Bridging Gaps - A Review of the Online Session

The Bridging Gaps online session offered numerous insights for anyone concerned with using the internet to further multi-cultural understanding.

Most of the session was conducted by Elaine Hoter who gave an overview of the courses conducted by the Center for Technology and Multi-Culturalism. Dr. Hoter offered three different definitions of peace:

• Negative Peace - the absense of violence


• Positive Peace - cooperation, harmony, commerce, mutuality
  
• Structural Peace - equality, independence, sovereignty

She showed us that the Arab and Jewish populations of Israel each adhere to different definitions, hold different narratives about what peace entails:

Hoter emphasized that student teachers in Israel hardly ever meet their counterparts from other populations, and that the purpose of the multi-cultural course the Center runs isn't to solve problems, but is instead considerably more modest - to facilitate meetings that take place on an equal basis.

Hoter, Ganayem and Shonfeld have developed a model for interaction based on the Contact Hypothesis. Their model makes use of the internet as a buffer that permits people to establish contact before they actually meet face to face:

The presenters emphasized that even in this somewhat sheltered situation it was preferable to avoid some topics that might on first glance seem innocuous but carried numerous political overtones. They also stressed, however, that the students in the course noted that the interaction between the teachers in the course served as a model of harmony for the students themselves.

Overcoming stereotypes is, of course, never easy, but the Bridging Gaps session (a recording is available here) showed that the internet, and a great deal of goodwill, can go a long way toward doing so.