Does that sound funny?
Well I started this thread to mention, what I have often thought, but never heard anyone say:
Why would being a Chinese language tutor qualify someone to teach "Chinese culture"?
Who even knows what Chinese culture is these days, or if it is even a useful concept to believe in. One of the most embarrassing things I ever saw was a "Chinese culture corner" event in another city. Both the none too reflective hosts and the foreigners present demonstrated the absurdity of the event over and over again.
I am thinking about teaching chinese culture classes, targeted mainly at people from China. My qualification is based on 3 things
1. being an experienced outsider looking, and living, in.
2.being a critical thinker who questions things and is willing to answer questions with other questions.
3. Unlike most, being totally aware of and honest about the fact that, on the subject of "Chinese culture" I am just an uniformed fool feeling my way in the dark. In other words, my qualification is precisely in the fact that I am aware that I am totally unqualified.
Totally agree with jonny9 and it works both ways because as a foreign teacher from the UK I do not feel particularly qualified to instruct anyone about the culture of the UK other than in broad terms and using comparison.
It's a case of not seeing the woods for the trees and only this week I've mentioned to students that a foreigner could possibly describe 'Chinese' (Yunnan) culture better than a native and that a Chinese student in England would probably point out traits of British culture that had gone unnoticed by me.
We are all victims of education and indoctrination and fail to take in the evidence of our own eyes until we encounter a different culture and begin to compare and contrast.
Teach or experience Chinese Culture? Immersion sounds like more fun (for the good things, of course).
Clearly the topic is 'teaching' culture.
There is a real logic here.
Unless you read up and learn about culture, you are not in a position to teach it.
I had to teach aspects of western culture in my last job. I had to read up a lot, and check some other things that I was not sure about.
I was surprised at how little I knew about my home countries culture. There is far more to culture than just an 'attitude' or gut feeling about your country.
Having studied my own culture I can see how unfit I was to teach it before I studied. My knowledge is still not complete, far from it.
I think that anybody who actively studies Chinese culture is capable of teaching Chinese culture.
Anybody who assumes they can teach others about their own culture without studying it, is naive.
Learning lists of names and dates is not studying culture BTW. That is history, and not very good history knowledge at that.
It is not enough to be able to rattle off a few bits of poetry either.
well, people often associate 'culture' as if it must be something 'elegant'.yet, to me, culture is just a set of practices within a group of people about how certain things should be done, in order it to be consider 'proper'. the typical example i could think of, is a new management comes in wanting to change the corporate culture of a company. so it is not a surprise at all, a keen observer from outside could 'teach' and change (much harder) a 'culture.'
the business practice of 'greasing the palm' in certain countries is kind of 'culture', i think, i am certainly qualified to teach the subject (quietly) even i do not do it myself. :-)))))))))))))))))))))
To add to the last posters comments.
I tell my students there are two sides to culture.
What I call high culture: Music, the arts, opera, literature.
And what most of us think of as culture. One useful definition of which is 'How we do things around here'. Which fits in with the last posters observations.
