Tolerance

Tolerance

The topic tolerance is very important for everybody, not only for the persons who stayed abroad . It is important for people all over the world , because the world is getting closer together and so we are more in contact to other persons with different behaviors.
A definition of  tolerance could be:

1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices,                 race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.
or
2. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one's own; a               liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tolerance)


The picture below shows that, it is necessary to teach tolerant and to teach how the pupil can be tolerant and learn how they can stay tolerant and open-minded.

(http://www.themuslimtimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Tolerance.jpg)


In class talked about tolerance and have done a spider web game, to get in closer contact to each other while talking about the topic and get to know the different opinions about it a bit better. Another main important fact of the lesson was the movie and how you can stay open-minded when you stays abroad.

But the two main questions had been:

1. What tools can we use to stay tolerant and be empathic and open-minded?
2. What kind of questions can you ask in order to reach understanding of a known – unknown situation?

1. To answer the first question it is necessary to understand, that living abroad means to leave the comfort zone and to became a member or try to became a member of the other society. In the last lesson was given an interesting concept how the process could be describable in a different way.

That the process is divided into 7 different phases.
1.Introduction phase
2. shock phase
3. reaction phase
4. persuasion phase
5. stabilization/reorientation
6.reversed culture

In all these phase it is necessary to stay open-minded and curious. Some tools, who can be used are to write a diary, that there is a possibility to reflect all the new views and behaviors. Another one is to create the own comfort zone. That means to have a place or a surrounding where it is typical to act like the person is familiar to. That can be a bookstore, a hotel or any places the person knows from home. Another opportunity to stay open-minded in a foreign country could be to ask whenever there is a question or whenever a behavior looks different and strange. To stay abroad it is personally my favorite. If there is just the own opinion and view on a topic it could be possibly to grows prejudices. These idea leads to the ideal of getting another perspective.

That leads to one of possible video-explanations about prejudices which shows, that their are the roots of discrimination.

2.The second question is difficult to answer. It depends on the way, how the person act when he /she is confronted with a different situation in the own surroundings. Someone seems to be shy but the person first observed the situation and later he/she will asks some questions. 

Some of the questions could be how they behave? How would I behave in this situation? Why do they behave like it? What kind of reasons could it be?

So it is important to ask open questions, that everybody can explain themselves. In this content it is necessary to get a better knowledge about assimilation and integration.