Xenophobia in 6 year old kids

Posted by MonaRina in Theme

1 comments

Xenophobia is a global phenomenon and, unfortunately, we can find a lot of examples.. I work as a teacher for 4 years in Greece and racist behaviour among young children is a common paradigm. These primary school children are certainly not responsible for that as what they do is "carry out" what they learn from home, from their "adult" parents and other relatives. This year, I saw and heard the most striking example of racism in elementary school. In my class (A’ class!) there is a little girl (X) whose mother is from Africa, so she has a dark skin. I often saw her on breaks being on her own. In my effort to help her socialise more, I approached another girl from the class (T) and I urged her to play with X. I was really unprepared and shocked by her response which was: “my mother told me not to play with black children”!!! I got sooooooooo angry, not with the child, but the mother! Even more frustrating and irrational I thought of the reply when I remembered that T has an origin from Albania and not from Greece (hence she also has immigrant parents)! The responsibility for cultivating antiracist culture lies on all of us, especially when we are related in some way with young children.. As a teacher I feel my duty heavy and my wish is to work at some stage in the future in schools where the xenophobic and racist elements are eliminated.