BN day...

Every year BNCC cancels class and the whole lot of us do some kind of faculty development thing...

This year the theme was, in essence, awareness of other cultures.

BNCC did a survey of cultural awareness a while back and we had a person come in to interpret the survey for us.

While I was taking the survey, I had problems with many of the questions -- especially the questions that ask for level of agree ment with statements like, 'deep down, people are all the same'. That is a pretty difficult question for a philosopher to answer... when we are talking about cultural values, isn't it the case that across cultures people love their families and find religious faith to be important in their lives? I can't think of one culture that doesn't support/protect children and somehow encourage some version of family life. I also can't think of one culture in which religion doesn't play an important role -- even when Communism attempted to make religion unimportant, people still held religious beliefs OR they held the values of Communisim as others held diety-centered beliefs...

Of course, if I answered 'people are all the same', their interpretation of my answer is that I am in denial of cultural differences.... which is not at all the case. I can easily think that people hold similar values ACROSS cultures, and in that way people are more alike than they are different. Of course, those values may be expressed in very different ways from one culture to another and THAT is different -- duh... but, the level of the question assumes a superficial view of the world and other people and I simply don't take that view.

I guess why this makes me so angry is that a core concept in philosophy is looking for the similarities in people across cultures. As Kant theorized, these similiarites are what make us human -- if a behavior or value is held by one group and not another, the thing is a cultural artifact and not a necessarily human artifact. According to the survey, Kant would have been in denial or something... which may have been true, but not because of the answers he would have given to the survey.

When I teach either Intro to Philosophy or Ethics, we discuss the characteristics of human beings. We look for the ways people are similar with the hope of understanding one another better. I suppose I should be proud to say that my students would be equally troubled by the questions asked. I know that they (and I) am not someone who denies the existence of other cultures, or who even minimizes cultural differences. Of coure they are there, the world is a complex place and people have found a wide variety of ways to live their lives -- duh. But, also isn't it the case that people are people deep down and that under the skin that is culture, we have the same basic concerns, values, challenges and triumphs?

Another example comes to mind -- a friend of mine is working to save the world. She's a law student at a very prestigious law school and she's recently been involved in immigration law issues. It seems to me that she identifies with her clients. All they want to do is to be able to live a good life supporting their families. She understands these desires because she has them as well. She was born and raised in the US -- as far as I know she's never had a loved-one deported, she's never been incarcerated for an immigration violation and I don't think she's worked manual labor to send money home to a developing country. She still shares the same basic value of loving her family and is motivated by that basic value to fight for people from cultures very different from her own. When you get down to the core of what a person is, she is like her clients. If she put this down on the survey we took, she'd be classified as in denial of cultural differences.... which she really, really isn't.

Finally, their definition of 'culture' was quite vague. It seems to me that everyone lives in at least one, and probably several cultural groups. They had a long list of kinds of cultures including gender, regional, age, profession etc... IF that is the case, then wouldn't we ALL be experts at intercultural communication? According to their interpretation of their poor survey questions, we are not. Something's wrong here...

Heck, according to part of the talk today, I am bi-cultural because I live in BN state and Red State. Leaving aside the fact that there are two different sets of customs in those states, the overall cultural influences are more or less the same.

I'm sure the stuff I missed when I left early would have adjusted my mood... it was programming presented by BNCC instead of a consultant, and I find that usually the college does better programming for itself than it can pay for.

Also, to add to the day -- my nemisis from about a year ago plopped herself down at my table. She's the one who posted the controversial muslim cartoons prompting a public debate on the topic -- and who accidentally CCd me on an e-mail in which she called me a coward for not allowing her to present them during the debate. What really made me cringe was that she and I agreed on the program...