fish outta water/shaken and stirred please!

Perhaps the best way to become aware of or move beyond cultural assumptions is to immerse yourself in another culture. At times living in a new environment can be uncomfortable, puzzling, or downright frustrating, but it sure helps you realize how easily you may take your community's ways of doing things for granted because 'that's just how things are done'. It’s as they say: "It would hardly be the fish who discovered the existence of water”. It may take a shuddering land on a sandy shore to fully appreciate the oxygenating liquid that once poured through your gills, but, if you’re adaptable, you may grow legs and hop on your merry way, or, at least, gain a different perspective of the pond you once called home… Perhaps there’s some rank pollution there that you’re healthier away from, at least for a while.

I think part of the key to successful cultural adaptation is to suspend judgments when you first arrive… both of the new culture, and of your own! Piece of cake right?! ‘Your’ way is not inherently right or wrong, and neither are the new ways you’re being exposed to… they’re just different. This kind of approach makes it easier to move beyond your own culture’s assumptions/values/constructs and yet, not be compelled to fully embrace the new one either. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing deal. If you can suspend judgments long enough to open to curiosity and understanding, you are likely to find ways of observing and participating in aspects of the new culture in a comfortable stretch between new and old. The longer you're there, the more you can serve as a bridge between the two… helping to build mutual understanding for those on each 'side' of the cultural divide.

I'm reading an incredible book right now called The Cultural Nature of Human Development by Barbara Rogoff, and it has been absolutely pivotal for me in terms of how I see cultural diversity, child rearing, education, community development and participation, religion, the list goes on and on! Although I'm reading this anthropological gem for work, I feel the timing couldn't be better on a personal level as well as I navigate a new environment again, and a new job.

At work, this book lays an important theoretical foundation for some of the primary social research we're about to do. We're looking at how children are learning from the formal work they are performing in four technical trades: automotive mechanics, carpentry, textiles/carpet-making and (likely) electronics. Through visits to micro-enterprises and interviews with business owners (who have gone through an informal apprenticeship process to get to where they are now), working children/youth, and educators/NGO staff involved in vocational training programs, we are assessing three things:

1. What children are learning through work (technical, business and life skills)
2. How they are learning it (who teaches, pedagogical approaches used, and how knowledge/responsibility is cultivated over time)
3. Some of the best methods to prepare working children for their careers and life, and what (if any) holes emerge in their current education through work
   

Rogoff's work is relevant in that she suggests that the Western education system (though being broadly replicated now) is one among many approaches to learning, and that learning by guided observation and hands on context-related experience (as is common in our micro-enterprises) can be very effective methods! Much of what she does throughout the book is debunk the normalcy of Western approaches to human development, so it helps the western reader to begin conceptualizing the water you've been obliviously floating in. I'll expand on our research and perhaps her work in the coming weeks but for now, I'll leave you with a great quote Rogoff uses in her discussion of cultural adaptation:

“The best part of comparative work in another culture [is] the chance to be shaken by it and the experience of struggling to understand it.” S. Goldberg

Here's to life long learning!