| | ANU is celebrating its 80th Anniversary! It is a month-long celebration. Chinese culture LOVES to celebrate and when there is a celebration of any sort, it is pretty large-scale. It think this is one difference between American and Chinese culture. American culture celebrates events too, but in a different way. I mean, the Chinese are SERIOUS. Our school is having delegates from the United Nations (alumni from the school) come visit and give lectures; they are having famous people of all sorts return to the school to celebrate with them. The entire school is littered with neon colored flags symbolizing a celebratory spirit and it seems like both central and south campus are bustling with an unusual amount of activity. In a lot of ways,the communal, celebration of the masses of the Chinese reminds me of the heavenly hosts that we will be part of in the future days to come, when we celebrate the coming of the King! It will be an ALL OUT SERIOUS celebration!
I was thinking the other day about guilt based and shame based cultures. Shame came with sin. This is something sin brings into the world; it is what Adam and Eve felt after they disobeyed their Father's voice. It is what we feel after we disobey our/their Father's voice. We do not feel guilt until a bit after our feelings of shame. Even in guilt based cultures, there is an element of shame but it is kept inside and is not as apparent. Part of me is tempted to say then, that guilt based cultures are more "upright" and "good," and that shame is not the ideal way to punish people because it doesn't take into account the actual sinful action, and that people should feel guilt about their sinful actions because of the inherent evil in the sinful action. But then, upon thinking about this issue a bit more, it occurred to me that JC suffered shame by being hung on the Cross and for what? For the sins that He himself didn't even commit. Was this shame the ideal way of dealing with the sins of humanity? No, but this was what sin brought into the world. So, if shame was the first response to an action of sin (Adam and Eve), and that this was the first result of sin, does it mean we can say that shame isn't the ideal way with sin, and that guilt is the more ideal way to deal with it?
If you believe in absolute truth, doesn't that tilt more towards believing that there is an absolute sinful action? In which case, the attitude towards the sinful action is what should be dealt with; not what others would think of your sinful action and your shameful reaction to what the others think. I'm still processing this because there is part of me that has a very hard time accepting the OK'ness of using shame to get people to do right. I mean, there is definitely an element of it in American culture too, but in Chinese culture it is more visible. If shame was the first response humans had to sin, isn't it only right to try to stay away from it? To get rid of it when we can?
I think of this mainly because i see the outcome of the shame nature inherent in Chinese culture through my students and their testimonies and stories of humiliation in front of their peers, especially in the educational context.
Emotional health in Chinese students is something that has become a very big societal issue recently.
The shame aspect of the culture gets students to have mental breakdowns/undue stress and pressure if they score low on consecutive quizzes/tests because the teachers announce their low scores in front of their classmates, who have scored high. You score low, you get shamed. Next time don't score low anymore. But what if you do? You get shamed again. A person can only feel so much shame until they can't handle it anymore. Then they commit suicide or something destructive like that.
In terms of educational circles, there is no intrinsic value to education for a lot of students. It is the extrinsic value of, "you do well to be praised and brought OUT of shame." It seems that there is no thought of "education is good for you; you should be excited about learning and it's the process of learning that matters, not the test score." So without this intrinsic value of education, extrinsic/external measures are necessary for students to continue learning. I guess the entire paradigm of extrinsic value to education might also be extrinsic to me because i'm looking from outside, into the culture.
Time to go. I'll continue this train of thought some other time. Any comments? I'm interested to see what you have to say, for those of you who have opinions on matters such as this. :) |
| | Posted 4/13/2008 11:31 AM - 34 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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