Quick summary
Your identity is the unique mix of your physical features, qualities, beliefs, feelings and behaviour. This chapter helps you explore what shapes it: your name, experiences, role models, achievements, emotions and roles. It ends with a self report on your strengths, areas to improve, opportunities and challenges.
Key points
- Factors that shape identity: your name, personal experiences (happy or sad events, places, books, films), people who inspire you, things you are proud of, emotions and the roles you play.
- Experiences teach lessons that shape personality. Reflect on what each one taught you.
- Pride depends partly on your surroundings: school, region and society.
- We feel afraid because we think we may be robbed.
- We feel happy because we think our effort paid off.
- We feel angry because we think something is unjust.
- Spotting the thought behind an extreme emotion helps us manage it and avoid harmful actions.
- Emotions and thoughts are linked:
- People feel differently in the same situation, which is part of what makes each person unique.
- Roles: student, friend, son or daughter, sibling. Each role carries expectations.
- Stereotyping: expecting everyone in a role or group to think or behave in one fixed way (for example, "boys don't cry"). Question such ideas.
- Self report (SWOC-style): your strengths, areas to develop, opportunities and challenges across knowledge, skills, attitude, and social and financial areas.
- Everyone is a mixed bag. Work on your weak areas, but grow your strengths even more.
Important terms
- Identity – the unique combination of features, traits, beliefs and feelings that makes a person who they are.
- Stereotype – a fixed, oversimplified belief about how a group should behave.
- Self report – a self-evaluation of strengths, areas to improve, opportunities and challenges.
Key facts
- Self-report criteria: knowledge, skills, attitude, social, economic.
- Four columns: strengths, need to improve, opportunities, challenges.
5 important questions
Q1. What is identity?
The unique combination of a person's physical features, qualities, traits, beliefs, behaviour and feelings.
Q2. Name four factors that influence identity.
Experiences, people who inspire us, the roles we play and our emotions.
Q3. How are emotions and thoughts related? Give an example.
Our thoughts cause our feelings: we feel angry when scolded wrongly because we think it is unjust.
Q4. What is stereotyping?
Expecting people of a role or group to think or act in one fixed way, e.g. "girls are not good at maths".
Q5. Why is a self report useful?
It shows our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges, so we can improve and make better decisions.
Exam tip
Prepare your own short self report; questions often ask you to apply the idea to yourself.
Class 9 · Self Development and Art Appreciation · Chapter 4
Social Leadership
Quick summary
Everything in nature and society is connected, so a problem in one place soon affects everyone. This chapter shows that interdependence, explains four ways of bringing social change with real changemakers, and asks you to start with a personal change project, because even one person can make a difference.
Key points
Important terms
Key facts
5 important questions
Q1. What does the social web activity show?
Everything in the environment and society is connected; a change in one part affects all the others.
Q2. Explain interdependence with an example.
City people depend on villages for food and raw materials, so village problems such as drought affect cities too.
Q3. Name four ways of bringing social change.
Community service, creating infrastructure, research and activism.
Q4. What did Dashrath Manjhi achieve?
He cut a road through a rocky hill alone with a hammer and chisel over 22 years, so his village no longer had a 50 km detour.
Q5. Why should social change begin with personal change?
Changing ourselves first gives us confidence and credibility to convince others to join.
Exam tip
Match each changemaker to their mode of change and work; it is a common question.
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