Tuesday 7 February 2012

My history class is racist!

Today in my class called The West and the world we were discussing what countries should be considered part of the western world. We discussed a few of the more obvious one like the US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and some others; then we got into the topic of Mexico which the class said was not a first world country because of the lack of a prominant middle class, I was alright with this. Then some other controversial countries came up like South Africa, which in my opinion is western, and others like Japan. This was my first huge disagreements; the class believed that due to cultural difference that Japan was NOT western! I strongly disagree due to the fact that they modern their government off of the west, I brought this up and the class disregarded me.

Then we got to Greece which because of the model of democracy originating from Greece the class said that it was western, but I said "wait a second, you people disregarded Mexico because of their failing economy but just because Greece was the start of democracy it is a western country! That doesn't make any sense!" but the class again disregarded what I said. Then the teacher asked "well how about Turkey?" The class said that due to the lack of wealth they were also not Western! I then stated "Why is ireland a western country as their economy is worse then Turkey's?" someone accused me of being Racist. so I responded "WHAT DO YOU MEAN RACIST I'M IRISH!!!!!" the student bit his tongue and said nothing more.

The class argued "because Ireland Has a rich history" in which I replied "You people should retake grade 11 History as you would have learned Turkey was a world power up until WWI!!" the class did not have any retort, but continued to say that countries like Turkey were not the West. I have decided that the people of the west aren't richer then other people they are only ignorant enough to label a country as better not on a basis of wealth but rather on a basis of Ideology and race! The reason Ideology is a factor is that they only said that countries with a mostly Christian heritage were west whereas countries that are Muslim like Turkey and other "lesser" religions are not priviledged enough to be concidered Western.

I have decided that rather then teaching racism and bigomy to students I will try to convince students about equality. There is no West and East in a class that I teach just seperate Nations all which are equal. These students are going to grow up to be racist bigomists but no student under my watch will be as such!

3 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if its a racism. We are talking about countries here, not nations. Still it's good to teach your students to be tolerant:)

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  2. well you are right about japan, and so are they. eastern culture, western economics.

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  3. There is a difference between being part of "the western world" and a part of the west geographically. Japan is considered "the far East," hence the whole reason we have the differentiations between Eastern and Western cultures.

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