Culturally correct communication of cancer?
There are 10 definitions of the word ‘culture’ in my favorite dictionary:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture
In my cross cultural communication workshops we used it in the sense described by definitions 5 and 6:
5. the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture; the drug culture.
6. Anthropology . the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.
There are lots of dimensions along which you can classify cultures and one of them is called: Boundaries of Privacy
Cultures that have a vertical hierarchy (class, caste, etc) often have rules about what are acceptable topics, and what are not. These can differ widely, and not knowing what is personal talk (and possibly offensive) and what is public talk (and safe) can create conflict.
<I tried to insert here a picture of Lewin’s circles, but it doesn’t seem to work>
Lewin’s circles tell us that some cultures have specific regions of privacy: these cultures have a very small amount of “personal” information that is shared in the public. Once a person gets into the “private” areas, all of the private areas are available. So a friend who knows about your relationship with your boss, would also have access to information about your personal finances and personal relationships. Withholding information in some area is seen as offensive, because it violates the relationship. Few people get this privilege.
In “Diffuse regions of privacy”, much is publicly available. People who become “close” do so in specific compartments or areas: so a friend may know everything about your relationship with your boss, but nothing about your personal finances or personal relationships. Withholding this type of information is seen as being normal and natural, and friends must be invited into each region specifically.
Friendship in the US and Germany belong to “diffuse regions of privacy” almost all of the rest of the world to the “specific regions of privacy”. My friends in America and Germany speak openly about having or having had cancer, whereas my friends in Austria, Hungary, Romania tend not to mention this particular kind of disease.
Back in the 70s I lived in Romania and I remember that my family members spoke openly and candidly about one of my grandfather’s dying of heart attack and the other of stroke. In 1982 I relocated to Germany and when I came to spend the last weeks with my father everybody seemed to avoid talking about his having lung cancer. My father himself insisted on “having TBC” if he had to mention his disease at all. I was forcefully recommended not to talk about “the C-word”, either.
Having lived for almost 30 years in the “diffuse regions of privacy” of Germany I had no problem adapting at least to this aspect of American culture during the last year.
Some of my friends in Austria, Hungary and Romania must have felt the disclosure of my diagnosis as incongruent with their cultural practices and some of them seem to be embarrassed, not knowing how to react.
I am writing these notes mainly to let them know that I remember the cultural environment they live in and I understand their reactions of reticence and embarrassment.
I know that their feelings for me is the same, no matter in which way they express or not express it.
the output of our mainstream school education
I made a huge tactical mistake in the education of my own children: I taught them to ask critical questions (e.g. “who does this?”, “what might be their intention?”, “who has a vested interested in this?” “what are the methods used?” “what are the results?”) whenever they want to understand something better. The system worked pretty well as long as we applied our investigative method on TV toy ads or 32 gear bikes some of their friends got for their first communion. But then we got into trouble.
My son started asking these questions in the religion class. In German schools religion is a compulsory curriculum but you can opt for the Catholic or the Lutheran Evangelic version. Luckily there is a standard procedure when children make themselves conspicuous. The German word is “auffallen” and is used almost exclusively in a negative sense. When the kids moved to this country a few years ago, the Head Nurse of the Kindergarten wanted to send them to a psychologist, because they made themselves conspicuous by being much too friendly, almost servile. At that time I explained the Head Nurse that it was my mistake: I tried to educate them in conformity with the manners expected in that other country they were born in, forgetting that too much friendliness is interpreted in Germany as weakness and servility. They enjoyed my re-education because now they did not have to be friendly and were allowed to suppress the weaker ones. My son was so successful that he started beating his 2 years younger sister.
This time, however, we had to go to the psychologist with my son. His verdict was terrible and had far reaching consequences: intellectual giftedness. The psychologist tried to soothe my fears: yes it’s true that these kids accept no authority, do not adjust readily to the expectations of their environment. But on the other hand they can be persuaded by intellectual arguments. He even said that our country would need more intellectually independent persons. Had we had more of them, our whole history might have been different. I was thinking about Karlrobert Kreiten who was a talented pianist but he made himself conspicuous by questioning Hitler’s final victory. He did this in a small circle of friends and family but his mother’s best friend turned him in and they shot him dead a few months before the war ended without Hitler’s final victory. We lived in a street named after Karlrobert Kreiten and our friends were always irritated by the length and unusual spelling of our address so we had to tell them to type in their GPS Richard Wagner Street 68 and then just turn into the first street across the adventure playground. Had we had more people like Karlrobert Kreiten our history would have turned out totally differently, indeed: we would have had millions of people with difficult or unusual names questioning Hitler’s final victory turned in and shot dead.
My son was only questioning the education system. Who invented it for whom for what end – he wanted to know, asking me the dreaded critical questions. He did not see any reason in getting up early and sitting for 5-6 hours in a classroom instead of learning those things at home in an hour and then be able to chase cars on the computer of a soccer ball on the playground.
I did what I mostly do when I feel intellectually cornered gasping for a breath of fresh air: I clicked on the Wikipedia for a definition. This is what we found:
Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.
After careful perusal of this information I had to go back to my son’s basic questions:
What is the aim of HIS school education?
Instead of trying to give a halfway intellectually honest answer I lapsed back into story telling:
- All your friends go to school too
- You all learn a lot of interesting and useful things there
- This is the system, everybody has to conform
His counterarguments were:
- All HIS friends hate to go to school, too. If they want to meet they can visit each other or meet on the soccer ground.
- He can learn from the internet and me what is interesting and useful for him
- Have I investigated whether there are gaps in the system, like taking special long leaves? Why not move into another country where education might be compulsory but not necessarily at school? He showed me on the internet a list of countries where home schooling is accepted.
Having no acceptable counterarguments I flew to another never failing educational tactic of mine: bringing in more aspects for consideration. I asked him what else he has learned at school, besides the curricula taught by the teachers. First he did not grasp what I wanted to hear, but I helped him with leading questions, so he would realize what a treasure chest of skills and culture techniques necessary for his future survival in society he had the privilege to acquire at school:
- how to cheat at tests
- how to look down on those of his former class-mates who did not make it to the “Gymnasium” (the high school after the 4th grade elementary school for the top performers in the 3 caste German school system) but lagged behind in the “Realschule” (high school for the second best performers) or even Hauptschule (the high school for the poorest academic achievers) and how to show the caste differences though hairstyle, clothing and language
- how to impress the teachers by
- saying what they want to hear, rather than what he thinks
- feigning interest in what they say
- how to impress the other boys by
- having the latest cell phone model and the coolest downloads
- distributing some of the cheat techniques in the computer games they play judiciously, selectively and profitably
- changing alliances and loyalties diligently
- how to impress the opposite sex by
- using tough language towards the day care staff
- letting his hair grow down his neck endlessly
- how to increase his revenues by
- falsifying his pocket money account
- lifting plastic bottles at home and at school and cashing the deposit
- how to tease and make fun of his sister in such a subtle way that makes reprimanding impossible
I have the impression that he grasped the value of the skills transmitted by our education system – unlike his sister who, at 8, stills acts in ridiculous childish ways like
- saying what she thinks
- showing her emotions overtly
- trusting her friends and parents
- helping her friends with their home works
- admitting to having made mistakes
But then she has been only two and a half years through our school education system and therefore there is hope that it will take on more and more efficiency and society will “deliberately transmit its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another” so that she will only make herself conspicuous at socially accepted occasions.
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