About two weeks ago I was in the studio minding the end of year exhibition when a colleague dropped by to chat. The exhibition this year was called From There to Here and it focused on the journey of students on the Grad Dip over their year on the course. I commented that one of the things I was reflecting on after this year was how to get better at teaching from non-western perspectives.
#1 / an infographic book
The colleague showed me a book by Yang Liu called East meets West; a visual exploration of the ways that Eastern and Western thinking can sometimes be in conflict. I immediately loved the book, probably because I am an information designer and I just love how simple and straightforward it was.
I was keen to get some feedback from my students on it. That evening, I showed it to a group of them and they spent ages discussing it. What was interesting was how the Chinese students would instantly say ‘yes, that’s definitely true’ to the visuals and how that would then inspire a conversation between the students. It struck me that this book was a bit of an intercultural conversation starter. It made me wish I had known about this book earlier in the year! I have since begun to think about how this sort of approach might become a workshop for graphic students.
#2 / a training session
I also attended a brilliant training session at UAL recently on Confucian Heritage and Cultures. The session content was thoughtfully put together and delivered by a Chinese lecturer. I have taught a lot of Chinese students in my different roles. While I have had direct experience of certain practical issues, I know I have lacked any broader contextual or cultural understanding of them. As such, I often really struggle to understand how to do it better.
I have noticed (and this session was a good reminder) how many staff seem to operate on a deficit perspective (Ryan and Carroll, 2005) with regard to International Students. They seem to focus overwhelmingly on what International Students can’t do or don’t understand. This point of view frequently crept into the training session with staff ‘centering’ western intellectual traditions. It seems to me that in doing this, we often miss the opportunities and benefits of a more diverse range of experience and perspectives in the studio. I think we also tend to grossly over-estimate and the merits of a British education, frequently romanticising our own educational experiences.
For example, the tutor talked to us about the different drawing exams that Chinese students have to pass. Many of these require a high level of drawing technique and privilege ‘life-like’ representation. When she asked whether British students are taught to draw in this way, many people said no. They said things like ‘drawing here is much more creative and expressive.’ I found myself laughing at that point as it just wasn’t my experience. When I did a Foundation at the University of Lincoln, life drawing was a 5 hour class every Monday. We were taught drawing in a very classical way. Success was whether it was life-like. This type of drawing was an essential part of my university portfolio. I know this might not be everybody’s experience but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it’s probably a fairly common one. More so than my colleagues in the training session seemed to think anyway.
#3 / …another book
The Geography of Thought by Richard E. Nesbitt. I am not sure how I stumbled upon it but it’s about Nesbitt – a lifelong universalist with regard to the nature of human thought. A lecturer who sets out on a research-based challenge to (essentially) prove himself wrong. It was an easy and engaging read.
Methodologically speaking, it’s a bit dubious at times. His sample sizes are questionable and I am not sure they are capable of generating robust or generalisable knowledge. This is something he rarely addresses in the book. However, it introduces lots of interesting and important ideas about the social origins of the mind and throws up some interesting challenges to the questions of universalism.
For me, the most interesting idea is on the first page of the book:
“A few years back, a brilliant student from China began to work with me on questions of social psychology and reasoning. One day, early in our acquaintance, he said, “You know the difference between you and me is that I think the world is a circle and you think it is a line.”
Nesbitt illustrates this on page 33 of the book. The diagram on the left is drawn by him – a western academic. The one on the right is drawn by one of his Chinese-American students. They are the same process from two perspectives.
This diagram inspired a whole other teaching practice-related train of thought for me. I elaborate on that in a later blog as it proved to be a relevant insight to my graphic design teaching.
The dangers of dichotomies
In may ways, all three of these experiences presented the issue of intercultural understanding through a series of dichotomies. While binaries can be convenient, I recognize that they represent highly generalized ways to talk about culture.
individualism vs. collectivism
For example, there were huge sections of Geography of Thought that focused on individualism vs. collectivism as a way of exploring cultural difference. This approach is certainly not new. It was heavily emphasized in the famous study of IBM staff, later published as Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. I became quite obsessed with this study for some time. Drawing on a body of research conducted in over seventy countries over a span of forty years, it makes a highly convincing case for mapping cultures using binary oppositions. They neatly cateogorise these oppositions, identifying 6 ‘Dimensions of National Cultures’. One of which is the individual/collective tendency of a culture. (Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J and Minkov, M. 2010 pp.89-133).
As neat and tidy as this all is, it’s important to acknowledge that both The Geography of Thought and Software of the Mind, are bodies of work produced by Western researchers and writers. It is safe to assume then that they are influenced by ‘Western models of explanation.’ These models, Kaiping Peng argues, tend to be all-or-nothing dichotomies that assume that a culture must be either individualistic or collective. Peng argues – as Nesbitt does in Geography of Thought – that ‘Western formal logic that cannot tolerate contradiction, even at the risk of exaggerating certain aspects of a culture or discounting the other aspects of the culture (Peng, K & Spencer-Rodgers, J & Nian, Z. 2006 pp 247-262).
Interestingly, the book by Yang Liu presents things precisely this dichotomic way and here it is this preference for opposition in the storytelling which make it such an effective and interesting tool for intercultural discussion.
eastern vs. western
The training session presented us with a view of Confucian culture and education in China, inviting us to reflect on the similarities and differences between our system and theirs. So in a way it was another ‘us and them.’ The accidental effect of this seemed to be that people felt comfortable making normative claims about which of the approaches was better or worse – us or them. I wondered if part of that training session might be more usefully focussed to allow people to explore the ‘mutual dependencies and complementariness of both.’ (Peng, K 2006 pp 258). I don’t feel we had a chance to explore this in any depth.
choosing your frames
While dichotomies are interesting frames through which to consider the student experience, taken too far, I can see how they might be reductive and depersonalizing. In all these interactions I found myself becoming seduced by the simplicity of them and needing to remind myself that ‘the culture is not the person’ (Cortazzi & Jin, 1997:89).
A students nationality is only one part of their identity and it may, in reality, constitute a very small part. While I have found these books and training sessions an incredibly useful way to begin to consider different philosophical perspectives and how they relate to my teaching practice, I can see the danger of believing too strongly in generalizations. We might slide into the dangerous territory of ‘cultural othering’ (Leask, 2006;187) and miss the opportunities to engage with the real breadth of alternative knowledge, perspectives and experiences the students bring.
They’ve given me much to consider and I am looking forward to reading further and thinking about how this might influence my planning for teaching.
References
Cortazzi, M and Jin, L (1997) ‘ Communication for learning across cultures,’ in McNamara, D and Harris, R (eds), Overseas Students in Higher Education: Issues in Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge. pp.76-90
Fukuoka, M. (1978) The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J and Minkov, M. (2010) Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival. New York: McGraw Hill. pp.89-133
Hsu, F. L. K. (1953). Americans and Chinese: Two ways of life. New York: H. Schuman
Leask, B (2006) ‘Plagiarism, cultural diversity and metaphor: implications for academic staff development,’ Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 31(2): 183-99
Liu, Y. (2015) East meets West. Cologne: TASCHEN GmbH; Bilingual edition (25 Aug. 2015)
Nesbitt, R.E. (2005) The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently – And Why. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing; New Edition edition (12 May 2005)
Peng, K & Spencer-Rodgers, J & Nian, Z. (2006). Naïve Dialecticism and the Tao of Chinese Thought, in, Kim, U. Yang, K., Hwang, K (eds.) Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context. New York: Springer-Verlag. pp 247-262
Shen, D. (1985). Mo Jing Luo Ji Xue (The logic of MoJing). Beijing: The Social Science Press of China.