Wander what happened to Aalimah tutor (SoN, 2015)? I hope it wasn’t just do the anti-racism and equality training and go back to your job. We need to dig deeper and get more personal.
What has happened to our society, when our beliefs are seen as threats? Education is crucial here and we are doing a great job with the younger generations, but the Generation X and Millennials have missed out on this and are fuelled with social media aggression towards other religions. Fear of unknow! We, as a society have forgotten what society is. We used to live as communities and feed off each others’ differences and uniqueness. Our generations have been taught to be individuals, competitors, rootless in the strive of individual monetary success. All to the determent of communities.
Aalimah’s tutor needs to be given one to one sessions where they start seeing people as what true definition of people is. People with feelings, desires, motivations. People who love and get hurt. This session could be in a shape of Aalimah’s tutor meeting a person of faith and getting to know them. Being made to ask questions to learn about each other differences and the beauty of that. UAL Anti-racism Action Plan is a detailed document, but if we do not humanise it and have additional support then just online tutorials, we will not see a real change.
Reading the Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, what struck me is how Christian UK really is with all the bank holidays and celebrations. I grew up in catholic country and everyone there was of the same religion. Now I live in a multicultural society but I’m still faced with Christian celebrations and events. To be more inclusive I choose a topic of one of my courses projects to be a development of the modesty womenswear range. The uptake on this project has been great and not just from the Muslim students. Seeing how a little act of inclusivity can affect the students’ motivations and results proves how much more needs to be done.
Higher Power: Religion, Faith, Spirituality & Belief – Raman Mundair’s Guru Nanak and the Realm o Chlorophyll Cathedrals Mundair chronicles her evolving relationship to religion and spirituality, from her introduction to Sikh religion at home, to her encounter with Christianity in school life and later experiences with Buddhism. What struck me deeply is that living compassionately and being mindful daily not just improves the lives of others but our own too. I strive to behave in such a way in my teaching and private life. We are teacher have a responsibility to create safe spaces for students to learn and flourish. My example of modesty range is such a simple way to make students feel like they belong.
Furthermore, in the Reith lecture Kwame Anthony Appiah on Creed, Appiah emphasizes the importance of respect, dialogue, and understanding between different faiths, urging us to embrace a pluralistic outlook that celebrates diversity and promotes peaceful coexistence. We are all different and that is what makes are so special and interesting. This is my daily moto. We need to celebrate who we are and create spaces for students to be able to do the same.
Shades of Noir Case Study – Faith [online]. Available at https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/shades_of_noir_case_study_-_faith_[Accessed 21 May 2023].
UAL (2021). Anti racism and Action Plan [online] UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/296537/UAL-Anti-racism-action-plan-summary-2021.pdf [Accessed 21 May 2023].
‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ Stimulus paper (Modood & Calhoun, 2015) [Accessed 21 May 2023].
Kwame Anthony Appiah Reith lecture on Creed, available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43ds [accessed o21 May 2023]
As a knitter, this so something so evident in the modern community, it’s very much moving past the sense of community and into a pro-capitalistic venture, which is evident during the social media age of humanity, ‘everything is profitable’ even religion.
The idea of humanising education is the future in bringing our cohorts back from social media and back into physical conversations, and reflecting on this sense of faith, to me faith isn’t just religion, its livable ideas of lifestyle, my faith in a queer man is very much living authentically and not enforced by outside hetrenormative culture.
This was a hard one for me to get behind, as growing up in Northern Ireland, faith and religion is very much a dangerous discussion but it now gives me a unique position to reflect on.
I agree with your suggestion about one-to-one sessions. It is a good opportunity for the tutor because it gives the tutor some direct experience of how students think and feel. Also for the student like Aalimah, I think it needs to be carefully monitored by a third party/person so that it doesn’t become a second suffering for the student.
I also suggest that Aalimah’s tutor simply needs to learn about each religion. This happened first because the tutor didn’t have the right knowledge about Muslims. And then the second mistake of the tutor is because of their non-knowledge; the tutor couldn’t facilitate the discussion properly and also couldn’t stop the misleading of the discourse by the students. This is all the beginning of not knowing about faith. So I suppose faith training could be one of the solutions in this situation.