Multiculturalism pages 9-10
What I see in multiculturalism is sectarianism, maybe because of my positionality in growing up in a war-torn pre and post-good Friday agreement of Northern Ireland. I still pick up on the everyday sectarianism in micro and macro aggression. In the core living environments of today, we are pinpointed towards hate in a media-controlled manner, be it from my background setting, ‘themuns’ (a northern Irish slang word for a person of the other religion). What we see constantly is faith-based attacks around sexuality or attacks on faith with white nationalists claiming Muslims are taking over.
One thing I have realised as an adult and educator is that the world likes to ‘Shout’ and it’s up to us how we absorb this information. also if we do take an interest in it, to find out our stance on the situation through investigation and researching both sides of the story. I got this from an amazing cross-community conflict management boot camp I was granted just after high school, the approach was that everyone was to believe their story, but it’s a core responsibility for me, as a person to understand both scenarios.
Minority Identities pages 12
It is interesting to read this portion, as referring back again to the positionality, pre the Good Friday agreement, Northern Irish Catholics were the minority identity, and it caused a lot of friction as the people who identified as Irish were stripped of rights, we have suffered the brutalist attack of the British army killing innocent people (proven fact) which caused the major 30-year battle of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Luckily ‘post’ good Friday agreement and my parents divorced I was able to experience a taste of ‘integration’ that liberated my views and questions on religions and ‘Christian’ identities, which is also a double edge sword, as growing up as a Queer kid, Christians or religious fanatics are still trying to devalue my being as a human and question our right to live.
I do give credit to this experience because I am so intrigued by religion and its mighty multi-faith possibilities that idealistically all believe in the same thing, from my explorations, the softer faiths do sing a louder song for me, Buddhism and my Irish connection to paganism how the 13th month is removed from society to live a modern ethno-Christian lifestyle. Looking for the wild card just to pull that month back into the yearly calendar to send everyone into chaos, that shifts the mindsets of all. I believe as an adult my mind is a curious secular individual with an interest, I like to listen and learn and understand, last year alone I had my first student experience with Ramadan, which totally freaked me out, that a person wasn’t eating or drinking, now it’s on my radar and my comfort as an educator is to show a more fatherly caring role during this time, engagement with faith calendars in ‘stressful’ teaching scenarios is new to me, but a challenge that is also exciting to bridge between my curiosity between faith and creativity as a queer man.
The Public Sphere page 13
I am a humanitarian secular futurist, remove ‘Religion’ from State and schools! The even possibility that is a topic on this ‘educational’ course is somewhat a two-way argument I have with myself, I can’t fully connect, but I also respect the person who has faith. Although I don’t think we as educators should be teaching a single faith or any faith in school systems at all. Religion breeds hatred, it lives off it, while stealing your money and living tax-free. As mentioned, this shift that has happened is to allow a sense of belonging a multi-cultural society that but faith shouldn’t be able to control living views on women, sexuality or gender! And even education.
This idea that higher education should provide respect and accommodation for other non-Christian faiths is a ludicrous statement, in what way? A religious care plan to be implanted, but then that went against the human rights act, or is this just a statement on the encouragement to understand multi-faiths in our cohorts which I am so for! But as an educational platform, faith and creativity can be challenging and this is the question rather than the space. I believe questions like this sense should be around safe environments and excluding risk in the factor for conversation, debate or creativity should not be inclusive with faith, as the risk in education is the journey of learning. My biggest fear coming from my background is another faith feeling that they have control over someone else’s freedom to explore life with the negativities or ‘consequences’ of being faith controlled.
I wholeheartedly believe that this would allow public educational institutions to provide opportunities in research or investigation around faith and creativity with risk and that as an educator I should have a chance to engage with this and provide a safe space between a multicultural environment to progress humanity through this connection between creativity disciplines and faith. The primary thing with this is that we don’t have the sole opportunity to explore this, could we potentially provide a course designed specifically for faith creativity, the history of faith within humanity alone is enriched with a multitude of possibilities and creativity should be allowed to explore we just need to provide the space.