On a breezy November evening Manjari took a brisk walk to the children’s park to pick up her small son. The homemaker was assaulted by jeering sounds, which she took for children-at-play, until she discovered that they we re directed, coupled with fistfuls of sand, at a plump, bespectacled boy. To her horror Manjari discovered her own Aryan in the midst of the melee, yelling "Fatty, Fatty, Four Eyes".
Manjari screamed "Stop it!" scooped up Aryan and left. The tormentors stopped and scooted away. "Mummy, what’s wrong?" Aryan asked. "We were just having fun. Don’t you tease Daddy about wearing glasses." He was genuinely puzzled.
Manjari froze. It was true. Her husband had started reading glasses and every morning, when he was surrounded by the newspaper. she’d kid: "You’re an old man now! You look like an owl!"
Here’s another scenario. You are at a naming ceremony, and when the gifting is over there are murmurs of disapproval: "How’s that she is so dark? Everybody else in the family is fair. Tch Tch. How sad!"
Your moppet comes home and chucks out her brown Barbie doll and says to the maid: "Take your dirty black hands off me!"
Even though you, yourself, have more sense than to discuss shades of skin color, children can be susceptible and influenced by adults who are stupid enough to set an example.
Sometimes we as parents are quick to stereotype and are critical of others – perhaps as a consequence of conditioning from our own parents. We need to monitor our attitudes and behavior r because everything that we say and do can influence our children.
For example: You’re stuck in traffic and the driver in front of you seems to be moving at snail’s pace. You curse under your breath and mutter rudely about women drivers. On a holiday in Goa you notice a cluster of Kashmiri shops and comment about how the community has taken over the state. You ask your child why he can’t be as hardworking as the South Indian kids in the class. You use labels: "All Muslims are terrorists" , "All Christians are drunks", "All Parsis are eccentric", "All Sikhs are dimwitted" and worse.
Each of these statements give our children the message that an entire group of people can be characterized – a message that does encourage prejudice. Instead you need to warn your children about the dangers of genera lizing – "all foreigners", "all Maharashtrians", "all domestic help" – and try to teach discriminatory awareness so that they respect a culture even when individuals in that culture behave in a deviant manner. Tell them that such people exist in all cultures and pick out exemplary individuals in the very same culture and community.
If you refer to your friends, even good-humouredly, behind their backs, as "Baldy" "Fat Face" "Deaf Dumbo", you are sending out the message that physical attributes can be a source of amusement. Your kid may be too young to understand why you laugh at jokes about a certain community and then hit the roof when he is sent home with a remark about playing the clown in the class by imitating the accent of the Math teacher.
Subliminally you are programming your kids to call teachers and peers unkind nicknames, all in the spirit of fun, so that stammering and limping and deafness and fatness become objects of ridicule perhaps forever.
Ours is a country where intolerance has always existed. We once believed that widows are unlucky and need to be ostracised, that girls need not be educated, that even the shadows of certain castes can contaminate us, that we need to destroy religious structures to make place for our own. Tolerance – and intolerance – is learned. If we fear differences, our children will too. Do you speak in positive terms about adoption, so that your child will treat an adopted classmate with natural cheer? When you speak of immigrants in your city – taxi drivers, milkmen, nurses – do you highlight the loneliness of living without their families? Are you wan and considerate only to people of your own caste, creed, community? Do you scoff at religious festivals of other communities? Is only your own community invited to your social get-togethers?
When you demonstrate your own tolerance you teach your children to respect humanity.
Go one step beyond tolerance and teach pro-social behavior – that is non-violent, non-hurtful, non-hateful. It means taking a stand against bigotry, speaking out against communalism. It means teaching your child to stand up against bullies who are tormenting a mongoloid child. The best way to do this is to be a role model.
Remember Socrates who had discussions way back in the Fifth Century B.C.? He gathered his disciples around him and raised leading questions about difficult moral dilemmas.
Your job also is to provide the stimulus, to make your child wonder about the thinking of his peer group. You do not have to scold, lecture, get angry or upset, but it is useful to discuss through hypothetical cases how even subtle forms of intolerance can be enormously damaging.
PRESENT A PROBLEM
Caran ’s parents were contemplating a divorce. Caran confided this to a friend, who told her parents and a couple of best friends. Soon the whole class was buzzing with the news.
Some children asked Caran hurtful questions like "Will you have to choose between your mother and father in front of a judge?" "Suppose they don’t want you, will you be sent to your grand parents? Will you be sent to a Boarding School?" "Will you have a birthday pany this year?" And so on.
Caran was very upset. He hated the D-word which was used a lot at home. With every question he got more and more worried. His parents were fighting a lot. He didn’t want to study or play. He sat alone during the break pretending to read.
What should Caran’s classmates do? The discussion may go thus …"Asking questions doesn’t mean that they hate him." … "But perhaps they are cruel because Caran does not know how to answer them." … "It’s not his fault that his parents are getting divorced."
… "Maybe his friends should invite him over and play games to make him
happy." … "He doesn’t trust his friends." … "He should go to the school counsellor. "
… "With the parents’ permission the school counsellor should ask Caran if the subject can be discussed during a ‘Values Class"’.
You can start these discussions in a car, or when you have a captive audience, at the dining table or at bed time.
Don’t wait until you are summoned by the school or by an irate parent when your child does something intolerant. This is precisely the worst time, because he will be busy defending himself or playing the blame game. The best time is when the child has done something right – like going to the new classmate’s birthday party. Praise her for attending and ask why she went, when not many others bothered to go.
Discussions open up new aspects of little minds and encourage them to think sensibly, without being part of a herd, which is how tolerance levels heighten and spread.
SHADES OF INTOLERANCE
Check if any of the following seems familiar .
… Holding your nose when you pass somebody with oily hair .
… Making fun of someone who is too fat/too thin .
…. Not playing with someone who can’t run fast enough .
… Imitating people who speak English badly .
… Calling people names because of skin-color.
.. Ignoring somebody in a wheelchair.
… Getting afraid of big black men .
… Not letting a girt play with cars .
… Not letting a boy take dance classes .
… Whispering behind someone’s back because he IS
adopted .
.. Teasing a chiki whose parents are gatting divorced.
~ Talking rudely about people from a state.
looking down on somebody whose do these and things are
not branded.
TACTICS FOR TOLERANCE
Tell your children
… Don’t prejudge people. Get to know them as individuals before you decide whether
you like them or not.
.. Treat others the way you want them to treat you.
Stand up for those who are being discrimated against. Don’t go along with the crowd when people are being unfair to somebody.
Learn about other castes, cultures, communities;–creeds.
{ 0 comments }
