During class, we received a specific task. There was a car accident, creating a horrible traffic, and we were supposed to demonstrate the reaction of different types of people with different "jobs". How would a police officer react towards the accident? What about a nurse? A mother? What about us, students? Because people come from different places or have grown with specific people, they tend to show unique thoughts or reactions toward something. For example, a man who is late for an important meeting would most likely get frustrated about the accident because it is delaying him to his meeting. Therefore, this kind of person wouldn't care about the accident, how bad it was or how hurt the driver was, but he would care about his own personal interest or, in this case, his appointment. However, a police or a nurse's reaction would be totally different from the late man. Because their job is to help and save people, they would have worried and went right away to help those who got hurt on the accident. A mother would have thought about her children first, because she is the mother, and her job is to take care of her children and give the kid a healthy education. This activity clearly shows that people are different, each individual have different perspectives. It was very interesting to see how people would really react differently. If we would have asked how each student would react for such situation, I am pretty sure everyone would have reacted in a unique way. That is a good explanation to why some students are good at a specific subject area but bad at others. The education that they received and how they grew up affects people's academic skills as well. For example, most Korean are good at math because of the country they are from and their strict parents. Risk-takers are better off at economics because they tend to go further on the market in order to get the best use of scarce resources to satisfy human needs. This is all based on the real world, whatever happens on people's daily life, whether it is related to social or academics, they will do and think differently from everyone else. On the TOK book, it clearly shows that people often have different perspectives because they come from different cultures and governments. Therefore, individuals are most likely to react in a unique way to specific scenes.
Very interesting how you mention that everyone who sees the car accident will interpret it in a different way. You gave examples of several point of views but I am curious to what the p.o.v. of the student you mentioned would be. Could you say what you might feel? Also, why did you specifically refer to the p.o.v. of a student, rather than just a teenager?
ReplyDeleteAlthough what you have said may be true, is it possible that some of the assumptions being a bit one sided? What I felt was that even though there might be some truth to some of the assumptions, like " Korean are good at math because of the country they are from and their strict parents", is this the entire truth to this situation? Aren't there exceptions? In the world today, such an unpredictable place, is it fair to generalize like this?
ReplyDeleteLeonardo, I agree with you with the fact that people react to the same thing in completely different and unique ways because of their culture. I can connect to this statement completely. For example, once I was on an airplane which had excess weight and they told the passengers that if no one wanted to send their luggage on a different flight for free they would pick randomly. It was a very interesting situation because I got to see how different people (with different cultures) reacted. I completely understood what you meant with this post, but I have a question. Don't you think that Koreans being better at math than other subject areas is more of a stereotype than the truth?
ReplyDeleteI like how you acknowledge the way different education depending on the region/country someone lives in, can have a big impact on an individual's decision making and thought process. I wouldn't have considered all students reacting individually because it's easy to forget we all have such different backgrounds. But now that you pointed this out, I remember how many different cultures and values are in one classrom and how much that would change the overall reactions, if this was an experiment done in a classroom where all the students grew up in the same place, with the same people, at the same school.
ReplyDeleteReally good idea about explaining how these many different types of people could react differently, and I totally connect with the fact of being late and frustrated when there is traffic but don't think about the person that may be in need of help and is in danger. Why don't you try to connect yourself with one of these characters or even all of them?
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