Judging n Being Politically Correct

yesterday, i was teaching 3 form 5 students on the drama Pygmalion by Shaw. the issues raised was judging a person on appearance n his speech. on one hand u have eliza doolittle the flower girl with cockney accent, n the other prof higgins, the phonetician who teach her the correct way of english pronunciation n trains her to be a lady. but what strikes me is that, shaw manages to reveal that being in an upper social class does not guarrantee a person to be "perfect". the upper class in the drama still talks english with certain flaws (incorrect pronunciation) so much so that in the end eliza was thought to be a hungarian princess in disguise bcoz of her flawless english.

in thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair, we come across Becky Sharp, who has to use her ingenuity to succeed in a world of double standards. she is always judged bcoz of her non connection to any good noble families.

The problem with us in our lives is that we judge the others.that part of human's basic instinct. we judge a person from the way he is attired, his body language, up to the point of commenting on a person's speech. this has been true when i first arrived at SS last year, when, after seeing the way i dress n speak, a person asked where my kampung is.

most of the time we tend to make erroneous judgments based on our first impression, which is y certain ppl strive on making a good appearance (but unfortunately, cant prove anything more than a mere decoration). i'm not saying all ppl who dress well r like this, but some r. some ppl dont present themselves well, but they do their job so meticulously that they just zoom up the ladder of success. one of my brothers is like this. he's plainly dressed. his curly hair is combed neatly, n never out of place. he loves to live in kampung surrounded with a fruit orchard. he used to collect really cabuk cars up to a point that a guard used to ask him to park elsewhere bcoz he didnt recognise my brother as the director when my brother parked his cabuk car at the director's parking lot. his colleagues drive BMW n Mercedes, but my brother doesnt mind at all. he used to say he wants to "change the paradigm". change ppl's perception, that is.

what does this tell us? that appearance is not everything. what is important is how strong that person's integrity n his identity, n his person's worth. that is y we have such a proverb as "dont judge a book by its cover" bcoz we r such suckers for first appearances. looks can be deceiving.