The 21st Century Classroom: A Model for Tolerance

Not that long ago, in most classrooms across Canada, the faces and attitudes of the students and the teachers were very similar, and those who stood out for whatever reason — the colour of their skin, their religious beliefs, a disability — really stood out.

Not so at the beginning of the third millennium. Today's classrooms are, most often, a multicultural mix of backgrounds, beliefs and abilities. You'd think, then, that being tolerant of those who are different would be second nature to students today, but not so. If anything, promoting tolerance, and with it the ideas of good citizenship, is more difficult than ever.

"Twenty-first century learners and teachers realize that citizenship and identity are becoming increasingly complex," says Lola Major, a social studies teacher at Lethbridge Collegiate Institute in Lethbridge, Alberta. In her 30-year teaching career, the make-up of Major's classes has changed dramatically, which is also the case for many of the 2000-2001 Prime Minister's Award recipients.

This complexity means that there are many more factors than ever before affecting students as they develop their attitudes. "Tolerance develops via students' relationships with their familial, social, physical, spiritual, cultural, economic, political and technological environments," says Major. Given that all of these are at play in the classroom at any one time, "it is impossible to predict that positive tolerance will naturally evolve even in multicultural classrooms."

How does a teacher approach tolerance, diversity and citizenship?

For Major, the key is divergent thinking. "In my social studies classes, I help students to look at all points of view and critically analyze all available information. This encourages students to be open-minded. In their adult lives, this will help them interact with a wide variety of people."

Major is helped in her efforts by the Alberta curriculum, which ensures that students study values, rights and obligations associated with citizenship and civic participation using an interdisciplinary approach that looks at things such as culture and community, the land, people, power, authority, decision making and global connections.

Students participate in a wide variety of anti-racism and citizenship activities, both inside and outside the classroom. What they absorb through these experiences comes through loud and clear in short essays Major has them write each year about what it means to be a Canadian citizen. Here is what one senior high school student wrote.

Very sound ideas from a teenager. And it's easy to see where they come from. With her "proud Canadian" sweatshirts and warm, inclusive manner, Major is a walking, talking example of the sort of person she helps her students become — a model of a tolerant citizen.

This idea of modelling behaviour — showing students what it is to be tolerant rather than telling them — struck a chord with other Prime Minister's Awards recipients.

"There is little use telling students how they should behave if they observe, in their uncanny way, that their teacher has favourites, treats certain students differently, or shows less respect and caring to particular individuals," says Carmie MacLean, a Grade 6 teacher at Tusarvik School in Repulse Bay, Nunavut. Interestingly, this long-held view of MacLean's was put to the test in her northern classroom, even though all her students were Inuit. They still fell into the usual pecking order and cliques.

Kathy Forsythe-Lantz's class of special needs students at Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School in Baden, Ontario, is full of differently abled people, so modelling and teaching tolerance is something this caring and thoughtful teacher does regularly. She prepared her students for the arrival of a boy from Somalia by watching a video about the geography, music and people of the African nation, cooking Somalian food and learning phrases in the student's native language. The students greeted their new classmate in Somali and welcomed him with great hospitality and acceptance.

Barry Lindhal, a social sciences teacher at West Vancouver Secondary School in West Vancouver, sees awareness as bringing tolerance and understanding. "Education can give a student the uncomfortable experience of 'walking a mile in another's shoes.' The experience can either bring blisters or awareness, and, hopefully, with awareness comes tolerance."