THE "Others"

A while ago, my co-hort and I were not asked to define the term "other" - we were challenged. To define this as a word or concept would be easy bit itself; however, when asked why it is socially constructed and what purpose it serves, the hamster quickens his pace on the wheel.

I believe most, if not all, human beings have an innate thirst for order and routine. We seek to categorize and differentiate our environment with aspects such as, food, animals, property, and social/economic status, as a way to organize our lives and develop our identity. To accomplish this task, we assign titles, labels, and wavering expectations according to our experiences, degree of knowledge, and perception of truth and description. This belief is based off my own opinion and experience; however, Takaki (1993) conveys to us that Vikings and Indians tell of stories using race, physical attributes, dialect, and possessions to separate themselves into categories when faced with other human beings. To the Indians, the Vikings were the “others” and vice versa; in other words, they were unlike themselves via appearance and immediate categorized as being different. In fact, the Vikings were referred to as being animal-like, due to their facial hair, size, and clothing. Of course, this story dates back to the year 1000 A.D., but our world today functions using the same method of operation when faced with people we view as being different from our own group. I believe we will always have “others” to refer to, as a society we set the norm and decide who walks the line, as well as who crosses it or falls below.

The cruel side of this impulse for humans to section themselves off from others is how we disregard, rather than embrace, what sets us apart and makes our species unique. Seeing the word property used to describe a human being throughout history is very unsettling yet remains the same on many levels of our world today. For the sake of this discussion question, I will maintain my focus on education, but human trafficking, discrimination, and slavery continue to plague our world and weaken our progress.

During a TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson (2010) discussed education paradigms and how our current system is no longer functional or applicable. Students are corralled by age, given blanket expectations, and presented with cookie-cutter instructional methods. Although, our views of diversity continue to grow, our actions contradict the pattern needed for real change. In other words, future goals cannot be met with the ideas and behaviors of the past. Due to the nature of my career, I think of special education and how we attempt to include children with special needs into a general education setting. By law, we classify them according to the criteria meeting one of the fourteen areas defined under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and then develop an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). Now, don’t let the word individualized fool you; in fact, most of the IEPs I see are made via drop-down menus and poor skills using copy + paste. Unfortunately, our educational system is still years behind where we need it to be in order to service our students today and prepare them for the demands of the future.

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Robinson, K. [The RSA]. (2010, October 14). RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms (Links to an external site.) Retrieved from https://[www].youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U (Links to an external site.)

Takaki, R. (1993). A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. New York, NY:

Bay Back Books.