Breeding Ignorance "Harmony and Conflict..."

I found the “Harmony and Conflict…” reading to be the most interesting of the semester. I recently finished writing my personal statement for law school and being the daughter of Spanish immigrants, this is one of the main topics within my statement. Sadly, I believe that the text books read in schools and movies shown do have a huge affect on people’s perspectives of other nationalities and countries. I don’t think that this is unique to American student’s perceptions of South America and Mexico, rather to other countries in general.

In the United States, education through text books is the main source for learning and gaining cultural understanding of other places and people. In the U.S., not much time is spent exploring other nations unless something they did is directly related to American history. After meeting some professional Canadian rugby players in New York last semester, I found it astonishing how little I knew about Canada versus how much American and World History they knew. We would ask the Canadians questions about U.S. History and they knew so much. I sadly didn’t even know how many provinces or states there were in Canada. This is a tragedy being that I am a senior in college and there is so much about the world in which I have never studied. I think that text books in public schools are cheating the American youth by the omission of information. We as an American people should be more culturally well rounded from a young age.

(Canadian friends in New York)

Next, I believe that text books and movies by the way they depict what little information they do give us, paints a controlled picture. Often, Mexico and South America are shown to be places of poverty, crime, and ignorance. Most movies and books portray Mexico as being inferior to the U.S. We study about immigrants and their history of betrayal to the U.S., but never of their importance to this country. For instance, it is never highlighted in films that much of the U.S. was actually taken from Mexico with actual Mexican people living in it. It is also not highlighted that Mexico allowed Anglo settlers the opportunity into their country to be later betrayed. In my own personal experiences, I was shown the the Anglos were only taking what was theirs. I reality it was not.

Finally, mass media plays a huge role in creating unfair perceptions of Mexico and South America. The coverage of uproar and chaos in these countries is covered on the news frequently. Rarely is there coverage about positive things within other nations. Mass media in this country portrays the U.S. in a positive protective light. It highlights misfortunes of other countries and plays on the strengths of this nation. It is not often that mass media pays attention to the cultures of other countries and if it does, it is only after a tragedy or to show short comings. Watch the trend on CNN.