When Cuc Lam fled Vietnam in 1978 on a small river boat and was subsequently rescued by the Malaysian Navy, little did she know that was the beginning of her journey to Australia. During their stay at a Malaysian refugee camp, Cuc and her husband learned that they would be accepted as refugees in Australia. Before their departure, Cuc sold her wedding ring to buy a little red suitcase – although she had very little to put in it, she didn't want to arrive in her new homeland looking as though she had nothing. Years later, the little red suitcase (currently on display at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne) has become a symbol of her difficult physical and emotional journey.

Like Cuc, thousands of people have made their own journey to Australia in recent years. The percentage of the Australian population born overseas increased from 23.1% at the 2001 census to 23.9% in 2006. As the National Curriculum Board has acknowledged in its recently published National English Curriculum Framing Paper, Australian students of today are “linguistically, socially and culturally diverse” and belong to a nation that is “pluralistic and changing”.

In light of the statistics, the challenge for today’s classroom practitioners, especially those working in primary schools, is finding suitable educational resources that support this multicultural learning environment. Consultation carried out by the Australian Multicultural Foundation (AMF) has highlighted the need for such resources, in particular for the 5–8 years age group.

The AMF’s work has shown that, given the diversity of cultures in Australian primary classrooms, teachers’ experience and knowledge of cultural groups is limited, and they are in need of resources that:

• inform teachers and students so they can openly and accurately discuss cultural similarities and differences
• express clearly that racism in any form is unacceptable (according to the Scanlan Foundation surveys, currently most discrimination reported by cultural and ethnic groups occurs in the context of school)
• are accurate and supported fully by the cultural group about whom the content has been written.

In response to this need and the AMF’s aim to promote tolerance and awareness of Australia’s diverse cultures and their contribution to Australia’s development, Oxford University Press has worked with the AMF to develop 20 Oxford Literacy books for guided reading based around the theme of journeys.

The Journeys books in Oxford Literacy represent the following cultural groups: Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Somalia, Tonga and Vietnam. This reflects the past and current immigration trends in Australia – seven out of the ten cultural groups featured were listed in a 2006 Census table published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that showed the most common country of birth of people born outside Australia.

For each cultural group represented in Journeys, there is one fiction and one non-fiction book. The fiction books are adaptations of traditional tales from each country, whilst the non-fiction titles recount the journeys of real people in the broadest sense – not just the immigration of people, but the journeys of skills, traditions and treasured artefacts. In some cases, the texts provide a written record of a family’s oral history and help to ensure that stories of how the Australian nation has been shaped are not lost forever.

For some of the Journeys books, The AMF liaised with the Immigration Museum in Melbourne to find ‘real’ people who were willing to share their journey with others. Indeed Journeys is in harmony with the Immigration Museum’s commitment to “collaborating with culturally and linguistically diverse communities to explore, document and present stories and experiences of immigration and cultural diversity…”

As well as promoting cultural awareness among Australian students, the exploration of each Journeys book within the framework of a guided reading session provides primary educators with an opportunity to build on the Values Education Program currently embedded in many primary schools. The resources lend themselves particularly well to discussion of the key values of a fair go, care and compassion, freedom, respect and understanding, tolerance and inclusion. Sharing these texts with students will help them understand other people’s points of view, encourage them to put themselves ‘in other people’s shoes’ and allow children to recognise points of similarities between cultures as well as differences.

Not only can the Journeys books be used to further literacy and values education teaching, they can also be used as a springboard into the lower primary history curriculum. As the recently published National History Curriculum Framing Paper states: “In the early years of schooling the curriculum should enable students to make connections between their own direct experiences and understandings from the past that result from their exposure to artefacts, images, appropriate primary sources and oral histories.”

As the Immigration Museum states, the journey remains one of the most memorable aspects of any immigration experience. Giving primary students the opportunity to share the journeys of Cuc Lam and others will no doubt increase their tolerance and awareness, and help them to tell their own stories in an increasingly globalised and multicultural Australia.

References
To view Mapping Social Cohesion – The Scanlon Foundation Survey Summary Report, and to find out more about the work of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, go to www.amf.net.au
Census statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics website: www.abs.gov.au