How to stop the rising generation from eating Cheerios

There are many things that can change someone’s life. But only one that can enable them to change their own: education.

As I have studied to enter this field, I have come to believe with a stronger and stronger conviction that this is a chance that every person in the world not just has a right to, but has a necessity for to be a competent citizen in our changing world. As a student soon to become a teacher, I plan to push for change to spread kindness and inclusivity from the classroom.

There is one huge barrier to kindness and inclusivity that I am keenly aware of in my area of the world, and that is intolerance and racism. These are hot topics in today’s world of social politics. We often hear that kindness and inclusivity are the answer to these age-old plagues. And i’s great to think that a few people doing good can spread these values across the globe. But the reality is that seeing kindness and inclusivity and even experiencing it themselves is not enough to ensure that a person will project these principles.

So how can we really make kindness and inclusivity spread? As we have seen with the legislation surrounding the American civil rights movement, these values are impossible to legislate. You can’t force someone to be kind. It is a decision they have to make either unconsciously or consciously.

Suppose everyone could make kindness and inclusivity an unconscious choice. How great would the world be? The problem is that doing this involves changing people’s mindsets. But how? In recent years social media arguments have proven that attacking someone’s point of view is a great way for them to become more firmly entrenched in their own perspective. I believe that for this very reason, this issue cannot be attacked head-on. We must destroy it at its source.

What is the source of racism and intolerance? I would posit that these malignant concepts are born of ignorance.

Racist and intolerant people, from my experience, are often people who live in their own bubble of racism and intolerance. They don’t know about or refuse to know about other cultures. They either have never had the opportunity or have avoided the opportunity to meet people who are unlike them. And they feed this same attitude to their children, who gobble it up like Cheerios.

So, how do we stop children from eating those metaphorical Cheerios? I firmly believe that these toxic behaviors are learned traditions that are passed down from generation to generation. And will only continue to be passed down as people persist in living in their own limited ignorant worlds.

Thus, to put an end to this terrible epidemic of unawareness, the only cure is education and diverse experience. To counteract this in my community, I will include more diverse topics in my teaching. One of the disciplines that I am studying is International Studies. My emphasis is on social and cultural change in Asia.

With this specialization, I plan to include topics that are less Western-centric in my teaching curriculum. In most global history classes, any topics having to do with Eastern history either focus on very ancient history or Westernization in the East. I would like to include topics about the formation of modern culture in the East both traditional and 20th-century influences.

This more recent history of Asia is often skated over which leads to a lot of ignorance and misconception about Asia and people of Asian descent. I believe that this has been an enormous factor leading to Asian hate in the West for centuries.

The same can be said of a myriad of other places besides Asia as well. For instance South America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Black America, the Middle East just to name a few. All of these topics should be as equally valued as traditional Western history in required high school and university courses. Doing this would greatly bolster the measure of kindness and inclusivity in the world.

This is not to say that you can understand a person simply by understanding their origins and the origins of their culture. What I am saying is that if students can’t accept that their way of doing things and viewing the world is only one subjective viewpoint out of many other equally valid perspectives from all around the world, there is little hope of them being able to be truly kind and inclusive in the future.

Today we live in a global society, however, our education system has not grasped this. Our students’ education is still sadly lacking when we consider that the future of our world, their future, is global and not local. Because of this fact, kindness and inclusivity will be more important in the coming days than ever. It’s time to stop watching kids get fed the same-old Cheerios and let them eat some good old-fashioned oatmeal for once.