A Single Story

1. What did you know about Nigeria before watching the TED Talk?  What did you learn about Nigeria after watching the talk? Before watching this video I knew nearly nothing about Nigeria besides its general location on a map. After watching this video I learned that Nigeria in many ways is similar to the United States. I also learned that it was different in ways like that they hire young children from poor families as servants and not many people have easy access to books written by Nigerian authors. 
2. Write down at least three quotations from the TED Talk that resonated with you and explain why you chose them.  Please note the approximate time of the quotation.  You can turn on the subtitles while watching the talk which may make it easier to write down the quotations. "My american roommate must have seen and heard different versions of the single story throughout her life" I thought this was interesting because her she is saying that there can be many versions but they add up to the same single story. "They were not starving, therefore, they were not authentically African" This quote was shocking in a way because a college professor even was so uneducated on what actually happens in Africa, stereotyping them all as starving people living in poverty. "Stories can break the dignity of a people but stories can also repair." This quote is saying that though stereotyping a nation can break their dignity and make you look down upon them, the damage is not permanent and can be reversed. 
3. Why might it be important to seek out additional stories and not rely on a Single Story of a people or place?  It's important to seek out multiple stories because one persons version of something can be very different from another's, and if you only experience a single story that would be your only view of the person or place. 
4. Describe a time when you experienced a culture very different from your own (even a family's home, a city, or a religious event could count)?  What did you learn from that experience? I went to a families home who were from India and immediately when you entered the home you had to take of your shoes, inside their home they had many tradition decorations and we ate traditional India food. My friend's parents both also had thick accents and when they were not speaking to or around me spoke Hindi.
5. How might living abroad challenge your assumptions or result in a paradigm shift? I think living abroad would challenge my assumptions by opening me up to new cultural practices and hearing how people from another country think and feel about certain things that may differ from the United States.

Why TOK?

-Communicators

I believe that the Sturgis community's ability to communicate is not exemplified as well as it could be. Though Sturgis does offer three languages to take as a foreign language (Spanish, French, and Latin) I don't believe that is enough. Though Latin provides a basis for vocabulary, it is still a dead language. It is often also said that French doesn't have much practical use in today's society. I believe adding other, widely spoken and useful languages such as Mandarin would be useful for students to succed as communicators.