November 19, 2015 - 11:36
The classroom is a community that all of the members of it cannot avoid to be included, especially in the young ages. If you want to stay in a safe position in the community that you cannot avoid participating in, you have to adapt yourself there. However, at the same time, unless you try to change the situation, nothing could be better or improved.
While there are communities which consist of members who share equality, fraternity and library, there are also communities which are made up of inequality, rules and power. The former ones are defined as “imagined communities” and the latter ones “contact zone” respectively by Pratt.
I had experienced a classroom which could be defined as “contact zone” when I was in elementary school. In that classroom, there was an obvious hierarchy. It consisted of few people who had power, many others who could not escape from the power and only one girl who was the victim of the power. Those few people were bullying that one girl and others were just looking at it whether they thought it was absurd or not.
The girl who was the victim always looked awkward and had an untidy long hair, which might had been one of the causes to be the target, however, in my perspective, there was no peculiar reason that she had to be the target. In order to be in a safe position, those people who were bullying her wanted to keep themselves in the top of the hierarchy which would not be invaded by any other people by standing on other people. That is, the victim could be anyone else and it was why other people including me could not do anything else but just staying in the kind of middle in the hierarchy of that classroom. No one except one girl tried to stand up for her because they assumed that if they did, they would become the next target, and eventually the girl who stood up for her actually became the target.
If it had not been for power in the classroom, bully would not have occurred as everyone knows that it is absurd and immoral. However, as power existed in the classroom which is a limited community, it occurred and everyone let it go on. In the passage of "Bloodchild" by Butler, it says,
“until he realized there was no"away."Not in the Preserve. Certainly not outside. After that he concentrated on getting his share of every egg that came into the house and on looking out for me in a way that made me all but hate him (Butler)”
If Terrans had equal power as T’lics, they might had not lived with each other, but in fact T’lics are in dominant and Terrans have to accept them and obey their rules to survive.
In the classroom, many people who were in the middle of the hierarchy who were just looking at the bully could not change the situation even if they thought it was wrong to bully the girl in order to stay in a safe position. The girl who was the victim of bully could not oppose to it because the bully might escalate. In order to stay in their places, people accept the power.
Additionally, in the story “Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by LeGuin,
“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery. (LeGuin, p3)”
the all happiness in this city “Omelas” is compensated for the child’s horrible misery. In the classroom, as long as the target of bullying is that girl, other people will be in safe. However, even if you are in rather safe position, it is still not comfortable if you know it is under the power or someone is being a victim. In order to make a fully comfortable community, you should stand up for it, not just staying in the “contact zone”.
Works Cited
Pratt, Mary Louise. Arts of the Contact Zone. Profession, 1991: 33-40. Print.
Ursula LeGuin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Ormelas." The Wind's Twelve Quarters. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Print.
Octavia Butler, "Bloodchild." Bloodchild and Other Stories. Seven Stories Press, 2005. Print.