Education and Stereotypes?
SeongminS08 on Jan 21st 2008
Now lets think about it, you have a 4 year old kid, who knows nothing of racism and stereotypes. What happens to him the next 10 years? He goes to kindergarten, elementary school, and he is now an 7th grader. Later on you find him cursing at people with a different ethnicity with all these words that are should have been prohibited.
So what happened? To tell you the truth I take my side on the Nurture side (in the controversial battle between Nature vs Nurture). I mean think about it. We were all born with a pure mind, nothing in it, except for the idea of hunger, sleepiness, and sexual desires. But after some extra words with a little taste of logic added into the pure virgin cocktail, this creates something very strong, more like Irish Whiskey.
Well enough with the alcohol, now that I’ve got your attention, let me ask you a question. When was the first time you ever had a racist or stereotyping thought? To me it was probably when I first learned about slavery and literature. I mean I just have this feeling that maybe it was the education in which we learned how to be prejudice and discriminate others from ourselves. But isn’t this the wrong thing to do? After all we are all just the same humans living on one small world. From education we learned that people are different from us, not just by how they appear but because of their past and the way in which they are explained.
So maybe we aren’t suppose to blame the whole idea that we were born different, but we were just learned to be different.
Photo Credit to glynnish and vees
Technorati Tags: Stereotype, Racism, Education
Filed in Power of..., Flaws of Life |
I think this issue is more complicated. Children, especially mine, learn to want (and take) long before they think critically about the consequences. Racism is probably just an extension of people being self-centered. I think your argument about nurturing just focuses the feelings to a group, or away from a group. There is always a component of us versus them like boys versus girls, my school versus your school, my class versus your class.
I guess the real question isn’t where it comes from, but what do we do about it now?
Well yeah I guess you might be right. It depends on where you on in the world, how you’ve grown up or been influenced by other aspects of life. And you are right about the fact that we need to think about what we are going to do now.
To me, an single 18 year old kid, its really quite difficult to do anything, but as a group (which I hope do achieve) we could make a difference and teach others. This is definitely a complicated issue, and I am not trying to take it in a simple manner.
Hey! I’m one of Mr. Mayo’s student [in the DC area]. I just got finished reading ur blog about racism; well, I experienced that can of racism, in a place you wouldn’t believe, in my middle school. In my school, Asians are known as the quiet, nerdy ones. Ones with high expatations from teachers & parents. With me being an TOTAL opposite; of what ‘I’m suppose to be’, I disappoint MANY of my teachers & mostly my parents. Me; me being so different from many. In school, they don’t understand that I really don’t have that kind of ability to do whatever ‘the asians usually do’. Knowing how RACIST that sentence was hurts, but I let down many people. Many people who expect the BIGGER things out of me. I really can’t. Really, truely, just because most of my kind are smart, their quiet & well trainned, doesn’t have to be the reason why I HAVE to change me; doesn’t give them a right to expect the most out of me because the person that is next to me is smart & queit. I don’t really like the fact I always get the saying, ‘I expect more out of you’ or ‘That disappointed me, especially from you’. Its makes me so mad! & reading your blog/post really showed me that I’m not the only one. I’m not judging the others but they shouldn’t have NO right of jugding this child. She learned differently. She grew up different, raised differently & she doesn’t know what to expect from people who treats her differently. The more I am of me; the more I disappoint many; I apologize & apologize, but really, they don’t accept it; because in their minds; they expect MORE of what I can give. I really enjoyed your post. THANKS! I’ll keep reading & commenting.
I definitely know how you feel Jenny. I’ve always been part of the minority and I know how it is like being a minority that is generalized into one characteristic. I mean I’ve even become a minority in Korea, even though I’m Korean. I really look forward talking with you.
I didn’t learn racism in school first. I learned it from my family. Growing up in the American south, with the history of slavery and the Civil War, racism was deeply ingrained in my parents’ and grandparents’ generations.
Schooling, though, actually helped end my racism. The government forced racial desegregation in my school (this happened all across the USA in the ’60s), and I found myself in a half-and-half mix of black and white students.
We didn’t have racial division. We came together. Mostly through sports, I guess.
My favorite memory was when I got in a fight with a black guy in the locker room, and when we found out he was waiting outside for me with some friends to gang up on me, about 8 of my friends came out with me to “watch my back.” And about four of them were black, but ready to fight for me, against people of their own race.
I don’t know how things are now in schools in the US. That was a long time ago. But I know that as children, we didn’t have a hard time breaking through racism through simple daily contact.
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