Report “Barxiluna (Dis)memory of the Islamic Past and Present in different aspects of the curriculum”
“Barxiluna برشلونة. (Dis)memory of the Islamic Past and Present" is a set of activities that highlight Barcelona’s Muslim legacy and how it has influenced the city.The activities are of a joint initiative from the Espai Avinyó and theReligious Affairs Office (OAR), which form part of Barcelona City Council’s Department for Interculturality and Religious Pluralism. A report has been written about two of the activities that have taken place as part of the #Barxiluna initiative, related to the field of education.
The relevance of Islam for Barcelona stems from the city’s important historical – and present – ties with Islam, and the activities in this initiative have aimed to explore these ties from different viewpoints. The first activities in the #Barxiluna programme reflected on history and heritage, and on museography around Islam. Later on, there were two debates on the treatment of the Islamic legacy and reality in the educational sphere: “Barxiluna. The curriculum” and “Barxiluna. Hidden curriculum”. This document, produced by Anyely Marín Cisneros and the team from the OAR, details the timeline and the conclusions of these two activities.
- “The curriculum” (15 March 2023) proposed creating a new space for debate and work on how to transmit the history and presence of Islam in various subjects within the Catalan education curriculum, with a particular focus on text books and the narratives around the history of Islam and the Muslim population. The aim was to analyse the way the Islamic world, historical events, geographical aspects, and economic, political and social aspects, etc. were presented in the text books that students work with. Based on the analysis of the texts of the main publishers, an anti-racist perspective and experiences linked to the educational sphere, a joint analysis was conducted of the content, the discourses and the ways in which Islam was represented in the text books used today in Catalan schools, and a discussion was held on some of the concrete measures that could be implemented to address the racism reproduced in this environment. Collaborating in this activity was the Educational Resources Centre (CRP) – Les Corts. To frame the debate and put it into context, there were interventions from Hallar Abderrahaman, social worker, Amanda Hawthorne and Marita Zambrana Vega, members of SOS Racismo Madrid, the organisation that produced the report Aprendiendo racismo: Racismo estructural en libros de texto [Learning racism. Structural racism in text books] (Zúñiga et al., 2023).
- “The hidden curriculum” (20 May 2023) shone a spotlight on the ideas about Islam that are implicitly transmitted in schools, and the experiences of students in schools beyond the official curriculum. Participating in this activity were the Muslim Students Association (AEM), the social educator Yousra Touri El Mansouri and the music group Pinan 450f. The activity was also carried out in collaboration with the Sant Andreu Interculturality Service and Escola L’Estel.
ISLAM IN THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE CURRICULUM
Within the field of education sciences, various forms of curriculum have been conceptualised which include the explicit curriculum, the hidden curriculum and the null, or excluded, curriculum. The explicit curriculum is what we tend to understand by curriculum without an adjective: the content and skills to be learned which are offered explicitly and publicly. As for the null curriculum, this is everything that is not taught in school, that which is not present or which is not considered relevant for learning. The skills and content covered in schools are not chosen at random, rather, they respond to certain ideas about what learning is useful or has value. Lastly, the hidden curriculum refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school. Among other aspects, this category tends to include the moral values and attitudes that, while not being explicit in the education programme, are transmitted by imitating the teaching staff, through social interaction between members of the class, through contact with the models embodied by adults in the education community, through the values implicit in the way information is treated in schools and through various other circumstances surrounding the learning process.
Questions relating to the past and present of Islam are explained or not explained through these three types of curriculum that have an impact on Muslim students (or Muslim families) and on the student population in general. The students in Barcelona’s schools have a diverse range of identities and religious backgrounds, in keeping with society in general. How is Islam spoken about in schools? In the document, Anyely Marín Cisneros concludes that the educational programme offered at schools entails tergiversations, misrepresentations and significant omissions with regard to Islam and Muslims. This is mainly due to a narrative that is based on oppositional identities, or “us against them”.
On the other hand, in relation to the hidden curriculum, a number of research projects point to the educational sphere as a space where Muslim students (or students from Muslim families, from majority Islamic countries, etc.) do not feel represented and even feel they are the victims of discrimination and racial harassment or Islamophobia. These cases of discrimination are mainly linked to use of the hijab or with school menus, but there are also others linked to prejudice about Islam and Muslim students.
