Monday, July 2, 2007

Educating About Discrimination

This is precisely where some children get their education daily doses. Who determines whether you feel comfortable with your image, you or your surrounding social atmosphere? This is an answer I’ll give for you, it is your atmosphere.

Society has taken our point of view about ourselves and tossed it, replacing it with the belief of the masses. This being good looks is so desired by everyone, it’s worth surgery and any amount of money. The concept of inner beauty is never discovered because the time was never taken to get that deep to find it. Childhood is where we all started discovering what looks meant and what they got you.

That’s why I believe that the aesthetic discrimination starts at the parental level. Parents must curve their whole way of thinking to give their children a chance to make their own assumptions and decisions as they grow older. The child’s role models can try as they might but in the end they can only give positive and negative reinforcement to try and mold the outcome. And even in the best of situations, the child may still grow to discriminate freely among the gamut of things to choose from. Taking all this into consideration it is the parent’s responsibility to point the child in the right direction. Not only by saying do as I say, but also do as I do.

As the child begins and progresses through school the teacher and peers surrounding that child become very important in the up bringing process. As anything else in life, if there is not a strong base for the teacher to start from, it becomes very difficult to teach the child education as well as shape their moral outlook. Teachers should be dedicating time to focus on education and not sorting out social injustices. If one was to present itself in the classroom setting, the teacher should be a reminding force to the student and not teaching new concepts. The teachers do control a very important atmosphere that must remain positive for the students. Teachers have grown so scared, with good reason, to suggest any type of behavior to a student. Parents tend to think that they are the only force or role model that their children should see and they are sadly mistaken.

You also have the parent that sends their child to school to not only get the book education, but learn how to act in a social setting as well. Teachers are very important in aiding the development of today’s children, and the word aid means helping parents, not doing it for them. We as a society need to change as a whole to better serve the youth of tomorrow. Educating children about discrimination is where these stereotypes began and education is where the will end.