This project works on racism in two ways. First, we want to create, starting from school, a lucid and open discussion on large scale migrations. The reasons why we think that this will help counter racism, are described in this article. Here, we just emphasize that we do not intend to tell young students our opinion on what is right and what is wrong, which would be manifestly against the critical thinking we praise. Second, we will support classes in the production of educative videos with scientific content, and we are going to ask them to let young migrants have the protagonist role. The reason for this is basically practical. The method we promote is based on mutual teaching. By means of online material produced by the pupils with our support and made available online for the open access of their colleagues, we want to extend the domain of the mutual teaching outside the class.
Young migrants will help us enlarge this domain once again, by adding interest for the videos in their country of origin. The message and the philosophy behind all this are clear: we want our project to make as many people as possible, with backgrounds and conditions as diverse as possible, enjoy an important service while at the same time are actively engaged in its development and support. It's not about searching for victims and helping them. It's not an educational video that will help solve the problems directly caused by racism. In this ambit, the more traditional work interventions of SOS racismo are more effective. What the video can do, is promote a way of thinking in which racism cannot possibly fit However, it would be short-sighted to pretend that reductive stereotypes don't exist and we should not worry about them. They do exist and they are much more subtle than we often think. Not only blatant racists, but also many well intentioned people extremely prone to sympathize, tend to associate migrations with problems and to forget that migrants, no less and no more than everybody else, have creativity, intelligence and sense of initiative, and their contribution to society might be precious. Not only we do not want to help anybody, not necessarily at least, it's us those who need the help of the students. Migrants will have a special role because their condition carries an extra potential, namely the possibility to spread our message further away. We hope that our videos will be useful for thousands of pupils, and that for this reason they will promote the idea of a society that includes everybody is more convenient for everybody. We don't think that fundamental rights should to be granted only to people on the base of being useful to society. Existing is a sufficient conditions for any person to have human rights. But reminding that we are all useful to each other, help promoting the universality of human rights. We leave to the brilliant scientist and outreach author Neil Degrasse Tyson the job of explaining to us some key ideas that we expressed in this article, although the context is slightly different.
Any teacher or student interested, may contact us by sending an email to keysosracismo@gmail.com. OR Fill the form. He or she will receive support, intended to make teaching and learning more fun and effective. Then, if they wish, they will contribute to the complete success of KEY. Anyone should feel free to pose questions, give feedback, or express doubts, either by emailing us, or by posting your comments in this blog.