Multicultural Speaker Forum

November 2008. Fox Meadow PTA - The Multicultural Committee. Coordinator: Amy Song, Svati Shashank.

One of the burning issues for parents is how to raise their children in a more global and interdependent world as it is now. Through some interactive activities, parents and teachers reflected and shared their global views, and in some point they dealt with some stereotypes they might have on different identities. Some conclusions were:

1. People from different walks of life do have many things in common than they are different.
   
2. The assumptions of traditional divisions of identity, such as race, gender, religion, nationality, are often misleading. In fact, it is increasingly difficult to stick to the prejudices about certain identity in today's world, where the interactions between cultures, either directly or indirectly happens in every second all over the world. 
3. Technology has changed the shape of the world and how we view others, and this has a huge implications on our children's future - the kind of world they will be living in.
4. Global citizenship has a very active meaning, and carries a deep social justice spirit.
5. To be able to work together, we need to build intercultural understanding between cultures and traditions. The first step is to foster interaction, which hopefully will break the stereotypes and prejudices that may traditionally exist. And we need to provide this type of interaction to our children in order to prepare them to be successful global citizens.