Dear Kyoto NHK ESS members,
Here is an information about a later half of the practice on April 6.
1 Genre: English Discussion
2 Title: Racism or not?
3 Article
The United Kingdom's former Foreign Minister Boris Johnson has been accused of racism. He made a number of comments about women wearing the burka while writing in the British newspaper ‘The Telegraph’.
Mr Johnson said women who wear burkas "look like letter boxes". He also said: "If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber," he would ask her to remove it so that he "could talk to her properly".
Johnson was writing an article about the recent full-face veil ban in Denmark. In the article, Mr Johnson said full-face veils should not be banned in the UK, but said women who wear a burka "look absolutely ridiculous".
The UK's Prime Minister Theresa May has asked Mr Johnson to apologize for his comments. She said: "I do think that we all have to be very careful about the language and terms we use, and some of the terms Boris used describing people's appearance obviously have offended." Another senior British politician has asked Mr Johnson to resign.
Many other politicians said Johnson's comments were Islamophobic and were a hate crime. They say he knew
his comments would offend many Muslims and others in the UK. Mr Johnson was London's mayor for eight years
and the UK Foreign Minister for two years and so had thousands of experiences interacting with Muslim people.
4) Discussion:
1.What do you think about Boris Johnson’s opinion?
2.Even in some of Japanese elementary schools, girls in the Muslim families learn in the classroom with these
clothes on. They usually wear pink headgears. If you were a school principal, would you allow them to wear these
clothes, all or some of the above? Or would you tell their parents not to allow them to wear any of the above.
3.If these girls were to enter a private elementary school, is the situation the same or different?
5) Presentation
In the end, one member in each group will talk about the opinions given by other members.
6) Assignment
Please read this article in advance and memorize the names of the headgears, because I’d like you to play some kind of game using these headears. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Masahiro Yamamoto