Micropublics as a form of promoting cross cultural exchange

“In the late 20^thcentury, it was common to have twenty-one nationalities in one class in public education and inner-urban catholic schools. Now it is rarer, and the public education sector is becoming smaller.”(Yule,. V, 2012)

The article by Christina Ho, ‘Micropublics and Everyday Multiculturalism’ discusses the notion of ‘everyday multiculturalism’ which stems from the term ‘Micropublics’. It is through the idea of everyday multiculturalism, that Ho is able to explore multiculturalism within Australia as well as incorporating the term Micropublics as a means of investigating the role of the public policy increasing the everyday multiculturalism in schools. Throughout Christina’s article, she stresses the importance of Micropublics, whereby individuals from different cultures engage with one another with tolerance. This is evident within Christina’s article as she discusses the negotiation of two families interacting with each other “neighbours exchanging home-grown vegetables and recipes across their fences (Ho,. C.Pg 604). Further the author is able to depict the importance of Micropublics which ultimately allows and encourages interaction between cultures to occur, by reinforcing the significance of culturally diverse schools. “School communities that reflect Australia’s cultural diversity are ideal sites for the regular and continual cross-cultural exchange that characterises Micropublics”. (Ho,. C. Pg. 606).

The author not only narrates her own belief but rather echoes her point through the view of society “Moreover, Australians strongly believe that schools should be culturally diverse” (Wadham, .B, Pudsey, .J, Boyd, R. Pg.1). The authors main purpose is to investigate wither schools are really becoming places of Micropublics whereby, schools are culturally diversifying themselves in order to allow negotiation to occur. This notion is further investigated by Valarie Yule in her article ‘Multiculturalism and segregation’ in which she shares a similar view to that of Christina, whereby segregation in schools is explored and the idea of multiculturalism and a culturally diverse school is challenged.  Yule depicts the traumatizing effects caused if multiculturalism and negation is not encouraged as it limits individual’s tolerance and mindset upon other cultures “Segregated schools can probably not be prevented - indeed, the trend is to multiply them, and some governments fund this trend. However, schooling itself must not be segregated. All young people and adults must have open access to how other people live and what other people think.” (Yule,. V, 2012)

“To gain credit for knowing one's own school's religion is aiding ignorant segregation. Students must have knowledge of what other people think.” (Yule,. V, 2012)

As multiculturalism is strived for, segregation within schools is still quite prevalent. Yule discusses various methods individuals, teachers as well as society may choose to approach the concept of segregation, such as having open days with other schools encouraging communication and  negation to occur. Further encouraging individuals to share one another’s cultures, as well as respecting not only others cultures but other religions as well. Similarly Ho’s article promotes and emphasizes respecting one another’s values and differences both within school and society.  “To gain credit for knowing one's own school's religion is aiding ignorant segregation. Students must have knowledge of what other people think.”(Yule,. V, 2012)

References:

Ho, C. (2011). Respecting the Presence of Others: School Micropublics and Everyday Multiculturalism. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 32(6), 603-619

Yule,. V, ‘Multiculturalism and Segregation’, 18 April 2012 <http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13512>