Can we teach or influence our students to not have racist bias?
Of course, we can try. However, let's bear in mind that these things are
deep issues. It's easy for us as foreigners to say that this new generation
should have nothing against the Japanese. But let's imagine the problem if
we bring it home.
Let's say some country invaded your country during WWII. They occupied your
city. They tortured and killed half the people in your city. They raped your
grandmother, tortured and killed her and your mother. They made your father
work like a slave until he died. In school, you studied all of this and
really learned the extent of the horrors that took place. The invaders were
eventually defeated but never acknowledged their guilt or offered any
apology whatsoever. Can you brush it all off and say it was just history and
you hold no ill feelings about it?
Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. But you can understand why many people in
that situation may have trouble forgiving and forgetting just as many people
in Iraq may have trouble forgiving America for its preemptive strike on
their country killing more than 100,000 people.
We live in a crazy crazy world but, whether we want to or not, as foreign
teachers we have a natural role as a type of foreign ambassadors helping our
students understand something about people outside their country. Anything
that we can teach in the way of greater understanding is good.
Dave Kees
