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CzechKid teaches openness

Multiculturalism is officially part of the Czech curriculum

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 11th, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
Dana Moree says she hopes the program she created will enable children to interact with people of other races, religions and cultures.
Magda was doing what any polite Czech girl would do when she arrived for dinner at her Vietnamese friend’s house with a cake. Per tradition, the offering was an expression of gratitude for a dinner invitation. But, to Magda’s bewilderment, the friend’s mother took offense at the gift. Why?
This scenario is one of the many explored in CzechKid, a new online program that uses cartoon characters to help instructors teach cultural understanding and tolerance in Czech schools.
Czechkid composites

Abu-Jamal or Jami
Background: After fleeing Kirkuk, Iraq, four years ago, Jami and his family sought asylum in the Czech Republic when smugglers failed to take them to Germany

Hassles: Peers calling him a "terrorist" because he's Muslim

Daniel
Background: Born to a Romany, or Gypsy, family of concentration-camp survivors, Daniel speaks Romany with an extended family at home. He learned to box after an attack by skinheads

Hassles: Struggling to find work because he's Romany

Magda
Background: The overachieving daughter of white-collar Czech parents, Magda converted to Catholicism. She prefers poetry and literature to chemistry, her mother's field of work

Hassles: Being called a "swot," or nerd; defending her religiousness

Suong
Background: Suong's Buddhist parents, who own a restaurant, immigrated to Czechoslovakia from Vietnam. She uses Vietnamese at home, but speaks Czech and studies English

Hassles: Assumptions that Vietnamese people only sell goods, dealing with the Foreigners' Police force

Ali
Background: An atheist born and raised in the Czech Republic, Ali calls his family "pretty normal" despite feeling different because his father is from Zimbabwe

Hassles: Stares from strangers, people surprised he speaks Czech

Pavla
Background: Pavla's father, a physically abusive alcoholic, refuses to help her "deprived" family. Her brother is a skinhead, her mother a supermarket clerk

Hassles: Fending off people who call her a Nazi because she believes the Czech Republic "is for the Czech people"

In this case, for example, Magda learns that in Vietnam it is considered rude to bring food to a host’s house because it is taken as a sign that the guest does not trust the host’s abilities to make a good meal. Her hosts learn about traditional Czech practices in return.
The program was developed in England nine years ago by Christopher Gaine, a professor of applied social policy at the University of Chichester. It has been used for years in the United Kingdom to get kids thinking about multiculturalism, stereotypes and tolerance.
The Czech version of the program premiered March 29, but it has been used in a pilot project in 15 central Bohemian schools for three months and in a handful of other Czech schools as part of research by Dana Moree, who created the version for the Czech Republic.
Moree, 32, is part of the humanities faculty at Charles University and took on the project as part of her doctorate work at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The CzechKid Web site (www.czechkid.cz) features 10 characters of different ethnic, national, religious and cultural backgrounds interacting.
Czech students created the six characters based on research of the communities they represent and experience with these communities. While no character is based on a real person, each is a composite of many people.
The stories are linked with teaching materials about asylum, refugee camps and other issues. And two of the CzechKid characters are Romany, or Gypsy, because of the country’s problems with Roma-related issues and stereotyping of that group.
Moree said kids using the program sometimes have an “aha experience.” She said she would like kids to come away from the program with a changed perspective or more open attitude toward others. “If it works like this I would be happy,” she said.
The indirect approach works best, according to Moree. She doesn’t believe in giving students papers to read about Roma, for instance.
“In the Czech Republic, you simply have to look for softer methods,” she said. With CzechKid, students are confronted with the characters’ stories, and not directly with the issues.
Moree said she would also like to explode the myth that there is a “typical Czech” or “typical Roma.” In fact, everyone is a combination of many groups, not just one, by dint of their family, professional life, interests and other aspects.
“CzechKid is kind of an invitation to see a person, a unique human being, and not a representative of a group,” she said.
Gaine said he was motivated to create the program when he was a teacher in an entirely white school in rural England. He noticed the casual, rampant — and unchallenged — racist comments.
A widespread idea in England at the time was that racism was only a problem where there were black people, he said.
Similarly, Moree pointed out that the Czech Republic is a monoethnic country with only 2 percent to 3 percent foreigners but that Czechs are increasingly part of a globalized world and will need to know how to approach a variety of people.
CzechKid is financed by European Union funds, the British Council and 2.5 million Kč ($119,331) from the Education Ministry. The ministry made multicultural education part of the curriculum in 2004.
So far the program has been used in the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and now the Czech Republic.
Gaine is confident, he said, that in all the countries where students have used the program it has "made them think and reevaluate their ideas about race.”

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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