'Putting People into Drawers' - Human Labels

Labeling People and the Definition of Normal

So, we got this English teacher (*No shit!*)... and this new topic which I am not quite sure what it is about. It could be either called 'labeling people' or 'being normal is the best that could happen to you'.

We got this worksheet. The first exercise was finding a definition of normal. These were our three options:

Normal behaviour means...

- the way everybody expects you to behave

- not breaking the law

- the behaviour of the majority of people

I thought this exercise was utter crap. I refused to do it because none of these definitions were right in my opinion.

Now, guess what was the right answer:

the behaviour of the majority of people

I could only shake my head at this. The behaviour of the majority of people. So, that's a good thing, or what?

One thing doesn't happen to be right just because the majority of people thinks so.

We should classify adjectives in the next exercise: Typical, mentally ill, deranged, usual, acceptable , odd, crazy, strange, insane, ordinary, peculiar, weird, conventional, eccentric, demented.

We had a table with three columns: one for normal, one for unusual and one for mad.

It felt just so bad having to put mentally ill in the column for mad.

You can't make mentally challenged people responsible for being 'mentally ill'. You just can't. And they're not abnormal just because they have a disease. They are only people, just like us. They are only mentally challenged.

It felt so wrong completing this table. Sorting something like 'crazy' and 'weird' into the column for mad just made them sound like they were bad features

I don't want to count how many times I told my friends 'You're just so crazy!' or anything like that. I mean, come on, who doesn't say that?

I know that in this context they were meant to mean something like mentally crazy, and not only something absurd.

'Eccentric' in the column for unusual... Demented as well. Unusual my ass!

Why does it have such a negative connotation anyway?

I always felt proud of being different and having unusual opinions and all that... But oh wait, no, if I call myself unusual, I might as well consider myself peculiar, strange and odd!

Look, my point is that words like 'conventional', which as always been quite a bad feature for me considering that it's boring to be conventional, suddenly sound good, at least better than crazy which has always been kind of refreshing and lively for me.

By sorting these words that are often used in a completely different context into either 'normal', 'unusual' or 'mad', we open a gap in society.

Suddenly, everybody wants to be in the column for normal because everything from unusual onwards has a negative connotation.

Suddenly, everybody who considered themselves 'crazy' (and by crazy I mean the 'good' crazy) is declared mad.

And what's with adjectives like rebellious, quirky and feisty. Are they normal?

God, Jasper, calm down!

The leading question of this sheet was 'What is normal behaviour?'

Why is it so important for us to know what normal behaviour is? Isn't it enough to have your own definition and to know that it's not bad not to go with the flow?

Shouldn't things like 'not breaking the law' be self-evident? They should not be included into a definition of being normal.

Next, we read a short story by Ray Halliday called 'The Happiest Guy on the Train'.

I don't know if you know that but it's about a mentally challenged guy traveling by train and several passengers' reaction on him. I really liked the story as it perfectly captured the common reaction when people are confronted with disabled people. (There should be more people like the I narrator but I am swerving from the subject...)

One of the exercises was finding a label for the guy. A LABEL. A GODDAM FREAKING LABEL!!!

That guy is mentally challenged! Don't you think he has enough to worry about and now you want us to label him?! And: Since when do you learn how to label people in school?

Let me give you some examples we could choose from (it's another absurdity to make us choose from examples and not make anything up, but that's another story):

Phsychopath • madman • nonconformist • weirdo • clown • lunatic • ...

Chm, chm (*insert noises that Dolores Umbridge always makes*) No, just NO! What even...?! No, I have no words.

Well, I guess this guy is a clown because he totally wants to draw all the attention to himself and loves to makes fun out of himself... (*People, PLEASE note my sarcasm-soaked way of expression*)

There is a really nice German term for this whole labeling thing: jemanden in eine Schublade stecken.

In English, it would approximately mean to put somebody in a drawer. I sadly couldn't find a suitable translation except from 'to pigeonhole somebody' which I found somehow strange.

And that was what we were doing in this very lesson: Putting people in a drawer.

This is a serious topic. I think it would be an achievement to abandon labeling people, not only from school but from everywhere.

Instead, we are asked to do so. And we don't even know for which purpose.

I couldn't really figure out what this lesson should teach us. The second part was surely meant to teach us how to handle disabled people but it clearly failed by making us label them.

I didn't.

What was that good for? I don't get that. There's just so much useful and interesting we could've learned from that story but we were just supposed to label that poor guy!

To cut a long story short: Don't ever trust your teacher and what you're taught at school.

Always question everything. Always.

You see those pictures I put in the media section? One of them says 'Stay weird'.

And now guess in which of our columns weird ended up.