Week 6

I agree with Kubota’s main points when she says, “the prevalent view on culture in teaching ESL reflects teachers’ good intentions to respect cultural difference rather than denying it altogether. Nonetheless, this liberal view of cultural difference tends to fall into cultural relativism, essentializing cultures, and creating a dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (Kubota 12). When you essentialize culture, not only do you run the risk of sounding condescending but you also run the risk of alienating the students you actually want to teach. However, I don’t know whether stereotypes are intrinsically bad. I think of them as crutches you have to use in order to support your body, but there’s a point where you don’t need those crutches anymore. Stereotypes may be like crutches you need to use in an unfamiliar situation but once you become familiar with the situation and with the students, you have to let go of those stereotypes and not let them cloud your judgment about people.

I also agree with Kubota’s statement that, “when two people from different cultures meet, misunderstanding tends to occur, she said, because we tend to judge the other person with our own cultural frame of reference. However, neither culture is right or wrong or good or bad. They are just different” (13). I understand while some people might do what Barbara did. Sometimes, it’s easier and more convenient to let our stereotypes handle unfamiliar situations such as finding for the first time that you have ELLs in your class. As I’ve alluded before, the reason is because those stereotypes make the unfamiliar somehow familiar. When we first meet the unknown, the only tool that we have is our own cultural reference. But we shouldn’t get to the point where we create an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality. And one of those ways to prevent this is by asking the students, listening to what they have to say, and seeing from their perspectives. In Kubota, Barbara does this by asking “more critical questions about students’ perceptions about culture…responding to a student’s comment that English communications is more direct and assertive than communication in Asian languages, [and] ask whether this perceived characteristic of English applies to all social situations and all people” (Kubota 14). With this kind of method, Barbara not only learned from her students but she also allowed the students to use their own cultural banks. In this, Kubota portrayed a symbiotic relationship which should be one of the ideal dynamics in teaching.