What is the third world, and why are some countries developing while others claim to be developed?
From our western point of view the third world consists of the countries that are still developing. It is the name for the less- developed countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The problem I see in this term is that it is just made up by people who think that they are more developed than those countries. This works all because of the use of language and how different terms are used in special context. That was good illustrated by the example Jonny gave us while speaking about discourses. We as western Europeans call the houses of the African mostly huts, although they have the same meaning for the people living in them as our houses have. This example made me aware of the fact that people, by using certain words to refer to different discourses and especially for the given example a negative connotation is made up.
The problem is that we claim that they are not developed. But if one comes to these countries, one can see that they have other priorities than having much money and using high-tech. Those countries are more aware of living together with the nature. And for me it is a good thing the industrialised countries can copy. Maybe some African countries are economically not as developed as European countries or the USA, but they have their own way of life and coping with the problems of the world.
To take the education more in consideration, it was really interesting to speak about the two Mongolian cases. It was said that the Mongolian try to copy things from Denmark and do not question what they are doing. But this is the problem. Although many of the didactics work in Europe, it can be really different in those African countries because they have other circumstances of learning and another way of living. Furthermore the didactics used in Denmark are made up for the topics Danish kids have to learn, in Mongolia the children have to learn many other things to be prepared for their later lives. For them it is maybe more important to get more input of information and free lessons are not working so well. So here I could see that people from the West have to be really careful about judging the school system in other countries. If you as a teacher want to work in those countries, it will take a lot of time to get along with the system and I think the aim can’t be to transfer our system to e.g. Mongolia or other so-called “developed” countries. They have to find their own way- the only thing we could do is to work together with them and maybe invite them to our countries to let them find out if we have things that would also fit to their countries. Nevertheless African teachers should be aware that their countries also have positive things, Western people can learn from, e.g. how to live together with nature. If you ask me, they are really clever about this and we could copy things from them to decrease, e.g. global warming.
