Culture Shock The United States of America is a country in which many people from all
over the world comes to live harmoniously with each other. Unlike Canada, which is a
multicultural country, it is a melting pot since each person brings his peculiarity to
enrich the culture of this country. But this melting process is not always without pain
or hurt. I felt the life in Canada is more comfortable According to John J. Macionis,
the author of Sociology, secondary Canadian edition. Culture shock is a state of bewilderment,
anxiety, disorientation and distress as an individual suddenly exposed to a social or cultural
environment radically different from his own. It happens frequently for the international students
and immigrants. Culture conflicts appear not only when students come to school and learn new ways
of living there, but also when they come back home and live with their own families or their own
societies. The reason for that is the students are young and easy to change, but the adults are
not ready to follow their example and adapt to the new situation. When I first come to live in the
states, my system of values must change in order for me to survive. When I first came to the
states, I was unprepared to live there, that's why I always suffer from stress because of culture
shock. I feel that student-teacher relationships in North American are not the same as they were
in Hong Kong. Hong Kong students often have high regard for their teachers. In Hong Kong, students
never call their teacher by their first name, because it is not respectful to the teacher. Also,
they hesitate to ask or to answer questions in class because they don't want to lose their face
in showing their ignorance in front of the class, and sometimes because their English is not good
enough to form a clear question. And if they give the wrong answer it not only humiliates them but
also brings shame on their families. Hong Kong students were taught to be modest and not to display
their knowledge freely until being specially called for. All these things can lead to
misunderstanding since my teachers thought that I was too shy, or stupid, or abnormal. Sometimes
when being directly asked for some questions, unlike American students, which are more creative
and can always give a fast answer, I have to take a long time to think the question over, because
I was afraid to give the incorrect answer. Teachers often feel uncomfortable with my silence and
tend to interpret my silence as an indicator of my inability to answer a question. It's a normal
thing that American teachers expect Asian students to ask them to explain something difficult.
However, Hong Kong students don't do this as we have seen earlier. Moreover, their feedback
sometimes leads to more misunderstanding. When teachers see their students listen to them in
smiling or in head nodding, they imagine that these students understand the subject very well.
In reality, some students mask their emotions and just act like that to be polite, since they
think that if they would ask question, the teachers would be hurt for their teaching was not
clear enough for the class. I was having low expectation from the teacher at that time and that
affects my learning. I was stressed and felt disorientation all the time in school. Many teachers
do not treat their minority learners as intelligent students, and perhaps as a result, their
minority students fail in their classes (Scarcella, 139). In Hong Kong, students stay in the
same classroom with a fixed seat everyday in a same year while their teachers come to their
class to teach them. Therefore, students can have many friends who always do the same things
with them. This helped to build a more close and stable relationship between students. Students
are more interdependent. What are important is not me but we. In America, the people are more
individualistic. People only pursue their own personal achievement and fulfillment. Relationships
between people are often many but temporary or casual. I felt people only care about themselves
and I felt that they are very selfish. At that time I always felt lost and lonely because I felt
it is difficult to find a good friend to talk to. Relationship are always causal, no one would even
cares about you. People in different culture usually have different values. In speaking with
friends, I had misunderstanding too. I have a friend in school who was Middle American. He often
tells people how healthy he is. It gave me a feeling that he likes to show off. But I know he was
not showing off, he was just like to expresses himself. Because traditional Asians often look down
on material things and don't think that these things could give them more value. So, I asked my
friend the price of his houses, cars or clothes, and he was very surprised since people don't do
so. Moreover, people there don't ask someone's age, for people don't want to show that they are
old. But in Chinese culture, the elderly are very respected for they are considered as knowing
the secret of life, and, therefore, wiser than the youngster. So Asian people are not hesitant
to ask and tell their ages. Body contact can be another subject for misunderstanding. In my home
country, people don't kiss or hug somebody of the opposite sex in public places. I was very
surprised to see people kissing each other in front of me. On the other hand, in Asian countries,
homosexuality is almost non- exist, because even if people are homosexual they will always hide it
as a secret. So two girls or two boys can walk together hand in hand and no one is shocked. But if
they do so in America, their American friends will be horrified. The main reason that I experienced
culture shock in America or in other countries because I had practiced a particular culture as my
basis of reality and I am strongly attached to my own culture. Ethnocentrism is the practice of
judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture(Macionis, 80). Ethnocentrism also
generates misunderstanding and sometimes conflict. I agree that I am ethnocentric but I think
ethnocentrism is difficult to avoid because culture is learned though enculturation rather than
inborn. You never know what are people's values and norms in other societies if you are not living
in that society and try to learn that culture. On the other hand, the idea of cultural relativism
is that the practice of judging a culture by its own standard. Which means what is right or wrong
to do is only determined by one's own society. So there are no standards to judge other societies
and there is no universal morality. This idea may be very persuasive and reasonable to many people.
But I think there is always universal truth in the world, we can sometimes judge other society in a
logical way. For example, today in Indonesia, Chinese people are discriminated. Many Chinese
Indonesians are being killed, raped and attacked. If cultural relativism is totally true, then
there is no reason for us to think that our peaceful society is better than the violence society
that used to practice genocide. Despite all these culture conflicts, I managed to earn American way
through schools, colleges and become respectable citizens. Inside this country, there still are
many ethnic communities where people from ethnic groups come to share their lives, trade foods,
and celebrate festivals. That adds to the diversity of American life and helps mainstream American
people to understand more easily other people in the world.