Module 4 Lesson Plan 1 - Cross Cultural Psychology

They Settled America
Part I - Amish Culture 

Review - Group Thoughts

1.  What does the class think was the purpose (to inform, to persuade, to discuss etc.) behind each class activity in the previous class or Internet meeting? 

2.  Which course objective was under consideration?

Class/Internet Activities

          1.  Watch, then discuss the excerpt from the video Witness.  Attitudes toward violence differ greatly among societies.  The grandfather presents the Amish argument about the use of guns to his grandson, who has witnessed the murder of a policeman.  What's your opinion about the role of guns in American society?  In Japanese society?

          2.  Share your notebook entries with your classmates.  Take some time to refine your techniques for developing a successful country briefing.

          3.  Optional Class response to "What is Happiness?"

The Utopian societies in America generally possessed unique views on what constitutes human happiness.  In contrast to Utopian points of view, your instructor presents a reading based upon research findings regarding the topic "What is happiness?"  Use and return the instructor handout to complete the following instructions:

1.  Read Explorations in American Culture,  pages 18-25 and mentally summarize the research findings in "What is Happiness?"

2.  Using small groups, summarize the major research findings for each of the following subsections of the article.  Present your findings to the class.

(i) "What is Happiness?"
(ii) "The Happiness Chemical"
(iii) "Can Money Buy Happiness?"
(iv) "The Tyranny of Happiness"

3.  Complete the "Focused Essay Topic" page 26:
Describe a moment or time in our life in which you felt great happiness.  Try to analyze this in terms of the article's findings or subject.  Does your personal experience support or contradict any of the author's findings?  Explain why or why not in your journal.

Summary

       1.  Within American society, two organizations which espouse non-violence have gained and sustained respectability and acceptance.  

Along the banks of the Missouri River which border the Dakotas, the Hutterrite communities live in a communal fashion, farm with and invent the most modern of technologies, and are an economic force to contend with.  They have not always been well-received by the Plains peoples, but responded with technology and without restraint during recent floods that uprooted traditional Americans.

Throughout the Pennsylvania landscape and neighboring states, the Amish sect preserves a German way of traditional life far less dependent on modern technology, and rich in its communal caring for its membership.

During the video excerpts,  (1) ask yourself how, in communal societies,  happiness is defined differently from your own perspective.  
(2) Note and describe how communal living seems to bring about a different sense of self from what you experience. 
(3) Are there seemingly different qualities of tolerance extended by the Plains people and the Pennsylvania citizens to these communal societies?

There can be a significant difference between the importance extended to the individual and the importance extended to the team or family or collective society as a whole.  

The Amish are found primarily in Pennsylvania and in Iowa, with other groupings scattered from New York to Virginia.  The Amish have generally clung to pre-industrialized values when possible, so as to be undistracted by the materialism of current American culture.  They are a non-violent people living on farmlands apart from modern society.  Their children are not required to join in the community and its restrictive beliefs until approximately high school age.

The Hutterites are found throughout Canada and the northern plains of North and South Dakota and Montana.   Like the Amish, they educate their children in their own schools, and espouse non-violence, and will not serve in the U.S. military.  They renounce their own autonomy as individuals and believe themselves put on earth to serve the collective good of their society.  They adopt the latest technological advances or even invent their own.  They live in simple homes or apartments without rent, receive no wages, and provide significant economic competition to American farmers whose expenses for labor and material resources are well above zero.

Property rights seem to give rise to an individualistic society.  The absence of property rights may be a factor associated with emergence of a collectivist society.

Homework

1.  Read Chapter Eleven "A World of Colors:  Culture Influencing Linguistic Needs" pages 54-59 in Cross-Cultural Perspectives in America.  Answer the following questions in your notebook:

2.  Read Chapter 9 "The Circle of Human Feeling" pages 177-194 in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.  Answer the following questions in your notebook:

Customary Behaviors (Other than my own)

"All people smile in the same language" ---- Unknown

Each society seeks to embrace its members with rituals (like the dance below) that bring its "dancers" together.