Special Lecuture

Today,(10/28), there was a special lecture given by professor Robert Courchêne, professor at University of Ottawa. It was about "Multicultural and Anti-racizm Education."

Firstly, Culture is a system for differentiating between in-group and out-group people. Also,culture is kind of like a museum. The reason is because culture changes. Than, what makes up culture? the things that makes up cultures are, Values and beliefs,Traditions and riturals, History, Stories and myths, Heroes and heroines, and Behaviour norms. However, what makes difference and problems between cultures? The things which makes difference between cultures are, Low and high context,Perceptions of time and space,Nature of hierarchies,Workplace, family, peer group, sport,Nature of change,Gender roles,Definitions of success,Notion of authority,Humour,Physical touch,Flirting vs. harassment,Silence,and The individual and the group.

So why do we need to know about multi-culture? Canada,forexample, there are three kinds of founding peoples,difference in cultural frameworks,change of immigration patterns,new sources of immigrants to Canada,existence of racism: - that is blatant and latent - and conflicting views on multiculturalism and racism.

There is also problems of stereotypes. Stereotype is , for example, kind of thinking like "All Japanese are good at math." even though they aren't.

Then how can we make up with these problem? One of the way is to read a simmilar story of each culture, and know about the dfferences in each story. For example, Cinderella.

Also, the Japanese Cinderella story is called "Hachi-Kazuki".