Audio Lesson Integration
Subject: Educational Philosophy
Topic: A Personal Educational Incident
Learning outcome: An educational experience could significantly affect one's worldview and characteristics. Students will take this chance to reflect on any educational incident that played a role in making who they are today.
Instructions: Listen to the story that happened to a six-year-old boy and think about the following questions.
What values were displayed or absent?
What epistemological themes were presented?
Imagine you were the child, mother, or manager; what would you do at that moment?
An Educational Incident
This is a narration of an educational incident that happened to a six-year-old boy.
activity6)_final_work.mp3Transcript
When I was six years old, I was nearly sent to the police station for stealing a pack of pop gum at the supermarket. It all starts with my curiosity triggered by the Anti-shoplifting system that was lately introduced to most shops in China around 1990s.
One day, I went shopping with my mom at one of the biggest supermarkets to buy snacks for my spring trip. When my mom was shopping, I noticed the big Anti-shoplifting facility they had. A weird idea just occurred to me. “will it be aware when I pass it with something unpaid?” I quickly grabbed a pack of pop gum and slowly walked through the facility. Surprisingly, nothing happened. Then, another thought was saying: “maybe I can have the pop gum and don’t pay for it, since the system is not working!”
I went back to the supermarket and followed my mom to the cashier counter when we finished the shopping. Suddenly, a manager-alike man with a pair of classes showed up and accused me of stealing. He was shouting, and I felt scared and nervous. My mom looked at me with a complicated look.
She turned to the manager and said, “sir, please lower your voice, I need to speak to my son.”
She asked me: “did you take something?”
I was too scared to speak, and I just took out the pop gum from my pocket and showed it to her.
My mom frowned at me and said:” why don’t you give it to me to check out? I won’t say no to it.”
I still did not say anything, just staring at my shoes.
The manager said:” I told you. He’s a little thief. I will call the police!”
My mom instantly got angry and raised her voice, “shut up! How do you know he steals it? We haven’t done our shopping yet and this pop gum is not we need, so I will ask my son to put it back!”
Then, my mom gently said to me, “could you put it back to where you got it?”
I quickly ran into the snack section and put it back.
On the way back, my mom didn’t say a word to me. I felt she was angry with me and she should shout at me for what I did. But why the silence. I felt more confused and guilty. That was the longest moment ever in my six-year-old life.
When we arrived home, I explained everything to my mom and admitted my mistakes. I promised that I would not do anything stupid like that anymore. When my mom heard what I said, she smiled and said: “I knew you didn’t mean to steal anything. Since you have realized and admitted your mistakes, go to wash your hands and get ready for dinner.”
That is the whole story of the incident that I was nearly sent to the police station for stealing a pop gum.