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.