When I was asked to teach a course on Intercultural Education in Fall of 2000 at McGill Faculty of Education, Department of Culture & Values, I put together a course-pack that included an exhaustive and exhausting list of readings. These included the classic Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality (1967), Jerome Bruner's The Culture of Education (1996), James Banks' philosophical work, Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society (1997), Edward Said's exquisite and carefully crafted Covering Islam (1997), Sonia Nieto's The Light in their Eyes (1999) and Affirming Diversity (1992), a more radical perspective on multicultural education.

However, exhaustive and exhausting readings do not make up a course. My thesis was that readings would merely supplement what I envisioned as a process of re-discovery of "self' and "other" through autobiographical writing. I believed that giving students the opportunity to articulate their personal narratives in the context of their own cultures would create openness toward "other" communities and cultures. I envisaged this writing as an exercise that would entrench in students the perspective that knowledge is socially constructed, that reality is not one dimensional, and that multiple truths can be respected and celebrated. I was happy to discover from my students that I was right.

My Palestinian Arab background and teaching experiences in Lebanon provided a great educational resource. Stories I told about teaching in Lebanon under excruciating circumstances of bombing, shelling, kidnapping, and sniping left them wide-eyed. This provided a backdrop to discussions on openness towards " the other." I was intent on showing my class that prejudice, when not nipped in the bud through education, can fester like an infected wound, creating very dangerous consequences.

The first assignment was optional. "Write your own personal narrative; delve into your past. Where do you come from? Who were your ancestors? What part' of your heritage do you know least about? Investigate your roots through interviews with parents and grandparents, etc. Write your story ...." I believed that by opening the doors for students to use writing to tap into their own personal myths, I would empower them with a strong sense of personhood and a clearer identity. This in turn would lead to openness towards other students in the class as well as other communities in the society they live in.

Montreal being the cosmopolitan city that it is, many of my students came from very mixed backgrounds. For example, Sarah had paternal Scottish origins and maternal Latvian origins with a touch of Aboriginal Canadian Miq'maq. Zein had Palestinian Arab grandparents and parents. Melanie had Irish and French origins where Catholicism was cherished.

The students used their own experiences to reflect on what they were studying in the course. Melanie, for example, was engaged to an Arab Muslim young man and both their families are struggling to come to terms with difference. The young couple wants their families to celebrate difference; the families find it difficult to accommodate certain aspects of the differing religious beliefs and traditions. For one of the assignments, Melanie interviewed her fiancé. She wrote,

Knowledge is socially constructed according to the environments in which we live and are educated. Culture is strictly a relative concept that cannot be used for comparison without adequate background recognition of both the people and the places. From this essay, I was enlightened to the philosophies behind Muslim religion and values, yet I still continue to hold certain biases against it.

Jackie was a Scottish student who began her narrative with the words, "Once upon a time in a land of rolling moors and mists lived the wee folk, the fairies, or the sitheachean as they say in Gaelic." At the peak of the course, when we were discussing stereotypes against Muslims, particularly Arab and Iranian Muslims in North America, Jackie found herself locked out of her house. Her Iranian neighbor invited her to spend the night at his house. The dialogue between them materialized into a twenty-page transcription that completely shifted her thinking on Iran and Iranian Muslims.

Shawn had a typical Anglo-Saxon background from the West coast of Canada. He decided to investigate the Spanish culture, something he knew nothing about: He was invited to dinner by Cristina, a Spanish classmate born and raised in Montreal, so that he could get a feeling for her family and their lifestyle. This is what he says:

My initial stereotypes of what I expected her family life to be like were quickly cast aside .... I learned that their Spanish culture is different from the Latino culture I [had] expected. Although both cultures share the same language, their traditions and lifestyles are as separate as their geography ...Had it not been for this assignment, I might never have made the effort to dine with Cristina's family and would have probably maintained many of the stereotypes I once held about her culture. Overall, I am going to make a greater effort to look. beyond my own experiences and .biases as much as possible when confronted with "others."
 

The breadth and wealth of my students' final projects astounded me. Working within certain guidelines, their choices included critiques and deconstructions of movies, commentary on written texts, and analysis of music videos and CD's in order to discover their multicultural subtexts.

One of the most poignant pieces of writing was by Melissa, a Jewish Canadian student whose final assignment was a deconstruction of the film Not Without My Daughter, a 1991 motion picture directed by Brian Gilbert. She called it, "a stab at the heart of the Muslim community of Iran." She added, "Blinded by our Eurocentric vision of the Middle Eastern Islamic culture, many Westerners come away from the film with complete distaste for a people that are so obviously different from themselves." I was proud of this student who was able to tease away the biases and sensationalism of the plot and write a critique of the film.

Andrea and Arielle's joint project involved taking pictures of graffiti in the streets of Montreal and commenting on them from a multicultural perspective. Maria investigated segregation in the cafeterias in a Montreal college. Her work was accompanied by a video; one could actually see ethnic and cultural enclaves in the cafeterias on film, although teachers and administrators who were interviewed denied the existence of segregation.

A superb piece of writing by Michael analyzed the concept of the "other" in 19th century Victorian literature, particularly Bram Stoker's Dracula. His essay took the theme of "the other" to a poetic and philosophical level, revealing that ultimately what we detest (i.e. Dracula) is what we fear. Michelle's project on The Art and Technique of Bonsai was no less impressive in its description of how to teach science from a multicultural perspective. In Penny's analysis of the film Smoke Signals, she said, "Acknowledging our ingrained, distorted perceptions of `others' is the essential first `step in the right direction' to acceptance ...recognizing the universal commonalties that exist amongst us, regardless of individual and cultural differences..."

I will never forget David and Alaya's rendering of seven poems by internationally renowned poets, without divulging the names and cultural identities of the writers. The poets were Margaret Atwood, Dan Pagis, Roque Dalton, Langston Hughes, Noemia de Sousa, Pablo Neruda, and Mahmoud Darwish. Many of us could not tell which poet had written which poem, a testimony to the universality of both human suffering and human compassion.

This course was a memorable one. Using narrative discourse in- the classroom, both as a writing and oral instructional tool, enabled my students to re-discover their personal identities and discover "the other." The "other" remains an elusive concept until the teacher can create a space and a medium to tap into empathy and compassion. This is possible through story telling, a vehicle that enables one to "put oneself in the shoes of the other." If I can put myself in the shoes of the other, it is likely that I will not be . savagely egotistical, racist or sectarian. If I can experience compassion, it is unlikely that the humiliation of another human being will give me satisfaction. If I am nurtured to be tender and sensitive, the whole cycle of life gains new meaning.

Samia Costandi is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Culture & Values in Education, Faculty of Education, McGill University.