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On Thursday afternoon, Oulu teachers could ‘borrow foreigners’ from a special ‘Culture Library.’
People from different countries – ranging from Somalia to Estonia – became human books for the day, to be borrowed by teachers eager to find out more about the cultural backgrounds of some of their students.
According to one of the co-ordinators of the event, Paula Hyvari, ‘We have teachers here and people who are training to be teachers. They teach immigrant children and they said they needed some information on the immigrant backgrounds of the children they teach.’
So, the City’s Department of Education, for which the 29 year-old former Primary School teacher works, decided to organise the ‘Cultural Library.’
‘This kind of library,’ she explains, ‘was first developed to help anti-discrimination against different groups who are discriminated against.’
‘The purpose of the event is to allow people to meet and discuss and combat discrimination and prejudice.’
It is also to ‘promote Multiculturalism’ and Hyvari emphasised that, in her view, asking foreigners to simply integrate into a host culture ‘can cause them stress, especially when they have not chosen to come here, such as asylum-seekers.’
The teachers themselves seemed fairly interested in the library.
‘I find inter-cultural education the most interesting part of my cause,’ smiles Emma Pihljamäki, 20, who is studying to be a Primary School teacher. ‘I met with Thai and a Romany. I’m going to Thailand this summer. I learnt practical stuff . . . like you can’t touch somebody on the head or point your feet at anybody.’
Tiina Holma-Kangas teaches at a nursery school at which there are Afghan children. She was fascinated to speak to an Afghan. The teacher thoroughly ‘enjoyed’ the experience but couldn’t think of anything new that she’d learnt from it. ‘We discussed about Finnish being a difficult language,’ she added.
Bezzi Faarid was one of the books to be borrowed. Originally from Algeria, he was there, ‘to explain North African and French culture.’ The language teacher, who is doing a PhD in Philosophy at Oulu University, enjoyed seeing ‘all the different cultures’ but he didn’t want his photo taken. ‘I like to be in the shadows!’ he laughed, ‘like Albert Camus!’ (the French Philosopher and story-writer).
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