Guillaume - 10:53am Mar 7, 2006 (#1 of 5)
Bonjour à tous.
J'ai comparé les réactions des étudiants X/MIT à la situation " Vous marchez dans la rue et quelqu'un devant vous jette un papier gras sur le trottoir. " La différence est assez flagrante mais il est possible qu'elle soit en partie dûe au fait que "some trash" laisse la possibilité de s'imaginer des choses bien plus régugnantes qu'un papier gras …
Des deux cotés de l'Atlantique, la confrontation avec le pollueur est assez peu recherchée : seuls 2 X et 2 étudiants du MIT l'évoquent. Mais en revanche, l'énorme différence est que 13 étudiants du MIT déclarent qu'ils ramasseraient le détritus par terre (seulement 4 étudiants passent leur chemin) ; tandis qu'à l'X les proportions sont inversées : 3 étudiants seulement jettent le papier à la poubelle contre 13 qui ne font rien … (Parmi ces 13, certains se sentent un peu coupable tout de même, comme l'indiquent certaines justifications).
J'avoue que les réponses américaines me surprennent : il est
extrêmement rare de voir en France quelqu'un ramasser spontanément les
déchets d'un autre. Comment peut-on expliquer cette différence ?
Pensez-vous que vous avez un fort esprit civique ? Ou que vous vous
sentez particulièrement concernés par l'environnement ?
Hello Guillaume,
To answer your questions, I think that maybe some of us MIT students taking French are more concerned with the environment. However, in general, I don't believe the majority of the students here are very concerned with pollution or protecting the planet which is definitely very sad. There are some recyling projects on campus such as a recycling competition for the dormitories but there is no major feeling about caring for the environment. MIT students are more concerned about their research and their work than pretty much anything else.
Compared to the rest of the United States, I don't believe that Americans as a group are that much more concerned about the environment (even though they should be because the recent natural disasters are a scary sign of what might be happening). However, there are other universities (probably liberal arts schools) where students are much more motivated to protect the environment and to really care about recycling and such.
As far as a civical spirit goes, MIT students would definitely do something small as pick up a piece of trash or point someone to the trash can, but there are other aspects in which I believe we are definitely lacking. MIT is so concerned about science and technology that many students are rarely involved or know of many social and political problems from the United States and abroad. As far as the undergrads (premiere cycle) go, we seem to be so consumed in our own little MIT world that it is very hard to see outside of it. I remember my freshman year (premiere annee) when there was a controversy in Iraq because US soldiers were mistreating Iraqui detainees... I did not find out about this until 3 or so months after it had happened. The problem was already in Congress when I realized what had happened. I honestly think that I lot of people here can I identify with me.
How about at L'Ecole? Do you believe that X's students care
about social and political issues? What do you do to keep yourself
aware about the world around you?
In response to Katia...I feel that the opposite is true.
I feel that (from the people that I know) MIT students, because they are interested in science and technology, are aware of certain political/social issues if only for the fact that science and technology are inevitably tied to them. MIT also has a significant proportion of students participating in community service activities. We may not go on large campaigns to accomplish certain goals, but we certainly help in our own way.
That we are in a bubble cannot be helped to a certain extent.
As students, our priority is to study and learn in hopes that we can
apply our knowledge in help society and be more quaified to respond to
political and social issues. While there may be a lot of students who
completely ignore what goes on outside MIT, there are also a lot of
students who do read the newspaper and watch the news. Levels of
informity differ, but I believe that we as a whole are not completely
unaware.
Yeah, I think MIT recycles pretty well compared to other places. I haven't seen too many other schools or been inside many other buildings that have so many recycling bins for both paper and plastic. Although recently I have seen a few recycling bins on the street in my home town, which is nice to see. Is there a lot of recycling in France or at l'X?
This situation actually reminds me of a more familiar
situation: right now I'm sitting in a computer cluster at MIT and there
is trash all over the place. It's like this every day. This makes it
seem quite surprising that such a high number of MIT students said they
would pick up the trash from the ground. Maybe it's just our class that
cares a lot about our environment. Or perhaps there are other reasons.
I think recycling is more a personal preference...you can't stereotype MIT students and say, yes, they are recyclers, or no, they are not. But I was definitely surprised at how many MIT students said they would pick up the little piece of trash and throw it away. And to second Vladimir's comment, yeah, people don't always stick to their word, because honestly have you ever seen a student sit there and clean up everyone else's mess in the computer cluster? no.
Perhaps our responses were more idealistic...we'd like to think that we would pick up the piece of trash to help the environment, and maybe it depends on the situation; if you see the person in front of you throw trash on the sidewalk, and youb were the only one to witness it, you might feel more obliged to do "good" and throw it away. on the other hand, the gross litter in the computer cluster has been sitting there for who knows how long, so students decide, what the heck, just let it sit there some more because i don't want to be the one to touch it. there's no immediacy effect.
Do any of the French students see this happening on your
campus? Where litter that has already been sitting there never seems to
be discarded because everyone just diffuses responsibilty onto the next
person?
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