A reflection of my own experiences of culture and identity in relation to education

A reflection of my own experiences of culture and identity in relation to education

All human beings are not all born the same, but education plays an important role in shaping one’s life. We have hundreds of laws to enforce an equality that does not exist in the nature. So we want to change the present situation, all we hope is that we can be educated equally, is “a society where all of our potentials are nurtured and given the chance to bloom”. If we do nothing, the wealthy and strong people win unarguably.

The article is related to the distributive justice in the society that suggested by Gewirtz (1998). Obviously people from all over the world have different SES, cultural background, religion, sexuality orientation etc. But they do have equal rights. As Gewirtz proposed, equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are the two categories of distributive justice. It doesn't mean the "absolute equality" but the "approximate equality". To get the equality of opportunities in education, the government is responsible for making sure that every kid can go to the schools and get educated properly, regardless of the race, gender or anything like these. To get the equality of outcomes in education, teachers in school should consider different teaching strategies for different students including ESL students and students who have various literacy skills.

Back to my high school, when I was in Chatswood high school, I felt equal in learning the contents. I am an ESL student and luckily I could take the ESL course in high school. Compared to other English subjects such as standard English or advanced English, ESL course is designed for students whose English levels are below the standard English. This provided me a great opportunity to be educated in a suitable way. Besides the ESL course, there were also some ESL teachers available to help students through almost all other subjects. I was benefited by these teachers for my visual arts subject. They sat among the ESL students and explained the hard words or phrases that seemed not to be understandable for us. If we had any problems about the assessments, these teachers were willing to help us analyse the questions, highlight the keywords and also tell us how to plan them. ESL students do need more help to fit their needs, and the ESL program in my high school made me have the same comprehension level as my peers from English-speaking backgrounds. Also, the ESL course counts to the HSC marks so that ESL students have equal opportunities to get into the university.

Students need to be treated equally. I hope that all schools in Australia could provide such an ESL program to support students from diverse cultural background or other similar programs to assist other types of students who are placed in the "disadvantage" groups. Education is important to everyone, as Wickware (2000) said: "The key to achievement, not only for minority persons but everyone, is high-quality, equal-opportunity education starting at an early age."

Reference:

http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/were-not-all-born-the-same-but-we-can-provide-equality-in-education-20130427-2il86.html

Gewirtz, Sharon. (1998). Conceptualizing social justice in education: mapping the territory. Journal of Education Policy, 13(4), 469-484.

Wickware, Potter. (2000). Access to education provides a way out. Nature, 405(6787).