Multiculturalism

[Carbonox]

Waving a flag is too nationalist for a multicultural paradise.

http://www.europeanguardian.com/78-...l-anthem-banned-from-swedish-secondary-school

I'd like to thank Sweden for always giving me my daily entertainment.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Waving a flag is too nationalist for a multicultural paradise.

Did you read the headteacher's comments? Seems reasonable to me, a classroom is a place for learning... Sweden is suffering a rise of nationalistic tendencies, makes sense to keep the opportunity for such occasions out of school.

 

[Carbonox]

Did you read the headteacher's comments? Seems reasonable to me, a classroom is a place for learning... Sweden is suffering a rise of nationalistic tendencies, makes sense to keep the opportunity for such occasions out of school.

Your use of the word "suffering" is quite fascinating.

 

[Encyclopedia]

I've always found flag waving and national anthems rather pointless and I can honestly say that I can't remember ever singing the national anthem in school. And I started school 22 years ago.

Don't even know all the words in our national anthem. I mean who cares?

 

[Spurgy 777]

I've always found flag waving and national anthems rather pointless and I can honestly say that I can't remember ever singing the national anthem in school. And I started school 22 years ago.

Don't even know all the words in our national anthem. I mean who cares?

Clearly the Swedish students who want to wave their flag, and sing their national anthem care, and there's no reason they shouldn't be allowed to at their graduation.

@TenEightyOne your post is nonsense, celebrating your graduation by singing the national anthem has nothing to do with "a classroom is a place for learning". If they wanted to sing it at the beginning of every school day, I'd agree, but that's not even remotely the case.

 

[Encyclopedia]

Clearly the Swedish students who want to wave their flag, and sing their national anthem care, and there's no reason they shouldn't be allowed to at their graduation.

@TenEightyOne your post is nonsense, celebrating your graduation by singing the national anthem has nothing to do with "a classroom is a place for learning". If they wanted to sing it at the beginning of every school day, I'd agree, but that's not even remotely the case.

Well then they can have their own private celebrations. Nothing says schools have to provide it in that particular way.

The most important song is "den blomstertid nu kommer" anyway because after that's been sung the summer holiday has officialy started.

 

[TenEightyOne]

@TenEightyOne your post is nonsense, celebrating your graduation by singing the national anthem has nothing to do with "a classroom is a place for learning". If they wanted to sing it at the beginning of every school day, I'd agree, but that's not even remotely the case.

Perhaps the recent rise in negative Swedish Nationalism has escaped your notice. Students have a right to pursue whichever interests they wish just as their headteacher has a duty to keep classrooms moderate. That means not allowing fertility for any Nationalist sentiment. Teachers have a pastoral responsibility when in loco parentis, you should read more of these forums for information.

 

[Dotini]

I'm informed by my morning paper that my county, King County, is the whitest big county in the US by quite margin.
White..................62.4% (~1.3 million, and also the slowest growing group)
Asian..................16.1
Hispanic...............9.4
Black...................6.4
Multiracial............4.3
Pacific Islander.....0.8
Native American...0.7

 

[Spurgy 777]

Well then they can have their own private celebrations. Nothing says schools have to provide it in that particular way.

The most important song is "den blomstertid nu kommer" anyway because after that's been sung the summer holiday has officialy started.

I never said they had to, of course they don't, I just feel they should as there's no good reason not to as far as I can see.

Perhaps the recent rise in negative Swedish Nationalism has escaped your notice. Students have a right to pursue whichever interests they wish just as their headteacher has a duty to keep classrooms moderate. That means not allowing fertility for any Nationalist sentiment.

Maybe if the school was really that worried they should up their effort in educating their students about other countries and other cultures. I think that would be far more productive than preventing the students from showing any pride in their own country and culture. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if their method was more likely to breed nationalism than prevent it, making students feel as if they're being discriminated against for liking their own country and wanting to include it in their graduation celebrations.

you should read more of these forums for information.

That would be difficult to do considering the amount I already read on these forums.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Maybe if the school was really that worried they should up their effort in educating their students about other countries and other cultures.

And you know they haven't?

I think that would be far more productive than preventing the students from showing any pride in their own country and culture. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if their method was more likely to breed nationalism than prevent it, making students feel as if they're being discriminated against for liking their own country and wanting to include it in their graduation celebrations.

I'm guessing your teaching experience is roughly zero...

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Don't even know all the words in our national anthem. I mean who cares?

A couple of years ago, I was working at a school that had a very high percentage of Indian and Asian students that also happened to be a selective school. Once, they were playing inter-school sport against another school that had a very low percentage of Indian and Asian students. As my school took to the field, the other school started singing the national anthem as an insult.

My school's response? To sing the second verse (which no-one remembers), gave them the opportunity to forfeit the match, and when they refused, thrashed them 12-0.

 

[HKS racer]

And you know they haven't?

I'm guessing your teaching experience is roughly zero...

Multiculturalism means being tollerant. This tollerance have to be from booth sides. You can't really blame a student for waving his national flag. If you do you are the one not being tollerant and you are one causing the rise of this "negative Nationalism" as you'd like to say.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Multiculturalism means being tollerant. This tollerance have to be from booth sides. You can't really blame a student for waving his national flag. If you do you are the one not being tollerant and you are one causing the rise of this "negative Nationalism" as you'd like to say.

Not in the least, tolerance is about free choice. Classrooms are a place where radicalisation can quickly occur through peer-pressure amongst young people. Keeping any such issues completely out of the classroom is the best way forward. Let them do what they like at the after-show party.

 

[Dotini]

Multiculturalism means being tollerant. This tollerance have to be from booth sides. You can't really blame a student for waving his national flag. If you do you are the one not being tollerant and you are one causing the rise of this "negative Nationalism" as you'd like to say.

Not in the least, tolerance is about free choice. Classrooms are a place where radicalisation can quickly occur through peer-pressure amongst young people. Keeping any such issues completely out of the classroom is the best way forward. Let them do what they like at the after-show party.

Multiculturalism means being intolerant. This intolerance applies mainly to one side. You need to blame people for displaying their national identity. If you don't single out people for blame, you are the one causing the rise of nasty nationalism, as you say.

 

[squadops]

Crayola has the answer 👍

Race, Culture, or Color?

 

[niky]

Had to wade through three layers of xenophobia (middle layer, Fra Tider, which is rabidly xenophobic and claimed the new New Zealand Cyber-bullying law (which, honestly, I also have issues with) is specifically out to get xenophobes, when it was written specifically to catch boys sexing up underage girls and boasting about it on Facebook) to get to the original article:

http://www.smalanningen.se/article/zlatans-nationalsang-forbjods-vid-utspringet/

The class wanted to play the intro of Zlatan's version of the national anthem at utspringet, while waving the flags of various nationalities.
The school said no.
- There is an important debate to take, but not on this particular day, says Rector Jimmie Nilsson.

This one particular school banned all flags.

All.

And they stopped the students from playing the "immigrant-friendly" version of the National Anthem...

Which, I think was kind of ridiculous, since the students wanted to wave the flags to celebrate their diverse cultures, but what the heck. The school said, basically: "Nope. No multiculturalism here."

-

Trust certain people to twist the article into: "SWEDISH FLAG BANNED IN SWEDEN, OMFGLOLOL"

-

Talk about spin...

 

[Encyclopedia]

^ Hah! Colour me not surprised.

 

[HKS racer]

Not in the least, tolerance is about free choice. Classrooms are a place where radicalisation can quickly occur through peer-pressure amongst young people. Keeping any such issues completely out of the classroom is the best way forward. Let them do what they like at the after-show party.

We all should learn from Filipinos, they are everywhere yet no one has anything against them. Why? Because the know how to deal with other people, expecially western people. They know they are guests and they act as guests, they don't pretend native people to stop waving flags, they don't tell em what they can or cannot do, they don't pretend to change society to their advantage as soon as they arrive.

Therefore they have been acknowledged as "good people", people that's here to work and live in armony. This is what multiculturalism is about. Go in another country, don't change your identity but at the same time don't piss native people off with selfish requests with the only purpose to exploit their solidarity gaining as much money as you can from their welfer and or demands to stop their traditions.

If you stop pretending native people to be proud of their roots, chances are these people will stop considering you a threat leading to a peaceful living and real integration in the end.

 

[niky]

Then you get the odd mass murderer posing as a nurse...

-

It's selective bias. Filipinos who go abroad are those who go abroad to work and who don't mind being among foreigners. They typically go overseas to fulfill an employment contract rather than to escape a war zone. And most who go overseas are college graduates, to boot (because, again, they're going overseas to work) Which means a greater level of maturity than populations which include large groups of unskilled workers and complete families.

Round here, we have a lot of xenophobes, asshats and various other undesirables. Same as any other place.

-

Also, when have Filipinos not celebrated their roots? Big groups congregate on special occassions and weekends. Areas with large Filipino populations feature Filipino groceries and restaurants. And they tend to stick together and keep in contact in foreign countries. There has been friction in Hong Kong and Singapore due to the large number of Filipino domestic helpers (unskilled labor), due to many of the same reasons there is friction between Europeans and Muslims.

 

[FoolKiller]

@TenEightyOne you would hate what American public schools do in my area. National and state flags in front of the building, my school had the pledge of allegiance every morning, We had celebrations for national holidays, large presentations for things like President's Day, a giant US flag in the gym, national anthem before every sporting event, and so on.

Heck, I attended a professional baseball game last month and they too have the national anthem before every game. IN fact, I can't remember a sporting event where that didn't happen. If Sweden is "suffering" the US must be tortured with nationalistic tendencies. I mean, God forbid we allow students to express their nationalistic pride or have any kind of freedom of expression that recognizes their heritage.

I'll admit that I was not happy that my school had the pledge of allegiance every morning. It was a level of indoctrination, intentional or not. But my school did not require participation. Those who didn't want to were asked to remain seated and silent. However, if a student wishes to express themselves in a respectful manner that is not incendiary or purposefully designed to cause a disruption the school does a disservice to their students by not allowing it. It teaches them that their opinions only matter if the powers that be agree with them. I have the same problem with the trend in the US of schools preventing student speeches at graduation from having any religious references. You want a student to give a speech because they earned that honor in some way (top of their class, performed some philanthropic act, etc) but they cannot express what they see as an important part of their identity? What's the point of letting them speak if you want to censor their acknowledgment of part of their identity?

This is censorship, plain and simple. I don't care what they are "suffering." Censorship of this nature is never right.


Would you also support a school official refusing an immigrant the ability to acknowledge their cultural heritage in anyway, or is the country only "suffering" from the naturalistic tendencies of the majority?

 

[TenEightyOne]

Would you also support a school official refusing an immigrant the ability to acknowledge their cultural heritage in anyway, or is the country only "suffering" from the naturalistic tendencies of the majority?

I think that Sweden's in a particular bing at the moment, like in Britain there's an upsurge in domestic Nationalism. A school can say that opportunities for drum-beating-flag-waving division (whether dressed as inclusionalism or not) without them saying that the origins and heritages of their students must be ignored.

 

[FoolKiller]

I think that Sweden's in a particular bing at the moment, like in Britain there's an upsurge in domestic Nationalism. A school can say that opportunities for drum-beating-flag-waving division (whether dressed as inclusionalism or not) without them saying that the origins and heritages of their students must be ignored.

Maybe it's differences in cultures. At our 4th of July party was a woman from Romania who takes her citizenship test next week and she was the most US patriotic person there. She lectured me for not wearing red, white, and blue clothes.

See, she can wave the flag, sing the anthem, say the pledge and still maintain her Romanian heritage. She even brought multiple Romanian dishes to the cookout (she makes delicious stuffed grape leaves). Flag waving and drum beating is only divisive if you want to think it is.

I definitely don't think it is divisive when you want to use what is supposedly a revised and inclusive version of the national anthem. That sounds more like trying to maintain tradition in a way to be more inclusive.

 

[novcze]

We all should learn from Filipinos, they are everywhere yet no one has anything against them. Why? Because the know how to deal with other people, expecially western people. They know they are guests and they act as guests, they don't pretend native people to stop waving flags, they don't tell em what they can or cannot do, they don't pretend to change society to their advantage as soon as they arrive.

Therefore they have been acknowledged as "good people", people that's here to work and live in armony. This is what multiculturalism is about. Go in another country, don't change your identity but at the same time don't piss native people off with selfish requests with the only purpose to exploit their solidarity gaining as much money as you can from their welfer and or demands to stop their traditions.

We have same experience with Vietnamese people ... they blend in, they are polite, they create no problems.

Strong contrast to followers of certain "religion of special needs".

 

[prisonermonkeys]

National and state flags in front of the building, my school had the pledge of allegiance every morning, We had celebrations for national holidays, large presentations for things like President's Day, a giant US flag in the gym, national anthem before every sporting event, and so on.

I think that the issue in that Swedish school was more than the students chose to make the event one that was nationalist when it wasn't necessarily appropriate to do so. A high school graduation ceremony might seem like a bizarre choice for them to crack down on it, but I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere. I'm guessing that there were other events on the school calendar where the administration felt that it would be completely inappropriate to break out the national flag, and they wanted to put a stop to it before it really became a problem.

It's hard to tell, though, given the obvious bias of the "source".

 

[niky]

Basically, from the original original source, the students wanted to celebrate their multiculturalism by running out waving the flags of their ancestral countries, to the tune of the Swedish National Anthem as rearranged by an immigrant to be more immigrant friendly. The school nixed the whole thing.

All flags.

All nationalities.

The European Guardian is making it seem like it's an anti-nationalist thing, when in reality, it's simply anti-everything, and, at worst, anti-multiculturalist. Which makes it rather ironic that it's being twisted in this way.

I agree with @FoolKiller that total censorship is a bad thing, though this isn't quite clear-cut in schools.

Schools like these, which put students in uniforms, have uniforms and dress codes to create an inclusive environment, in which nobody feels left out because they aren't as rich or aren't as interesting as some of their classmates. A total whitewashing of culture may be excessive, but it's not a new thing. It's as old as the school uniform itself.

On one hand, it's a sensible thing to leave politics out of schools and focus on creating a non-toxic learning environment. On the other hand, like sex, children do need to learn about it and talk about it at some point in their lives.

-----

We have same experience with Vietnamese people ... they blend in, they are polite, they create no problems.

Strong contrast to followers of certain "religion of special needs".

Ironic, that video, as he mentions "progressives don't like to admit minorities can be racist" considering:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...s-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/

Selective bias. The Filipinos and Vietnamese you meet are the nice ones. The racist ones tend to stay home, because they can't stand foreigners.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

On one hand, it's a sensible thing to leave politics out of schools and focus on creating a non-toxic learning environment. On the other hand, like sex, children do need to learn about it and talk about it at some point in their lives.

I've run into that conundrum so many times. I teach both English and the humanities, and encounter it frequently.

One of the most difficult units to teach is one called Politically Involved, where we walk students through the political system and address issues that are politically relevant - and we do it at an age where students are getting their first real exposure to politics. You really have to work to keep your opinions out of it.

Even in English, I'm halfway through a unit called "Representations of People and Politics", and the set text is the poetry of WH Auden, who was openly on the political left. Likewise, I've also taught The Motorcycle Diaries as a set text.

 

[HKS racer]

The Filipinos and Vietnamese you meet are the nice ones. The racist ones tend to stay home, because they can't stand foreigners.

At least they have the coherency to stay home, instead there are racist integralist intollerant people from a certain religion that pretend to dictate how western people should live.

 

[niky]

At least they have the coherency to stay home, instead there are racist integralist intollerant people from a certain religion that pretend to dictate how western people should live.

They stay home because home is a stable environment.

Other people don't have that luxury.

 

[novcze]

Ironic, that video, as he mentions "progressives don't like to admit minorities can be racist" considering:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...s-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/

Selective bias. The Filipinos and Vietnamese you meet are the nice ones. The racist ones tend to stay home, because they can't stand foreigners.

how is delusion of western progressives connected to that map



btw.

"(2) Different people might hear the question differently. Saideman writes, "In some places, when one is asked this question, they may think of a single race, perhaps the Vietnamese think of the Chinese but not of other races. So it may not be that the people are very racist in general — they just hate one group that is defined by race." In other words, if Vietnam scored as particularly intolerant (they did), that might just be because they're less tolerant toward the race that popped into their heads first — e.g. the Chinese — than they are of other races in general. This makes it tougher to compare across countries."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...icity-maps-from-an-ethnic-conflict-professor/

 

[niky]

how is delusion of western progressives connected to that map

You mention the Vietnamese are especially tolerant... and then post a video that claims progressives cannot entertain the idea that minorities can be racist...

-

If you hate all Chinese because of bad experiences with some Chinese in the past, then that's still racism, even if it's a specific form of racism.

Filipinos, for example, might be very accepting of Caucasians, somewhat tolerant of Koreans and Japanese, and barely tolerant of Chinese (due in part to politics) but the treatment here, at home, of Indians, Pakistanis, Africans (and black people, in general), and the local Negrito population is still very poor.