Challenge 6: What is the third world, and why are some countries developing while others claim to be developed?
At the beginning of the class Marcus have given us some questions to answer about the poverty in the world. It was to start to go inside the topic we are going to discover in this class: the third world. Many times we have spoken about this third world but not really about what it´s mean. At the end of the class we will be able to talk about it properly.
When we talk about the third world we have done a classification, we have put somehow the people in groups.
Carl Linne published a book in 1735 called "Systema natura", with a classification of the people in the world. He stablished four categories: A. American, B. European, C. Asiatic and D. African. Each one had some features like hair black, gentle, severe or crafty. Both in physical and pyichological sense. Also, he thought that each group had a different way to govern themselves: by customs, by laws, by opinions, by caprice.
With this view of the people, we can guess that he treats the people like animals: by species. It´s a closed system because you cannot change how you are, if you born in a place, you will have some concrete features.
Thinking about when this book was written (1735) we can guess that the power to colonize could be based in the thought that there are some people better than the others. Some of them will fell that they have many things to teach, to develop, to show; nothing to learn from the other people.
Somehow the language is creating a culture: when we use words to describe something we are seating our thoughts.
After that we have read a text about some educational experiences in Eritrea to try to find the power relations between the people who appear in the stories.
There were a lot of signs of this power. For example, the fact that a person is listening (with a camera) one of the lessons, it makes feel the teacher observed, judged. And when at the end of the lesson the teacher asks is to obtain an appreciation of the lesson, it also shows us how important is for him to be evaluated.
Other situation with power relation is when the text says that the punishment to the children who arrive late is kneeling in the sand in the school compound. It´s a physical punishment, which show us how strong is the power of the teacher (and the rules) in this case.
During one of the lessons, there is only one book (teacher´s book) in the class. So we can see that only the teacher has the information, the truth, and the power. We can see again the importance of the language.
We, who belong to the first (rich) world which is developed, think that we have the power to decide that some other people belong to the third (poor) world which is developing or undeveloped. We feel some power inside ourselves to (using our language) make groups among the people.
