"Educating for Tolerance
" If you visit Stockholm, I advise that in addition to the museums, palaces, the old quarter and the islands, visit a modest neighborhood south of town called Rinkeby. The vast majority of its residents are immigrants and families, I say, this is one of the poorest districts in the country, although the idea of \u200b\u200bpoverty in Sweden, which has reached the highest living standards in the world along with Switzerland, has little to do with what the rest of the world the word means.
important thing to know in Rinkeby is the public school, an institution that is a mirror of what human society should be, the whole world, prevailed among us mere mortals the wisdom, the wisdom and spirit practical. There are at this school boys and girls who speak different languages \u200b\u200bnineteen and come from a hundred different countries. Everyone knows Swedish and English, but have lost their mother tongue because the school has managed so that everyone receives at least one hour per week, classes in languages \u200b\u200bspoken at home and spoke their ancestors. The school's principal, Börje Ehrstrand, is convinced that the integration of these children to the culture and customs of Sweden is easier if not rejected, but claimed and are proud of their origin. The philosophy that permeates the school Rinkeby it in one word: tolerance.
In the frantic amount of things I did and I saw in the eight days I just went in Stockholm moved me as much as a few days ago I was in Rinkeby. They welcomed me Nineteen children and girls, each in a different language. All of them were a true fan of the races, traditions, religions and cultures of the world. There were young Scandinavian girls in miniskirts with evenings of Yemen, North African Arabs intermingled with Turks, Chileans and Chinese, extravagant and formal attire. Function began singing songs related to Christmas Nordic.
Then came the show. It consisted of two parts. The first was a summary of the life and work of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), chemist who invented dynamite, was a powerful industrial and bequeathed his fortune to create the awards that bear his name. This biographical notes made no secret that the fertile and famous character had been a Social Democrat and Republican anti-monarchist and had also sketched some small works of literature, with more enthusiasm than inspiration. Then, the representation became even more didactic and told us what they were present findings and achievements this year who had earned their authors the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Physics and Chemistry. From Hats off! The day before, in a BBC program, the actual tried laureates enlighten the uninitiated on those inventions and, I believe that I speak for myself alone, "left us all in the family Babia. These brats, however, through his drawings, photographs, cards and oral explanations, some impregnated with good humor, got give viewers a much more accurate idea of \u200b\u200bthose scientific achievements, including magnetic prodigy flying frog (the star of the Nobel this year, no doubt), managed by the physicist Konstantin Novoselov.
The second part consisted of counting and representing in summary a novel of mine, The Storyteller, in which a Jewish boy Peruvian Lima and middle class, it becomes a storyteller machiguenga, ie experiencing a cultural conversion is also a historic move, the rational modern man and a primitive, magical and religious. They did wonderfully well illustrated through designs, music and pictures were reading texts in different languages, different narrators. I seemed to be reliving the insides of all that was the construction of the story.
Neither school district nor the Rinkeby were twenty years ago in the shadow of what they are now. Violence reigned in the place and photos from the time show that classrooms, playgrounds and school halls were a monument to dirt and disorder, while academic performance was the lowest in the country. It was under these conditions in one of the teachers, Börje Ehrstrand, assumed leadership. The reforms he introduced were discussed with parents, which, thereafter, were given an intense and constant participation in all school activities, including teaching. Students themselves and thereafter secured the room cleaning, doing volunteer work.
The first two years are the most difficult and in them the school's primary task is to iron suspicion and sullen attitude of newcomers to their peers who wear different folder, speak another language, worship another god. Some adapt easily, and those who do not have special courses attended by parents, advised by the two psychologists who are part of the campus. Generally, after the third year the communication and exchanges are fluid and can talk about integration in diversity, because the common-denominator language and accepting the "other" - are already part of the student's personality.
Rinkeby School is notable not only because it coexist children across the cultural spectrum, too, because from For three years his students included in the national contest honors math and the average outstanding academic achievement. The demand has made over the past five years the school has grown, currently a quarter of its students come from other neighborhoods, and the reputation of the institution will transcend the Swedish border. Recently awarded the European Community as the institution most successful in preventing juvenile delinquency.
I felt sorry I had no chance to speak, in that tumultuous week, with Börje Ehrstrand, to learn more about the author of this feat cultural and democratic is the school he leads. But I visited the library and I was glad to hear, by the mouth of one of the librarians, the teaching of literature and incitement to read part of the primary school curriculum. No wonder that, contrary to what is generally believed that the school is not a reflection of what happens in the neighborhood-in this case the impressive transformation of the neighborhood school has had a salutary effect on the community surrounding it, diminishing the violence, ethnic and religious disputes, crime.
Sweden has not been immune to the prejudices against immigration, fueled by the financial crisis and the consequent reduction in employment, have parties and extremist movements, anti-immigrant and xenophobic political presence who did not. For the first time one has entered the Swedish parliament in recent elections. It is not the first case. When a society is the victim of some catastrophe, economic or political, the need for a scapegoat and of course, immigrants are the main targets. Never mind that all statistics show that without migration the European countries could not maintain high living standards they have and that foreign workers bring to the economy of a country is much higher than what it received. The truth is shattered against what Popper called the spirit of the tribe, the instinctive rejection of the "other", which is not part of his own flock or herd, the early closure is the biggest obstacle for a country to achieve civilization.
So what has gotten the Rinkeby school is so important and should serve as a model for all countries receiving large numbers of immigrants and want to avoid the problems resulting from the marginalization and discrimination that they often victims. We must start with children. They learn to live with whom they speak, skins, gods, different customs, and, living together, go shedding, like a useless waste in their own cultures, from all that hinders or prevents the coexistence with others, is the safest way to get it later they are as men and women can live in peace in this ethnic and linguistic diversity, which, like it or not, is the overriding feature of the world whose threshold we stand now.
Mario Vargas Llosa "
