Yesterday I participated in organising IFP’s peace day 2019 – well actually we were organising it for like half a year but we ran it yesterday.
(LO 3 Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience)
I think it went well enough – waking up was hard and not to diss anyone but this event made me realise how important it is to be organised (I have no right to say given that I have forgot the date for my EE meeting ) as I was worried we would forget something crucial and unforeseen. Thankfully it all ran smoothly. In fact, I was worried we would be missing something / not have detailed enough plans or slideshows/ not be able to get enough content together for most of our planning sessions. Perhaps it was good that I worried because that motivated me to do things. Another good thing may be that Dr Allen had the cards/materials with her, so us students didn’t have the opportunity to forget. I regret doubting my teammates in the earlier stages of planning when we seemed to get nothing done because they were all quite good at public presenting and did their parts. Basically, I didn’t need to feel panicky because turns out they are very reliable people. I admire Aaliya’s voice projection skills. (LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively) In other activities, I’ve worked with people who do not seem to want to do work. (Once, I’ve asked someone minded helping with a task, they accepted it and agreed they understood how to do it. Then they did nothing for the rest of the time.) I guess now I’ll be able to tell the difference and not misjudge people.
As for the activity my group was in charge of running, (“Are we creating intolerance by being overly tolerant?”) the first session went surprisingly well, discussions and debates sprang up and never went down for this group as there were vocal people with polarised views – I think listening to their discussion about how freedom of speech to express intolerant views is important for society versus how we should not accept having some people verbally opressing others. All groups managed to come up with our ‘big question’ (to varying extents) by themselves, but it was only in the group that people explored the idea of free speech versus protection so much when it comes to tolerance. The participants also helped me realise how important context is when it comes to saying things, or how something is phrased. (*flashbacks to English lang lit class*) Walking around to sop up group discussions during the activities, all the groups touched on the idea of how the way something is said makes it more or less acceptable. While I thought the first session was the most successful, some of my group members thought the debate was too wild and exclusive.
For the second group, we made it more clear to them that the person who remains at their card arrangement can rearrange the cards during the gallery walk – before the gallery walk, groups had different arrangements, but afterwards, most of them became the same. Hmmm… accidental induction of confirmation bias? Its scary how real it is.
The latter two groups needed more guidance with their discussions – I think we could have provided this guidance better. One of the questions that worked well in the first session was “did any of the arrangements offend you?” – they had lots of opinions to share. But for the third session, nobody said anything. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used a word as strong as “offend”. And then theres the group of people in the third session, who ranked the statement “God doesn’t exist” as very tolerant – even though every other group disagreed, nobody presented the idea of ‘sometimes words can hurt people/dominate the culture of a community’. When the conversation lulled, I brought up the idea and the discussion continued. Then, something that really annoyed me was that some people in the “God doesn’t exist” group went on their phones as others spoke. I tried to talk to them later but then it was hard to talk to the whole group because they were filling in the feedback survey. Ughhh technology.
Actually, in every session, someone goes on their phone at some point – usually, when the conversation is interesting, they don’t do that. Is it our fault for failing to capture their attention/being unable to direct the conversation to be engaging? It probably is, to some extent. Then again, people may be on phones as they are too tired to interact and the phone is their only escape. Discussing these heavy topics drains energy. I should have put more thought on this. I find that as presenters, we are usually too busy engaging with a more vocal part of the crowd. Some people are left on the fringe, and they cluster into these confused groups. One such group I integrated into (sat down with) had trouble understanding what it means to arrange things by “tolerance” and asked me to “rephrase” the task – I first tried to explain it as “something a tolerant person would say”, or something that would “come from a tolerant community” and then something that is “acceptable”, before remembering our group’s decision to not “define tolerance” for the participant. Oops. To be honest, I got confused as well in that moment, (previously, I had suggested we change the word “tolerant” in the instructions to something else, but people disagreed and I went with the flow) writing this reflection, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with my rephrasing. So now I can think of two reasons why the group remained confused. 1. I tried to hard to explain, and my own confusion came through as I was constantly trying to correct myself. 2. There is some language glitch for the phrase “most tolerant” for people bilingual in Chinese and English, which is for them as well as me, (they were at least proficient in English if not fluent, we have discussed the idea of tolerance and shown them the definition) because perhaps they find it just as hard to comprehend that phrase. This should not be the case, because English has taken over my mind some time ago and I can understand other ideological concepts only in English. Or perhaps it is the meaning of “tolerant” itself – does tolerant refer to the stereotypical open-minded progressive person (ie people who may not tolerate homophobia) or the relativist who accepts all ideas? That should be up to the participant to decide. Some people just don’t like ambiguity. The kahoot was also confusing for some people – in one session I paired up with a new student who doesn’t seem to speak English so well; when you are wondering what a clown is, it gets even more confusing that the only “correct” opinion is finding them “s e x y”. For us and other people who get it, it is hilarious. Perhaps we could have included pictures. I wonder how well the overseas people tackled it – On project week, Angus said his group (I think Saskia was in it as well) spent a lot of time ironing out details.
Anyways, now let me read the feedback survey responses and see if my understanding of what happened is accurate… its a bit disappointing only 18 people replied (but we weren’t trying to enforce the survey) So right after I had a business class about corporate social responsibility and not disclosing customer information in market research, I’m going to post some of my favourite responses here. All of these are anonymous – I didn’t bother to check who said them, and they are too beautiful (even the first one) not to share.
Q: “Define tolerance in 2 sentences”
“when u tolerate things”
“Acceptance is wholeheartedly agreeing with a statement, and rejection is downright saying no. Tolerance is asking questions which will lead to meaningful conversations.”
“Tolerance is putting up with someone else’s belief even if you don’t agree with it. This includes not becoming agressive if they don’t agree with you”
“Ability to live with people who have different opinions from yours”
Oh goodness someone selected “no” for “do you want to join IFP” – I should have turned off collect email addresses!