DIGITAL LIBRARY
AVOIDING ETHNOPHAGY IN INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION
Univeristy of Granada (SPAIN)
About this paper:
Appears in: EDULEARN12 Proceedings
Publication year: 2012
Pages: 4008-4013
ISBN: 978-84-695-3491-5
ISSN: 2340-1117
Conference name: 4th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies
Dates: 2-4 July, 2012
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Abstract:
Multiculturalism is a fact in today´s societies. As a matter of fact, diversity has become a main topic of contemporary education. In an increasingly interconnected world education in changing and it is due to adapt to new situations, among them, diversity. Immigrants and people belonging to different subcultures need to get used to hegemonic culture, and in turn, beyond multiculturalism, intercultural education is the ideal way to get a real integration and mutual enrichment of different groups. Still, schools do not often count on enough resources and tools to develop this necessary teaching; otherwise, under intercultural education trials, it is hidden an ethnophagy that tries to diffuse founding incoming cultural identities to impose an education criteria-based strategies of acculturation. Intentions, in this case, are supposed to be correct, but they forget intercultural education is the only way to get a society where all the cultures are on the same level, and the interaction between the communities living in the same country or city contributes social and cultural richness and avoids discrimination or violence.
The main focus of this paper is based on the importance of a real intercultural education that avoids differentiation behaviors in students and teachers, avoiding exclusion, asymmetric or unequal interpretations of different cultures and trying to value diversity.
Keywords:
Ethnocentrism, diversity, interculturality.