Religious Diversity in Early Childhood in Australia - Essay Example

But in a very typical Australian context, some of the major areas that diversity can easily be identified are in the areas of attitudes and believes towards religious beliefs of people. This is said without a doubt of acknowledgment that Australia is a multi-practicing religious nation. Although there is the freedom of worship enshrined in the constitution of the country, there continues to be the sharing of different attitudes and beliefs towards the religious practices of other people who do not belong directly to our own religions.

In my experience with a class of very young early childhood students in a school that was different from where I usually worked, where I had gone to undertake my practice, I came to realize that our Australian society would be better created if issues of religious misconceptions and religious discrimination are dealt with right at the early stages of the development of the children.My experience was such that I had gone to the school to undertake my practice wearing a headscarf, which is known in our religious parlance as hijab.

The wearing of the hijab has several religious connotations that make it compulsory for every virtuous woman to have on. As part of its religious significance, the hijab or headscarf represents a veil that denotes the separation of man or the world from the creator, who is God (Wagner, 2006). However, the community I had gone to teach, being dominated as an Anglo Saxon community seemed not to be too familiar with the use of the hijab. Most of these kids in my class who had fair skin looked at me as belonging to a totally different set of practices that they were so unfamiliar with.

Initially, not many of them wanted to approach me at all. The situation even expanded to include most of their parents and other curious colleague teachers. With time, however, some of the kids mustered courage and started approaching me as a normal person because my resistance to continue using the hijab and yet go about my duties normally proved to them that I was just as a normal person as they were.