"Discrimination, a view of Idealism and Materialism"

Outline.



Introduction:


This essay will relate the play “The Tempest” written by William Shakespear between 1610-1611 with an issue we have dealing over years which is discrimination and also to make the relation with how discrimination is developing in society. But the main purpose of this paper is to see how this issue has kept at schools from many years, and give some suggestions so that teachers can be aware of it and make a change.


Body:

I. 1) Definition of discrimination.
2) History from colonialism until now (21st century).
3) How it is represented in “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare.

II. 1) What is going on at schools.
2) How teachers can deal with discrimination.



Conclusion:


To conclude, it is clear that there are diffent types of discrimination and it is divided into categories, such as direct or indirect discrimination. And it is not something that we can step forward and forget it because it is occurring nowadays, and they way teachers do their work is crucial to have a change. Thus, teachers must be aware of this in order to know how to teach what they have to.



"Discrimination, a view of Idealism and Materialism"



This essay will relate the play “The Tempest” written by William Shakespear between 1610-1611 with an issue we have dealing over years which is discrimination. To start this essay it is necessary to define in general terms what discrimination is, it is also important to write some history about this from colonialism until 21st century in which we are living. After these definitions it is possible to show how it is represented in the play, and from that to make the relation with how discrimination is developing in society. But the main purpose of this paper is to see how this issue has kept at schools from many years, and give some suggestions so that teachers can be aware of it and make a change.

Discrimination is a term that we all think we know, but if someone asks you to give a definition of discrimination, would you know how to answer that with a clear definition? Maybe yes or maybe not because all depends on your point of view of discrimination. Therefore, some definitions has to be given to have it clear in your mind. According to what the dictionary says, “discrimination is the act of separate, dstinguish, differentiate one thing from another, or to tret others differently because of racial, religious, political or aconomical reasons”. Now, if this definition is analysed, it is possible to see that to discriminate can be used in a positive way in the case that we have to distinguish, however most of its use is close to the negative side, so another definition according to the book “The Social Meaning of Discrimination”, Aaron Antonovsky says that “discrimination may be defined as the effective injurious treatmentof persons on grounds rationaly irrelevant to the situation. Individuals are denied desired and expected rewards or opportunities for reasons related not to their capacities, merits or behavior, but solely because of membership in an identifiable out-group”(86). This last side of discrimination may be expressed in two ways, it may be directly or indirectly. (1) Direct discrimination is when a person is treated less favourably due to his/her characteristics, such as sex, parental status, race, age or disability. (2) Indirect discrimination is when a policy or procedure has a positive result for one person or a group of people and negative effects on another person or group of people.

Since many years, in fact many centuries, discrimination has been present in actions done by the man or woman. It comes from the very beginning, when Europians started to colonize other continents. When the conquerors arrived America, they saw indigenous people living in the continent with a very a different life style that was simpler (not saying that it was easier) because of its naturality. It was totally opposite to the way Europian conquerors lived. They had different principles, habits, customs and beliefs which made them think that they were civilized, superior than the indigenous because they had the money, and they also think they were more intelligent because they received formal education. They were also different phisicaly, terefore, in this period, indigenous people became Europians’ slaves, so they were treated as inferiors and conquerors took control by imposing their culture (let’s understand culture as ideals, religion, habits, etc) as the right one. This way of “educating people” caused resistance in the people who belonged to those colonized lands and it also caused the death of many who fought hard against this imposition. It happened to indigenous people in America, colonized by the Spanish crown, and it happened to African people colonized by Great Britain as well. Thanks to these examples, it’s easy to make a relation with the definition of direct and indirect discrimination explained in the second paragraph. During colonization, direct discrimination was obviously represented in the feelings of superiority that conquerors had because of the differences in the way they both lived, so they didn’t understand nor accept other way of living, and of course the color of the skin was determiner. Not just direct discrimination occurred but indirect discrimination was also present and important in their process of cultural imposition. Conquerors imposed their ideals by lieing to indigenous, especially in terms of religion. Indigenous couldn’t keep their faith and their beliefs because Europians brought Catholic religion argumenting that it was the right one. This is the religion imposed by imperialism and colonialism that is strongly alive and extended all over the world as the main religion. That is indirect discrimination which also can be seen as the idealism of conquerors over the materialism of colonized people. English has also been extended all over the world as the important language, and even as a second language in many countries. In the case of South America, many foreign companies are setting up and are even more powerful than the companies that belong to this part of the Continent. For example, nowadays there are many Mc Donalds that don’t leave space for South American restaurants. All this is happening because we are living in the age of a new imperialism in which direct and indirect discrimination is a day by day issue.

In “The Tempest” is a story based in times when colonialism was taking part in History. In this play, the idealism that prospero has over the materialism in the Caliban is discrimination. The Caliban is Prospero’s slave because he is different, everybody see the Caliban as the monster who only acts by instinct and has no moral, thus Prospero impose him ideals and treat him badly. Prospero doesn’t let him be by trying to take away all the materialism or naturality that is the inner part of the Caliban. It is the same to what happened to indigenous and African people when imperialism was taking over of the world. Even though it was not the main topic of the play, Shakespeare in a way showed us how discrimination occured. It is still happening nowadays, especially at schools where students represent the Caliban, someone with no habits and no moral at all that has to be educated by teachers who represent Prospero. Regarding this, the educational reality at schools is like that, but in many cases it is not the school’s fault but it is the teachers viewpoint. Most of the teachers see students as people who have to be hardly educated, so they usually impose their ideals, to what students put up resistance because they are forced to change just as Prospero did to the Caliban. Instead of forcing students to learn, teachers must invite them to do it and in that way there would be less resistance from students to learn because they feel discriminated when the teacher doesn’t share the same ideals with them or they are not understood by the teacher. As discrimination is everywhere it is extremely important that teachers know how to deal with it and to be caruful on what they teach and how they teach it. If students have to learn vocabulary, the teacher has to be explicit and say what words can be offensive and in what context they can be used. For example, the word black may be offensive if a white person calls an Afro American black.

To conclude, it is clear that there are diffent types of discrimination and it is divided into categories, such as direct or indirect discrimination. Besides, both types of discrimination were part of the colonialization process and of course they are represented in Shakespeare play “The Tempest” which took place in an island that had not been colonized. And unfortunately, it is not something that we can step forward and forget it because it is occurring nowadays, and they way teachers do their work is crucial to have a change. Thus, teachers must be aware of this in order to know how to teach what they have to.










Bibliography.





Antonovsky Aaron. “The Social Meaning of Discrimination”. Clark Atlanta University, 1960.


Shakespear William. “The Tempest”. Classic Books Company, 2001.


Carol A. Wong, Jacquelynne S. Eccles and Arnold Sameroff. “The Influence of Ethnic Discrimination and Ethnic Identification on African American Adolescents’ School and Socioemotional Adjustment”. Journal of Personality, 2003.



Wikimedia Foundation. “Caliban”. June 13th. 2009.