5 year old vs. 18 year olds

It was funny seeing that book again, the one with all of the different cultures and their possesions. My Grandma has the same book that she used to show me all of the time. Back then to me it just looked like a lot of different people with a lot of different stuff in some very different places. Thing was though, I was right, thats all it really was. Yet, how is it that I wasnt suprised when I was around 5 years old, and the entire classroom was shocked at around 18 years old? I belive its because as people get older their minds get more complexed. As well as people grow so accustomed to the same routines within our own culture, that it closes our minds off from all of the different cultures around the world. Where as if you have a 5 year old who doesn't even know all the aspects within her own home, its more easy to convince them that the way of the world is different. Its like working with a blank canvass compared to working with a painted canvass. Which one is more easy to paint new ideas onto? As people grow older though, we are educated by people within our culture that teach us to follow a set of rules. Such as eating with a fork and knive compared to eating with chopsticks. Different people for different places have been taught in different ways. So the more they become educated, the stranger it is to them to see other people with a different lifestyle. Which is one of the reasons why I belive that a child's mind is one of the best kinds of minds. For their simplicity allows them to see the world and different cultures as just another new thing.

A Bronx Tale

Today we finished the movie A Bronx Tale, going into this movie I think the entire class knew that there would be some sort of turbulence for the word Bronx tends to frighten people. They in a sense fear the Bronx for it is classified as a ghetto where trouble arises and danger is a normal. Yet we really dont take into consideration our personal experiences with ghettos to judge places like the Bronx, for most of us dont have a personal realation with areas such as that. We tend to use our second hand knowledge based off of what we know about the South Side of Chicago and try to compare all ghettos across the country to this one particular area that is familiar to us. Yet lets be honest, no two places are the same, so I think its safe to say we overgeneralize a bit when it comes to unfamilair areas that have been labled "dangerous."

I personally grew up on the east cost, atlhough I am a Bostonian, I was born in New York. My mother has lived in New York for her entire childhood up until she had me. One of the areas that she lived in was the Bronx. I asked her questions about it such as: Was there an extreame amount of violence? Were the crime rates out of control? Were you constantly in fear? But the answer to all these questions was the same: "Its just like any place you would live in." And she was right, when I go back to New York I sometimes see the Bronx, and it is overstated when it comes to its notorious reputation. Whats even more suprising is that some very respectable people live there as well. So generally people tend to generalize about this dangerous area without even knowing what the place is really like.  Instead we rely on movies such as this one to inform us and give us our opinions on something we lack personal interaction with.

Misunderstandments

Today we began to watch a short film about a thrid grade teacher teaching her young 3rd grade students about racism. Although we did not get to finish the movie to the end, I have already seeen this movie in my sophmore english class. Towards the end of the movie the thing that I remembered the most was how upset the children were who had the disadvantages were. I remebered them being frustrated and not knowing what they did wrong or how they deserved such a punishment. Some may think its wrong to teach such a lesson on children who are so young. However I strongly disagree, teaching children at such an early developmental stage is a huge advantage. Not only will they rember not to act racist towards ones of different color, but they will also take with them how it felt to be judged by others who are in society: "the superior group." Children at that age have minds that develop so fast that they are able to take in what the teacher was teaching and remember it for a long time to come. Yet they are still at a age where they do not fully understand what is happening and why. But come to think of it do we really understand racism or judgement when is is portrayed against us by others? No matter what age you may be, you still will not fully understand how people can treat you so poorly due to something you have lack of control over.

The other day I was watching the movie A Beautiful Mind, being a huge film fan I pay close attention to the story and how the characters are reacting towards certain kinds of situations. For those who are not fimilar with this movie, the main character is schizophrenic, which means they view things in a different way then what most people would see. An example of this would be seeing dilusions. However, this movie gave you an inside view of his mind and how he viewed the world and as I was watching I even felt part of the confusion that he had to deal with. A lot of the times he would act out in public and others would mock him. This is the same situation with racism, he can't control whether or not he has an anxiety disorder, nor can people change the color of their skin. Which is a lesson all should learn at a very early age so we can overall have a better understanding of those different than us.

Gang Leader for a day

So far I have only read part of this new story we have. Yet I find the majority of the story so far to be repetitive. Ever since we were in school our teachers have been teaching us about black history as well as the social divide between whites and blacks. Then as always we read a short story always involving some character who is courageous and goes out to venture the other side of the social ladder what is now come to be called the ghetto. Following this short story is a class discusion on what we think the story means and how we could improve the situation in real life. Yet from what I see I notice no effort once our class discussion is over to try to change the current situation. Even though we spent about a half hour discussing and making fake promises to our teachers how we would try to change the situation. It is no doubt that the divide between whites and blacks even today still stands as a major problem. But if I started to go into that debate it would be another lecture of one we've all heard before. However, lets open up our eyes to the bigger problem.

The way we think is that life goes on as it should be, we figure in our minds that the lower classmen must have done something to deserve their poverty and the upperclassmen overall work hard to achieve their great sucsesses. How does that type of thinking occur? It starts with overall judgement of others. For example, if a person continuously fails their classes we see them not having a very sucsessful career. Or if a person tells thier peers that they are not going to college after highschool they recieve wierd and dissaproving looks. Yet the reality is that some people are born into the unsucessful lifestyles, and they are raised and brought up in a way that we would never even think to come close to being appropriate.

My freind in upstate New York lives in a very small town with a population of 200. In the middle of the woods in other words. I just had a conversation with her and the discussion of gays came up. She failed to see where calling people gay was morally wrong. Yet when I thought about it, I realized that she is so disconnected with the outside world that she doesnt know any better. She thinks that this is the only way to go about life. Same goes for the lowerclassmen. Their surroundings prevent them from exploration of the outside world, and they think killing and drug dealing is acceptable. Which is what draws the more privlaged back, leaning us towards the direction of staying away from them. Thus creating this big social gap between the two.