4. February 2020
Week 5: Cultural Paradigms

I looked up the word for paradigms and the Icelandic interpretation is your idea of what something is. This week we are learning how culture can affect how we understand things in life. We all come from some kind of culture. It can be the culture in your family, neighborhood, church or even school. I have learned through the years that different cultural beliefs or thinking can be good and bad. In Icelandic culture people are blunt when they are talking to people. If you ask an Icelander what they think about something be ready for a blunt answer, whether you like the answer or not does not matter. I have also learned being a Latter-day Saint to respect other people's cultures. If I am not sure about why they do certain things in their culture, I ask if it's alright that I ask a question about what they are doing. If they say yes, then I will ask, if they no then I will not ask.

There was a quote from Professor Ivers in a video I watched and he said "Culture creates false needs and false problems" https://video.byui.edu/media/0_9w0czg1f . This quote made me think of how people might bully or mistreat others and say it's their culture. Perhaps people make up their own ideas what culture is and hide behind it. This often happens in religions and people mistreat one another because they say their religions says they can. Then you meet people from the same religion and they say that is not their religion, but more of a cultural thing.

When you teach English to newcomers to the country there are sometimes misunderstanding that happen in the classroom. This usually happens because the learners come from different cultures. I think these misunderstandings can be resolved before they happen in the classroom. The teacher can ask the learners in the class what are some of the things that seemed strange to them or rude when they came to America. The teacher can write key words on the board and the learners can discuss how they dealt with the issues and what they think of it now.

It's important the teacher realizes that people come from different cultures and belief systems. The teacher can research what it appropriate in the learners cultures. I lived in England around many Muslims and I learned that Muslim men did not shake hands with women who are not their relatives. I did not know that, but once I did I learned to respect that.

Cultural differences should not matter to what we think of people, unless perhaps it leads to oppression of others. I worked with youth in America and one was a Native American and would never look me in the eye. I wondered why he did that and learned later that in his tribe the younger ones did not look in the eyes of the adult people. To them that was a show of respect not to do that. I accepted that and did not have problems with it and then later when this youth became an adult he visited me and looked me in the eyes.