Culture Paradigms - My thoughts

I recently watched a Ted Talk from Delali Bright. She shares her personal story about growing up in West Africa. She talks about how the cultural paradigms of her childhood affected how she felt about herself as a person. Then how she suffered a shift when she moved to the United States later in life. Because of her experiences, she is a self-image activist. She feels that people should not be made to feel less because they do not fit into the physical appearance paradigms of their country. Her talk is really interesting and the video is available to view here.

So what can we learn from this experience? I'm sure many people suffer from the same kind of struggles. If you look back into history you can see the same kind of situations. Once it was considered ugly to have suntanned skin as it meant you had to work outside for a living. If you were pale, you were beautiful. Now it's considered beautiful to have a 'healthy' glow. 

How do cultural paradigms affect our everyday lives? Something that affects everyone is education. When my kids were younger my daughter asked to be homeschooled. We looked into it and decided to go this way for a while. Later we switched to a virtual charter school that we love. However, even with these choices, we could see that some people had a paradigm when it came to the style of education we had/have chosen. We were judged on the 'idea' that the term 'homeschool' or 'virtual school' gave them.

I immigrated to the United States from the United Kingdom many years ago but there are a lot of cultural differences between the two countries. However, since teaching ESL I have also noticed many more. So what happens when we do business with or teach people from different cultures. It's super important not to offend or take offense, cultural paradigms can lead to this kind of situation especially in the classroom.

The Mexican writer and diplomat Carlos Fuentes said, "We shall know each other or we shall exterminate each other".

When we think about this statement it seems extreme but I have come to realize that sometimes when we think differently to someone else we see them as a threat. Differences are seen as negative. In the ESL classroom, we need to try and change this way of thinking. Instead of shying away from differences we need to embrace them. I think one thing we can do is to not jump to conclusions and give people the benefit of the doubt. We also need to learn about each other and where they come from.

 I watched a clip of a documentary from the National Geographic about Cultural differences. I shared a little of the video below. 

It's interesting looking at cultural paradigms from another point of view. Things that we take for granted or consider 'normal' are completely alien and strange. We definitely need to remember that we are all children of God and therefore all equal in his eyes. Different is not bad and we can all learn from each other and be introduced to new ways to look at things.

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