10/17/2021; Week 5: Response to Culture Paradigms

TO UNDERSTAND? OR TO EXTERMINATE?

For you, what is beauty? If I, as a Filipino, would answer that question, I would answer this with a list of standards here in my country. Beauty is being white. Beauty is being thin and curvaceous. Beauty has straight teeth. Beauty is someone who wears glasses and has Chinky eyes. But if you were to answer this, I bet you will say different standards that you think are beautiful depending on your home’s culture. You might also be shocked by what others would say regarding this question because that was my reaction before I learned about different cultures.

Before, when I was around 14 years old, I believed that I was not pretty because, first, I am morena or have tan skin. Second, I don’t have a straight set of teeth since we don’t have money to pay for my braces. Lastly, I maybe am thin before, but I don’t have any curves or what people here in my country called a “coca-cola” body. I was bullied because of these traits for many years. But when I joined Girl Scout Camp, I was educated about different cultures and how these affect our points of view.

In one of our sessions there, we talked about different beauties. I learned that in China, having small size of feet is beautiful. In America, having tan skin is a trend, and it is lovely. In Japan, having crooked teeth is gorgeous. These revelations left me dumbfounded, and I was like, “Oh, I am beautiful. I think I am just in the wrong country.”

If we look closely, different countries have different cultural paradigms. Cultural paradigms are the cultural role-concepts that we use to negotiate our notion of self and our relationships with others in our everyday lives. Knowing these cultural paradigms will veil your eyes from seeing certain things, or they will open your eyes to see things that other people from other cultures never would see. It will make you diversely see things. It will broaden your understanding of things. For example, specific action may be considered normal in your own culture, but it may not be in others.

If we connect this to education, this should be learned by the students and teachers. This will help us know the differences between one another. It will help us understand that things are okay for some and not for others. It will help teachers be more considerate to their students with different backgrounds. It will also help students be more friendly and understanding to their co-students.

In addition, being educated on cultural paradigms helps us avoid meritocracy paradigms because, for me, it is a trap paradigm. A meritocracy says things need to be earned. You need to deserve what you get. If you get something good, it needs to be deserved. You need to stand out to deserve it. This is one of the paradigms that most countries have. An example of this is that you first need to be good for you to get a good education. You have to fit in with their standards for you to have privileges on things. We might think that that is normal since we live in a culture with meritocracy paradigms. But when we think of it, meritocracy is not only wrong; it’s terrible. It is awful that students who are not that good have a little or no chance to be better even though, in reality, they are the ones in need.

Now my question for everyone is, “Shall we know each other to understand and help one another? Or shall we exterminate each other?”