Moscow, Russia - In the Moscow House of Nationalities, a round-table discussion on “Ethnology for All: Problems and Prospects of Ethno-cultural Education” took place on April 21.
The participants in the discussion, representatives of the non-commercial sector and education sphere, gathered together to discuss the issues of preventing negative phenomena of our time such as racism, chauvinism, and xenophobia.
The meeting was opened by the head of the State Institution “House of Nationalities,” Vasily Valerievich Tishkov. He shared his ideas that in Russia and in Moscow in particular, the population is in urgent need of sufficient ethnic and cultural education. Very often we are unacquainted even with our neighbors, and lack of knowledge could be the origin of conflicts. Mr. Tishkov proposed to the participants of the meeting to discuss the mechanisms of ethnic and cultural education and share experience.
Thereafter, Ambassador for Peace, Sergei Kuchinsky, Chair of the Council of the Peoples of the Russia Assembly, took the floor. He told about the joint project of the Assembly and the company “Russian Railways.” Long-distance trains could serve means of ethnological education, a communicator for the passengers that represent 176 ethnic groups of the Russian Federation.
A very interesting project was presented by Shakhmirzova Bella, a fifth-year student in the journalism department of the Moscow State University. She told about the youth project that was launched a year ago: a course of lectures called “Face to face,” about the peoples of Russia. The purpose of the project is to tell in simple words about national traditions, meals, and legends of the different nationalities and their languages. Within the schedule of the program they organized master-classes in cooking where the participants could cook a national dish and offer it to others. Cooking is the best means to unite people. Usually meetings are held informally in different places, mostly in clubs and cafes, twice a month.
Ivan Alexandrovich Grinko, historian and ethnologist, presented his web-project “Ethnology.” By means of the Internet the project is uniting people in all districts of Russia; to date it has educated about 11,000 people in the history of the ethnic groups and nationalities of our country and the world.
Sarkarov Amil Zabitovich, chair of the council of the regional grassroots organization “Lezghins (an ethnic group in the Caucasus) of Moscow,” spoke about importance of media in ethnic and cultural education. As it turns out, in our multinational capital, there is no international newspaper that serves as an informational link helping to unite nationalities. Now the project of developing a monthly insert called “Sto Lichnost” into the newspaper “Arguments and Facts” (with a distribution of 400,000) is on a full scale.
Elena Knyazeva, representative of the Universal Peace Federation, presented her project "Mister and Miss University Pageant” that promotes social engagement among the youth and international harmony.
After the round-table discussion the participants exchanged personal information and made plans for future cooperation in the direction of ethno-cultural education.