Prejudism is natural

Yesterday I received a call in school from another teacher. She told me that out of her three students in a violin lesson group one was absent, one had forgotten her violin, and the third was uncomfortable being alone with men. The teacher asked if it was alright to send a student down without an instrument to avoid an uncomfortable situation.

Of course.

But wow. I could only imagine what makes this girl feel uncomfortable with being alone with men- and in an instant my imagination came up with something that made me sick.

As her teacher, I have noticed that this student is very emotional, and on at least one occasion I have been alone with her and noticed that she in fact was very uncomfortable. At the time, however, I did not know the reason and when I asked if there was anything wrong that she would like to talk about she said that she would just rather play.

I had been warned about giving lessons to individuals while student teaching and even insisted upon to not under any circumstances do this because young girls will make up stories that could get me fired. Fortunately, there are a set of doors in the room with many windows and other lessons being given just on the other side of them. Any false allegations could be easily put down with these witnesses.

This girl's feelings pose many questions to me, but the aspect that most interest me is one of generalization. This student presumably had an uncomfortable encounter with a man and now is afraid of being alone with men- which is a completely natural reaction. Of course humans and all creatures will make generalizations about things in their environment among many reasons; to be safe. Think of the film Crash: a woman is assaulted by two young "thug like" black men and now makes sweeping generalizations about race and clothing in relations to individuals' potential actions and lives.

This is prejudism, but is it justified? I might say "yes, prejudism is justified" if I was not also aware that prejudism (in this sense) in addition to protecting us through fear and lack of understanding, in return, causes problems mainly attributed to lack of cooperation not only for the self, but the group which it identifies and other community members directly and indirectly.

As a society in America, we are trying to rid ourselves of prejudism and I believe this is why- and this is why we have given other words like generalize, racism, and sexism a place under the umbrella of "prejudism." It is a bad word. We don't like it because it hurts people- isn't that just a sweeping generalization itself?

Prejudism is natural. It is the result of simple processing of environmental data passed down to us from the cave men. This mode of thinking is fast, easy, and efficient: i.e. "This dinosaur ate my friend. I will, in the future, avoid dinosaurs." What's wrong with this? One word: herbivore.

My students, my program, and myself should not have to suffer as a result of any student's generalization of adult men. My students should also not suffer as a result of trusting an adult man.