It sadly comes as no surprise to me that even a profession that is so mindful and aware of cultural differences is not free from cultural stereotypes. Kuma's article, "Problematizing Cultural Stereotypes in TESOL" addresses in particular the stereotypes that are associates with students from Asia and debunks them using sound research. An interesting point that Kuma makes is that "nearly 3 billion people belonging to cultures and contrasting and conflicting as the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and many others" are grouped into the same cultured identity of 'Asian.' there is a stark difference between not only all of these cultures, but Indian and Chinese--to group these two extremely different cultures into one group is absolutely ludicrous.
What first struck me about this article was the mention of the first stereotype that is attributed to students from Asia: their obedience to authority. Surely is is a stereotype that we have all heard and believed, not interpreting it in an offensive way but nonetheless perpetuating something that Kuma showcases as being false. My mind went back to an article that we read in this very class: "Potential cultural resistance to pedagogical imports: The case of communicative language teaching in China." In this article, Hu explains the problems that teachers/classrooms trying to incorporate CLT may face. Here is an exceprt of what I said in my blog entry about the article:
"Finally, Chinese culture and customs play a big role in their unwillingness to use a communicative approach in the classroom. A communicative method, by definition, is opposed to teacher dominance--and education culture in China is not like that--they teachers are viewed as the supreme educator. "Students are expected to respect and not to challenge their teachers" (Hu 98)."
I find it interesting that in this class we were asked to read this article when we would later read another article that seems to blatantly negate and spurn the claims made. However, I do not think it so horrible: as Kuma mentions at the end of his article, "We as TESOL professionals largely deal with the unknown and unmanageable. In our attempt to deal with the complexity of our task, we fall for simple, sometimes simplistic, solutions" (Kuma 716). I do not find it hugely problematic that we have read conflicting research because it is important for us not only as TESOL professionals but as scholars of any kind to realize that there are conflicting views and research and be critical of each side.
(To be continued...)
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