Right now, in my Language Arts and Social Studies class, I am learning about WWI and WWII.
In Language Arts, we are discussing the holocaust through online articles and “literature circles.” Literature circles are where our teacher puts us in groups where we read a book and discuss what is going on in our book.
In all of the books, the story takes place either somewhere in Europe, Central America, or the U.S. But, in all the books, the main character is getting prejudged by other characters.
In the book I’m reading, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne, the main character holds prejudice to another character.
In another book, The Cay, by Theodore Taylor, the main character, an American boy, thinks that a black man, who is way older than he, has to do all the work because the man is black and he is white.
From this, we can learn that we need to make sure that we do not judge people by the way they look on the outside.
For example, the district that I am in requires that at some point in time, we are taught a short bullying unit. My social studies class is currently going through that unit, and in a video we watched yesterday, the person had a $10 bill, and a dented tin box. Out of 5 people, 4 chose to prejudge the box, and went for the $10 bill. Only one person took the chance and chose the tin box, and when the man opened the tin box, there was a $100 bill in the box. The damaged, old, tin box, ended up being worth ten times as much as the plain $10 bill.
The point of this tin box is to tell us that if you judge the tin box before you open it, you might end up with something that is only one tenth of the value as the box.
On a person, if you judge them by the size of their nose, like Jewish people were in WWII, you might not ever figure out what you could have.
In the end, the lesson is that we have to take a risk and get to know the situation, before we form any opinions and decide how to act.