| Review | Class/Internet Activities | Summary | Homework | All People Smile... |
Daily Class Outlines (DCOs) have a consistent structure to help
students identify the work to be accomplished during PSY-119: Cross-Cultural
Psychology:
(1) DCOs identify the week of the semester (called module during
compressed summer schedules) and each weekly module has two parts called Day 1
and Day 2;
(2) DCOs contain a title that identifies the primary topic for that day.
(3) Since culture presumes language, the misuse or misrepresentation of language
is common. So for sake of humor, I lighten the beginning of most DCOs with
a laughable Daily Language Blooper.
(4) The important divisions within each Daily Class Outline are:
the Preview or Review;
Class/Internet Activities;
Summary; and
Homework.
(5) The Daily Class Outlines usually conclude with Customary Behaviors (Other
than My Own) and a picture to stimulate your imagination. Country specific behaviors that are appropriate and
inappropriate are presented. You may be surprised to find some body
language or other outward signs that mean exactly the opposite of their American
meaning in certain foreign cultures. The DCOs frequently contain
information pertinent to specific continents, such as listings of countries,
capitols, languages, currencies, etc.
(6) Because graphics are slow to load and slow to print out, I usually save a
graphic picture for the end of each Daily Class Outline.
I change the Daily Class Outlines each semester, usually from 24
to 48 hours before I present a class. During the morning of each
scheduled class, you can download the DCO before coming to class and file it in
your notebook. Using Internet Explorer (other browsers don't
work well with PHCC equipment), you can find each DCO by following these steps:
type
http://164.106.143.4/eco into your browser;
click on the PSY-119 Course Homepage;
click on the 15-Week-Calendar link;
click on the numbered Week-of-the-semester link in
which you are interested;
click on either the Day 1 or Day 2 link for either the 1st or
2nd class presentation.
File the DCOs in your notebook. Complete the work specified on the DCOs
according to the directions in the course syllabus, and you'll move smartly
along in your student life sensitized by achieving five course goals listed in
the syllabus, (and mentioned below on this DCO).
|
If You Need Help |
| If you have questions about course content, you can email me at tmeyer@ph.vccs.edu. Mention the course title and section, and then the help that you need. (Since I teach courses and sections not related to yours, you are likely to get the wrong advice if you fail to mention the course and the section or the time during which you meet with me in class.) |
| If you have questions about logging onto PHCCs Blackboard Discussion technology, you should email mnelson@ph.vccs.edu . |
| If you need help with writing, presenting, or researching your essays and projects, use our Learning Resource Center staff, and your fellow students here at Patrick Henry Community College. |
Welcome to a Learning Community that prides itself on its cooperative abilities and the latest 21st century technologies!
1. Most of us do not visit the rest of the world frequently, nor do we often meet many persons socialized in significantly different ways. If we are raised from childhood in a specific location, we become socialized according to the norms and expectations of our elders. Our socialization is called ethnocentric, because we see the world from our elders' point of view, believe it to be our own point of view, and have, initially, no other points of view with which to compare our own.
2. Cross-Cultural Psychology can broaden tolerance for others and enhance our abilities to work together, if it equips us with a sense of cross-cultural relativism. Cross-cultural relativism refrains from judging others by our own standards. Cross-cultural relativism seeks to understand norms by which others were socialized and then evaluates what is discovered in relation to the norms or values of that society.
3. The global economy, the technology of the Internet, and the need for teamwork on projects bringing people from all parts of earth into an e-commerce work environment - these simultaneously propelling events - all require today's workforce be schooled in cross-cultural relativism. To that end, Cross-Cultural Psychology tries to help each of us achieve the following course goals:
Course Goals
A.
Understand the concept of culture.
B. Recognize variability in human
behavior.
C. Contrast the cultures inherited in
one's own family, and
country with other societal views of human behavior.
D. Gain an awareness of socio-cultural
change.
E. Foster understanding among
culturally diverse peoples.
| I. | Instructor Expectations |
| II. | What is Culture? |
| III. | Optional Exercise - Exploring the World Village |
I. Instructor
Expectations
1. Sign the roster before each class session. Sit so as to be able
to read the projected materials on the screen or blackboards and to hear the
instructor.
2. Introduce yourself to a study buddy, and keep his or her telephone and
or email address with you. Ask your study buddy to take notes and pick up
handouts when you are absent. Do the same for him or her. (Do not
ask the instructor for previous handouts.) Correspond every week about
each module, the homework, and the projects your are working on with your study
partner using PHCC's Blackboard Discussion methods.
3. Bring the texts and notebook to each class. (You'll find that
using three one-inch notebooks is the easiest way to complete the following
tasks.) Your notebook should be one
into which you can insert loose leaf pages. Put your name in a large
contrasting color on the face of the notebook. Arrange your notebook in
this way during Part One of the course:
| Notebook Requirements | Part I | Part II | Part III |
| 1st | Download a copy of the syllabus and put it in your notebook. |
| 2nd | After the syllabus, put a divider in your notebook labeled "Part One" so the instructor can immediately locate your Daily Class Outlines associated with Part One of the course. |
| 3rd | Each class session, print and file the Daily Class Outline, and then insert your handwritten reflections about the class activities for that day. |
| 4th | After your handwritten reflections, insert the word-processed questions and answers that are your homework for that Daily Class Outline. |
| 5th | Part One will consist of five modules of instruction. Each module is divided in half into parts called Day 1 and Day 2 on the internet. You will have ten sets of Daily Class Outlines during Part One. After each module, its reflections, and homework, insert a divider labeled with that module's number. |
| 6th | After Part One with its five modules file your "First
Book Report." After the project include one final divider with "First Book Report - The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" (or "American Ethnic Group Paper," or "American Ethnic Group Presentation" written on it. |
Here is why we do these things:
By using these dividers I should be able to tab immediately to that portion
of your work which I intend to spot check. Also, this procedure
enables you to function in a highly organized manner. Such organization
provides you and me the freedom to innovate when necessary, and such deviations
from procedure are easily recognized by me and anyone wanting to refer to your
notebook.
During Part Two, retain the syllabus, but use a second one-inch notebook for the contents of Part Two.
| 1. | Put a copy of the syllabus in your notebook. |
| 2. | After the syllabus, put a divider in your notebook labeled "Part Two" so the instructor can immediately locate your Daily Class Outlines associated with Part One of the course. |
| 3. | Each class session, print and file the Daily Class Outline, and then insert your handwritten reflections about the class activities for that day. |
| 4. | After your handwritten reflections, insert the word-processed questions and answers that are your homework for that Daily Class Outline. |
| 5. | Part Two will consist of five modules of instruction. Each module is divided in half into parts called Day 1 and Day 2 on the internet. You will have ten sets of Daily Class Outlines during Part Two. After each module, its reflections, and homework, insert a divider labeled with that module's number. |
| 6. | After Part Two with its five modules file your Country Report. After the Country Report place a divider with the name of the country on it. |
During Part Three, retain the syllabus, but use a third one-inch notebook for the contents of Part Three.
| 1. | Put a copy of the syllabus in your notebook. |
| 2. | After the syllabus, put a divider in your notebook labeled "Part Three" so the instructor can immediately locate your Daily Class Outlines associated with Part One of the course. |
| 3. | Each class session, print and file the Daily Class Outline, and then insert your handwritten reflections about the class activities for that day. |
| 4. | After your handwritten reflections, insert the word-processed questions and answers that are your homework for that Daily Class Outline. |
| 5. | Part Three will consist of five modules of instruction. Each module is divided in half into parts called Day 1 and Day 2 on the internet. You will have ten sets of Daily Class Outlines during Part Two. After each module, its reflections, and homework, insert a divider labeled with that module's number. |
| 6. | After Part Three with its five modules file your Family Tree Report. After the Family Tree Report place a divider with the name of the family on it. After the family tree divider, use the remaining space to file a copy of your Second Book Report - And Keep Your Powder Dry. |
4. Become familiar with using Internet Explorer (Netscape Navigator will
not work) to reach the instructor's website:
http://164.106.143.4/eco
| Use the link for Psy 119 as a cover page to the course, or for the links it contains to the instructor, syllabus, related links, or 15-week calendar. |
| Use the link for 15-week calendar to learn when class meets, what the daily class outline contains, and what the daily homework assignments are. |
| Use the link for syllabus to be able to contact the instructor, to recognize course objectives, and to know how you will be evaluated. |
5. Keep the college Register and your instructor informed of your current mailing address, telephone, email, and SSAN. Your instructor uses an Access mail-merged database to give you information whose mailing address labels are only as accurate as those provided by the Registrar. Bring matters and circumstances that require my attention to me as soon as they arise.
6. On the day of each class session print the daily class outline called Day 1 or Day 2 under Weeks 1 through 15 on the 15-week suggested calendar on the world wide web. File them in your notebook.
7. Keep your notebook up-to-date with handwritten reflections for each class session and word processed homework assignment so that it can be graded during approximately the 5th, 10th, and 15th weeks of the course. Be prepared to share your homework or notebook entries with a study partner, or with the class. (Do not make entries you would be unwilling to share with others.)
8. During Part One of the course, I expect you to write The First Book Report.
| The First Book Report - The course homepage link provides the necessary detail. The first book report refers to The Crysanthemum and the Rose by Ruth Benedict. |
| (Some students may have access to exceptional resources, or have a PowerPoint or video-recording skills that would, with my permission, enable them to do either of the following tasks in place of the first book report. See me during the first two weeks of class if you would like to discuss the possibility of substituting either of the following projects for the first book report: An American Ethnic Group Presentation - See the course homepage link for useful details. |
| An American Ethnic Group Report - See the course homepage link for useful details.) |
9. During Part Two of the course, expect to prepare a Country Cultural Report while working in a small group. Expect to do your share when presenting your portion of a country report to the class.
10. During Part Three of the course, expect to prepare a Family Tree Briefing and Report and to share stories about it with the class. (This project can be your own family tree or that of an important immigrant family.)
11. Your final exam will consist of writing the Second Book Report described under the Book Report(s) link on the PSY 119 Course Homepage. The second book report refers to And Keep Your Powder Dry and will teach you what American military strategists learned from Margaret Mead about how to work together with allied cultures to defeat foreign enemies during World War II. Limit your paper to a title page, and three single-spaced typewritten pages. Make certain your essay has an introduction (theme statement), body (supporting paragraphs), and conclusion. See that a separate title page contains the title, theme statement, and your name, section number (PSY 119), and date.
12. Take the initiative to meet and assist each other so we can enjoy well-prepared country reports, appreciate similarities and differences among our family trees (or those of famous immigrant families), and discover how cross-cultural psychology helped America work successfully with other cultures during wartime.
1. The process by which we come to believe there is a "right" way to think, express ourselves, and act is called socialization. The process called socialization teaches each of us what we need to do to be successful within a given group. Socialization looks forward and backward to determine what behaviors, values, and beliefs are important to continue, and usually depends upon language to transmit these important ideas from elders to younger people within a given group.
2. Once socialized, many persons are hardly aware that other realities can and do exist. People are said to be ethnocentric, that is, capable only of judging others from their own culture's perspective.
3. Persons schooled in cross-cultural psychology may be capable of both ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the ability to judge or to see reality from the point of view of those raised within a different process of socialization.
4. The term culture usually refers to things made by human beings rather than to things that occur in nature, or as the result of biology. When you approach an island, you approach something created by nature, and the island in itself is not culture. When human beings call the island "Hawaii," and refer to its native people, their economy, political arrangements, religion, and artifacts like buildings, tools, and schools, we are talking about aspects of culture.
5. The critical dimensions of culture concern assumptions about life. Their is an objective and a subjective set of cultural attitudes about life. Objective culture refers to man-made objects like clothing, food, and homes. Subjective culture refers to man-made ideas in the mind such as values, norms of behavior, and roles. Culture is transmitted through language, itself a human invention.
6. Culture is a socially constructed collective creation resulting from interaction with others. In each culture, elders transmit ideas to those in childhood. Because culture is widely shared and accepted as normal, there is little reason to discuss it frequently. Culture is adaptive, and changes somewhat with each new generation.
7. Lack of common language and vocabulary along with discomfort or inability to discuss culture becomes evident in well-meaning clashes between persons of different cultures. Failing to grasp each other's perspective, we may resort to (a) responding emotionally, or (b) with frustration, or (c) by making negative judgments about those not socialized like ourselves.
8. Cross-Cultural Psychology should help free you somewhat from ethnocentrism and enable you to begin to appreciate people around the globe in terms of cultural relativism. Take a moment to review course goals or learning objectives A through E in the syllabus. Also consider how the journal, country cultural report, and final exam essay (essentially a book report) were selected to help you achieve the course goals.
9. International tourism, a global marketplace, an e-commerce world on Internet, demographic trends in population, affirmative action politics, and a world-wide trend toward increasing interdependency among multi-cultural peoples - these half-dozen things confer a global importance on our course objectives.
10. Your success in Cross-Cultural Psychology will be proportional to:
| Your ability to feel that you are making a satisfactory personal adjustment, perhaps saying "I feel comfortable and that I'm doing well." |
| Beginning and maintaining good interpersonal relations with others. If others with whom you interact report, "This person is getting along well," you are succeeding in cross-cultural relations in the second dimension. |
| Task effectiveness -You need to know that you can produce and deliver in cooperation with others by completing country reports. You also need to know that you can research your family tree or select that of an important immigrant family. You have to be reliable and regular in completing the assigned readings and homework, and you have to discipline yourself to read from Cross-Cultural Psychology, The Chrysanthemun and the Rose, and from And Keep Your Powder Dry. |
| You will be successful here if you experience no greater culture shock than you might expect in taking on any other new academic discipline. |
(These ideas on culture were paraphrased from Intercultural Interactions - A Practical Guide by Kenneth Cushner and Richard Brislin.)
III. Optional
Exercise
If time permits, we will examine
(page
29) Exercise 1.9
from Susan Goldstein's Cross-Cultural Explorations
Exploring the World Village
In this exercise we discover a quick and easy way to discover how much our knowledge is limited to the cultural world in which we live.
1. Put your name and date on the exercise.
2. Imagine a world just like today's, but populated by just 1000
citizens.
3. Answer the questions.
4. Hand your paper to a class-chosen recording secretary (perhaps the
teacher) and we'll try to discover the range of the class responses to each
question, before we turn to the answers (page 375).
You should refer to the Dozen Expectations as needed to be familiar with what the instructor demands of you.
Let's make a practice reflective notebook entry. Using this web page,
write down:
from Instructor
Expectations
(1) any questions or difficulties you have with understanding and meeting the
dozen instructor expectations;
from The Meaning of Culture
(2) definitions of
a. culture,
b. ethnocentrism, and
c. cultural relativism.
(3) Make note of the four items by which you can discover how well you are doing in Cross-Cultural
Psychology.
(4) Enjoy the following article "The Whole World As 100 People" by noting any pieces of information which seem new and different to you.
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:
There would be:
| 57 Asians |
| 21 Europeans |
| 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and South America) |
| 8 Africans |
| 52 would be female |
| 48 would be male |
| 70 would be non white, 30 white |
| 70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian |
| 89 would be heterosexual, 11 homosexual |
| 59% of the entire world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people and all 6 would be citizens of the United States |
| 80 would live in substandard housing |
| 70 would be unable to read |
| 50 would suffer from malnutrition |
| 1 would be near death, 1 would be near birth |
| Only 1 would have a college education and Only 1 would own a computer |
| When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for both acceptance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent. |
1. Read Cultural Psychology (CP)
Chapter 1
Culture, Values, and Social Thought,
Study pages 1-6
(Put your name, the module and the lesson number at the top of each page in your notebook. Then use cut, copy and paste commands to place the boldfaced questions into your notebook. Read the assigned readings. Then skip a space, and without boldface, type the answer found in your readings for each question.)
Use your notebook to type your response to the following questions.
| 1. | "You and I are not born 'fully' human. We come into the world unequipped to survive... React to this statement by explaining what culture is and how it equips each of us to survive in a unique social environment. |
| 2. | In what ways do the Dobuans particularly differ from common North American ideas of what 'human nature' should be? |
| 3, | What do you think played the greatest role in giving the Dobuans those characteristics? What factors or circumstances most influence a North American's personality? |
2. Read The Chrysanthemum and the
Sword
(C&S) - Chapter 1
Assignment: Japan
Study pages 1 - 19
Homework: Homework: Use your
notebook to type and respond to the following questions:
| 4. | In June of 1944, people in the United States were saying the war with Japan would last three years... In Japan they talked of its lasting 100 years. So in many ways we were facing a foe who thought and behaved differently than Americans. Enumerate the differences to which Ruth Benedict refers. |
| 5. | "The study of comparative religions has
flourished only when men were secure enough in their own convictions to be
unusually generous. They might be Jesuits or Arabic savants or
unbelievers, but they could not be zealots." The study of comparative cultures cannot flourish when men are so defensive about their own way of life that it appears to them to be by definition the sole solution in the world. What would be the consequence of remaining narrow minded when studying comparative cultures, according to Ruth Benedict? |
United States |
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| A firm handshake, accompanied by direct eye
contact, is the standard greeting in the United States. Occasionally, among
very good friends who have not seen each other for long intervals, women may
briefly hug other women, and men may quickly kiss the cheek of a woman.
Males rarely hug one another, however. Occasionally, men may shake hands
with the left hand either covering the handshake or lightly gripping the
forearm.
webofculture.com |
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"All people smile in the same language" ---- Unknown
Imagine yourself in each of the following pictures.
I include a picture (or two or three) at the end of each lesson. The primary question in cross-cultural psychology is whether the human beings we have become are primarily influenced by (1) nature, by (2) nurture, or by (3) that portion of our environment which is man-made.
Today's pictures reflect (1) nature, (2) nurture, and (3) human creativity. How would the person you become be influenced by the canyons, the companionship, or the architecture if you spend a considerable amount of your life in these environments?
