WEEK 7 - CULTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY
German and Italians are different. Of course, they are. However,
it doesn’t matter when we are fallen in love. Right? Yep! I had my first
embarrassment and sadness in one month of marriage. My husband’s family and
mine were in our apartment to have lunch with us that Sunday. After talking to
each other a lot, we were ready to have our snack at four o’clock. I set the
table exactly what my mom used to do. Suddenly, my husband stood up, opened the
drawer, and took several table knives, one for each person at the table. I was
so embarrassed. Why did he do that? I said nothing at that moment, but
everything was a mess in my mind. At night, I asked him why he did that. He,
very surprised, looked at me and said: “Honey, you put only one table knife,
but everybody needed one. In my family, we used to have a knife for each
person”. Cutting a long story short, I said to him in tears. “In my family
home, we used only one table knife, not one for each person.” My husband
insulted my family culture, but in his innocence, he only used his family
culture.
See, culture is something personal. According to Mr. [1] Ivers, “Culture
can have a big effect on your psychology, [and] (…) in all cultures, they have
their things that make a real man, a real woman, and it’s common to have shame
if you don’t live up to those things.” Researching a little bit more, I
read on the [2] American
Psychological Association that ‘culture’ means the distinctive customs,
values, beliefs, knowledge, art, and language of a society or a community
passed on from generation to generation, and they are the basis for everyday
behaviors and practices. Wow! It’s something so serious! Before studying
culture and psychology, I was unable to understand Brazilian Indian culture.
So, I researched the Indian culture, and I learned that men’s responsibilities
are to hunt and fish, build their ‘ocas’ houses, prepare the soil for
agriculture, make canoes and produce the work tools. The women’s responsibilities
are to collect fruits and roots, prepare the food, take care of the children,
make ceramic objects, nets, and baskets. From now on, when I see Indian women
with their children sitting on the sidewalks selling products, I know that they
are doing their role according to their culture.
We really don’t know people’s culture. So, I will be more
careful about being nonjudgmental. My sister-in-law is a descendant of
Japanese. When she married my husband’s brother, she was the only one Japanese
woman in the city. We had to learn her way of living because it was different
from ours. My husband’s sister married a Peruvian man and we had to learn his
way of living too. I think we all were involved in stereotype threats in a
diverse family. Don’t you think? German, Brazilian, Japanese, and Peruvian
cultures mixed, but everybody respected each other. But what is a stereotype
threat? It is the feeling you are at
risk because of your culture or social group. Mr. Ivers gave us some examples
of stereotype threats: Women are bad at math. Who said that? White
males feel inferior to black males athletically. Really? In Brazil, for
example, some men think that only women must clean the house. I don't believe
it! “All races have the tendency to live up or down to their cultural
expectations”, said Ivers.
You might be thinking about how the event of table knives finished. Well, I accepted my husband's culture, and there are table knives for each person every day. His culture became my culture. Not all cultures will become yours! Remember, ESL teachers need to know their students for not applying activities that will shame them due to their culture.
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