This was our second lesson of "Globalization and Professional change". We talked about " Presenting yourself depends on the culture", " Assimilation and Accomodation", "Culture Shock" and " The known unknownsetting".
In the first part of the lesson, our teacher " Marcus" presented himself in different ways. Then it was our turn, we had to make pairs, so that we could present ourselves.
Peer exercise:
How do you present yourself in your culture?
We are polite, we say our First and Last name. We present ourself by only saying the important things and we think about the aspects that might influence our relationship with that new person. With this, i mean that we think about what we say.
Besides your name, what is self- evident in the way you present yourself in your culture?
It depends on the situation.
=> Formal: We shake hands and we call the other person sir or madame, or we call them by their last name.
=> Friends: We give kisses on the cheek, shake hands and we give "quick" hugs.
Why is it self evident?
It's a habit, you just act instead of thinking about the situation. It's integrated in your life.
We also discussed about the differences of presenting yourself between the different countries. Our conclusion was the following: German people are more formal, Spanish people are a lot more open and spontanous, the Belgian people are something between the Spanish and the Germans, and Danish people are more social.
But i noticed that Spanish people have more then one name. Belgian people just have 2 names because we take our father's name as our last name and the parents think of a first name. So we concluded that there are a lot of differences between culture.
We talked about Assimilation, Accomodation and Culture shock. Assimilation means that you expand your cognitive schemes with additional information. Accomodation means that you totally change your view about a certain culture when you learn new information. Culture Shock means that you're totally shocked about a certain culture. You're seeing things that are unfamilliar.
After defining the different terms. We continued the lesson with a group exercise:
Everybody had to think about a positive or negative " Culture Shock" that we've already experienced on our arrival. Everyone had to talk about their experience and they had to link their " Culture Shock" to another "Culture Shock" , so that we could create a spider web.
Can we avoid " Culture Shock" ?
I believe that we can't avoid " Culture Shock". You may know a lot about a different culture, but if you see that culture in real life and you get the chance to experience it yourself, you'll get shocked bacause it's still a culture that you're unfamilliar with. The only thing you can do, is to prepare yourself, as good as possible.
The know unknown setting
We discussed the familiar and unfamiliar things between different kinds of classrooms.
Laos:
=> Familiar: blackboard, chairs and tables, presentations of the kids, a teacher, ...
=> Unfamilliar: a dog, open building, teacher wears flip flops, natural light, ...
Denmark:
=> Familiar: artificial light, big groups, didactical material, ...
=> Unfamiliar: less formal, different cultures,...
Eritrea:
=> Familiar: tightly packed books, mixed gender, ...
=> Unfamilliar: no chairs, no real walls, ...
Tasks:
1) What tools can we use to become open- minded?
=> We can get a lot of information by just reading, books, newspapers, ... and by searching the internet.
=> When you have different cultures in your class, you can ask them a lot of questions, to know something more about their culture, or let them present their culture. A good idea is preparing an international evening/ day so that all the children get the chance to get to know another culture.
=> Don't think to narrow. You have to take into account that all cultures have familiar and unfamiliar aspects. Have respect for other cultures.
2) What kind of questions can you ask in order to reach understanding of a known- unknown situation?
Eritrea:
- Is there a blackboard?
- Do all kids have the same age?
- Does everyone has their own stuff?
- When do the kids have school?
- Do the kids have group work?
Denmark:
- Why is everyone discussing?
- Where is the teacher?
- Why do they need so much media?
- Why is everyone looking at different directions?
- Why do they put their hands up ?
- Why do they use a lot of furniture, buildings and artificial light?
Laos:
- Is it common to have animals in the classroom?
- Do you have educated teachers?
- What does a normal school day look like?
Reflection:
I was actually surprised of the fact that the way of presenting yourself is so different in other cultures. We are normally so alike with all of the Europeans but still everyone is trying to hold on to their "cultural roots" so that they can seperate theirselfs from other Europeans. My opinion about "Culture schock" is that you can't avoid it, even if you're really prepared on the " new culture", there will always be some things that you won't accept because we are mainly focused on our way of living so it's difficult to accept the other culture. I found it very interesting to see different classrooms in different countries. There are so many things we're not used to see in a classroom. Even if you think that some things are so obvious to have in your class, there are classes who don't own those obvious things. For example: books, chairs, tables, closets, ...
