How to cope with cultural dilema's in a globalized world?
For this challenge we had a task. We needed to read a text. The text was difficult to understand. I didn't understand anything of it, it seems like a puzzle text. But when we started the class we did first a brainstorm of what this text was al about and the teacher explained us. The puzzle was that you need to read some words in the other direction. For example in the title of the text was the word Nacirema but this word means Amerikan. So what the text tried to say is that we interpretate the world all the time on an other way then other people do. We think that our culture is so mutch better than other cultures and that we are smarter but that's not true. It's proved that the eskimo's are the martest.
We see it al from our own culture. We can understand out of culture: climate, language, habbits, trading, tradition, celebrations, food, landscape, religion, values,... . But do we always have it right? I don't think so. In every culture are positive and negative things. But it are the people who has conflicts and not the culture. Culture is made by people and not by nature.
But why is it important to beaware and knowlege about the concep of culture? Is it a challenge? Can you use it?
As a teacher i see culture as something you can learn from. Different cultures is more a chance to learn from each other. For example i did my practice abouth Christmas in a multicultural school and it's more difficult to prepare but it's so worth it. I linked the Christmashappening to what it can be for Moslims and jodisch people cause my children from practice had all a very different background. And know they know more abouth other people. So they can see more why people thinking like that caue they know something abouth there culture. It can make social contacts better. So it is usefulle when we talk in practice abouth human differences.
