Stereotypes: Where do they begin? Post #3

In my first Blog Post I introduced my You and the World project. My topic was stereotypes and how they affect youth. I found that stereotypes have the ability to judge a certain group or class of people based of off multiple encounters. When researching my topic I found that stereotypes are issues involving ignorance, racism, and hypocrisy. I was interested in the topic because it wasn’t something that you heard often.

In my second Blog Post I introduced my plan for original research. I decided to make a survey that was school wide. I only wanted responses from students because this project is based on youth. I have gather some incredible information from the survey. I found that 100% of the people that took the survey were aware of stereotypes. I also found that 91.3% of the people that took my survey used stereotypes.

Since the last post, I had a few thoughts about what I wanted to do for the Agent of Change part of the project. My topic is so quirky that every thought I had was not good enough. They had no effect on the purpose of my topic. It took a while for me to come up with a superior idea for my Agent of Change. After a while I just stopped thinking and went to google for some ideas. I had no luck with that either. An idea of a petition came to mind when I was watching an episode of Zoey 101. I decided to create a petition, but a single question got in the way. “A petition for what?” I did not really know what my petition was going to be for. I had to brainstorm a little more. How do you fight the causes of stereotypes? Well if everyone censored what they say it would not be an issue. I remembered a rule from my elementary school. It was for when you wanted to make a joke or say anything not too appropriate. It was called T.H.I.N.K.!

T.H.I.N.K. means to think…

T- is it True?

H- is it Helpful?

I- is it Inspiring?

N- is it Necessary?

K- is it Kind?

By considering these steps not only are people censoring what they say they are also bettering themselves as a person. By signing my petition you are agreeing to T.H.I.N.K. before you speak. After getting the word out about my petition, multiple people asked question about if they could still say what they intended to. I just reply “do what you think is right”. If we all T.H.I.N.K. before we speak the world may become a better (less ignorant) place.

I think that I could have made a better decision on for my Agent of Change. There were only a few choices and I picked the one of best fit. Maybe I could have given a quick presentation about it at TFI like another student did or maybe I should have given a presentation about it during advisory. These thoughts came to mind a little too late. But knowing so much about this topic now, I don’t want to give up on it. I still will be collecting signatures long after this project is over. I am determine to get the word out about stereotypes affecting today’s youth.

Annotated Bibliography