A different approach to language racism in primary education with the example of the film “Two languages, one suitcase”

Year 2017, Volume: 8 Issue: 1, 12 - 24, 30.12.2017

Emine Uçar İlbuğa Tülin Sepetci

Abstract

In today's world, cultural identities defined by religious and
ethnic characteristics come into prominence as representation
and recognition demands of ethnic groups, minorities, sects etc.
Today, especially from the 1990s, immigration to big cities from
the eastern to western cities continues increasingly, because of
the reasons such as forced village evacuations, seasonal works,
education etc. Especially concentration of immigrant families in
certain settlement centres of immigrated cities, the relationship
between these people and people from different ethnic backgrounds in cities, the problems encountered by children and young
people in schools, constitute an important discussion topic.
Nevertheless, it is not possible to see that basic human rights are
equally distributed among citizens who have different cultural
values in the nation state. Especially speaking mother language is
an individual and social right. Naturally, this situation leads to
intensification of multiculturalism debates and the growing
demand for multicultural regulation of basic citizenship rights. In
this study by analysing “Two languages, one suitcase—on the way
to school” fictional-documentary, all these problems are
addressed on the basis of language racism from the perspective of
the film. In the film, a teacher’s experiences who can’t speak
Kurdish with the children who can’t speak Turkish in a Kurdish
village are put forth. Moreover, students with different cultural
identities and language skills that formal education policies
ignore during the education process are evaluated in the triangle
of family, teacher and students' problems and all actors,
including teachers, students and parents, stand out as victims of
the educational system.

Keywords

Multilingualism, multiculturalism, documentary, ethnicity

References

• Aka M. (2012) Türkiye’de diller ve etnik gruplar. Uluslararası Türkçe Edebiyat Kültür Eğitim Dergisi 1(1):293-297.