what might be different from a Turkish school. The teacher of Islam and the Turkish teacher were also invited, and it became clear that it was the same pupils that were the difficult ones with all the teachers. This might well have to do with the fact that quite a large number of the Turkish mothers cannot read and write German and that many of them do not speak German although they have been in Austria for over ten years. There is, however, a promising link between school and home, between Austrian homes and Turkish children, it is a programme called Lernhilfe or Help with learning.

As a matter of fact, having children from different nationalities in our classrooms makes a great difference. The teachers talk more about cultural similarities and differences than they would otherwise. Children share simple songs in their language, they talk about their everyday lives, their customs, their holidays, their food, their expectations in life etc. This happens throughout the year, not just on two days named International Days. So intercultural learning takes place in our classrooms in a series of small steps.