Go Deeper Than The Catchy Music and Fun Games

W08: Deep Culture in the Elementary Classroom

Surface studies of culture can be a lot of fun. There’s fun stuff out there for every interest, like KPOP music videos, Japanese video games, Bollywood movies, International soccer teams, and Italian desserts. Elementary kids might enjoy learning about some of the playground games kids play in other cultures, too. Showing kids more options lets them see that there’s more to choose from out there in the world.

My latest KPOP albums with my Japanese gaming console

There are also deeper differences between cultures, too. In an article I read for school by John and Nathaniel Ivers, they applied a psychological formula for counseling to cultural perceptions ("Teaching Deeper Culture in Elementary School Foreign Language Classes", Learning Languages Spring 2010.). When an event or circumstance happens, we filter it through our beliefs and culture and then react. Reactions can vary greatly because of cultural paradigms. They gave an example of tossing a marker to someone. In the US, we just catch it, say, “Thanks,” and move on. In some Latin American cultures, it would be seen as extremely rude and the receiver would take offense.

Some of these concepts might seem tricky to convey to elementary students, but making an effort to teach them how perspectives can shift will serve them well. (Some concepts are more age appropriate than others, too, like gestures, manners, and expressivity.) Learning about deeper differences between cultures opens up the mind to different kinds of possibilities. They start finding options in the way they approach problems or life in general. That’s where we really start unlocking potential in the mind. Just knowing there are options opens us up to evaluating what we’re doing and seeing if we can do it better. The founders of the United States of America had studied many foreign philosophies and ideas and used them in creating our government.

Deep culture instruction can also help children develop more tolerance and love for those who behave or respond differently from them, too. Young children can be taught to understand that what someone’s doing might be coming from cultural difference and not malice or stupidity. Everyone benefits when there’s more understanding and patience in the world.

Give Yourself a Mental Break

W07: Culture and Psychology

Cultures provide many functions. They’re a way of being connected socially with others, which is a positive thing for survival. We unite over commonalities and communicate our needs in ways others can understand. We collaborate and strengthen each other. They give us purpose in our lives through constructed roles. There’s a bit of a catch, though. We tend to develop cultural ideals that don’t necessarily fit the people in the culture. Brother Ivers, who I’ve mentioned before is a professor at BYU-I, called the ideal person our culture says we should be striving to be our “ought selves”.

These ideals are constructs. They’re based on what a society has decided is an optimal person, and that varies from culture to culture. We tend to experience psychological distress when our more natural “real selves”, a term Brother Ivers used, fall short from our culture’s “ought selves”. I grew up in and am still a member of a conservative religion with “traditional” family values. A fairly standard “ought self” for women from that culture is a stay at home mom who devotes everything to her children and husband and has a large family. New moms outside of that culture also struggle with “ought selves”. I remember being heartbroken because I had a c-section instead of an idealized medication-less natural birth. Moms regularly feel bad because they feed their kids convenience foods and let them watch TV shows so they can catch a break. Are those really things they need to feel bad over? No, but we’re socially conditioned that those are short of the ideal so we feel negatively about ourselves when we make these choices.

Delali Bright gives a great example of culturally-inflicted psychological distress in her TED talk about beauty. I linked to it in a previous post, but here it is again. It’s definitely worth watching. In her first country, she had intense mental distress because of her weight. Her culture’s “ought self” for her was supposed to have more fat on her body. She was skinny no matter what treatments she underwent. There was no changing her size. She had awful psychological distress because she could never get near that “ought self”. American culture was different, though. The “ought self” for beauty for women in the US is skinny. She matched that easily. She gets complimented and praised for her size. She no longer has that conflict between culture’s expectations and her reality and has far greater self-esteem as a result.

Several lessons ago, Brother Ivers said, “Culture creates false needs and false problems.” It’s held true time and again as I’ve looked at various paradigms and social dynamics. We should all take some time to mentally set aside our ingrained cultural expectations and give ourselves a break from psychological distress over constructed problems and shortcomings.

Manners

W07: Differences in Manners

Manners are behavior norms we’ve developed in interacting with others. Following a culture’s manner rules leads to better social interactions. Breaking them can lead to negative interactions. Many manners are learned from parents and teachers while growing up. Members of a culture tend to learn which ones they can bend or break and which ones are immutable through instruction but also experience.

Outsiders to a culture aren’t so lucky. Kids get some leeway while they’re learning them because they’re young, but adults don’t automatically get that treatment. People experienced with foreigners are forgiving, but others might be less so. There are also so many manners that a person could go years living in the US and still run into bad social missteps. A person with a jovial funeral culture could be quite out of place behaving with smiles and bright colors at a somber tear-filled mourning.

It’s important for instructors to give foreign students heads up on manner differences to avoid social misunderstandings or contention. A little knowledge about things like handshakes can go a long way. Cultures are very diverse, though, and covering all the manners for every situation would take too much time.

Brother Ivers, a professor at BYU-I, has mentioned a principle in his lectures on culture again and again. It’s observation. Always observe the people around you when you’re in a new setting. If you notice what everyone else is doing first, you can mimic their behaviors and not stick out so much. Teaching that principle to students in conjunction with what manners we can cover in class can help them feel more confident for unexpected situations.

Do you have any stories where your manners (or ignorance of them) almost got you in trouble?

Classroom Norms

W07: Cross-Cultural Students in the Classroom

Cultures have many differences. Languages, foods, and traditional clothes are some of the obvious ones. Classroom behavior, however, is one that can fly under the radar.

Expectations for students and teachers can vary between cultures. American students are expected to do problem solving and group work. Other cultures focus more on individual abilities and achievements. Some cultures find it fine to let teachers wander off where the students want to learn. Others find it rude for students to distract with other topics. Asian schooling can be very authoritarian while American schooling is looser. Corporal punishment at school is a given in some cultures, but teachers in the American school systems would face legal trouble for that.

Students who are brand new to a culture are likely to flounder a bit as they find that their behaviors and expectations don’t quite match up with their new environment. As instructors, we need to be very aware of those students and see how we can help them adapt. We also need to be patient with them if they’re slow to open up or have conditioned behaviors quite different to what we’re used to. A friend’s adopted children from Africa felt like school was torture because they were used to being outdoors and very active in their day. An American school environment was very different for them.

Cultural differences in school norms shouldn’t be too foreign a concept, though. If we think back on our own schooling, we can probably think of classrooms that felt different. I had some instructors who ran a strict classroom and one who was completely opposite. He had us call him by his first name and joked around with us all the time. He even made us play dice with him to go to the bathroom.

We can likely think of students who behaved differently, too. I see that even in my own children. My oldest likes structured, quiet, individualized schooling. My middle child would be elbows deep in six different experiments while holding twelve conversations if he could. Family cultures can also affect students’ attitudes and classroom behaviors.

If we keep our eyes open, we’ll find cultural differences everywhere, not just with our foreign students. As we find those differences, we can take them into consideration and help our students adapt and find more success in our classroom environments.

Constructed Reasoning

Week 06: Attribution Tendencies

We want to understand the world around us. Part of that quest for understanding is attribution. We’re always looking for reasons for things. It’s simply part of human nature to try and make sense of life.

I do this myself every day. I have properly diagnosed (and hereditary) chronic health problems but still look for reasons as to why I might be feeling particularly awful at a given moment.

In looking for causes for successes and failures, we look to internal and external factors. With my health, I look internally to my body’s permanent condition but also externally to foods I’ve eaten that might be making me hurt or sick. I can also look to the external cause of my family tree for giving me my debilitating genetic condition.

Creating a framework of attributions satisfies psychological needs and help give us direction for future action. When I look at foods as a cause, I can limit what I eat or make a journal of what makes me feel worse. Removing certain foods has been successful in bettering my condition.

Unfortunately, applying attributions can also result in stigmas and negative psychological patterns of thought, especially when we apply attribution to the conditions of others.

In many cultures, people and families with disabilities are often given negative attributions. In the New Testament in the Holy Bible, when seeing a blind man, Jesus Christ’s disciples ask him, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? (John 9:2)”. People all over the world face that same question. A woman I know from Taiwan with a son with severe disabilities tearfully talked about the social stigmas her whole family faced because of their son’s health conditions. They were shunned and seen as cursed or a bad family. People did not want to be friends with them and didn’t want any of their luck to rub off on them.

The same thing happens in the US, particularly around autism. A false and dishonest study attributing autism to vaccines has left lasting emotional effects on families with autism and has impaired our national health by steering people away from life-saving medicine. It hurts to be told that a child’s permanent condition is your fault, either as a doctor or as a parent.

We must be aware of our cultural and individual attributions. Seeking understanding is not a bad thing. That’s how we make social and scientific progress, after all. The troubles come when we jump to conclusions without proper evidence and make irrational attributions. As we teach about culture, we can help students see the ways we culturally construct understanding and how those constructs shape our lives.

Space Invaders

Week 06: Personal Space Differences

Sometimes we feel slightly uncomfortable around someone when we’re talking to them. Our conversation partner might seem intimidating, flirtatious, or standoffish. The way we feel about a person or social situation is often directly influenced by how close or far away we are.

We tend to have different personal space boundaries based on who we’re interacting with and how we’re doing so. We stay farther away from strangers than friends when talking with them, but sit next to them if there’s no room on a subway or in a theater. Doctors get physically closer to patients than anyone except spouses in examinations but definitely aren’t allowed that intimacy in any other situation. Parents invade their young child’s personal space all the time.

Everyone has some kind of personal space boundaries, even animals. Heini Hediger, a zoo director, made extensive observations of animal space boundaries. He found that seagulls would stand even distances apart when on the same object. Animals step away or flee when predators enter their spaces. We humans have physiological responses to our boundaries being invaded, too.

The curious thing is that while every human has layers of boundaries, where those boundary points are is a cultural construct. This means that a person’s optimal comfort spacing might be closer than that of the person they’re interacting with if they’re from separate cultures. Person A might keep stepping towards Person B to feel more comfortable. Person B might keep stepping away for their comfort. They will likely develop conflicting feelings about their encounter since their boundaries don’t match up. The unfortunate part is that they frequently won’t know the cause.

When it comes to interacting with people from different cultures, it’s important to give them some social leeway. Don’t necessarily write someone off after an awkward or uncomfortable first encounter. Now, creeps will be creeps in any culture, so we should still be careful, but most people mean well. A little bit of tactful input on spatial discomfort might be very helpful to someone who comes from a different social climate. To paraphrase a saying I read once, “Ignorance causes far more problems than malice.”

“...Misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (translated from German)

"Don't give her money."

W06 Individualism vs. Collectivism

The father and breadwinner of a young immigrant family passed away unexpectedly. He, his wife, and children were members of my parents’ congregation. They were family friends, as well. People in the congregation wanted to help, which is wonderful. Losing a spouse is awful and especially painful when it’s unexpected and the family lives in a foreign (to them) country. My mom was in a leadership position in her congregation and part of councils that look out for the members. She gave the other leaders one key piece of counsel: “Don’t give her money.”

Why was my liberal feminist mother recommending they not help her friend out with money in a truly unfortunate situation? Wouldn’t a newly widowed mother in a foreign land need money because her family lost their source of income? Wouldn’t some immediate cash be a great idea to help meet the next rent bills and buy some time for her to grieve and plan? This kind of charitable response is very appropriate and much appreciated for a typical American widow. Immediate financial aid doesn’t necessarily apply to a situation for someone from another culture.

My mom’s friend’s culture is a group-oriented one. According to what my mom knows about it, some of the money, if not all, would have gone to her husband’s extended family in living Africa and possibly even to members of their local African social community. That’s how things go in their culture. Money offered with intent to help my mom’s friend and her children might not be used 100% for the immediate and intended situation. My mom recommended they give her direct goods instead to make sure the boys and mother got their needs met and that their help went where they wanted it to.

The situation had different rules because of cultural differences in individualism and collectivism. Americans saw the death as directly affecting the nuclear family of the deceased. This specific African culture saw it as affecting a larger family and community unit. The American widow figures out what’s best for her nuclear family and does it (usually with some counsel, but ultimately making the decision herself). This African widow had stronger pushes and others who felt they should make decisions for her. It’s definitely not a bad thing to have people looking out for you in times of hardship. It’s wonderful that she had so many people to help look out for her. There are simply different cultural approaches to situations that need consideration, particularly when we’re outsiders looking in or wanting to help.

Individualism and collectivism both have their pros and cons. Full cultural assimilation isn’t my goal as a TESOL/TEFL instructor. I’m not out there to convert them to any supposed wonderful joys of American individualism. I see them as individuals and focus on their individual needs, but I’m not making judgment calls for them on what aspects of which cultures to retain or discard. I help my students learn English and culture so they can more effectively understand and navigate a new environment and make their own judgments. When they learn the individualistic tendencies of their new culture, they’ll be able to see how to adapt their own behaviors in specific situations or understand where people might be coming from.

Do you have any stories like this one, where a response to an incident had to be changed because of collective cultural factors?