Living in a Conservative Country
"Is it difficult for you to live in such a conservative country?" One of the high school students asked the ex-pat teachers during a He For She meeting.
He for She was a club started and advised by my friend Elise in the high school of the school I worked at. The name refers to a term in a speech given by Emma Watson to promote gender equality. She said that men were essential in working towards equal rights and treatment for women.
The club itself had issues with being taken seriously by the school community. Male students very rarely showed up. Usually, the number of foreign teachers outnumbered the students who showed up. Several parents called the school director with a list of complaints about the club. One of the complaints was that the club promoted gender equality. Yes, it did. Living in a conservative country meant being subjected to frequent misogyny.
The club itself had issues with being taken seriously by the school community. Male students very rarely showed up. Usually, the number of foreign teachers outnumbered the students who showed up. Several parents called the school director with a list of complaints about the club. One of the complaints was that the club promoted gender equality. Yes, it did. Living in a conservative country meant being subjected to frequent misogyny.
Even at eight years old, my students had traditional gender roles engrained. At the beginning of the year, the boys in my class would refuse to sit next to the girls. I had a boy in my class tell me that the male teacher on my team should make more than me because he did more work. One day we were talking about Malala and a student told me, "I agree. I don't think girls should go to school." My students were fascinated by the 2016 presidential election, but the only thing they would tell me about Hillary Clinton was that she "killed babies."
The students in He For She asked, "Is it difficult for you to live in such a conservative country?"
The answer is yes.
As a teacher, my frustration came not from my students having different opinions than me. My students formed their ideas and opinions based on what their parents, older siblings, and the church told them. They went to school with students who mostly shared their socioeconomic status, political and religious beliefs. My frustration came from my students never having to think about their opinions because, for the most part, they were the opinions everyone around them shared. Since kindergarten, they were asked to walk in a line of boys and girls, separate their backpacks by boys and girls, and play soccer separately at recess. Catholics make up a big part of the religious population of El Salvador and my school was representative of that. In El Salvador, there is an all-ban on abortion of any form. Women can be sent to prison for miscarrying.
It can be dangerous to be surrounded by people who think and believe the exact same things as you. Austin Kleon writes in Keep Going, "interacting with people who don't share our perspective forces us to rethink our ideas, strengthen our ideas, or trade our own ideas for better ones. When we're only interacting with like-minded people all the time, there's less and less opportunity to be changed." My students didn't have to think about their opinions when they had met very few people whose opinions were radically different from their own.
Children frequently have less agency of who they spend time and interact with. An adult can go on the internet or turn on the news to find opinions different from their own. However, when given the choice, adults congregate to those with similar views as their own. We unfollow or block people on social media who post things we disagree with. I'm not the exception to this. There is even a certain type of person who teaches abroad. As a solution to this, Kleon references Alan Jacobs who wrote the book How To Think. Kleon wrote, "Jacobs recommends that if you really want to explore ideas, you should consider hanging out with people who aren't so much like-minded as like-hearted. These are people who are 'temperamentally disposed to openness and have habits of listening. . . people who when you say something think about it rather than just simply react." Seek out the like-hearted people who can change opinions and beliefs or strengthen existing ones.
Although it was a frequently frustrating experience, my students helped strengthen my own ideas and beliefs. One being, from a young age, kids should be exposed to people who are different from them. But, as my students would say by the end of the year, "well, that's just your opinion."
The students in He For She asked, "Is it difficult for you to live in such a conservative country?"
The answer is yes.
As a teacher, my frustration came not from my students having different opinions than me. My students formed their ideas and opinions based on what their parents, older siblings, and the church told them. They went to school with students who mostly shared their socioeconomic status, political and religious beliefs. My frustration came from my students never having to think about their opinions because, for the most part, they were the opinions everyone around them shared. Since kindergarten, they were asked to walk in a line of boys and girls, separate their backpacks by boys and girls, and play soccer separately at recess. Catholics make up a big part of the religious population of El Salvador and my school was representative of that. In El Salvador, there is an all-ban on abortion of any form. Women can be sent to prison for miscarrying.
It can be dangerous to be surrounded by people who think and believe the exact same things as you. Austin Kleon writes in Keep Going, "interacting with people who don't share our perspective forces us to rethink our ideas, strengthen our ideas, or trade our own ideas for better ones. When we're only interacting with like-minded people all the time, there's less and less opportunity to be changed." My students didn't have to think about their opinions when they had met very few people whose opinions were radically different from their own.
Children frequently have less agency of who they spend time and interact with. An adult can go on the internet or turn on the news to find opinions different from their own. However, when given the choice, adults congregate to those with similar views as their own. We unfollow or block people on social media who post things we disagree with. I'm not the exception to this. There is even a certain type of person who teaches abroad. As a solution to this, Kleon references Alan Jacobs who wrote the book How To Think. Kleon wrote, "Jacobs recommends that if you really want to explore ideas, you should consider hanging out with people who aren't so much like-minded as like-hearted. These are people who are 'temperamentally disposed to openness and have habits of listening. . . people who when you say something think about it rather than just simply react." Seek out the like-hearted people who can change opinions and beliefs or strengthen existing ones.
Although it was a frequently frustrating experience, my students helped strengthen my own ideas and beliefs. One being, from a young age, kids should be exposed to people who are different from them. But, as my students would say by the end of the year, "well, that's just your opinion."
