The C word

Culture?  "Let's have a culture Friday!" "Man, you are so culture." "What are we doing this weekend? No that culture s***!" "That's the culture here."  So loaded, and when we are encouraged to include it in language teaching, what a lot of baggage!  I'm sure we have all done explicit lessons like Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, origami, etc.  At the last Conference, presenters spoke about culture as being explicit, and a few mentioned it as a social behavior we adopt.  What I gathered from the presenters is that the teaching of culture should permeate through our daily language class.  It should support and not separate itself from the language.  Now that's the language teacher talking...

It made me look back at my year's teaching at Cross.  Did I teach them CULTURE?  I brought in Chinese calligraphy during the school supplies unit.  I brought in the preparation of Chong Yang Gao during the Chong Yang celebration.  My students had to read and talk about holiday events.  Did I teach culture???  My many-time senior Oudi said to me after coming back from a 2-week suspension, "Dailaoshi, can we just learn about what people really do?  I mean, the animals, the sports, they are ok, but they are not interesting."  Considering Oudi goes on suspension on a monthly basis, I don't have him around enough to learn any unit in its entirety, and since he's out in the 'real world' a lot of the times, these things really cannot interest him.  Do such students need more 'culture days', arts and crafts, food preparation?  While they may be into making Chinese pastries, writing with Chinese brushes and reading about shocking facts about some Chinese traditions, are we teaching them what we set out to teach them?  the language?

Many kids are excited about the discussion of whether or not Chinese people really eat dog meat.  Though that usually generates classroom excitement, I never indulge in this type of conversation, but I do tell them that I don't eat dog meat personally.  But using this as a teaching moment, I asked them how they would call animal meats they actually eat, like cows, sheep, pigs and chicken.  They eat beef but not cow meat.  They eat lamb but not baby sheep meat.  The list goes on.  I even shared my experience of eating snake meat once when I was little.  The kids are more impressed than grossed out a this point.  What is the message here?  Chinese people are not shy about recognizing that they are eating animals, so we call them by what they are.  It was great fun for everybody.  Did we learn culture?  Did we learn a little more about language usage?  I think so.