Townhall Experiences

       So, this week we all went and did a townhall-esque meeting with the ELS students and took some of their questions. In general, I was very surprised at the types of questions and comments we received. The students at ELS are engaging with texts and "American" culture in such deep ways that many of us (at least from my own small view of the world) do not consider when thinking about our own culture. Many times throughout the talk I was faced with the question of what it was about our culture that made us different and to be confronted with something like that is eye opening as well as really humbling. For instance, when Abed was asking how we come to the decision to just move away from our parents and set out on our own life and career path. He couldn't fathom that line of thought from his perspective. The collectivism instilled in his culture is so vastly separate and different than our individualistic culture that my "software" is programmed on a different plane of existence almost.
        This also brings me to trying to delineate where our cultural identity and culture actually split. The ways in which I saw myself separating my own personal cultural identity from what it means to be "American" were eye opening. I don't really know what it is to be totally "American" from the perspective of the outside world or other cultures and this townhall has pushed me to the limits and boundaries of what it means to be American. Also, there was the question of what the "American dream" really means. It used to mean something static like the nuclear family. A house, a car, two kids. As society changed and as the context of our culture changed with things like glocalization and world trade our idea of what the dream is has changed drastically. Also, I think it is tied intensely to things like class, race and gender. On top of that even, we have an individual idea of what it means to "have made it" in the United States. This identity/culture split isn't as dichotomous as Hofstede might say, but at the same time there are some rhetorical boundaries that separate the two. Although our software is affected by the context and culture that surrounds us, we still hold deep values that are instilled in us from when we can't remember as children as Hofstede points out.
        I'd like to end with a question or two that has been rattling around in my brain since we left the meeting. I wonder how the Q&A session would've gone had the students not been told to prepare questions that were connected to their own readings. We had a lot of questions for them that were concerned with the societal and cultural ways in which a foreigner might have to use to navigate what is most undoubtedly unfamiliar to them just as their culture is unfamiliar to us. I'm also concerned with the power structure that happened in the townhall. Dr. Graves was kind of a panoptic sort of presence that kept the students "in line" so to speak and I felt at times she might have guided them in their questions and possibly suppressed some ideas or questions we might have gotten. Maybe I was the only one who felt that? Finally, I wonder why Rich and I were targeted specifically for the question covering divorce rate in the US. Are men the deciders of that kind of situation in that particular student's culture? Arranged marriages are a huge deal around the world. That difference where women and men choose who to marry must be a large change. Did anyone else want to know whether or not any of them would stay in the US? In Lubbock even? There were so many question I had that were not answered in that kind of format. If it were possible to split them from a power source such as a teacher, I wonder if we'd get more candid responses....