American Culture & University Life Lectures

(For those of you who have been waiting patiently for this overdue installment of "The American in Manchuria," I was on writing leave for a while, but am now back in the saddle. In the meantime, I decided to get creative and make a pen name: "Meiguochurius" [may-gwaa-chur-ius]. Combination of the Chinese word for America, the word Manchuria from the former name of this region, and a proper Latin ending. It's been growing on me.)

I did a series of Sunday lectures on "American Culture & University Life" for the students of a Chinese friend of mine at a nearby campus this past semester. Speaking topics included: "Studying Hard or Hardly Studying": Undergraduate-life in America; Find Your Language Niche: Increase your interest in studying English; Asking "Why" and Not "How": Teaching styles in American higher-education; and Deciding What to Do Post-Undergrad: Getting a "real job" or going to grad-school.

I highlighted some of the differences between college and university life, spoke about students and part-time jobs, and differences in learning/teaching styles between our two cultures:

The students at my lecture were very interested in the aspect of being a full-time student with a part-time job. They thought that in China, good students could not easily balance this with classes. (Money always comes in handy for things academic and non-academic with students everywhere around the world. Students = money and students need money.)

In Asking "Why" and Not "How": Teaching styles in American higher-education, I talked a little about teaching styles in early Greek university education that have been made a basis for western thought in asking "why." I went on to compare some differences between colleges and universities: small and large classrooms, teacher v. student ratio... general environment.

From a Western eye within the university system, Chinese learning styles appear to be same from birth to death. Students learn Chinese characters from a young age by hours of memorization and they have to use this same method for all of their academic studies in life, which is why they spend so much time studying. Good university students use all of their time focusing on studies: they eat, sleep, go to class, and study. Those who deviate from this rigorous schedule are considered lazy, even if they just take an hour for themself (as another western colleague of mine has observed). There's no such thing as skimming through material, trying to get a main idea, or comparing and contrasting... these methods are alien to them. In many instances, they have to recite to memory lines of information, word-for-word. On my tests, I always receive answers verbatim from what was written in my notes to them, which can be a little unnerving and suspicious at first. When learning English, they memorize words as whole units and not something that has the possibility of being taken apart and maybe understood in pieces. I suppose that this is an okay practice for beginners of the language, but not for advanced learning, as there is so much that you can learn about roots to help oneself understand parts and subsequent definitions of whole of words.

Culturally, this method is expected and students have to abide by it if they want to succeed. There's certainly no changing the status quo of life here very easily. And because for many, life is the difference between farm and city or meager city job and well-respected job, then choosing to spend all that time studying or not can have the possibility of changing ones' life and that of their family. That may seem universal, but it's particularly moreso here.

-----

Overall, I really enjoyed putting this lecture together. It helped me examine my own culture, observe another, and be able to get reactions and responses from Chinese students about the practices in Western education and student life and some even in comparison to their own. You might be surprised how often I corrected mis-information that they had, but then again, it would conversely happen in the West to some extent.

MEIGUOCHURIUS