Ignorance of Instructor

My husband and I have been here for almost 2 months and we moved here for his job. We love Germany. I visited him last year while he was here for work for three months and we couldn't get enough of this place, the history, the beautiful scenery, the food (both german and turkish) and then the offer came for the transfer and we were thrilled.

I felt the same way until recently. I am taking a German language class right now and on two difference instances I've been offended and insulted by comments made by my instructor. The first comment was "All killers and murders come from America". This was brought up during a discussion about the shooting in Winneden. I was confused and asked her to repeat herself (I thought maybe she got her English twisted), nope, she repeated the same comment. I said, no, this isn't true that America does have murders and killers just like all countries but "killers & murders" don't come from America. America is built up many nationalities from various countries. I would never come here and say such a thing so opening like there isn't anything wrong with this. Horrible.

Then, today...apparently all America's are fat. I have a problem with the "all" Americans are fat. This just isn't true at all. Yes, we do have overweight people, we have medium people, and we have slim people. We do have fast food but we also have Whole Foods and people who attend Gyms and work out daily. We come from Chicago where at a number of times throughout the day you will always see people running, down the street, by the lake, eating at healthy fast food places. Do we have McDonalds, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, of course...but we also have Pockets, Salad Spinners, and even better, Whole Foods ( inside the grocery store you can eat from the healthy hot buffet and salad bar".

Seriously, why can't we stop the stereotypes? I friends from various countries that lived in Chicago and never once would I stereotype their country and their people or themselves personally.

Can we stop the ignorance? It is possible.

Veronica 25 Мар 2009, 06:40 - Report