Daniela Rubi Papi – “Teachers Teach Kids, Not Schools”
I thought that what Daniela had to say was very thought provoking. I think it is very true that we can’t just give people more and more things without educating them on how to use it, but I think that she disregards how important the things actually are. I think there needs to be a place for both. I think that her example with the water filter was very good. I think today a lot of us want to help and are willing to give our money away to help others in need but we don’t want to give anyone our time, because that is more valuable to us. I think that at some point we all face this kind of dilemma, money vs. time, and I think more of us need to be willing to give our time towards helping people. I definitely think she raises a lot of really good points about giving and how detrimental it can be if we don’t take the time to educate the people we are giving to.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story
I really enjoyed this TED talk by Chimamanda, as this was something I faced directly with my trip to El Salvador. Currently El Salvador is consider the murder capital of the world, so a very dangerous place, and my family was not very happy that I was choosing to go to this place. They couldn’t understand why I would go to a place where so many murders took place. So I said to them El Salvador has a population of over 6 million people do you think that everyone single one of them is going to try and kill me. They agreed that that was a silly thought. I also told them that the news stories they found on the internet couldn’t be all they looked at for El Salvador. And I didn’t know how to put it in simple words, but Chimamanda summed it up beautifully. They had a single story. They would read one news article talking about how El Salvador was a very dangerous place and they began to think thats all there was to El Salvador. Now I am not saying I didn’t think this way at first. I am very scared when I first read about El Salvador being such a dangerous place but I knew there were loving and caring people there who were victims of violence and had this horrible picture painted of them. I think we all do this, look to a single story to assumed it explains a entire situation. I know that I have done it multiple times, but I do continue to try and not pre-judge a situation before I know all the facts,
Good.