Prohibiting Prejudice

In order to make the world a better place, we need to get rid of prejudice. Significant strides have been made to make the world more accepting of people's differences, but there is still so much hatred. It is important to make people realize that different religions, races, sexual orientations, etc. don’t diminish someone’s life; we are all just human beings at the end of the day. Getting rid of prejudice would be beneficial to the world as a whole because it would lessen the amount of crimes in the world and it would make people more connected. If everyone accepted people for who they are, hate crimes would not be a thing. Individuals who commit hate crimes do so because they are ill-informed, or not informed at all, about people who are different from themselves. Some people are scared of things that are not familiar to them, and that’s fine, but that’s where education comes in. Accepting other people into your world might also change your perspective on things. Learning how other people view life isn’t a bad thing—it gives you more to think about and helps you broaden your horizons. If people stopped hating people then the world would be a very cohesive place. Think of all the wars that wouldn’t happen!

People need to be educated about different cultures from a young age in order to minimize prejudice. A lot of biases and prejudice often come from older people in someone’s family or ignorance on someone’s behalf. Adding a class in elementary that discussed different ethnicities or sexual orientations, etc. would be a step in the right direction. Kids would be young enough to not have biases drilled into their heads, and they would be able to look at people with an open mind. The most important part is that they understand that people who are different from them are still just people; we all feel the same emotions and experience a lot of the same things. Going into middle school, kids could be given a pen pal (thanks for the idea, Logan) from a different country every so often. This would expand on their learning from elementary school. Having real contact with people who are outside of their normal circle would give kids something concrete to hold onto rather than the typical classroom style information they would receive in elementary school. In high school, kids should be offered the opportunity to spend some time abroad, or even at home with a person who is completely different than they are. A step farther than the pen pal letters, this opportunity would offer an even more visceral experience for people to really understand that being different isn’t as terrible as the world makes it to be.

Many people don’t interact with people of different cultures until they go away to college, and even then that interaction may be very minimal. This is a plan that would introduce people to a wide range of cultures at a very young age, and while it is not fool-proof, it would start making a difference early on.

And if none of that works, we can just ship them all abroad…like Wife Swap, except with kids.