Students brought together to learn about each other and discuss issues of racism

NINE years ago, a Jewish girl was walking home from school in Sydney when a busload of students began shouting racist slurs.

Students from the program

NINE years ago, a Jewish girl was walking home from school on Sydney's north shore when a busload of students from a neighbouring school roared past her and began shouting racist slurs.

Rather than insist on harsh punishments against the students involved, the state's Jewish leadership proposed a novel solution of bringing the distraught girl face-to-face with her anti-Semitic attackers.

"We started out with 20 Catholic students, 20 Jewish and 20 Muslim students and got them talking to each other," Vic Alhadeff, chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, said.

"The students were able to ask direct questions about why people with different cultures or faiths or backgrounds engage in their different cultural practices. It was an enormous benefit and an opportunity for the students."

Almost a decade later the program - now labelled Respect, Understanding, Acceptance - involves more than 1500 Sydney school students each year, brought together in groups of 100 or 200 to learn about each other and to discuss issues of racism.

The program is touted as a way of helping young Australians break the cycles of racism demonstrated by recent incidents involving ABC presenter Jeremy Fernandez -- abused with his daughter on a bus in February -- and AFL star Adam Goodes, who was branded an "ape" by a 13-year-old female spectator in Melbourne at the weekend.

"Clearly, some racism which one encounters is coming from the home, and that is where the real challenge is. We must counter negative messages, the bigoted messages coming from the home," Mr Alhadeff said. "There is no such thing as a bystander. If you're a bystander, you're part of the problem."

Yesterday's RUA gathering at the University of NSW allowed students from Granville Boys High - a public school in Sydney's strongly-Islamic west - to come face-to-face with pupils from Brigidine College and Masada College, a Catholic girls school and Jewish school on the city's affluent north shore.

Brigidine student Maddi Breen, 16, said the meeting gave her an opportunity to meet and mingle with the city's Muslims, who are a rare sight in St Ives, where her school and Masada are located.

"I don't think we have any Islamic people at my school. We learn about Islam when we study religion, but this is giving us a chance to meet and understand each other," she said.

Granville's Mahmoud Skef, 15, said he had learned that Jews prayed three times a day.

Muslims make up 18.5 per cent of the population in Granville, compared with 0.6 per cent in St Ives. Jews account for 13 per cent of St Ives residents, compared with 0.3 per cent in Granville.