Week 5 - 2/1/21 Cultural Paradigms

 What is a paradigm? 

    Have you ever visited a new country and felt completely out of place? Then you have probably experienced culture paradigm.  Different cultures view things in different ways.  What is funny to one group of people may not be funny to another group of people.  Imagine sitting in a public place where you are a newcomer to this culture.  You can tell that something you are or are not doing is just not right here, but you have no idea what the problem could be.  Are you sitting in the wrong area, is your dress inappropriate, is there toilet paper hanging out of your pants?  Who knows what the reason, but you just feel embarrassed by something and you are not sure why.  

    Culture creates false problems and false needs.  When one culture views something in one way and another culture views it in a different way, there is a culture difference.  This can create problems that are not really problems and needs that are not really needs.  

    Brother Ivers asked a group of foreigners to think of some things that Americans do that are weird or different.  Some of the answers this group gave were interesting to me.  I wondered why these things were weird.  The two examples I am most guilty of are dressing very casual and wearing tennis shoes when I am not participating in a sporting event.  My feet do not like to be in shoes, they like to be free! I usually wear flip flops because they are not restrictive.  Right now it is winter.  In order to keep my feet warm, I wear tennis shoes out in public even if I am not going jogging.  My tennis shoes are almost as comfortable as not wearing shoes.  I do not see a problem with this because I do not want to buy an additional pair of shoes that are comfortable just for running errands around town.  This idea of not wearing tennis shoes for errands create a false need of an additional pair of shoes.  A personal experience I can share on this subject is years ago I was living in Russia.  The host family I lived with invited me to go out with them.  When we reached the Disco Tech, I wasn't allowed into the building because I was wearing tennis shoes.  In their eyes, I needed to be much more dressed up and have my dancing shoes on to enter this place and have a good time!  I was a little frustrated because I thought I looked fine and didn't see the need to dress like I was going to prom to go have some fun. 

    Experiences like mine help us to feel empathy towards others.  Watching the National Geographic video about the young men from Africa, I felt empathy towards the young men.  They seemed so excited to come to America, but were so confused by so many things that their experience wasn't as fulfilling s it could be.  Cheese didn't look like cheese, meat didn't look like meat, food that taste like soap!  What a disappointment.  I hope these young men were able to adjust to some of the culture differences and enjoy their time in the United States.  

    A great insight  that I got out of this lesson came from the women on the TED talk. For many years she had very negative feelings and experiences about being thin and how one day in America gave her the opposite feelings and experiences.  The way the 2 different cultures viewed something so was  completely different.  To think that a doctor would prescribe depression medication for her to gain weight is so crazy to the culture here in America.  

There will be many culture differences in a TESOL classroom.  Learning about the different cultures we may have in our classroom will help us to be aware of some of the differences ahead of time.  Some things may come up that we are not prepared for at all.  When these things happen, we must remember to act like our savior Jesus Christ who showed love and compassion to all people.  A great quote that Brother Ivers shared has stuck with me. The great Mexican intellectual Carlos Fuentes said, "We shall know each other or we shall exterminate each other." If we do not get to know someone who is different than we are, we will find ourselves pushing each other away and creating false problems, we will never really learn anything from one another, ultimately exterminating each other.  

 Over 20 years ago I went to Russia to teach English to children.  We were told to have a fun and engaging class, to play and be silly with the children.  The schooling they were used to was very rigid and teachers were not to have fun with their students.  If you look at the girls, they are dressed in very fancy dresses while I usually wore jeans and tennis shoes.  Here we are playing a game on the floor, having fun! Their Russian teacher might have assumed I had no control over the kids and that they would never learn in this environment.  I think that we learned something about each others cultures and in the process, built meaningful relationships and the kids learned to speak English!