Thursday, May 28, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"

The Letter 'P'...



Primal- indigenous for me
Hinduism for you 
Islam, Judaism, Christianity
And Buddhism too

Perhaps we are all different, still all can agree that we: 
  • believe in peace
  • feel shy when speaking in public
  • know that purple is a colour 
  • believe we should keep a promise
  • know the name of our principal 
  • try our best to be positive
  • love to play
  • enjoy painting during art class
  • want to protect our environment 
  • know how to print the letter P

Buddhism has been known to "the West" for many centuries, with stronger contacts establishing only since the 19th century. But even then, knowledge of Buddhism was largely confined to a small elite until the 1960s when it started to become more popular. Today several hundred thousand "Westerners" have adopted Buddhism in one or other of its different forms, and "many more quietly incorporate Buddhist practices on to their daily lives (Bodhi, 2000)...

But if this become true, if there is a revival in the West, what would Buddhism look like in the future? Or asked differently: How can Western Buddhism be characterized? The major feature is the existence of "partly syncretistic, partly innovative attempts to create new styles of Buddhist practice conformable to the Western temperament" (Bodhi, 2000) with the borders of the different schools being blurred. One American bhikkhuni describes the situation as follows: 

All the different traditions are going and most people don't separate. (...) they don't think 'Oh, are you the good kind or are you the bad kind'. Most Westerners think 'Oh you are Buddhist and so you can teach me something about Buddhism.' So a lot of information is starting  to mix in the west. 

Pfaff-Czarnecka, Joanna

Friday, May 22, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"

The Letter 'O'...



Our governments can be different in many ways
Communism, socialism, conservatism, and liberalism too
Let's get together and talk it through
Perhaps we'll create our own world view

Oh we know we are different, still all can agree that we: 
  • love to play outside
  • know that the earth orbits the sun
  • need oxygen
  • try to keep an open-mind
  • are proud when our country goes to the Olympics
  • know how to get to the school office
  • grow old
  • know not to say obscene things
  • observe very carefully when the teacher is teaching
  • know how to print the letter O

We are seducing ourselves with a delusional idiom of individualism. To accommodate global capital we are drawn to capital bodies, intelligence, sexuality and possessions. Once again, we are tempted to reject the unemployed, the welfare poor, immigrants and refugees as moral aliens whose fates lay no claim upon our own. We fancy that we can set up new walls between the rich and the poor, between personal and civic life, between today's enjoyment and tomorrow's misery that will fall upon children and youth who are not our own. In the name of an absent capital god we are being asked to break the civic covenant, to fragment our communities, to exit from the city in order to reconnect in an abstractive, vertical union with our global other in the world's finance, film and fashion houses. Meanwhile, the sweatshops, the refugee camps and the prisons do not close; exploitation and violation do not cease; hunger does not abate. We are asked to close our minds, to harden our hearts and not to cry out.

O'Neill, John

Friday, May 15, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"

The Letter 'N'...



Names, they vary in many ways
But in the end they tell you 'who'
Ng and Venkatasubramanian
Just to name two

Now it's easy to see that we are different, yet all can agree that we: 
  • know how to print numbers
  • have names
  • know the consequences of a nuclear bomb
  • feel a little nervous before a test
  • need love and compassion
  • have a navel
  • like taking a nap when we feel sleepy
  • have a nationality
  • try to keep our school desks tidy and neat
  • know how to print the letter N

... you may well think that standing up against the daily indignities (of racism) is simple; and you would be quite right. It takes so little action on your part to interrupt the daily indignities. As more people do so, enormous change will begin to take place for those for whom those little bits of injustice become a daily, living hell. So many of us have wanted to help, hut have wondered how one person could really make a difference in ending racism. The good news is that in simply interrupting the daily indignities, you contributing significantly to that goal ...

A corresponding truth is that we often fail to do the transformative work (that is to transform our world of justice) because we get stuck in our need for a certain self-image the need to avoid seeing ourselves as bad so that we do not feel badly about ourselves. That "self-image need" often prevents us from becoming the shining examples of love that we want to and can be. It is time, very simply, to get out of ourselves and get into the world.

Nile, Lauren and Jack Straton

Friday, May 8, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"

The Letter 'M'...



Metical, euro, rial, frane
Tughrik, pound, krona, rupee
The world has almost 200 currencies
And during show-and-tell they're fun to see


Many of us are very different, but still we all: 
  • enjoy beautiful music
  • know the importance of medicine
  • like getting a letter in the mail
  • try to be polite and show our manners
  • like wearing a mask in drama
  • mature with each passing day
  • recognize our class as a mosaic of cultures
  • enjoy the world of magic
  • like to make new friends
  • know how to print the letter M

The power of encountering diverse views of reality through shared stories remains in today's world but it is discovered in a different setting. A fascinating aspect is that not only has the context changed it has also expanded. Today, readers encounter cultures and people they rarely have the opportunity to meet face-to-face (Miller & McCaskill, 1993; Rosenblatt, 1938). Gutenberg's printing press changed the communication settings of the world. People can now encounter diverse perspectives simply by accessing what is now a vast repertoire of books, in a range of media from vellum to pixels on a computer screen.

Through print, the reader is drawn into new worlds where characters give each of us a new lens to use in viewing reality. Characters for whom we feel empathy can generate the development of broader perspectives of our worlds, including the recognition that nor everyone perceives in precisely the same way. Such a recognition could lead the reader to an epiphany of self-discovery grounded in the understanding of just how one's own culture has shaped and molded one's attitudes, values and beliefs (Carlson, 1992; Hansen-Krening, 1992). From this initial awareness of self, the process of ethnic identity development is sparked (Christensen, 1989; Helms, 1993; Sue & Morishima, 1982; Uba, 1994).

Mizokawa, Donald, Nancy Hansen-Krening and Zhongming Wu