Posted by Teacher Ria in Advocacies | 2 Comments
He Said, She Said: Ending the Name-Calling Battle.
More than once, I’ve had kids proclaim to their classmates “I don’t like you to be my friend”. Upon prodding, I find out why: because she’s pangit (ugly) or fat. Yes, this comes from four and five year olds. Shocking as it may be, being a preschool teacher has exposed me to the fact that discrimination is not only an adult thing.
It got me to thinking, where this comes from?
Then it hit me: this is the message we give children. We call people names a lot. From the “idiot” in the car that cut in front of us to the wierdo dressed in all black walking in the mall. And those are only the “mild” kinds of names we call others. It’s also the labels we give them and the characteristics associated to it. For example, statements like “ibibigay kita sa bumbay” or some other derogatory comment like that. Sometimes it’s also the non-verbal signals we give out, such as suddenly clutching your purse when someone who looks like a goon walks by. Many times we don’t think about our actions when we blurt out a label we have for people. Often it happens on instinct or reflex, without us much giving second thought about it. I, too, have been guilty of it.
You may wonder where this whole post is coming from. Let me backtrack a bit. It started a few days ago when, while listening to the evening news, I heard the newscaster comment about the upset Ateneo experienced at the hands of (as he put it) “the lowly UP Maroons”. I sincerely hope I heard him wrong, but that’s how it came across to me. Saying it in a different manner, such as “The Blue Eagles were defeated by the last seeded UP Maroons” or something like that seems less derogatory, right?
This got me to thinking about how we can end the perpetual name-calling battle. It’s not enough to scold children when we hear them do it. Punishing them may help a bit but not necessarily change it. We need to stop and change the messages we give our children. This does not pertain only to media, especially the media of today where even cartoons teach kids to call others “stupid” and the like. It should begin with us.
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Just two days ago, a student of mine pushed his classmate, who at that time we all thought has broke her arm. When I asked why he did such thing, he said “I don’t like her.” I asked as to why, then all he came up with was “She is smelly.”
I became furious and felt like crazy trying not to laugh with his response. But see? At this early age, they really do know how to discriminate and actually do something bad about it.
I would be lying if I say I don’t do name-calling.. even with my students, even more with them around (in tagalog of course).
I don’t know if he just came up with that response so he can give me his excuse of hurting a friend. But it was, in all seriousness, terrible to see how much kids think and talk just because adults nowadays influence kids more on negative traits than the good ones.
The next day, the girl who we all thought broke her arm, came hopping and skipping inside our assembly area with her hands swinging all about. And that’s another issue there to talk about.. kids acting out too much, just as the same as lying. x_X
hi teacher ria.. namiss ko ang pagtuturo dahil sa pagbabasa ng blog mo