Prejudice

Hans Georg Gadamer:
Pre understandings are all I have. We process the things we observe via our pre understandings in order to place and cathegorize them in order for the world to make sense to us.

Today we talked about cultural meetings and how all people are prejudice in some way or another. We did a pretty funny exercise where we were to guess some random things about 5 persons of our choice e.g. he's good at football or She's a good cook ect. Actually some of us guessed right and I guess some of our prejudice is right if we don't give it much thought and just let our subconscious or 6. Sense do the work:-) but if we think about our prejudices, like when you say a general thing about the Spanish people it can be a bad thing. To provoke Alvaro a Spanish student I said that one of my prejudices was that Spanish people liked killing bulls. And actually this is a very big topic in Spain that almost divide the Spanish people in half. A lot of young people in Spain don't like the bull fights, but I guess it's about 50/50 and In some areas they are trying to make bullfighting illegal.

Modes of study

Differences and similarities in modes of study:
In general the northen countries has very similar modes of study. The student - teacher relations is very loose and the teachers prefer to teach with the students inputs and active participation.
In the South and middle east the students are more passive and the teachers are teaching while the students in silence are making notes and are only allowed asking questions at the end of class.
All of the different studies have very similar clientel. We Can All work with children and adults with or without special needs in some way or another.


Economic:
In Denmark you get money from the state, the education is free but you need to buy your own books.
In other countries like spain and greece you need to pay money to go to School and you are not getting money from the state. So you need to save up money beforehand, work while your studying, have rich parents or if your grades are good, get a scolarship. In this case my guess is that the gap between social classes is bigger and more likely to accure then with the Danish system. The poor people have no money to educate themselves and the poor gets poorer while the rich gets richer.
So you Can say we are pretty privileged in Denmark, getting money from the state and free educations, but still we pay about 50 %, some more and some less depending on your income, in tax compared with Hollands 33%. So the danish state has more money to use in the welfare system, then others with lesser taxes.
In many of the southern and middle eastern countries it's possible that only one parent is working while the other parent is at home looking after the children etc. So the need for pedagogs like in Denmark and after school arrangements is not that big in those countries.
In Denmark it's very difficult to afford only one parent working, so it's very normal that both parents are working and the need for after school arrangements are bigger then other countries. Actually the children spend more time at institutions like school and after school arrangements then at home with their parents. And that's an ongoing topic in our field of study in Denmark.

Observations

It's pretty interesting to see how people place them selves in a multicultural classroom. This is the beginning of the course and people are teaming up with people from the same nationality. In spite of my own knowledge of this I still have the same urge to do so. It's very hard to leave your safety zone. The language barrier makes it harder for people to talk with each other a cross nationalities. But I'm sure when all of us get better expressing our selves in english, we'll socialize more a cross nationalities in our spare time as well.

A presentation of myself and the international course

About me:

I'm a 23 year old pedagogical student at Frøbel Seminarium. I'm at my 5. semester out of 7 in total and this semester i'm taking the international course while my fellow classmates are following a normal 5. semester.

The international course:

The international course started at the 26. of august 2010. It takes place at Frøbel, so it's a cool opportunity for me to meet up with other foreign students and have guest teachers from all over the world, without leaving my safety zone :-)

In the class there is students from all over the world. E.g. A lot from Denmark and Spain, then there's some students from Netherland, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Estonia, France, Finland and Mauritius. All with some kind of social work skills. Some teachers others social workers or educators and so on. For the next 5 month we are going to work together and have classes together.

My expectations for the course:

I hope to learn about all the different cultures and how they do things differently and similar to our country and thereby get a broader perspective on things. I like to know more about other countries welfaresystems and in general how life is for both children and adults in the different institutions.

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