Tolerance

"Since I am imperfect and I need tolerance and kindness of others, 

I must also tolerate the shortcomings of the world until you found the secret that allows me to remedy them"

- Mahatma Gandhi -

TOLERANCE, A WORD SOMEWHAT COMPLEX

Tolerance is essential in our society; a global society that constantly changes, a society that increasingly opens borders to new things, new people and new cultures; but also new ways of thinking, new points of view, and so on. 

How a person cannot be tolerant? 

The word tolerance is defined as respect and consideration for the ways of thinking, doing and feeling of others, even if they are different from ours. That means that tolerance implies to recognize that there is a big diversity of being a person. 

Conventional wisdom has defined tolerance when it says that this term means "live and let live". 

However, it is important to take into account that to be actively tolerant does not mean accept everything and respect all differences if they threaten the integrity of others.

Nowadays, it is very important that tolerance is present in different fields as for example in family’s relations, relations between people, in the teaching-learning process at schools, and so on. It is said that tolerance is the necessary consequence to comprehend that we all, are fallible people; that means that everyone makes mistakes. 

What do you expect when you make a mistake? Well, that’s exactly what the others expect from you when they make it. TO BE TOLERANT! 

Actually, education has to keep working on transmitting values such as respect, tolerance, etc., because by doing it, we are forming tolerant citizens that will be respectful with differences, and that will learn to learn and to unlearn constantly in order to adapt themselves in the society and become more open-minded. 

But, is to make pupils aware about the importance of these values only responsibility of teachers? 

Listen to them!

What tools can we use to stay tolerant and be empathic and open-minded?

or...

What kind of activities can we put into practice with our students to make them be more empathic and tolerant?

The truth is that there is no key to become tolerant in one day, and there is not only one way to do it. But the most important thing is to have a positive attitude. There is a tendency to be afraid of the unknown, and sometimes this can be the reason to be not tolerant or afraid about what we do not know or with the things we are not familiar with.

From my point of view, I think it is important to make a good work on reflection. Make students work in groups and let them to find out what the differences and similarities between them and the others are. Then we must engage pupils to discover why in their own country do not act in the same way and once they have the answer, they will have to explore why in other countries act different.

By keeping the dialogue open students will acquire new knowledge about themselves and the others and consequently they will get a broader perspective about everything around them.

In this point, students will be aware that tolerance is based on the fact that no one owns the absolute truth, because what for some may mean something, the same may differ to others.

In the following link there is a video about an experience that a teacher did some years ago. Althought the main aim of the activity she did with her pupils is not to work on tolerance, it is a good example to make a reflection about "prejudice," "discrimination," "race," "inferior", and indirectly how these concepts can can help train a person to become tolerant.

Jane Elliott's decision to teach a daring "blue-eyes/brown-eyes" lesson in discrimination to her class of third graders

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/

To end my comment on this section, I am going to present a little summary with two of the activities we did in "Tolerance" lesson, and I have had another possible activity to work empathy between students.

TOLERANCE CORE CONCEPTS

ACCOMMODATION learning strategies: is the process of modifying previous ideas about a culture once some concepts have been assimilated. In the "accommodation" the person will internalize new ideas built about culture.

ASSIMILATION learning strategies: is the individual process of adaptation of impressions that a person has about culture. Normally, it has a preconceived idea about the culture and the person tries to add new knowledge about the culture in question to their prior knowledge.

CULTURE SHOCK: is a reaction to stress which is caused by the new and what is unfamiliar. Is the emergence of tensions and feelings of discomfort resulting from having to meet the daily needs in ways that a person is not used. 

PREJUDICE: is the prior opinion or idea that a person built on a concept or other person before acquiring direct and real knowledge about it. Normally the word prejudice is associated with a pejorative connotation.

STEREOTYPING: is the preconceived formation of ideas, prejudices, attitudes, beliefs and opinions by frequent repetition by society, generally applied to a group of people with common characteristics, such as nationality, age, culture, etc.