A521.2.3.RB
I
really enjoyed listening to Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story”
presentation. Not only was it a great message, but I also related to the theme
she used to tell the story. I was a foreign language teacher for many years. In
those years, I listened to many students telling me why immigrants shouldn’t be
allowed to stay in this country. I believe the reason for their ignorance is
exactly what Adichie describes: they only have a single story. They have the
opinion of a parent who is not educated about the reasons why people immigrate
or they have listened to media accounts of immigrants taking our resources,
etc… and they do not understand that many people see the United States as a
place of hope and opportunity.
Before
she mentioned it herself, my initial though as I listened intently to her was
that a single story leads to stereotyping. When you only have one side of an issue,
especially if it is relayed to you convincingly by someone you consider to be
reliable, you tend to believe the information and therefore, have a narrow
viewpoint. For example, the media tells stories about our public schools based
on their grades from the State of Florida. These grades are, in my opinion,
bogus because they do not take many things into account. However, when people
read in the paper that certain schools are graded D or F by the state, they
automatically think that those are bad schools and do not want their children
to go there. Wonderful things happen at these schools and brilliant people
teach there. When they only have one side of the story, however, parents tend
to take it as fact. This trickles down to their children as well and, before
you know it, there is a lot of misinformation circulating about those schools.
As
Denning pointed out in the text, springboard stories like hers have several key
points. First, her idea for change was well communicated. She gave several
examples of poorly informed individuals due to the fact that they were
operating off of a single story. She used events from her life and told the
tale from her point of view which made the story much more interesting to the
audience. She provided several places, but I do not remember any dates. She did
talk about specific periods of time, however, when she mentioned storied she
read as a little girl and then her college years. She detailed what happened to
her as a result of these events in her life. She realizes during her trip to
Mexico that she was also a victim of the single story mentality. The entire
story was genuine and the audience could easily sympathize with what she was
saying. She remained positive throughout the story even though she was talking
about events which were not necessarily happy for her.
In the
end, I felt as though many people in the audience left feeling as though they
had a better understanding of how the single story idea can skew a person’s
point of view. If they were not motivated to change, they were at least
thinking about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment