Now that the festivities are all over and the
new year well underway, thoughts move on to the next big professional event:
described as:
Greatly
looking forward to it as is Angeliki who is doing a poster presentation. I’ve
never been to The Pool so this is a
wonderful opportunity to meet up with fellow TEFLers and to do a bit of
exploring as well.
Visiting the Beatles Museum is definitely a
must and I’ve heard there’s lots to do there. But right now my sights are on getting together the talk I am to
deliver.
The subject in focus is whether
teachers should be social justice
warriors and what I want to explore is how our perspectives and attitudes
are informed by language, experiences, etc. and how they are very subjective,
individual constructs. My take on it is that we cannot necessarily pass on our
particular perspectives to others simply because they are our students.
While doing my research I have been trying to
clearly define the difference between perception
and perspective. It seems the former is the information that
we receive from our senses, while the latter is the frame through which we see
the world. Clearly each one influences the other and there is a reflexive
interrelationship there.
Related to those is the concept of attitude. This is described as a
psychological construct, a mental and emotional entity that characterizes a
person and is a complex, acquired state formed through ones past and present experiences.
According to the ABC model, there are three key attitudinal components: affective - feelings and emotions, behavioral – previous actions or
experiences and cognitive - beliefs,
thoughts, etc..
And what particularly interests me
is how most of us construct a fairly cohesive, unified perspective from what is
essentially a fairly fragmented reality. To explain this we refer to the
psychology field of cognitive dissonance. This state is described as a mental
discomfort or psychological stress that is caused by being confronted with
facts that contradict our beliefs, ideals and values. Whoever experiences this
internal inconsistency is motivated to reduce this cognitive dissonance and
make changes by justifying this stress, by adding to the cognition, or by
avoiding what is causing the contradiction.
That brings me to consider something that
caused me distress some time ago. We happened to be in Scotland in September
2014, at the run-up to the referendum on
‘Should Scotland be an Independent Country?’.
We were quite by chance leaving the day before
the vote. I liked to say it was because Z was afraid he might be obliged to
wear the kilt, depending on how things turned out! While we were in Stirling, I
was proudly wearing the NO badge, which I still retain. What disturbed me was
that I saw that the “Yes Scotland’ group were using the saltire as their
symbol.
And now
I understand my reaction of extreme annoyance: the saltire was for me a
treasured symbol of nationality, culture and identity but here it was representing
an attitude I did not hold – that Scotland be an independent country. Instant
cognitive dissonance!! My perceived reality was suddenly fragmented: my beloved
saltire could not be associated with what was for me a ‘bad thing’ – Scottish
separatism. My need for cohesion was
dealt with not by avoiding the contradiction, but by challenging it. I walked
into the NO canvassing office and gave them a good piece of my mind, stating
that they had no right using our national symbol for political reasons. The poor lad there looked somewhat perplexed
and had no answer, which was not relevant – I felt better in my attempt to
reduce the fragmentation in my perspective!
The results of the referendum I was happy to see were: 55.3% for the
Nos, and 44.7% for the Yes group.
It is
particularly interesting to note in that referendum there was a voting turn-out
of 84.% - the highest ever recorded for an election or referendum in the UK
since the introduction of universal suffrage.
It is also interesting that the main reason
given for the Yes votes was ‘disaffection with Westminster politics’. Which is
why I am seriously rethinking my position on an independent Scotland.
??
??
??
??
Ideally,
I think a union with the Republic of Ireland would be an excellent solution: an
alternative, enhanced Celtic Tiger – what a delightful concept!
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