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Instilling Cultural Education In The Future

    Cultural identity and intercultural education are things that have always been difficult for society to grasp, especially in westernized countries such as the United States.  An easy and efficient way to gain that understanding would be to integrate intercultural education into public school systems. 

In today’s media, there are a myriad of incidents regarding the misunderstanding or outright hostility towards cultures that we are not familiar with, such as the recent mosque shooting in New Zealand.
These are incidents that, when you think about it, could have been easily avoided if we had a better understanding and relationship with cultures outside of our own, especially ones that are vastly different from our own.

The largest societal obstacle for intercultural understanding is the failure to recognize three key identity development stages. According to Martin & Nakayama’s chapter on “Identity and Intercultural Communication” from their scholarly article titled “Experiencing intercultural communication: an introduction”,
the three of these stages are the minority development stage, which consists of unexamined identity, conformity, and resistance & separatism. The majority identity development stage, which consists of unexamined identity, acceptance, resistance and redefinition & reintegration. Lastly, the third stage is the multicultural identity development stage, which consists of awareness of different, struggle for acceptance, and self-acceptance & assertion.

In Winkler’s “In the name of Terrorism” it is stated that contemporary presidents evoke terrorism as a key component in their ideological formulations of the American culture. The reasoning behind this is because, when you think about it, for as long as America was founded under scrutiny and oppression. Ever since the culture been around, they have always been dedicated to anti-terrorism acts. From fighting against American Indian tribes to British soldiers to Al-Qaeda forces, America has always been in a defensive conflict for the betterment of their own community. Additionally, America has come to be known as some sort of great defender who’s military and Government have been pledged to defend their people and the world, to the best of their ability, against what society can claim to be acts of terrorism.
It is because of this mentality that the majority of the American people are so wary, cautious, and even hostile towards cultures outside of their own. They fear the unknown and only know the dangers that other cultures and countries can impose upon their society.

The goal I wish to accomplish by integrating intercultural education into the school systems would be to have most young Americans feel like they belong to the majority identity development stage but identify with the redefinition & reintegration aspect of that stage. I want them to be aware of the American culture they are integrated within but also understand the grievances of the past so that they can learn from them and move forward in a more culturally adept future.

By integrating intercultural education into public school syllabi, the American youth would gain a newfound knowledge, appreciation and respect for their surrounding cultures, as well as their own. They would recognize the truth behind America being the great melting pot that it is, and they would learn that it is because of that melting pot that their society is unique and, in a way, special. 

The installation does not require a total reformation of public school systems. All that they would need are an emphasized importance on foreign language classes, and a minor reshaping of their curriculum in order to focus more on the cultures of the countries and cultures that speak those languages. If we learn about new languages and their cultures in unison, then we will develop a greater appreciation for both of them on top of one another.

In a world that could be depicted as “ugly” because of the violence and scrutiny between various cultures due to the embedded hostility and misunderstanding of each other, the best way to combat this ugliness would be to embed knowledge and appreciation of other cultures into the future generations of the world. With the higher presence of intercultural education in American school systems, we will be able to install a sense of respect and admiration of the various cultures around the globe within the youth generation, and this has the potential to lead to a future where hate and intercultural miscommunication will be absent from our societies.

The American Life of a Dutch English Major

Solomon Oritz once said, “Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” For this reason, a woman named Lynn Van Beersum had chosen to leave her native land of Nijmegen, in The Netherlands to further herself on her journey to education in the United States of America.

Lynn Van Beersum came to Farmville, Virginia in order to expand her knowledge of the English language. Her aspiration in life is to become an English teacher and be able to teach English as a second language back in her home country. After a long and thorough interview with her, I have concluded that she had accomplished exactly that, and had a wonderful experience while doing so.

Lynn taught me and the friends she made during her time in Virginia that even in the most extreme and different circumstances, even with factors such as homesickness and language barriers, it’s possible to learn from your experiences and come out the other end happier than ever before.

Lynn spoke fondly of her native country. She spoke highly of her friend and family, the various customs that she was used to and her life at school. She spoke about how every day she would bike to the train station and take a 15-minute train into Nijmegen in order to attend classes at her university (whose name roughly translates to University of Nijmegen). She would go through her classes in her day to day life and be social with friends and classmates at shops in town after school or in between classes. Her life at home was peaceful, she lived with her mother and father where they would live a quaint life, watching Dutch reality TV shows and eating various meals that she spoke fondly and proudly of. Occasionally she would go out to visit her sister and her fiancé. She typically got to do this when she was coming home from her weekend job of being a youth’s gymnastics coach since her sister’s house was on the route she would take back home from work.

When I asked Van Beersum why she had come to the United States, she said “because it was obligated. It was a mandatory part of my education, i’m studying to become an ESL (English Second Language) teacher, and a semester abroad in the third year is obligated. I really badly wanted to go to America because I’ve never been before, and I saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience the college life in a new perspective”

The first thing that Van Beersum noticed about America was the lack of public transport compared to The Netherlands.  “Everybody either takes a bike or public transport to go anywhere. Not a lot of people even own their own cars where I’m from” she said when I picked her up from the airport after she was gazing out across the long line of personal vehicles in the arrivals pickup zone.

Although she experienced culture shock a variety of different times through the learning of American slang and colloquialisms and finding out that people unironically support Donald Trump, Lynn was very quick to assimilate herself into the culture here. She made friends very quickly and within her first two weeks had found a small group to attend a rock concert with, in Richmond.  Lynn had picked up on a lot of American slang and culture, and eventually started speaking English with a very slight southern accent, which was amusing to not only me but to her and her many friends around her.

When asking Lynn if she felt like she had felt like a member of American society and if she had found what she sought after here, which was an education in the English language and a positive American college experience, she simply answered “absolutely.”

Lynn Van Beersum came to America as a shy, slightly awkward Dutch girl with dreams of being proficient in the English language and finding a positive and uplifting American college experience. She left with so much more than that. Lynn left with so many friends that it was difficult for her to say goodbye to them all. She left feeling more independent than ever before, since this was the first time she had ever lived away from home. And finally, she left with the ability to speak English so fluently that she eventually ended up correcting mine and her classmate’s grammar.
If we all just take the time to appreciate and learn from the situations we’re placed into, I think we can all have experiences as positive as Lynn’s.

An Analysis of our Upstairs Neighbors

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An Analysis of our Upstairs Neighbors

Canada is one of the United States’ closest neighbors, however, often times we are ignorant as a society to the cultural differences of our upstairs neighbors and believe that we’re more similar than we actually are. Even though the United States and Canada are very culturally similar in many ways. However, despite these similarities, there are still many cultural differences, especially in American and Canadian college cultures. My interviewee is Bobbi Uhl, a Canadian freshman on the women’s golf team at Longwood University.

This topic is important and relevant because, as our closest and most similar neighbor, it is assumed that Canada is essentially the same as the United States in a wide variety of aspects. However, this is quite the opposite. To put this into perspective, think about how culture varies from state to state, or even within the state of Virginia! Culture in Northern Virginia is immensely different than culture in places such as Richmond or Norfolk. Northern Virginia and Richmond both reside within the same state, but if cultures can fluctuate and differentiate to that extent within the same state, imagine how much they differentiate between two different countries, regardless of how similar the two countries may be.

When I asked Uhl “What was the hardest part of coming to America and adjusting to life here?” compared to her previous life in Canada, she gave a plethora of responses and examples. She explained that the people in Virginia were very similar to the people that lived in her hometown of Erikson, Manitoba. This was because she Erikson was located in the countryside of Canada, much like how Farmville, Virginia is also located in the countryside, so it seems like the country subculture between the two countries is similar. “It feels like home here, so I don’t notice very many differences in terms of the people,” says Uhl. She did state, however, that the adjustment from the imperial to the metric system of measurements was quite difficult at first.

When I asked her to focus more on the differences she noticed in the two societies after explaining the definitions of “power distance” and “industriousness”, Uhl stated that she believed that Canada had a lower power distance than America, due to the fact that she felt like Canadians were not as reliant on their government or did not seem to be as “tightly strung” about it as Americans were. She also commented on the fact that she believed that Americans were definitely more industrious than Canadians. “Yeah, Canadians have a great work ethic and everything… but I feel like Americans are just a lot more… what’s the right word? Stressed… about their jobs, lives, futures, and so on.” Uhl believes that Canadians have a tendency to be more laid back than the average American.

After conducting my interview with 19-year-old Manitoba resident, Bobbi Uhl, along with additional research, I have come to the conclusion that while, on the surface, Canadian and American culture is very similar, we have a different concentration on power distance and industriousness. American culture seems to have a higher power distance and value industriousness more than Canadian culture. Additionally, during my research, I also found that a common pet peeve among Canadians was that they don’t like it when Americans, or people from any other countries, assume that they’re also from America. They recognize that our cultures are similar, but they don’t like being lumped in with a group of people that they are not a part of! For future reference, it is always a good rule of thumb to be able to spot the subtle differences, such as accents, mannerisms, and so on, before jumping to a conclusion!