Blog 5

Holiday talks about the construction of Othering. Holliday talks about how our sense of the Other prevents us from truly communicating with other students. Sometimes, we interpret someone not based on their action but based on what we believe they should act and be. A.2.1 talks about the Smith family and how John interpreted Mrs. Smith’s actions as her just being Amish. Moreover, if she did something un-Amish-like, he’d just chalk to her being secularized. A.2.2 talks about the negotiation of culture and dealing with cultural differences. A.2.3 talks about the power play that exists in different cultures. This is illustrated through Jeremy and Jabu’s interactions. This is shown when Jeremy thought that he knows what Jabu’s culture is like. “Cultural Assimilation and Its Delusions” defines what is assimilation and what are its limitations. Assimilation includes “linguistic assimilation…[an expectation for immigrants] to discard their home language and start learning and using English” (Kuma 78). With this way of thinking, it seems like immigrant students will more likely lose their mother tongue. The nativist notion of assimilation goes against recent findings that “show that maintenance of the mother tongue among immigrant children can in fact facilitate their successful learning of the target language” (Kuma 93).

“Cultural Stereotypes” discusses three specific stereotypes that are held about Asian students. These stereotypes are that they are passive in class, they lack critical thinking and they obey authority (Kuma 710). From what I recall during my school years in the Philippines, there really wasn’t much blind acceptance to authority. I think part of the reason why we didn’t question our teachers was because we had to show respect to our elders. Talking back to them was never a line that we could cross. It simply was part of our culture. It’s not to say that we always obeyed and never questioned. We did. My classmates and I certainly never questioned our teachers in their presence, but we didn’t agree to everything they said. There were times when we couldn’t help but sometimes disparage our teachers especially when we didn’t agree with their opinions, but that was always done when the teacher wasn’t in the room. The classroom context wasn’t that different from any American classrooms except for one thing—our classmates have no compunction whatsoever in saying that what our classmates has said is wrong. Almost all my teachers have said, one time or another, that we should always respect each other. When I was in the Philippines, however, we were free to make fun of the other especially when their comments are so off the mark. That, more than obedience, prevented me at least from participating in a subject I wasn’t comfortable with. This reflects what Liu has said, “we need to take into account, besides cultural beliefs, factors such as ‘the relevance of the students’ familiarity with the subject, the students’ motivation to participate, the students’ anxiety and tolerance of risk-taking and their speaking abilities and communicative competence” (Kuma 712).