Ethnicity and Race
Most social scientists believe children are not born prejudiced. Instead, prejudice is learned. Individuals may learn prejudice from their parents, family, peers or experience in schools, community, from media, and from other socialization experiences. Most of the countries have ethnic pluralism which should be balanced with national unity. There are specific problems that do arise in ethnically diverse societies. I do concur that prejudice is learned. My racial experience as I will explain in the story happened while I was still in primary. This is my story.
Although many of us had already studied the carbon cycle while in 7th grade, our teacher Ms. Mark being in considerate of high student mobility rate, could not assume that every 8th grade student had the mastery of this challenging concept. For that matter, she attempted to review photosynthesis the week before. Together we constructed items explaining the role of sunlight being the energy source that plants utilize in producing sugars just from water and carbon dioxide.
The following week, we progressed onto alternative energy and tackled corn chips. Ms. Mark used to teach five classes with each having its own unique character. Our class was dynamic and she ever looked forward each day to fast-paced interchanges. She was working hard to ensure that she engendered a serene and respectful atmosphere for purposes of discussion and her 29 students possessed a relaxed rapport that indicated respect for one another’s individuality.
Raising of hand was not the order of the day in Ms. Mark’s classroom. She had realized that lack of formality fostered participation from students who had less likelihood of contributing in a traditional setting. The teacher incorporated creative ways of encouraging individual responsibility to learn such as share-outs, picking names, and cooperative grouping. In reinforcing personal and collective responsibility in various cooperative groups, Ms. Mark employed a roll-a-number technique where she allocated numbers 1 to 6 to each team members and then arguments solicited from the members of the team whose number was being rolled.
Ms. Mark’s class was composed of students emanating from different ethnic and racial backgrounds. She continually underpinned the idea that discussions that are scientific in nature become more full-bodied when there are kinds of different perspectives. Ms. Mark always reminded the class that it was each individual’s responsibility in enhancing the knowledge of the group by contributing one’s own perspective.
A few days later, students read and discussed as well as presented articles and preliminary research on ethanol and other alternate fuels. Students also observed the products that result from a burning candle in a projector camera. The class teams in their participation worked together in a “walk through”, a model for the life cycle of ethanol matter. The students held cards bearing the names of molecules embedded on them by the aid of a yarn in tracking their “journey.”
However, some students confused the words ‘matter,’ ‘energy,’ and ‘fuel’ and even used them interchangeably. This made them to be unclear on the relationship between matter and energy in the whole process. The ‘culprits’ mainly were some black and this presented a dirty scene where they were abused by some whites as ‘thick-headed.’ A racial discrimination was presented in this scenario. Despite the tireless efforts of Ms. Mark to mingle students and work as a group in unity, this ethnic biasness was evidenced. To worsen the situation, some white students termed these black folk as ‘monkeys whom are disturbing.’ This scenario has since stacked in my mind as a glue. Indeed racial difference is real in our society.
In spite of this, as the 8th grade class rivuleted into their science classroom founding their seats by the table, Ms. Mark proceeded in opening the file of the names of the project teams of the week within the interactive whiteboard. She sturdily believed that random rearranging of team groupings give her students the best opportunity in interacting and learning from both dissimilar and self-selected peer sets. Ms. Mark also ensured that by maintaining the self-selected related partnerships, she could encourage a crucial social support system for her students. This was done by using the interactive whiteboard application in combination with the smaller self-selected teams of 2 or 3 with one another.
Ms. Mark already had posted three (3) familiar ethanol production sites along the classroom walls and marked by big printed signs coupled with home-made and blown-up pictures of native areas such as: 1. Farm filed, 2. Refinery, and 3. Gas station. Moreover, she possessed a copy of the Life Cycle Assessment Process Tools and planned to separately model energy and matter in driving the idea home that they could be separately traced. These sites or stations represented main points for inputs and outputs as well as transformation of energy and matter as crop grows converting it to fuel. This is because the class was researching on ethanol production via process of fermentation. This activity would assist students in testing their understanding on how matter is transformed by both living and non-living constituents in an ecosystem through the fermentation process and the overall biofuel life cycle.
As the class was still in the mood of discussing the staff of Life Cycle Assessment Process Tool, Ms. Mark using the same pictures or photos of the stations embedded on the interactive whiteboard, made a drawing of three rectangles and did write their designations as farm, refinery, and car. She also drew straight purple lines that indicated both matter input and output while wavy red lines indicated energy input and output. Ms. Mark also did cut red and purple yarn for her students and this represented and tracked the journey that was taken by matter throughout the whole cycle.
Ms. Mark then made a proclamation, “Last week, we traced matter input and output for the carbon cycle of ethanol production and combustion, and we had some unanswered questions. Today, we are going to see where energy fits into the process.” This statement embroiled some serious concerns. It seemed that the whole topic of ethanol production took long and some students were bored up. They would just throw words anyhow and helter-skelter. I can remember one white fellow student responding to Ms. Mark very badly who happened to be a black woman. The student remarked, “I’m tired of this staff, you take them to your fellow folk. You are disgusting and may be those monkeys can keep enjoying your lectures.” The whole class came to a standstill. The students had all their eyes focused on Ms. Mark looking sympathetically. This situation further dawned to me that racial prejudice is a real “disease” ravaging our society.
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