A Multiculturally Utopian Bubble dismantling? - Racial Discrimination in European Schools

By: Lavinia Tacke 

Reading time: 4 minutes 

 Source: unsplash 

The European Schools are an intergovernmental education system that provides their students, who are mostly children of EU staff members, with “multilingual, multicultural, and inclusive education” grounded in European values. This is how the official website describes the vision of the 13 European schools, which are located in six EU countries. 

As underlined strongly on the website, the school's aim is to foster multicultural collaboration and to provide education that upholds European values. However, to put it in William Shakespeare’s words, “All that glitters is not gold…” 

The problem of racial discrimination 

According to an anonymous interviewee who is a teacher at a European school, in the last 2,5 years, the number of racially discriminatory incidents has gone through the roof. The use of the n-word, bullying based on students’ skin color, or their accent, is becoming a bigger and bigger part of everyday life in her school. One young student at her school even had to leave the 

school because the bullying had gotten so serious. Furthermore, she explains that the bullied children are often too afraid to speak up because that mostly leads to even more bullying. 

She sees one cause for this alarming development in young students’ increased use of social media and their unrestricted access to unfiltered content. She fears that students do not realize the consequences of racist actions and would not question what they see on the internet. 

But something is being done about the issue, right? 

The interviewee states that what is being done is insufficient to combat this issue at the school level, as incidents of racial discrimination barely have any consequences for the bullies. 

There is, however, the so-called KiVa program, a scientific program tackling bullying that was established at the University of Turku (Finland). Nevertheless, the respondent criticizes that the program does not address the issue of racial discrimination but is designed very generally to combat bullying. 

How is the topic of racial discrimination taught in class? 

Since schools play an essential role in our society and in shaping societal norms, the interviewee explains that making young children aware of such inequalities is crucial “to ensure that this kind of behavior [...] does not continue.” In regards to her personal experiences teaching literature in class, she learned that most children do not translate what they learn from texts into real life. She mentions the novel “Noughts & Crosses” by Malorie Blackman as an example of what she reads with young students in class. The novel describes a dystopian world that subverts racism in order to raise awareness of our reality. However, according to her, this teaching method using literature to thematize the issue does not lead to the desired effects: 

“ It doesn't resonate because [the students] are just seeing it as literature and not taking on board any kind of metacognition.” 

- The respondent, a teacher at a European school 

Cover “Noughts& Crosses” 

Source: amazon.nl 

Alternatively, she incorporates experiments into her classes to challenge students' perceptions of real-life experiences with racial discrimination, fostering awareness and metacognition. For example, according to her, the "Blue Eye/Brown Eye Experiment" had a more far-reaching effect on her students, making them realize the impact of appearance-based privilege. 

What should be done in the future? 

According to the interviewee, the UK, where she worked for a period of time, has a very different approach to combating racial discrimination in schools, because in the United Kingdom, “this kind of behavior is not tolerated and [they] have an organization that literally comes in and does awareness training.” In the UK, a special Commission for equal opportunities ensures non-discrimination in schools for both students and employees. The so-called Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) enforces and monitors human rights legislation on nine grounds, including race. From the respondent’s point of view, the handling of racial discrimination in British schools could serve as an inspiration for the European schools and other schools in Europe. 

“The policy that is the European Union policy on racial discrimination should be reflected in schools.” 

- The respondent, a teacher at a European School 

For her, it is clear: more consequences are needed to combat the issue of racial discrimination in schools, and there should be a “policy in place that reflects the culture of the European Union, because remember the European school is an offshoot of the European Union”. 

Inspired by the British Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), she calls for the need for an executive branch that enacts such EU-value-reflecting policy. Furthermore, she clarifies the need to establish working groups in schools to reflect on the enforcement of such policies and the handling of incidents of racial discrimination. 

While speaking with her, a teacher at a European school and therefore a direct witness to the issue of racial discrimination in European schools, it becomes evident that something has to change in the schools to continue providing education based on European values. Like in many other schools, the problem seems to take hold before the doors of the European school system. As schools act as a driving institution in our society, education on (racial) inequalities is essential to fostering the ongoing development of a European community that so often takes pride in its openness towards each other.