What is the third word, and why are some countries developing while others claim to be developed?
At the beginning of the lesson we started with a quiz. What do we know and what do we believe about the third world? The quiz showed us that we have many finished images about this topic in our head. For example: In which country do we find most female parliament members? Viet Nam, Rwanda or Sweden? Many of us thought it will be the country Sweden because of our opinion of the countries. So the answer “Rwanda” was really surprising.
During the lesson we talked a lot of the fact that we can construct pictures with using the language. With special words you can create a power relation. So it depends which terms do we use. The language can be really powerful.
We heard about Michel Foucault. He was a French philosopher, psychologist, historian, sociologist and founder of discourse analysis. Foucault was especially interested in the ways in which knowledge, language and culture operates in our society. He was of the opinion that the perspectives changes all the time. Furthermore, he said that the social relationships are influenced by the language we use.
Then we read a small part of Carl Linné´s book „Systema natura“ which was published in 1735. He divided the various nationalities into categories and wrote to them certain properties. The way it is written is very racist and manipulative but at this time was helpful. With this book slavery could be justified.
The Truman discourse:
“Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.” … “ I believe that we should make available to peace-loiving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life … “
He constructs a whole world. He is of the opinion that if you don´t think that technology can help the third world you are not a peace loving person.
UN discourse:
“There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments.” … ”Very few communities are willing to pay the full price of economic progress.”
UN actually accepts that we destroy communities with the way of development. They blame the poor countries for being poor because they don´t want to pay. So it´s their own fault that they don´t achieve their new life.
Escobar discourse:
He says that the world still believes in the thought which were written fourty years ago.
In our group we found three different main power relations in the two Eritrean cases:
The power relation between the teacher and the pupils.
The power relation between the teacher and Marcus.
The power relation between the local teachers and the Indian teachers.
A teacher who works in a developing country has to be open minded and to look at the other culture without prejudice. In addition to this, you need a lot of background information about this country. In the text you could read that the local teachers don´t like the Indian teachers. But why? One point ist that the Indian teachers are paid ten times as much as the local teachers. Moreover, the different materials can be a challenge for a teacher. At the picture in the text we saw that the class had just one book to study English. So you maybe have to change your teaching methods. I´m of the opinion that to teach in an underdeveloped country is a great and exciting adventure, where you can collect a lot of experience.
