Page 3268 - Week 10 - Thursday, 25 August 2005
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us. War persuades us to believe that those who look different or sound different also bleed differently, feel pain differently, love their children differently, care for each other differently, enjoy friendships that are qualitatively different, and have a sense of justice and injustice that is less keen than ours.
As former US President Woodrow Wilson famously said, “Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.” War comes in different forms. In our time, it takes the shape of formal war, such as the war being waged in Iraq. It also takes more diffuse forms, such as the war on terrorism. In both forms, it blunts our instinct for tolerance and encourages us to look sideways at those who dress or sound unlike us. It makes us doubt the good intentions of those who believe in a different god to ours.
Just in the past week we have had the federal education minister, Dr Brendan Nelson, saying that he intends to meet the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils to discuss ways in which Australian values can be inculcated into Muslim school students. Why would he imagine for one minute that Muslim students would be any more lacking in these values than, say, Christian students, agnostic students or atheistic students? Where is the evidence for it, and just what are these values to which we must all cleave?
On local talkback radio earlier this week, some callers were suggesting that immigrants ought to be taught how to eat a pie at the football. One caller suggested that an understanding of our national personality could be achieved only by reading our national canon, listening to the music of our domestic composers and contemplating Australian art. Dr Nelson thinks that he knows what Australian values are. He was quoted as saying, in the context of inculcating Muslims with the right set of values:
If you want to be an Australian, if you want to raise your children in Australia, we fully expect those children to be taught and to accept Australian values and beliefs. We want them to understand our history and our culture, the extent to which we believe in mateship and giving another person a fair go, and basically if people don’t want to support and accept and adopt and teach Australian values then they should clear off.
The question is: why should we assume that these values are any less of a priority in Muslim schools than in the schools run by various Christian denominations, or the schools that operate according to the educational principles of Maria Montessori or Rudolph Steiner, or, indeed, the secular schools run by the states and territories?
Another question worth asking is: why should we assume that the values we cherish as Australian values are peculiar to us? Do we truly believe that other nationalities do not hold dear the value of mateship, even if they call it by a different name? Where is the evidence that those who arrive from other parts of the world with the desire of making Australia their home are somehow value free, or value deficient, in need of a crash course in mateship and a fair go?
I believe that for the overwhelming majority of those who make up our multicultural society, tolerance is a value that is held dear. But I believe that there is a risk of tolerance being allocated a lower position in the ranking of Australian values as we resort more and more to platitudes to describe what it means to be, think like or feel like an Australian.
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