POLL: Would you be willing to broaden your horizons?

Sign me up. As long as I don't have to learn Mandarin.

 

Hell, yes. Cultural awareness and appreciation should be part of everyone's education. Pardon my ignorance, but are you saying this is not routine in US schools?

 

well... i think as adults many people already have concrete ideas of what the rest of the world is like, right or wrong. some may change their minds when presented with reality, but i bet many won't want to change the picture painted in their head.

this is something that needs to be integrated into a childhood education, before the prejudice sets hold in kids' minds.

come to think of it, hyo, the official "cultural awareness" i got as a kid were the (extracurricular) hmong culture fairs in the wrong-side-of-the-tracks elementary school- but only because a large percentage of my fellow students were children of hmong immigrants. (this did not happen in the more well-off area of town where i went to 3rd grade.) also we read "roots" in 5th grade and discussed the struggle for equality during black history month. i recall nothing from then until college, where i was required to take a "minority culture" class, which focused on minority groups here in the states. but then again, i really try not to remember childhood in general so i could just be forgetting something.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Nov 8 2006, 05:44 PM) [snapback]345812[/snapback]</div>

No 'Cultures Day' when people put a pin on the map to show where they're from, dress as they would in their home country and bring tasty treats? No world history? No study of indigenous peoples? No cultural geography? I know the rest of the planet isn't like where I come from, but wow.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Nov 8 2006, 05:22 PM) [snapback]345844[/snapback]</div>

shameful, isn't it?

 

I did that in college already. For those that don't go to college, then heck yeah, there should be some of that classroom or self-study learning.

There are specialized programs in high schools here that do the same; however, they're geared toward the "gifted" students. I think it would be great to have something like that in junior-senior years in high school. That way, narrowly-focused opinions of the world aren't totally solidified.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Nov 8 2006, 07:19 PM) [snapback]345907[/snapback]</div>

I just remember courses like "Modern World History and Culturalism" which covered a historical and sociological discourse on other countries/cultures. We had lots of 2-semester sets of courses that the second semester covered 19th and 20th century history...

A great place where I learned a great deal of multi-cultural appreciation was my high school French classes, believe it or not. I suppose my teacher was outstanding, but much of my second and third year of French covered African colonialism issues and cultures. Very cool.

And btw, I'm no spring chicken, either. I got two liberal arts degrees from Virginia Tech--known for its engineering programs. I think we had a sorely underrated history, English, and poli-sci dept. It didn't hurt that I worked with a variety of folks from India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Korea, and Eastern Europe.

 

Personally, I WOULD like to learn more about other cultures, so I'd be willing to take a self-study course, but I think I'm in the minority. I think the majority of US citizens consider learning as something they had to suffer through in formal schooling, rather than something they continue to do every day. So I'm not sure that a voluntary self-study course for adults would be a success.

There's been some corporate education in the concepts of diversity for at least the last quarter-century, with emphasis on "The world is changing - it's no longer a white fraternity and you'd better learn to adjust to it", without specific training in multiple cultures, and even that has met with more than token resistance and grumbling in the ranks of the people who had to attend required training classes.

About 5 years ago, I was a consultant working on a project where the consulting teams were from two different companies, and all male except for me. We went out to lunch as a group one day, and one of the consultants from 'the other company' was complaining bitterly that he had to go to diversity training from his company, and many of the other guys commiserated with him. Two minutes later, he told some lame joke about Tina and Ike Turner that required you know that Ike had reportedly beaten Tina during their marriage, and all the guys chuckled, whether they understood the joke or not. I was livid, but kept my mouth shut until we were driving back to work. I was riding with my boss, and told him how upset I was, and got a 'oh, well, boys will be boys' response from him. He finally understood my point about the mocking of 'diversity training' and the joking about men who beat their wives when I explained the 'Ike and Tina' joke to him. He blushed, apologized, and later did take 'the guys' who worked for our company and talked to them about it, including telling them that a 'group lunch' with the project team is actually an extension of the workplace.

I agree with the people who've suggested that more 'cultural awareness' training/teaching needs to happen with kids.

I definitely don't have 'the answer' for this, and there have been lots of good ideas talked about here in this thread. I'll give another example, too. I've been working for the last year for a very large company, and the company sponsors and contributes to employee 'clubs'. There are around 2000 people who work on our 'campus', and there's a South East Asian 'club'. They sponsored a 'South East Asia' month that included serving many different South East Asian cuisines in the cafeterias, and little 'information cards' that stayed on the cafeteria tables for that month, each card giving a lot of interesting facts about a particular country, including a map showing where it was in the world. There were also many 'after work' cultural events.

 

So, I suppose Russian history won't be on the curriculum any time soon? I should be careful not to draw too many conclusions from only a few posts, but this is shocking. Nothing personal, but might this lack of education have something to do with America's reputation for being xenophobic and arrogant?

 

I do my own self study by lots of reading. I also see what a lot of different 'cultures" are like through my job. The worry I would have about this self-study course is that it would turn into a "America bashing" type of study. Condescending (sp?). Kind of like what a lot of do-gooders try to teach about our history with the indigenous Indians.

Any worthwhile program would have to be presented as a world-wide program (in other words, all cultures get the same training) with America just being one of many. Good, bad, and the ugly.

Good luck in trying to do that and including some of the truth about Islam. Of course, good luck in trying to do that with Christianity too!

But then again, do we want to hash around the PAST, or do we want to know where we have grown to.

Questions, Questions.

Pinto Girl, I like how you try. I enjoy these types of discussions much more than the flaming ones.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Nov 8 2006, 07:19 PM) [snapback]345907[/snapback]</div>

well, i finished my bs in 2004 and just had that one class. of course, i went to a small school in a small town in rather-sparsely populated western wisconsin. we had a large general ed requirement, but the choices for diversity classes left something to be desired.

in grad school, our coursework was (i say was because i'm done with it all) exclusively hardcore science- nothing else. i'm at a substantially bigger school which draws a more international crowd, and there are many more diversity events here. many of them are organized in part by one of my colleagues from india.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(livelychick @ Nov 8 2006, 07:26 PM) [snapback]345910[/snapback]</div>

that's where most of my understanding of other cultures comes from, actually... interacting with people, which i think is one fantastic way to learn.

 

The only cross-cultural education I had in school was one comparative religions class in high school, which dealt exclusively with the Eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and was very cursory.

There is no such thing as too much education regarding the cultures of other groups. I think it's typical of conservatives when Schmika expresses a fear that teaching about other cultures might turn into bashing his.

There was a cultural component to the pre-Columbian history classes I took while studying Spanish in Mexico, and it was fascinating.

Cultural diversity should be on the required curriculua throughout school, beginning when kids are old enough to understand that their culture is not universal, and continuing throughout university, and including foreign languages.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Nov 8 2006, 07:43 PM) [snapback]345922[/snapback]</div>

Actually, I took Modern Russian History in school, too.

 

I voted "no", must take the opposing position and ask, "Why?".

Really, in the end, what is the true "value added"?

I can be someone who only gets involved with people like me, and never intend on leaving the United States, why the hell would I give a fat flying For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge what Kwanza is, or how I might insult someone by showing them the sole of my shoe?

It's like the "It's a small world" ride at Disney, am I really a better person when I leave? Or even more irritable at the idea of a weird androgenous Pygmy shaking its spear?

"Ignorance is bliss", so they say,
"If it makes you happy, it can't be that baaa-aaa-aaad", Sheryl Crow sings, therefore why, really, is ignorance such a "bad" thing?

h34r:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ Nov 9 2006, 12:46 AM) [snapback]346083[/snapback]</div>

Learning, language, love, life, everything...

or, as the Klingons say, die in ignorance.

Have a blissful day, Squid.



note: edited to make more sense