Before today’s lecture I was not confident with my understanding of the definitions of ideology and prejudice. However, I feel that I now have a clearer understanding of the concepts and I can desrcibe different theories about the reasons for prejudice and ideologies. Prejudice is an attitude towards a group or its individual members. It is usually a negative attitude, including negative feelings and steryotypes as well as prejudgements, and it is never based on fact. There are many different types of prejudism found in modern society which are related to factors such as sex, race, disability, nationality, and ethnicity. It is important to recognise the difference between prejudice and discrimination as people can have prejudice towards certain people without discriminating against them. Prejudice would be believeing that women make better teachers than men, while discrimination would be preventing a man from becoming a teacher, because of this prejudice.
There are many ways in which we, as educators, can influence prejudice. We must use this power to prevent prejudice and to encourage positive attitudes and acceptance of difference. It has been suggested that to prevent prejudice we should encourge people to watch sit-coms as these often raise current social issues in a way which allows people to feel more comfortable discussing them. I believe that through programmes such as ‘Modern Family’, people will become aware that social norms are changing and that we must accept difference as a reality which should be embraced. Programmes such as this encourage acceptance and celebration of difference, and make reference to times where they may be subject to prejudice. This helps to bring these issues to the public eye, and if analysed with learners, would be a fantastic way for them to understand the intended messages.
It is impossible for any of our decisions to be made or our opinions and beliefs to be formed without our own biases. Most of these biases, sometimes in the form of prejudices, are learned. The prejudices we learn as children often become our automatic response, while the prejudices we learn as we get older are arguabley those which we consider more thourghly before accepting. Petigrew’s theory of Conformity in Prejudice states that when people are more conformist, they tend to be more prejudice. This suggests that our society controls our prejudices as it it those who follow the unwritten rules of society that show the most prejudice beliefs.
When discussing Hegal’s Social Identitiy Theory (1979), which suggests that people gain a strong sense of identity from being members of certain groups and that it is our ideology which determines our social life, I found myself becoming slighty lost by the concepts. I need to read further on this theory in order to gain an understanding of its main points. I would also like to find out more about the affective, behavioural and cognitive roles within it.
Ideology and Prejudice are closely connected. Our ideology is our ideas and our beliefs, as well as our values and interests. Ideology is often related to groups which are guided by it. It can be argued that society constructs all human knowledge and we all have conscious and unconscious ideas which are influenced by the way we are brought up and our experiences. We all have a Worldview. This is a set of beliefs which attempts to explain the world around us. It is when we share these ideas and beliefs with others, that they become an ideology.
Karl Marx argued that it is the ruling class who rules the lower classes. He argued that the ruling class dominated the thinking of the lower class, controlling their ideologies. If this were to be believed to be true, it would be a clear example of how our macro-world can strongly influence, even control, our every day lives as the people in the lower classes may never meet those who essentially rule their every day activities and beliefs.
Furthermore, Mannheim’s Theory of Generations suggests that our ideology is determined by our family members of past generations. He implies that our beliefs and ideas are passed on, and possibly developed, through families over many years as it is our interactions with our envrionment, with different people and within our culture which shape our ideologies.
Overall, my knowledge of ideology and prejudice have began to develop today, from my unlcear level of knowledge to a more firm understanding of the basics of these two concepts. However, the learning which has taken place for me today is a mere starting point as I aim to develop this in order to gain a full and in depth understanding through further reading.
