Primary school education should include introducing each and every child to the following:
- A broad range of races and cultures, particularly Aboriginal people (young and old, from the city and the desert).
- People with disabilities.
- Men and women from each major religion, some of the minor religions, and some people without religion.
- Gay people of each gender and maybe someone inbetween.
And - to bring us to the matter at hand - asylum seekers and refugees.
Inverbrackie, in the wet and green Adelaide Hills, is now home to 81 asylum seekers. Eventually 400 will be living in the surplus army barracks.
A timeline of public sentiment in Inverbrackie is a clear example of how information, education and exposure help people come to terms with something new.
Ignorance - in the sense of lacking knowledge, not of stupidity - allowed fear to fill the vacuum. But as the locals have come to better understand the situation, that fear has all but evaporated.
In October, the Federal Government made the surprise announcement that families would be taken out of detention and moved into detention-lite, `softer’ centres in WA and SA.
The initial details of the plan were sketchy, leaving people confused and divided. The State Governments had apparently been kept in the dark too, and were made to look foolish by the announcement from on high.
Various parties quickly leveraged the resultant division for political gain. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the ``idyllic’’ surrounds of Inverbrackie were akin to rolling out a ``red carpet’’ to people smugglers.
The groundswell of resistance was for a short time bolstered by the Australia First Party, who gabbled on about a ``refugee invasion’‘. Their website rails against ``unarmed invaders and parasites’‘.
But then, gently, the tide started to turn. Partly (I like to think) because the locals strongly rejected Australia First and their ugly pamphleteering.
Also because the Government started filling in the multiple blanks.
So on the weekend families started arriving and were, in general, welcomed.
The more information, the less fear.
Centacare director Dale West said the campaign against the centre seemed to have stopped:
``Once these people actually move in, they become human faces,’’ he said.
``Not many people can look at an 11-year-old girl who’s got one arm because she’s had the other one ripped off in Sri Lanka and say: `Go away, we don’t want you’.’‘
This is not about policy. There’s been plenty of policy debate already. It’s just about removing that fear of the unknown.
And the simplest and most effective way to do that into the future is by exposing children to all the variety of the human race from an early age.
I’ve written before that with new puppies you get, literally, a check list of things to expose them to in their first months.
It includes people with different skin colours, bicycles, thunder, men in hats.
This helps ensure they are not surprised, frightened and therefore aggressive later on when they come across strange new things.
Some of the asylum seeker children now living in Inverbrackie will be going to local schools.
It would be a fair bet that the children already in those schools will have absorbed the community’s conflicting messages.
Who knows what that does to a young mind, which can be curious and welcoming but can also be full of fear of the unknown.
So with any luck that fear will be eradicated once they’re meeting the asylum seeker children in the playground, sitting next to them in the classroom, sharing their food and their stories.
Evolution has left us with a tendency towards tribalism, a tendency that should be overcome through education, starting with children.
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