Video: Mockingbird don't sing

For my second videopost, I picked a short fragment out of the film 'Mockingbird don't sing'

It's an American indie film released in 2001, and is based on a true story.
Katie, the main character, was imprisoned in her room from the age of 1, until she was released when she was 13 years old. Being in social isolation during her whole life, she has little or no experience in human care, social behaviour and language.
In the film, we follow the process where Doctors and professors try to help her to get into society again.

Obviously, I can't post the whole film because of copyright reasons, but I think the following scene is quite interesting to link to the course material.
We see how Katie is eating with 2 doctors, and suddenly another woman appears and gives Katie a little present. The doctors are surprised to see that the woman knows what Katie wants. The woman states that Katie made it clear to her, although not with words.
It's a good example to see that even someone who doesn't know the correct language, still finds ways to express himself. Learning the language itself is a process that follows by doing other things.

Certainly check the whole film out. It's quite nice and differs from the usual Hollywood crap that gets thrown at us.
IMDB: Mockingbird Don't Sing

A post about proper lingo and de use o' accents!

Yous see, wire telegraph is a kind o' a dead, dead long moggy. yous pull 'is tail in nicked york and 'is barnet is meow'n in los angeles. do yous cotton ed this? and didgie operates exactly de same way: yous send signals e'yer, dee receive dem thuz. de only difference is dat thuz is nah moggy.

The quote above here, try to read it out loud. Sounds stupid, eh?
Did you understand what you were saying? Is it perhaps written by a little kid who doesn't know the language very well? A person who didn't speak English tried to write this?

What you were reading is a quote by Albert Einstein, arguably on of the most intelligent persons ever, but it's translated to Scouse, one of the strongest British dialects from the Merseyside area. While it may sound stupid at first, the content isn't altered in any way.
We tend to think people who speak with a strong accent are often dumb and stupid, but I don't agree at all with this and I thought the discussion we had about this in classroom last week was very interesting.

During my last internship, I was in a class and one of the students was a foreigner, who moved to Belgium a couple of years ago. Already on the first time when I came to observe the class, their teacher came to me and said this guy, I'm gonna call him Marc in this post, was really dumb, and required a lot of attention. But during the lessons, I noticed the teacher was very punctual on language, and often refused to listen to answers by students if they didn't express themselves in proper Dutch.
Marc never asked to give any answers, and was very quiet in the classroom. It looked like he didn't know what he was doing. Also, his written answers on a test were often very short and lacked any details.
During the lessons I had to give in that group myself, I planned some tasks which they had to do in small groups, and guess what!!? Marc was very active and he contributed a lot to the group he was working with. I observed him and his group a lot and, although lots of the things he said contained grammatical errors, the contents of the things he said were very useful for his group. At the same time, some other members of his group helped him out expressing what he said in proper Dutch.
After this lesson, I had a little chat with the teacher and said I thought Marc did really well and was a good student. She didn't knew what to answer...

This example leans closely to the contents of the text about Lee we saw last week, and I think it also shows that we shouldn't judge someone purely based on his ability to express himself in a specific language. The contents are the main part, the rest will follow.

Oh yeah, by the way. The translation of the quote at the beginning of this post is the following:

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

Acceptance!

During the Easter holiday, I spent two weeks in Canada. A delayed flight and a huge jet-lag prevented me to attend the class the following Monday. So instead of writing about the contents of that class, Ms. Kelly asked me to write something about those two weeks, linked to the course obviously.

A few weeks before, we had some discussions in the classroom about Merkel saying the multicultural society has failed. Canada is the contrary and universally known as one of the most multicultural, successful, societies. But why?

The country counts a very high number of immigrants and people of different ethnic origins. With the most recent census, approximately 32% of the citizens said their ethnic origin is Canadian. That's only a third of the total population! Also worth mentioning is that Canada houses around 10 percent of the refugees worldwide. With these numbers, we can state that even a born and bred Canadian is a minority in his own country.

As a result of this, people seem to accept diversity, and even see it as a typical thing for their country. Also the government is very pluralistic, with one of it's most important realizations being the Multiculturality Act (1988), a law which is aimed to preserve and enhance the multiculturality within the country.

While I was there, I was traveling alone. Just booked my flight-tickets, hitchhiked a bit under 1500km and slept were I ended up each night, all low-budget. I know many people don't like this idea of traveling alone, but I can only recommend it. If you ever have the chance, give it a try. Traveling alone is one of the most social things you can do because you're forced to get in contact with other persons instead of just hanging out with the people you already know, and it makes the experience quite intense.
By doing that, I had the chance to meet and speak with a lot of people. It also confirmed some of the points I wrote in the previous paragraph.
More than half of the people I've met there claimed they had a different origin then Canadian. But when asked if they knew a lot of other persons with the same origin, almost everyone claimed they only knew a handful of those people. This is a big difference with how it's here I think. I didn't witness a lot of real ghettoization. Here, I often get the feeling that immigrants like to stay around people from the same country. Why? I'm not sure, but I often think it's because that is the place where they feel accepted.
In Canada, and other countries that share the pluralist way of life, the general acceptance towards differences, not only ethnically but also on subcultures, hobbies,
 and activities, opinions,... , makes people feel a lot less stressed and pressurized I think. There was a huge "live and let live" mentality which made people do what they enjoy, not what society thinks they should enjoy.

Traveling here was a very interesting experience and the biggest difference with all other countries I've been to was that I couldn't find anyone who disliked living there. It's the first time I saw that while traveling. The biggest complains I heard were that the winters can be quite long, or that taxes can be quite high, quickly followed by stating that they still think it's worth it because people get a lot in return for these taxes.
I guess the general acceptance towards others is a key factor in people being happy, because everyone spends less time getting annoyed by others or on the other hand worrying that they could possibly annoy anyone else. That's something we can learn from...

First videopost

So, my first videopost. Honestly, I didn't really know what to say and but anyway, here it is. It's just me talking a few minutes to the camera, and at the end also high and low context cultures, according to my dog... :-)

Learning the language?

So, last time in the classroom the subject 'integration' was discussed. More specific; everytime when the word 'integration' is mentioned, we think about cultural matters.

One of the topics in this was language. Should someone who decides to live in another country learn the language of that country?
I personally think immigrants should be able to choose for themselves if they want to learn it, but they have to take responsibilities for their choice. I'll try to clarify:
I know a guy who owns a car repair shop near Antwerp. Not for regular cars, but pre-war luxurary sports cars; Lagonda, Bugatti, Bentley, etc... The guy is British and has his shop already for several years, but doesn't speak a word of Dutch. When I met him, I asked him why he doesn't learn it. "Quite simple", he said, "99% of my customers are from other countries. My shop is one of the best known all over Europe in this market and most people who come to me don't know Dutch either. I see no reason why I should learn it. I have everything I need and I earn money in this shop this way."
That's what he said to me, and I think he is 100% in his right to say so. He's able to care for himself and doesn't need any help from Dutch-speaking persons to live here.
On the other hand, I know another guy who immigrated to Belgium several years ago, doesn't have a job, and also doesn't speak a word of Dutch.
He sollicitated a few times, but every time again he didn't got the job because he didn't speak Dutch. After a while, he grew tired of this and just stopped applying for a job. He just has his unemployment benefits, doesn't care about working nor learning the language and everytime when he needs Dutch he demands tolks or translations...
This is unacceptable I think. In cases like this, the government should take steps, like perhaps scrapping the unemployment benefits or more actively persuading those persons to either find a job or learn the language.

So, in summary, do I think someone moving to Flanders should learn the language?
I don't think the government should make it mandatory, as long as they can live and take care for themselves independantly. The moment this lack of knowledge of the language is causing problems, steps should be taken. That said, I personally think an immigrant should take the initiative himself to learn it because, as I mentioned in my previous post: "Why is it so important to learn the language of a chosen country? The better we can communicate with each other, the better we can understand each other. If we understand each other better, it's easier to harmonize and co-operate."

Culture consists of many more things than just language though. I just think the only critaria should be that culture shouldn't conflict with law. As long as that's not the case, everyone should be able to keep and show some of his/her culture. During travelling, I often went into bigger cities that had a Chinatown, Little Italy, etc... and I thought it was interesting to see those places.

The multicultural society has failed

Those words from the title were made by some important European politicians, including Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, and were welcomed with a lot of controversy. Rightly so? I don't know, I hope to analyze this in the coming post.

What is a multicultural society?
I think it's important to first define what a multicultural society is, before we start judging it. I was looking around online for some definitions, and here are some interesting ones I found.

"A country where anyone is free to express their language, dress, food, religion, customs, etc without persecution - while at the same time learning the dominant language and living by the rule of law of the chosen country including the freedoms given to women and children as opposed to their culture."

and

"A multicultural society is a society, Group, school or organization where people of different races, cultures and religions live, work and communicate with each other in peace."  

and another one

"A society in which an observer can recognise several distinctive subcultures characterised by differences in some or all of dress, language, religion or spirituality, norms and values, prevalent sports, games and pastimes, family structure etc ~ with borders between the subcultures sufficiently porous for the observer to also be aware of transcultural activity, for example people from one group practising some of the choices and customs of another, and of metacultural activity i.e. the emergence of new forms and patterns arising from the blending of the prior subcultures (e.g. "Indie" music; e.g. English-language Tibetan Buddhism). 

Communication is essential for each group to understand the others, and the more substantial and accurate the communication the more likely inter-group relationships are to be characterised by harmony and co-operation rather than fear and suspicion."

So, if I take those definitions as a starting point, maybe I can try to make an analysis about how I see it.


Freedom to express their language, dress, food, religion,... without persecution
If this is one of the criteria for a multicultural society, I think we can already see some of the shortcomings. We hear so many prejudices that are based on racial matters every day:

• All Arabs and Muslims are terrorists
• All Americans are dumb, lazy and obese
• Al Jews are greedy
• All Irish are drunks
• ...

I think this aspect of the multicultural society has failed. Cultures, both native and foreign, are often judged and offended based on race, religion, etc...


A society in which you can observe and recognize distinctive subcultures
Here's one we succeeded I think. If you go to Antwerp for example, you could easily spot some orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, an Asian neighborhood, a Moroccan neighborhood, etc...



Being able to spot transcultural activity
We often go and eat some Italian pizza, Turkish kebab, Chinese nasi goreng, Japanese Sushi, etc... 
In our spare time we practice some Yoga which is part of the Hindu culture or do karate or judo. Smoking a middle-eastern hookah is gaining popularity around here, and so on...



Learning the dominant language of the chosen country
This one is up for discussion I think. Most immigrants I know know and/or learn Dutch or French, but I still think this is up for improvement.

Why is it so important to learn the language of a chosen country? The better we can communicate with each other, the better we can understand each other. If we understand each other better, it's easier to harmonize and co-operate.


Living by the rule of law by a chosen country
In some cultures, the law is based on religion while in some countries, Belgium for example, religion and the law is completely separated from each other.

For my, the latter is way better; it's more clear, more recent and not up for interpretation.
Religious laws are often based on very old texts, which often can be interpret in multiple ways. Extremist groups, like Sharia4Belgium for example, often abuse those religious laws for their own cause. Also, in some cultures, women don't have the same rights or earn the same respect as men do. This clashes with human rights.



I think this is a difficult one, but to me, if you choose to live in a specific country, you have to live by the rule of law in that country. Even if it clashes with your religious beliefs.
I know a lot of people from other cultures who don't have a problem with that, but unfortunately, extremists often drag the name of a whole religion or culture through the mud by disagreeing with it.

Not sure if the multicultural society failed or succeeded on this one. In general, I think it succeeded, though it's up for improvement.


Conclusion
Just the fact that the multicultural society causes so much discussion, is a bit of an indicator it has failed somewhat. I mean, if 'Living and working together in peace' is a criteria for a successful multicultural society, all the discussion and rising popularity for right-wing political parties indicate that a large group of people can't live in peace with those other cultures.

There are positive points where we can build on though, but there is work to do. I like the theory by David Pinto about this matter. I do agree immigrants are somewhat cuddled to death and think support should be a bit more limited, along with more citizenship courses. That way, people are forced to get integrated in the Flemish society which could only benefit both parties. Too often, you see other cultures sticking together very much, and closing themselves a bit towards other cultures because they can get all what they need within their own culture.
Grouping together and keeping hold of your own culture isn't a bad thing in itself, but if everyone, Flemish people and other cultures, open themselves a bit more towards each other, I think the society can greatly improve.

So, to conclude. I personally think the multicultural society hasn't succeeded (yet). By saying this, I don't claim it has failed though. You can only talk about success or failure if you see a finished product, and I think it's currently still a work in progress and could go either way.

High and low context cultures: some personal insights.

So, we were talking about the low and high context theory according to Edward T. Hall in school. I found this interesting because we got to see some theoretical insights about something we experience everyday.
The situation that sprang to my mind immediately about this subject was the period around my last year in secondary school and the year after where I worked full-time.

I was following hotel-school and during my training at school, everything was solely focussed on traditional French cuisine. In some way, this is a very low-context environment: It is focussed around some old books from a few selection of cooks who already passed away a long time ago. Every dish has it's own specific name, a very complete recipe to make it correctly as it has already been done for decades and a huge fan-base of purists who criticize you when you do it in a different way. Every classical French dish is described in the smallest details in order to make it how it should be made. And than we're only talking about the food, not to mention the chefs that seemingly all have to be white, middle-aged men with a bright, white uniform.
I thought this was very sad. At school, there was barely room for creativity and trying to do new things. I was told before that cooking was about creativity, making art with food, but at school, it felt as assembling some Ikea-furniture: It is what you expect, it does what it has to do, but it has no story or identity in it. Now, when you take a huge jigsaw, go nuts with the Ikea-furniture and make it into something extraordinary and unique, that's a different story. Not everyone will like it, but at least you have something with it's own identity.

I graduated, didn't knowing to be happy or sad, and after a short break of around a week I went out to look for a job. Somewhat regretting the choices I've made earlier and now being forced into a job which I thought had very little perspective due to the low-context nature of my training, I was open to every interesting offer, just to be able to see and learn something new. My former classmates were hunting jobs in the classical, high-profile restaurants, but I ended up in a small restaurant ran by an older Iranian woman. Despite being graduated as a cook, it was back to zero when I started there.
The first days, I didn't know what I saw. There were no cooking-books, recipes or angry chefs telling you exactly what to do. Everything here was, I finally know how to call it after this class, high-context cultured.
"How should I make this dish?", I often asked the first days. More often than not, the answer was "Just do what you want in order to make it taste good"
Not that much was documented extensively, there were no specific rules about the way to prepare every dish. Cooking had a bit more of a personal aspect in here. Sometimes, it worked out well, sometimes, it wasn't really how it should be.
But, often it was also quite difficult to work there in the beginning, because I didn't have experience with such a high-context environment in a professional situation.

I don't really know what was the best, a high-context or low-context culture. Is there something as 'the best choice'?
Sometimes, rules and regulations are necessary, however, a higher context culture appears more friendly and personal to me. It's just a matter of finding a balance between them both I guess, and the only way in achieving this is opening your eyes for other cultures and getting to know them, accept them and interact with them. The multicultural-society that everyone was hoping how it would turn out.

I know my story is a very specific situation, but for me, it gave me some insight and it was my own personal meeting between western and eastern culture. Also the theory about the iceberg metaphor appeared very clear to me due to this experience.
When I told people I was working in an Iranian restaurant, there were a few reactions that I heard several times, like:

• Oh, isn't it strange to work with muslims?
• Everything is very spicy there I guess?
• Iranians? Aren't they all terrorists?

By working there I realized that our view on something is always very narrow and influenced by media. When I look back, everything I ever heard about Iran in the media is that they are a threat because they're trying to develop nuclear weapons, they are very conservative muslims and regarding to their food, we seem to think that everything in Asia is just spicy. Honestly, some stereotypes were also in my mind before I worked there, but in reality it was completely different.
First of all, she wasn't muslim at all, she was a refugee who fled away after the Iranian revolution. As far as I know, she wasn't developing nuclear weapons in her basement and the food tasted very mild actually.
While working there, obviously I learned some new cooking techniques and dishes, but the most interesting thing I learned had absolutely nothing to do with cooking.