[MUSIC] Welcome back to weeks five and six. We have now come to the very end of eight courses. And this is the final course and the very final time that we'll have together in terms of trying to pick up some of the big issues that we've been talking about over the last few weeks. And we come again to this issue of parents and community. And the issue of relationships, relationships which play out both within the school and beyond the school, with teachers and students, with teachers and parents, with teachers and other agencies. And the places in which many young people find themselves in children's homes perhaps, or fostered. So it's not simply a question of parents and teacher relationships but often very different kinds of contexts. And within that, we talk, or have talked a lot about diversity. What does diversity mean? Clearly there is a diversity in terms of ethnic background, in terms of class, in terms of gender. But I think we want to go a bit beyond that to look at diversity in terms of the individuality of young people who are not easy to put into any particular category or any particular box. But the diversity as it's effected by the place children find themselves in acountry as large and as diverse as Australia. And in the Maldives where each island has a different kind of context and possibly quite far away from the main hub. The main island where most of the administrative and management takes place in the Maldives so I'm going to ask both of you to say a little bit about this. And perhaps we would kick off with Fawaz. If you could say something about how this issue of diversity is addressed in the Maldives. >> Well in terms of personal characteristics, the diversity is not an issue in the Maldives, because we are a very homegeneous country itself. However, when it comes to the sort of social economic backgrounds, or where we come from in terms of which island you are coming from. There are differences in opinion. There are differences in the level of thought. As well as there are differences, to some extent, in their expressions. How they express themselves. These issues have been an issue when it comes to the metropolitan area where for the capital. So teachers sometimes find it difficult to address the issues of diversity from students from different background and different islands. But the main area that I guess the Maldives needs to focus is the level of the students. Because we have a system that is in place that addresses mainly the average child in the classroom. So the low-performing students are left behind as well as the high performance students. So that's the area that Maldives needs to mainly focus on in addressing diversity. >> Picking up that same issue, Tony. Could you comment following up from Fawaz talking about the context in the Maldives. Could you say something about those issues as they played out in Australia context? >> I guess we have a different understanding of diversity now, than we perhaps had 20 or 30 years ago. Australia's always been a very multi-cultural country. Obviously we've had substantial background and substantial connections to the United Kingdom and to various other places in Europe. We had large influx after the second world war from places like Turkey, from Greece, from Italy, and so on. So multiculturalism has always been one of the aspects of diversity that Australia has done pretty well. It hasn't done as well in terms of it's own indigenous population and it hasn't done as well in terms of socioeconomic diversity. So although Australia has always been seen as being an egalitarian country that welcomes people and treats people fairly and equally. That has only gone to a certain level. However what we have seen in the past 20 years is a recognition that diversity can also be socioeconomic. It can also be in terms of people's sexuality. It can be in terms of a variety of other backgrounds. And so the issue of gender, the issue of socioeconomic differences, and so on has been addressed in the past 20 years. Perhaps not as well as many people would like it to be addressed but at least it's being recognized as being an issue. I think the starting point of trying to deal with something is to recognize that it's a problem in the first place. And what we've done in Australia is to recognize that there is a lot that needs to be done to improve things like rurality, to improve social economic position of people. We still have the same problems as there are in many of the Western countries where the rich seem to get richer and the poor don't seem to get anywhere. But at least I think at the educational level, we're working as hard as we possibly can to give everybody a fair shot. To see if we can establish an opportunity for there to be moderately equal outcomes for all young people. I think that's about as much as we can do within an educational system. Recognizing that to change some of the other things involves changing the social system as well. >> Giving everyone a fair shot, yeah I guess that's what we're trained to do in our schools. We're trained to understand the whole gamater, different religions, races, cultures, and so on. The diversity that makes up a school seems to be in most countries, actually growing in terms of the different backgrounds from which young people, their families come to school. So tolerance is one thing we haven't talked about, and the importance of tolerance. But I wonder if we should also be considering. Where are the limits of tolerance and where might we be intolerant? Is there a case for intolerance? Intolerance of racism. Intolerance of sexism. Intolerance of educational inequality or bullying. Of oppression, of a whole range of different issues that we have to take to account. So tolerance of intolerance is an interesting kind of tension isn't it? And I think that addressing the various constituencies that we are addressing in these courses is an issue that we want to be able to come at with a more fine-grained understanding of what we're talking about. So either of you, or both, would you wish to make a comment on that? >> Well, I guess as you say this is a rather hot potato. But I think the issue that I would like to focus on mostly would be whether or not we see diversity as a problem. Or whether we see it as a cause for celebration. And I think what we find in any community in the world. We will have certain groups of people who see diversity of any kind at all being a problem and we see other people that recognize what diversity brings to the table. How much we can learn by working with other people. How much we can learn by working with different cultures. By visiting different countries, by working with people who are not the same as us. So I think that within the framework of education, there is a fairly high level of tolerance that exists. Unfortunately, we can't say the same about our communities. And since our communities are still the drivers of our education system, we still have instances where intolerance occurs. But it's systemic intolerance rather than the intolerance of individuals. Well I think what we're finding is that teachers are now so much better educated than they were 20 or 30 years ago. And are so much more prepared to accept the variety of people that they have to meet, they have to deal with and they have to educate. I think we're on an upward swing rather than a downward swing. >> Well, that's a nice optimistic ending, Tony. But I'll let Fawaz have the last word in terms of optimism. That optimism that you've expressed of systems changing, people changing and our becoming more understanding of the relationships that we've talked about. The relationships of school. In society, the relationship of parents and teachers and the relationships that address those contested issues of sexism, racism, inequality which run so deep in all our systems. If it was. >> Well, if I have to comment about how it works in the Maldives, our system has been for a long time a very tolerant system where we accept students from, how do I put this? From various regions. As well as we have international students to some extent as well. However one of the things that I'd like to note here. It's not a positive note, but we are getting into a situation now where in some communities, some parents actually don't send their kids to school because of certain types of curriculum. For example, music. Some teacher, or some parents do not want to teach their kids music so they don't send them to school. So there are pockets of intolerance in the country. However, in general, it's a tolerant system and a tolerant community as well. >> Great, thanks. Thanks to both of you. Thanks to both you for your tolerance of some of the difficulty you've had across half the world or virtually the whole world in having this kind of communications. >> Thanks John. [MUSIC]
