Stigma

I've been dealing a lot with issues of stigma, in my personal life and in my professional life.  What exactly should someone my age have accomplished in their life by now?  What are society's expectations?  Why am I so hard on myself? Why are my expectations of myself so high?  What if I succeed?  How will I know?  Better yet, what if I fail?  What if everything that I've worked for does not pan out.  And how will I even know if I succeed or fail?  It is based on society's labels anyways.   

The more I think about the world around me, the more I realize that we are all trying to understand the world through some type of label,category or standard.  And the end result?  Discrimination.  Stigmatization.  Profiling.  Stereotyping.  Everywhere I turn, I see it happening.  

I am currently teaching my grade 9 students about the Holocaust.  The way I teach it is not through facts.  I want them to use the experience as a way to understand the world around them.  I want them to be able to see what I see.  I want them to use their knowledge to never stay silent when they see something that should not be happening.  I want them to implement the morals and values in their daily lives.  

I usually try to teach about the Holocaust in January and February, just in time for Black History Month.  Learning about the Holocaust is not about facts or memorization.  As a matter of fact, there is not one date or name or place that actually matters in the way I teach.  It is the lessons that we must learn from these atrocious acts of inhumanity that we must learn about.  That is why I always show "A Class Divided" when I teach about the Holocaust.  It is Jane Elliot's grade three experiment from the 1960's after the murder of Martin Luther King.  She segregates and instills hatred in her grade three students based on the color of their eyes.  She feeds her students false statements: people with blue eyes are smarter that people with brown eyes, etc. And what we see in a matter of minutes is that hatred, discrimination and intolerance develops in the classroom.  I then relate this type of 'faulty talk' to Hitler's messages of propaganda.  It is all related.  All discrimination and violence and racism and sexism and intolerance is the same: it stems from faulty and untrue beliefs.  

This month, why not teach your children about respect, virtue, being kind, generosity and inclusion.  Take them to one of the many events for Black History Month.  Here's the website link for a detailed list of what is happening in Montreal: www. montrealblackhistorymonth.com

Also, read this article for more information: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Role+models+spotlight/6075657/story.html