KEY WORDS: tolerance, teenagers, simulations, problematizing teenagers’ attitudes, problem-solving discussions.
ABSTRACT: The author of this paper introduces an innovative approach that allows schoolteachers to eliminate nationalistic stereotypes and prejudices among students. The paper describes four main conditions to develop multiethnic tolerance in teenagers and also presents practical applications of using these conditions and suggested simulations in real life school situations.  

The development of tolerance is probably one of the most critical modern problems in Russia, the country with a multiethnic and multi-religious population, well known for a number of issues in the sphere of multicultural relationships. A traditional approach to multiethnic education, an education in the spirit of respect towards other cultures presupposes introducing students to different information sources about other ethnicities, as well as developing their respect towards human rights and cultural pluralism through the standard school curriculum. But there is little if any data which will show teachers how they should approach such issues as social stereotypes, cultural centrism, xenophobia, etc. – issues that certainly slow down the process of developing patience in teenagers. There is no answer to the question, what kind of conditions should be created for students to overcome personal barriers that prevent the development of tolerance and patience?

As our practice and research shows, a mere fact of providing students with more information about different ethnicities and numerous world cultures, as well as about human rights do not necessarily mean that the problem will be solved.

The aim of this paper is to describe another variant and another approach, which will allow teachers to concentrate on eliminating inner barriers many students possess. We are talking about creating four main conditions to develop multiethnic tolerance in teenagers. It is not just a theoretical construct but also a practical experience that proved to be successful in one large educational institution in Moscow and in a small suburban school in Kaluga.

1. The first initial condition is organizing students’ introduction to different cultures in a specially arranged time and space, “educationally equipped,” attractive and valuable for students. Providing such an introduction or a “meeting with a certain culture,” a teacher is literally moving it from a chaotic social sphere into an organized and restricted by “educational barriers” space where he/she can create all the necessary conditions for the successful result. By ‘successful conditions’ we mean a choice of a ‘partner,’ a topic for discussion, its duration and intensity, and finally, a dialogue and analysis.

A teacher can set such meetings as certain simulations where teenagers can voluntarily choose and play the roles of representatives from different cultures and will need to communicate in the form of an “intercultural” dialogue on a certain subject. The scenario is prepared beforehand, and to become successful in their performance students will need a lot of initial knowledge and training. In other words, in the situation of the game, students learn a lot more about cultural diversity in the world, as well as about evident cultural differences, and intercultural conflict situations that arise out of these differences. Below you will find a few examples of such simulations.

Simulation “Laws for the Holy Land” presents a situation of talks between Christians and Muslims in an imaginary country “Holy Land.” Some problems, which might arise in such a country, have been discussed together with the possible ways to solve them.

Another simulation “A Court Hearing about the War in the Caucasus” was developed as an actual court trial where “representatives” from different hostile groups would talk about the nature and reasons for war situations in the Caucasus in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Simulation “A Meeting of the Worlds” allowed us to recreate a “meeting” of the population of the Old and New Worlds during the times of great geographical expeditions and represent the differences in points of view among Europeans and indigenous people in numerous parts of the world.

Let us analyze in more detail one of these simulations and show how they are organized in real educational practice.

In the simulation “Laws for the Holy Land” the teacher first introduced the situation to the students, then asked them to choose a character to play – a Christian or a Muslim. Afterwards, that they would play a situation that is happening in the country “Holy Land” where people of these two old religions had been living next to each other for centuries. Then, the students are asked to make one more choice in support or opposition to the possibility of peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims.

The first group is those students who do not only believe that living next to each other is possible and valuable for both, Christians and Muslims, but who also feel ready to conduct talks about the rules of such a coexistence. These students are asked to find arguments and facts in support of their opinions. During the actual performance they would play leads in simulated talks.

The second group is those who consider that Christians and Muslims living next to each other would always create problems and provoke conflicts, and that in principle there is no chance for their peaceful coexistence. Students in this group are asked to participate in the talks as well and think of the nature of conflicts that might appear in such a religiously mixed state. During the performance this second group will show to those leading the talks what kind of problems they will need to solve in the future.

6-graders² from one of the schools where we held this simulation, initiated discussions on the following topics which they considered problems for this multi-confessional state: “Interethnic marriages and religious education of children in mixed families”; “coexistence of different religious traditions and dangers of hurting religious feelings of one another”; “a secular character of the state and the non-interference of the church into state issues”, etc. Discussing these and some other problems students managed to develop a number of rules, though sometimes naïve, which would allow them to predict the appearance of new religious conflicts. Below we will mention some of these rules:

• Such a state should be always ruled by two people, a Christian and a Muslim, and they should be elected by the adult population of the country. Any conflicts should be resolved by the fairly elected Duma (Parliament).
• Every court trial should be presided by two judges, one Christian and one Muslim, though the final decision should be taken by the jury.
• The power should not consider any of the two religions more influential. The political leaders should not interfere with the church decisions of Christians or Muslims. Church leaders are not allowed to interfere with the state political decisions.
• Education should be equal for everybody; girls and boys should study together.
• Our state will welcome mixed marriages.  It is only a decision of a spouse whether to preserve his/her own confession or to convert to the religion of the other spouse. In the situation of preserving different confessions within one family, a husband and a wife are obliged to be respectful to the traditions, customs, and holidays of their spouse’s religion.
• Children born in mixed marriages are supposed to study religions of both parents. Children should respect religious beliefs of their parents. After becoming adults, they are allowed to make a free choice of their own religion or to choose no religion. Parents should not influence their children’s choice.
• Women may wear yashmaks if they consider it necessary for themselves. No one can push them doing so.
• Crusades and religious wars are forbidden in our state. You can ‘fight’ for your own religion but only peacefully.
• We will consider more serious punishments for insulting religious feelings of our constituents (for example, defilement of churches or mosques) than for other crimes because the first ones might cause mutual hatred and will destroy our state. Children will never be punished seriously because they are unable to understand how bad they have behaved.

Though we do understand all the positive features of such simulations but we need to admit that they do not necessarily change for the better students’ attitudes to other cultures, especially true it is about teenagers who might hold powerful negative social stereotypes, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism. With this said, we do realize that teachers need some other strategies to develop tolerance in their students.

2. The second necessary condition is “problematizing” the attitude of teenagers towards representatives of other cultures. In this situation by “problematizing” we understand an artificially created problem situation that is oriented towards clarifying different contradictions in students’ attitudes towards different cultures, which allows them to find out and overcome their own stereotypes, prejudices, and cultural centrism, which they probably did not realize before. The main goal of “problematizing” is creating doubts about evident facts. It happens quite often that teenagers express in their opinion, harmless judgments,  which might have a discriminatory character or could bear humiliating or offensive remarks about other people.  It is difficult for the students themselves to realize such situations and moral problems, especially when they represent the dominant culture which accepts certain attitudes as standard ones; on the contrary, the students from minorities are very sensitive to such situations and decipher them as socially unacceptable and unfair.

In other words, for many students this kind of unfairness has never been problematized.  At times we witness a serious contradiction between students’ declaration of humanistic principles and their real behavior mixed with intolerance. This particular situation demands a close attention of every teacher and specially organized educational activities.

One of the problematizing procedures in schools could be “Master Plan East^3”. For example, at one of the classes from “World History in the 20th Century” fifteen-year olds were introduced to the odious plans of the fascist Germany in concern of Russia and its population. The students were invited to discuss those plans and express their own opinions. Typically, such discussions raise a number of emotional reactions, stimulate patriotic feelings and activate antifascist attitudes.  When students realize that they themselves could become potential objects of racist attitudes, they initiate talks about human rights, social inequality and intolerance to any type of discrimination. In such situation a teacher should raise, probably, the most important question, “When you hear racist expressions towards other people, do you feel the same strong intolerance to these expressions or slightly different? Why is it happening this way?”  An attempt to answer this question puts students into the position, opposite their own – the situation of belonging to the dominant majority, and this allows them to reflect on their own attitude towards minorities.

Elements of problematizing might become part of different simulations that teachers organize with their students. Below is an example of how we used a problem situation “Which religion is true?” in the simulation “Laws for the Holy Land.”

At the beginning of the simulation when the leads from both parties, Christians and Muslims, sat down at the table to start their talks, we asked them first to formulate important reasons which brought them to the table. Students were talking about “the necessity to live peacefully with their neighbors,” about “common roots of different religions,” “commonalities in moral codes od Christians and Muslims,” and also about the possibility “to create laws which would treat everybody in an equal way,” and “how important it is for Russia today.”

After that the teacher asked the students the following question, “As much as I agree with you that Christianity and Islam are really close to each other, I would still insist on hearing your opinion about which religion is closer to the truth?”  This question and even more so the discussion based on the answers are very important. If the students realize that the teacher’s question was inappropriate, and no one was allowed to claim preferences of this or that religion during the peaceful talks, then one might consider that the students were really ready for a dialogue and possible mutual compromises, and the simulation could be continued. For example, one student, participating in that simulation, Darsha K. managed to stop the debates of her classmates right at the beginning, addressing the teacher with the following question: “You should not have asked us that question, this is not fair, we will be quarrelling bitterly over it…”

But if the students do not manage to overcome the barriers of the game and will start discussions on the teacher’s question, then the teacher should stop it at the peak of the discussion and ask one of the students to comment on the conflict.

In our example this artificially created problem situation allowed students to see a contradiction between their own desire to lead equal talks and to establish respectful relationships among representatives of different confessions on the one hand, and their own authoritarian attitudes towards the dominance of their own truth, on the other.

3. Another important condition is provoking problem-solving discussions. In this respect we do not so much mean a dialogue of different characters but rather an interpersonal communication on different problems that exist in any modern multiethnic society.  Such discussions do not only allow teenagers to compare their own attitude to other cultures with the attitudes from their peers, but can also help them change their positions – as we know, the opinion of their peers could be most valuable for the students of this age group. Below you will find a few topics of possible discussions, which can be easily “built” into the instruction process: “The concept and term of “national belonging” – do we still need it in the modern world?”; “Marginalized people and “lumpenproletariat”⁴: public attitude to them and a state policy”; “Is there fascism in modern Russia?”; “For whom has been the history textbook written?” 

To be able to provide for a productive discussion with the students’ highly emotional involvement, a teacher should work out a number of questions ahead of time. To point out some new shades of the same problem and to stimulate a discussion, a teacher might use the following suggestions.

For example, if the overall topic for the discussion is “The concept and term o “national belonging” – do we still need it in the modern world?” then a teacher can use such questions as:

• How important is this concept for modern people?
• How different would be your answer (if any) when you are identifying this concept for the title nation and for minorities?
• For which group is the feeling of “national belonging” more important?
• Is there a borderline between the feeling of national pride and nationalism; how firm is this borderline in real life?
• Are national stereotypes always right?
• Who should define the concept of “national belonging,” and what do you think of mixed marriages?

4. Finally, the last condition is making sure that students will reflect on their actions and feelings, and their opinions that they expressed while participating in simulations.   This is important as any personal position and attitude should be thoroughly reflected on. In this respect we can recommend using comments made in the circle mode, or using “unfinished sentences,” surveys, or writing essays. Here are some examples:

• Please choose the answer to the question: “After the class, your original opinion on the topic has been: a) confirmed; b) slightly changed; c) radically changed? What were the reasons for this?
• How do you personally feel about the idea of political and cultural uniformity for the sake of bringing the society together?
• How should history be taught in schools where we have students from different ethnic and religious groups?
• Do you believe that the laws suggested by you (in the simulation ““Laws for the Holy Land”) or any similar regulations would be necessary in the situation of modern Russia?

As you can conclude from the aforementioned, we are trying to let students reflect on the class discussion one more time but a little later and figure out his/her own position towards the subject and analyze possible changes and corrections in their positions.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that simulations and strategies that we have described in this paper would not necessarily develop tolerance in every student in your class group; we are realistic and understand that the results could be different with different students. Any life attitude and firm beliefs take years to be developed, and in principle, this is an ongoing process. We would prefer to consider it just an initial phase of developing such a position and identifying all the necessary pedagogical “tools” to ‘equip’ it.

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