I am glad that I have had the chance to take Introduction to Society 1125 in my first year of university. I have learned valuable resources from the classroom that has resulted in me viewing society differently compared to when I had viewed it before taking this course. From this course, I have learned new theories and concepts that I have never heard of before, as well as having to unlearn and relearned previous concepts and social issues that I thought I had knew from the past. One of the new concepts that I have learn in this class was debunking. Debunking is defined from the lecture notes as analyzing something at the obvious and deeper levels to better explain the social behaviour (pg. 6). To give an example of debunking from the class lecture notes would be from sociologist’s Emile Durkheim’s study on suicide. A person might think that the obvious reason for someone to commit suicide is because of personal problems. However, Durkheim looked at the deeper level of suicide and concluded that social integration and social solidarity also plays a role for an individual to take his or her own life (pg. 6). Debunking has helped me to look at situations now in society at a deeper level, as before I was only looking at the obvious level. As a result, I have become a deeper and fair-minded thinker rather than a simple-minded thinker in order to gain different perspectives from various viewpoints.
When I reflect back, I am a bit surprised to see that there are a few social issues that I have had to unlearn and relearn in order to better understand the social issues through a sociologist’s perspective. I would have thought that the many viewpoints I had learned before would be somewhat accurate to history; but rather, some of my perceived notions only gave half of the truth. Therefore, I am grateful that this course has corrected my perceived thoughts about certain social issues. One social issue where I have had to let go my perceived thoughts in order to relearn it and see it from a sociologist’s perspective is about race. Before the class lectures and videos, I had not given much thought about race, and when I did I was not taking it from a sociologist’s perspective. For example, I had previously thought that race existed many generations ago, and that it was always defined as groups of people differing based on their skin colours. However, I have learned from this class that race is not a very old term and that its original definition is not what it is today. In fact, slavery was before race, and in which case slavery was not based on skin colour (pg. 47). As I had mentioned before, I was surprised that my perceived notions were either entirely wrong, or were half accurate, but I am grateful now for having my perceived notions corrected and being able to take away lessons of learning from this class to apply it to my everyday life.
