I will always remember the bus ride on my
first ever day of high school. Looking wide eyed at the groups of students who
make their way onto the bus, being intimidated by their large social circles of
the older students. It was a long ride through streets of the Western Sydney
suburbs before the school bus reached its destination as the students piled in
with every stop listening as the volume on the bus approached roaring with old
friend reuniting after their summer break. I will admit, in my heightened state
of insecurity, being one of the few first years on the bus, I couldn't help but
eavesdrop on the conversations carried out before me and I was quick to
discover that I had little to no understanding to these dialogues; not because
of the content, but these students were speaking in different language. This was
my first solo encounter with a different culture coming from such
a homogeneous primary school where the Vietnamese culture was present
among 90%+ students As a result, I had little to no understanding of inter-culture interactions. My transition into understanding these alien cultures was going to be one with many troughs.
My first reaction to students of
different background was to avoid. Fearing the unknown, this initial reaction
was a common defence mechanism as the year 7 groups started to form and clustering together finding solace in similar cultures. We remained in our culturally oblivious state,
content with our ignorance which sometimes led to racial conflicts. Cultural
polarisation played a large role in my high school life and I now realise
with great disappointment that the school did not attempt to confront these
issues. Our school was a rich tapestry of cultures from all parts of the world yet
there was failure from the teachers to facilitate students transcend such
obvious cultural boundaries. The school should have aimed at early stages of
high school to nurture a respect for other cultures (Ho, 2011).
Due to the absence of programs aimed to develop
cross culture interactions, it cannot be unexpected to have such cultural
polarisation as the one that I had experienced. It is without a doubt that
cultural acceptance would have been achieved earlier with these ideals of
respect yet the multicultural environment of my school inevitably led to
interactions and negotiations (Moody, 2001). Towards the end of school the
cultural boundaries were torn down yet for me acceptance was a result of
compromise rather than understanding.Consequently, I felt that regardless the
numerous times approaching a year when I would alight from the bus, I was still
that kid on the first day of school who could not comprehend other cultures.
The truth is the first time I got off the bus was when I was stepping into
university, when cultural studies was highly esteemed
.
Ho, C. (2011). Respecting the
presence of others: School micropublics and
everyday multiculturalism. Journal
of Intercultural Studies, 32(6), 603-619.
Moody, J. 2001.
Race, school integration and friendship segregation in America. American journal of sociology,
107(3): 679–716.
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