Sunday, July 5, 2020

Implicit bias



This post is week 4 of 8 in the #8WeeksofSummer Blog Challenge for educators.
This year has been tough. Not only because of the corona virus but also because of the continuous violence, protests, inequality that we are witnessing with our own eyes.
Although I am in a different country, racial inequality and bias, does exist but in a different form.
In our times, I don't believe that you will be able to find an homogenous nation anymore. And I don't even know if it is good to have only one race in a place. There is no diversity, no difference.
Still, people who are different than us, mostly immigrants face a lot of trouble. Not the same rights, terrible living conditions, poverty, no or little access to health facilities, criminality, racism. Only a few people try to help.
A lot of problems have arised at schools, especially when groups of parents go not want immigrant children to attend their children's schools and have even protested against it.
So, it is not always implicit bias, most of the time it is pure racism.
The bad thing is that this "feeling" is transfered to the native children by their parents.
So, as a teacher, it is pretty difficult to take drastic measures against it.
I would suggest parent -teacher gatherings and talks with experts about equality, racism, violence and equal rights.
As a second step, the school could organize multi national-events with food and art from different countries in order to bring people together and make them realize that the differences are not so big after all.
With children, we can do projects about different countries and traditions, role-play (and make them understand how uncomfortable it is to be judged by your race or color)

Hoping for a better future!

2 comments:

Denise Krebs said...

Theodora, yes, you are right. This was a difficult topic today. I like how you distinguished between implicit bias and all out racism. So, true. We are fighting that in every nation too. I like your suggestions, and especially your hope for a better future. That is my new mantra, that I will be a better ancestor than those who came before me in the area of justice and equality.

Theodora Papapanagiotou said...

You are so right. We are responsible about what we leave for the next generations.

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