As an adult, a parent, and an educator it is my social responsibility to make sure that the children I am entrusted with are aware that not everyone lives the same kind of lifestyle. We are all different in some way or another and that doesn’t make me any better or worse than anyone else. This can be a challenging concept for children that have grown up with only people of the same race, which hold the same beliefs and are very similar in the majority of their ways.
Discrimination and prejudice interfere with people’s rights to have access to equality of opportunity and hinder the promotion of diversity, and they should have no place in a children’s setting.
People tend to make jokes, slurs, and stereotypes about other races. Members of a specific race will hear the same negative comments so often that they’ll eventually start to believe them. According to Claude M. Steele, “...a person’s personal performance can be detrimentally affected by the psychological triggering of negative stereotypes assigned to one’s social group identity” (606). These comments will start to take an emotional toll on one’s brain and will cause a person to use the negative comments that hurt them towards people who are of the same race. It’s an endless cycle of being dehumanized, accepting the dehumanization, and then dehumanizing someone. It’s important that children know that this type of behavior was occurring in America and although Americans cannot right all their wrongs, they can still learn from their mistakes. To add on, people are aware that using slurs and stereotypes to create others feel inferior is wrong, but that does not stop them. The authors say that, “Majority of people will use racial commentary to deny equality in the safety of their own home with friends and close acquaintances” (605). The same people will embrace equality in public in order to make themselves feel better about what they say in private. Children need to learn that the only way to achieve equality is to be striving for it
I’m not going to argue that teaching every single student in a public or private school system is necessary. I believe it helps when trying to solve the problem the US has been having with racism, but there are some cases where it’s just not going to help. So instead I’m going to argue that we teach every student in or above grade five with parent consent. This is because teaching a five-year-old or a student around that age isn’t going to do anything but cause more harm. This is because a five-year-old more than likely has never has a single thought go through there head about different skin colors. If you start introducing racism and the issues involving racism to a five-year-old that’s when things like a little kid saying they don’t want
The fact is, by the time a child can walk, they start noticing color differences. At a young age in school, you are told not to judge others just because they are different. That would seem like enough right? But unfortunately, schools aren’t the only influence that children have. The most influential thing in a child’s life is his/ hers parent, who may be teaching the child something totally different from what the school has taught them. Children’s’ minds are easy to form, so if a child’s parents are racist, more than likely racism will be seeded in the child’s head at a young age. This is one way racism continues to survive today. It is also in this way that people can be grouped or identified in an unwanted way. People may be been seen as a part of a group that they are not even involved in just due to the color of their
This remarkable study, which is excessively designed for parents and teachers, should reveal to readers how children develop racism by the effects of the surrounding environment; supported with case-studies from different schools. This study looks into how young children’s thought processes and behavior can be simply equated with different color children. Furthermore, in this research we make a strong efforts by asking experts from different fields such as social workers, psychological people, religious point of view, and law enforcements. In order to help us find better solutions about this dilemma and learn how parents can actively make a change to help their children be normal and decrease the number of children that are being racist. If
There are citizens in the United States who believe they are living in a free society where all individuals enjoy the same livelihood and have throughout this nation’s history. There are also citizens living in that same country who do not see this place as one where everyone is valued but discriminated against on the basis of skin color. For almost four-hundred years, blacks have been seen as inferior to whites based on the color of skin. The United States has a history of slavery and people fighting for equal rights. Children need to be taught that we do not judge on the basis of skin color. A teacher by the name of Jane Elliott decided to teach her third grade students about the dangers of making judgements based on physical characteristics such as skin color and eye color. Her lesson was designed to bring the reality of discrimination to the for front of her students minds. She began her fight to educating people about reality of racism the day after Dr. Martin Luther
Power prejudice and discrimination can affect children and young people by making them feel excluded.
Racial discrimination is something that has always happened in the world and also the school system. In history everyone knows the infamous story of Ruby Bridges a 6 year old girl from Louisiana who was the first to integrate schools in the south. She was faced with much discrimination from white protestors who would often yell at her throw slurs. Things were so bad during this time period she had to be escorted into school by policemen and parents went as far as to not sending their kids to school because they knew she attended the school. (Boyd, 1) I believe there are several factors that contribute to racism such as zoning policies, the outside community, classroom set ups, and even some teachers within the system. This topic is very controversial and often times over looked because many people believe that the education system is fine and that racism does not go on within the system. But it is also not just within the system some factors come from the outside world. When discussing the education system the most important thing to remember that there are young adults and children going to school every day to be educated and better themselves. School should be a place where everyone feels comfortable to go and can go without judgement or uncomfortable feelings. When an environment is created where a student may feel judged simply because there skin color they
Certain races can’t have rights because they are “that” race. Back in the day, many people had to fight for their right to get the necessities that were needed. Caucasian (white) people didn’t have to worry about anything but; minorities have to fight to break free from these standards of their life. Kids shouldn’t have to worry when they face such discriminative manner towards their race. Take Muslims for example, because they are marked as terrorist doesn’t mean that all of them are terrorist. Kids shouldn’t have to deal with it. As a result, just because they are that “certain” or “special” race, they shouldn’t be treated differently.
“Racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it” - a quote from Ruby Bridges. The average american naturally learns about the effects of racism at the age of 4. Although there are many good things about this, the fact that toddlers are naturally learning racism from their parents and people around them is quite concerning. Over the last 100 years, 62 million people have died from some form of racism. That is over 20% of the United States’ current population. The reason it is so important for school-aged kids to learn about the effects of racism is because these kids are the future of our generation and if they do not stop this, no one will. Spreading awareness about the damage that racism has done will hopefully
This article shines a light on various points about how informing children about race and discrimination is essential to our society. Racism and discrimination does not apply to just one specific demographic such as Caucasian individuals. Unfortunately the society as a whole is accountable for playing a part in stereotyping, microaggressions, prejudice actions and many more. As a future counselor I would recommend a policy that becoming self-aware about racism should be necessary in this society. Formulating a policy oriented around the workforce and educational systems could be a start. I had a friend who informed me that her retail job spoke about preventing discrimination during her employment orientation, however, she still
It’s my job as a teacher to try and teach my students that prejudice is hurtful and hateful. As a future teacher, I want to create an inclusive environment in my classroom. For instance, the posters, artworks, toys, and other materials in my classroom would be diverse in terms of race, gender, and ethnicity because not only is it colorful and vibrant, it will also make all my students feel welcome. I want all my students to feel respected. I would also keep parents involved and informed. So if any incident occurs or if my students have any questions that can cause mixed responses, my students would have a lesser chance of getting the wrong response. Also, I cannot ignore discriminatory behavior. Avoiding problems won't make it go away, in the
Society is diverse but, unfortunately, education is often nuanced by cultural homogeneous. Discrimination can be described as the unjust allocation of value based upon a different category of people (Winant, 2005). Racism, ageism, and sexism are few of many examples of discrimination that are present in society. Discrimination, certainly, has a powerful impact on the educational journey of many students. Anna, just aged 13 years old, was exposed to regular bullying at school due to her indigenous background (Harrison, 2016, p. 3). One example of discrimination Anna received was that she would have “white kids running up to [her] and biting [her] shoulders and yelling ‘chocolate’” (Harrison, 2016, p. 3). Discrimination in Dr. Elizabeth Tailby’s
Race has always been a serious topic in the United States since we gained freedom from Great Britain and became our own country. There has always been racial division and inequality due to differences in the color of one’s skin. Although the tensions aren’t as bad as they were during times of slavery or during times of segregation, races other than white (“the normal race”) still face many biases in society. Minorities still have a harder time making ends meet and live in more poverty than those who are white. Minorities still have higher unemployment rates than those who are white. Minorities still get treated differently because their skin is not white. Minorities are simply not treated or seen the same as those who are white. Why is this a problem we face and is there something we can do to change this from reoccurring in the future? In Chapter 3 of Nurture Shock, Brigitte Vittrup does research on white parents and how they teach their children about race. She feels these biases are still being made because white parents don’t teach race to their children, in turn their children learn to form these biases towards minorities. In order to see things change, we have to do something different. We should begin by teaching children about race from a young age. If we don’t teach them that we’re all the same and that everyone should be judged by their hearts and not their skin they will learn to see the different races and create their own biases. Eventually we will continue to