With partners:
Teacher Snapshot 1
TEACHER: It’s not just language barriers. I think in Australia there are incredible cultural barriers. I don’t think that it pertains just to language because I think that very often when they come here – because they’re disenfranchised for not having the language they also sort of enclave themselves in ghettos and develop a kind of a subculture where they live within their own community. They tend not to go out and assimilate. They’re expected to live with a foot on either side of the fence when they go to school but when they go home they go back into some kind of mismatch of their own culture as it was 30 years ago, but not as it is today.Teacher Snapshot 2
The cultural and socio-economic backgrounds of teachers can be very different to their students.
TEACHER: …most teachers come from a predominantly middle-class backgrounds and have predominantly middle-class values about things like education and material gains, success, whereas they [some CALD students] come from backgrounds where what’s valued is personal relationships, family, loyalty. There’s a clash of values. It’s a class thing. It’s not just a culture thing.
TEACHER: The kids that have run across the border, they value the small things they carry with them in their backpack, the kids value the possessions of the family rather than anything else. And middle-class teachers say, you’ve got to do this, or that, to achieve and education is your way out. We’ve still got to find a way to cross that line. And teachers don’t understand that.
TEACHER: The teacher is way outside of that [understanding students] on a number of different levels. Age is one. Cultural background is another, understanding or the ability to empathise is another. Religion may be another.
Teacher Snapshot 3
TEACHER: I believe in multiculturalism but I also really believe that we have a commitment to integrate people into this society. Absolutely. I absolutely feel very strongly about that, because once they leave school that’s it. If you haven’t taught them about voting, about society and participation, what have you really done? You haven’t instilled in them a sense of being Australian. They’ll then go off, sit in their houses, and they won’t feel one bit Australian. And that’s a real worry for me.
Teacher Snapshot 4
TEACHER: …the whole thing of civic citizenship and feeling a part of the society. A lot of the kids do not feel part of this society at all. They have no idea of the decision-making processes of government or anything like that… I was just speaking to girls last period, there’s this perception that they don’t have to be part of this society. If they don’t do well at school, they can opt out, they can get married and live happily ever after in the northern suburbs…. They were saying to me, “well I’m in Year 9, if things don’t work out, I’ll go to Lebanon and bring a poor man in here”, into a country where he doesn’t speak the language, where customs are strange and weird and muddle through life together. And they get married at 20 years old. There’s lots.
Teacher Snapshot 5
TEACHER: There’s a lawlessness about these kids too which scares me a lot. Like [student] X drives a car without a licence and she drives up to Epping and we talked about you, you know, this lawlessness. They have no respect for the law, that’s why this civics thing is so important. So she’ll drive all the way to Epping Plaza without a licence, and I said to her, well what’s going to happen if you run someone over? If you have an accident? And we talked about all those possibilities. So there is this thing, and that comes down to this… not being integrated. If you’re a 16 year old girl driving without a licence, and she didn’t know where the rear vision mirror was… It’s a recipe for disaster. Her brother’s had so many accidents, and her father has had a whole series of car accidents too… So there’s this real disrespect for the law which I find frightening.
INTERVIEWER: She was born here wasn’t she?
TEACHER: Yeah, Australian mother. And her plans for the future next year? She’s going to do Year 12 but she’s not sitting the exams. She’s going to get married in Algeria and then she’s going to do some Islamic studies over there…
INTERVIEWER: Does she know much about Algeria and what’s happening there?
TEACHER: I don’t know. But she’s got this young man and she’s got this diamond ring…