Dear Editor,
I don’t have, nor have I ever had, children who attend Bowen Island Montessori. However, as a mother and as a professional who works on issues relating to diversity and inclusion with governments, organizations and communities around the world I have been drawn to these issues as they arise in my own community. The Montessori case has been of great interest to me and I have done my best to understand it.
From what I have learned, the problem for the complainants stem from the fact that there is one, very dominant culture at the Montessori school. As I have commonly seen in my work, this tends to lead to either social exclusion, or a process of “homogenizing” people who come from different cultural backgrounds.
The following is just one example: When I lived in a small Tibetan village in northern Nepal, my Tibetan friend sent her daughter to the local government school. All of the teachers at this school were Hindu Nepalis, not Tibetan Buddhists. In order for children to attend this school, they had to stop speaking Tibetan, and take on Hindu names given to them by well-meaning teachers. So my friend’s daughter, for example, went from being Dawa to being Gita. The curriculum was one in which Hindu Nepali values were instilled in children: they learned about the gods, the rituals, and the history of the country from this perspective. While I was living in the village I could see that this was confusing for my friend’s daughter. She would come home with comments like, “Nepalis eat rice. Why don’t we eat rice?” and “Why don’t we wear Nepali clothes? My teacher says that we need to wear Nepali clothes.” Many years later I visited my friend again. She told me that, over the years, her daughter had slowly shed her Tibetan identity: she refused to speak Tibetan or return to the village to take part in ceremonies important to the local community.
It seems that while their daughter attended Bowen Island Montessori, Mai Yasue and Gary Mangel were given an option: homogenize or face exclusion.
The school’s most recent letter turns this situation into policy. It seems their plan to avoid conflict is about avoiding discussions on diversity and inclusion in the first place. The idea of “clarifying programming” in the recent letter seems to intimate a complete lack of acknowledgment that maybe, just maybe, listening to others with diverse opinions and embracing the need to change will help the school shift in a positive direction.
I’ve been fortunate to have two children at IPS for the past year, where there is a strong focus preparing children for life out in the world. That world is increasingly diverse, inter-connected and multicultural. The best way to equip our children is to give them opportunities in school and at home to learn about diversity and inclusion first hand. These are not issues that are going to go away. And thank goodness they aren’t, because embracing them benefits all of us: there is incontrovertible evidence that more diverse teams, organizations, and governments are far more effective.
Perhaps if there is money to spare at the Montessori, rather than investing in an administrator whose job it appears to be to guard the gate against anyone who might challenge the current and somewhat antiquated status quo, a better decision might be for BIMS to engage a human rights and diversity specialist. A specialist of this kind could look at school policies and programming together with the staff, so that informed decisions can be made from both a business and equity perspective. In order to ensure that BIMS remains a relevant and viable option into the future as Bowen moves towards becoming a more diverse community, it seems critical that the school goes through a process of self-reflection with the support of external experts. This is the opportunity that I would hope that they can seize. It’s never too late.
Thank you,
Rebecca Calder
