In-class Writing 2
After talking with a partner and thinking about the question, what do you think are some of the ways a society can reduce prejudice? Which way or ways do you feel is going to be most effective? Why?
I think there are many kinds of prejudice in a society, not just between different cultures. As prejudice is one of the most persistent things in the world, there’s not much effective we can do to reduce prejudice.
But maybe there are some things help reduce prejudice. First, people get their most opinions from school, at least in China. The teachers tell students their opinions or general opinions about something. Well, sometimes those opinions are prejudice. Like we were told Japanese are all evil because of things they did during the war. In fact, there still are some good qualities about Japanese. Of course we should not forget that history, still people need to know more truth about Japanese. So teachers are playing an important role of reducing prejudice. People will believe what teachers say especially when they are young.
Secondly, the media is the other way to spread prejudice. The same example about Japanese, we were told by the news that Japan is refused to admit the history about the war with China and they also made up unreal stories about that history in their textbooks for students. But the truth is those textbooks with wrong stories are used less than 1%. Most Japanese were told the real stories about that war. So if the media can tell us more truth or don’t ignore the true information, we can sort of reduce our prejudice.
Basically, my opinion is we have prejudice because of lack of knowledge. We got some prejudice because we were not told the truth. If a society really wants to reduce prejudice, start with telling the truth.
