Happy New Year

Thank you again for your comment posts. I think that your insight along with the excellent exhibition presentations this week, many people had a chance to learn new things about culture and communication, and maybe had fun doing it too. I am very pleased with your work, and the visiting teachers and guests also had very positive things to say. Well done.

For this blog entry, I would appreciate your thoughts and reflections on the CCC exhibition:

Did you enjoy doing the exhibition? What kind of challenging questions did you need to answer? What did you learn from it?

The blog will take a short break until we come back from the holiday. But for CCC students, I hope that you see the heavy reading coming up when you return. The next half of the semester will be expanding out to think more about international trends that are affecting cross cultural communication. Authors, Mok and Kim, talk about "internationalization" and how to blend different cultural traditions in an unavoidably globalized world. Authors, Tan and McKay, talk about English as an "International Language," and about the difficulties for culture to translate through a universal medium.

I hope students will find time over their holiday break to flip through these pages. See you next year. Aj. M

"For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice." T. S. Eliot

The Beauty of Uncertainty

Thank you for the thoughtful discussion about the Thai smile last week. It seems that it has many functions, which explains why one sees it so often in this culture. It helps us to understand a little bit more about why we are.

This next unit is aimed to consider cultural difference and tolerance. This is the central issue of cross cultural communication. One person talking is not communication. In order for communication, another must be listening and participating. Therefore, one must extend a level of tolerance and open-mindedness to another, to give the Other the time and respect to express themselves and their world views. If communication is effective, then a new possibility for living together will emerge.

However, communication must start with myself: I am a man. I am healthy and able. I am not poor. I am white. I am heterosexual. I am educated.

I am lucky. I don't know why, but my culture has decided that all of my identities are either good, right, or powerful. I did not choose these identities. I was born into a good family and into a strong culture that has given me the gifts that I have in my life. These gifts are not my rights. They are the privileges that culture gives to me, and does not give to others.

Culture can be unfair and intolerant. Cultures often do not listen to the Other and continue to teach people what it believes to be good, right, or powerful, and the resulting arguments are usually over race, gender, politics, and religion.

Thai protesters wear red and yellow shirts and shout at each other, but no one listens. Unidentified men bomb hotel rooms in Mumbai, and no one talks. There are conflicts, big and small, happening everywhere and everyday, simply because of intolerance and miscommunication.

If we take off our red and yellow shirts, there will be no differences to argue about.

There is no specific question this week. I appreciate your thoughts and reflections. Happy Father's Day. Aj. M

"Our greatest strength as a human race is our ability to acknowledge our differences, our greatest weakness is our failure to embrace them." Judith Henderson