Chapter 7: Teaching About Peaceful Coexistence: Reflection, Dialogue, and Transformative Action

I have been teaching at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto since the fall of 1991. Writ large I explore issues of language, culture, and identity within a context of diversity and difference in educational settings. Multicultural and multilingual education, by its very nature, engenders emotionally intense discussions—situated as it is at cultural crossroads which have been altered so dramatically over the past few decades in Canadian and in other urban centers—especially in the Greater Toronto Area. Indeed, the Canadian societal fabric is built on the notion of a multicultural mosaic where, at least officially, the maintenance of minority languages and cultures is encouraged. Toronto, as the largest urban centre in Canada, is a very desirable destination in the global community in terms of immigration and resettlement. In recent years, immigration levels in Canada have gone from approximately 85,000 to 220,000 annually, with one out of every four new immigrants settling in Toronto. Indeed, many immigrant and/or refugee students and their parents arrive in Toronto overwhelmed by forces of war, political oppression, and violence, by economic struggle and language barriers. They carry with them hidden but enduring scars that influence all aspects of their educational experiences. Within this context of demographic shift and diversity, issues of cultural difference, conflict resolution, and peace education cannot be viewed as being peripheral to mainstream schooling. We must find ways in which to use our classrooms as safe places to learn, to become friends with the other, as Kristeva (1991) puts it, “urging us to welcome others to that uncanny strangeness” (p. 142). School, as the meeting place, becomes the borderland where cultures collide and intersect in complicated ways. It is therefore clear to me as a professor of education and as a former elementary schoolteacher, that focusing on the “other” from the perspective of practicing teachers in classrooms is essential in order to develop more effective directions for promoting cross-cultural understanding at all levels of schooling.