Today we had our second lesson about Multicultural Environment. We started by asking our own class' students about their home countries. It's quite extraordinary to see how things might differentiate between countries all over the world, with things you don't necessarily even think of before someone mentions that. A good example of this was regarding Chinese culture and their use of colours. Red is the colour for good luck, black and white were used in the matter of death.
If I reflect that in the other cultures I may know, I can tell that black is a colour used in alot of other cultures to represent death. Instead of red, the Irish people have a full day (St. Patrick's day) dedicated to green.
Going forward with the lesson, we took a look at this so called culture onion. It was supposed to represent some layers of culture which might affect an individual's identity. Later on we added some layers to the onion, for example religion, language, income and history.
With a few other visual examples about cultures (the "Culture Iceberg" and the "Pyramid") we came into the conclusion that there's a lot more than the surface shows. Some cultural behaviour you may notice on the first visit, others might take months, if not years to discover.
This lesson made me wonder some important symbols to me. I woulnd't necessarily know what to answer on that, I don't feel like I have any special ones. I do know of some, like the peace sign, but nothing seems to really be close to my heart. I feel like some people could more likely represent what is important to me. One of these people was my late grandmother. She was a woman who taught me courage, self love, caring about others. I don't think she ever knew she was doing that, but now that I've thought about her after her passing away, I can see there were many lessons about life.
Speaking about her, I don't have too many rituals in life, but one was always spending the Christmas with her and the rest of my closest family. I still have that ritual and hopefully will continue on having that.
The things my grandmother halfway accidentally taught me are also one of the most important values in my life. How to treat other people and how to let people treat you. I have also learned something from my parents and friends, for example that you don't need to be overly mean, but you need to stand your ground at times.
This lesson made me wonder some important symbols to me. I woulnd't necessarily know what to answer on that, I don't feel like I have any special ones. I do know of some, like the peace sign, but nothing seems to really be close to my heart. I feel like some people could more likely represent what is important to me. One of these people was my late grandmother. She was a woman who taught me courage, self love, caring about others. I don't think she ever knew she was doing that, but now that I've thought about her after her passing away, I can see there were many lessons about life.
Speaking about her, I don't have too many rituals in life, but one was always spending the Christmas with her and the rest of my closest family. I still have that ritual and hopefully will continue on having that.
The things my grandmother halfway accidentally taught me are also one of the most important values in my life. How to treat other people and how to let people treat you. I have also learned something from my parents and friends, for example that you don't need to be overly mean, but you need to stand your ground at times.
All this put me through some deeper thinking about the few key things to put in my own "cultural onion" and this is what I came up with:
