The first 2 lessons of my Cultural Differentiation Elective (CDE) have been amazing and quite interesting. I have finally broke free from my usual and boring lower secondary humanities which were quite dry. I don't mean to say that they were boring but Humanities are always very dry and I just have to get used to it. Geography and History for the past two years were fine and okay. However, since I have applied for CSE-BSP, I have thus taken a fresh new start and a new Integrated Humanities Elective (IHE) which is the Cultural Differentiation Elective. I hope to have a fun and joyous journey in this year learning this new elective!
In our first lesson, Mr Karplus, our CDE teacher, roughly showed us our SOW or our syllabus. He showed us our CDE wiki and some case studies we were going to look at. For example, the topic titled "Dichotomy between China and the USA" looked interesting as I thought how do China and the USA differ exactly and many more questions. It would answer all of my questions and get a deeper insight into the topic.
Then, Mr Karplus started the first lesson asking as what we thought CDE was about. We all had different views to the subject, but had a similar concept of what the subject was about. He also showed us the differences between the West and the East, showing us Google searches if he searched American Culture and Chinese Culture respectively. The search results were quite stereotyped. For example, American Culture revealed pictures of hamburgers and the US flag, while Chinese Culture revealed ancient art and calligraphy. Mr Karplus then went on to show us the differences between Chinese and American values. For example, American values include consistent persistence, success emphasis, work for work's sake, efficiency and practicality, Science & Technology, progress, material comfort, humanitarianism, freedom, democracy, equality, racism and group superiority. I was quite shocked to learn all these values as most of them were quite different from the Chinese values we were taught when we were young. For example, the education in the West was much lax than the education in the East. Young people in the West were allowed romantic love while the young people in the East are more restricted in terms of relationships. I felt that it was quite amazing as I had learnt so much just attending the first lesson. Moreover, my peers had also asked intelligent questions in which the whole class benefited from. The East and the West have similar and different values at the same time.
In our second lesson, we started our first case study on "Google Way". Mr Karplus showed us 2 videos of Google. I would expect such a famous and big company to have long and tiring working hours, heavy workload and stress but surprisingly, it was not! I was stunned to realise that the Google workers have freedom and relaxation. They have a lot of facilities for the workers in order to come up with ideas for the company. For instance, Google had many cafeterias for the workers to have their meals, massage rooms, swimming pools and almost all the 'relax' facilities in the world. However, I know that life couldn't be so good in Google so I took the video with a pinch of salt. Google has planned to make the workers happy. Even the long queues Google is deliberately having in their cafeterias. All these facilities provided and benefits has a motive to it which is to get the employees to mingle so as to share their latest ideas to come up with something new. This is a ingenious way of getting their employees to perform to the best of their ability, with emphasis on quality over quantity. The second video was a more perceptive video in the sense that it not so much focused on the benefits of Google, but however had more interviews of the high ranking positions people such as the CEO of Google and basically all about Google. It had certainly differed from the first video as this video was more on the neutral side.
Overall, the first few lessons have been thought-provoking and interesting, and I definitely look forward to more lessons in the future.
Hi Sherwin
ReplyDeleteIt is an insightful reflection that you have wrote. I can see that you really enjoyed the new CDE lessons. I agree with you that humanities lesson during lower secondary was not so interesting. Much of them were just merely memorising facts, case studies and events. However the CDE we learning now are much more interesting as are able to look into different countries culture, learning them by watching videos instead of memorising from textbooks.
It is an interesting reflection you wrote. I agree with you that the search results on google were stereotyped and there are way more to the cultures than just what we see on google search. For example google just showed pictures of red food when typed in ‘Chinese Foods’, however, there are way more types of food than just that. Also, I agree with you that after learning the values of America, I have learnt that the values have lots of similarities and also differences. It is a great reflection. Hope you enjoy CDE lessons as much as I do.
-Wang Ming Chuan
Hi Sherwin
ReplyDeleteIt is very great that you have written so much about the elective. I think that I agree to you as well that CDE lessons are more insightful as the humanity lessons that we have taken in Sec 1 and 2. CDE lessons also focuses on current topics( or not so ancient), unlike history, and learning about CDE doesn't only involve the memorization process, its more of your own understanding.
Your reflection is great. I can see that u have conceptualize and adapt what Mr Kaplus said into your reflection. For example, u gave in examples like " the education in the West was much lax than the education in the East. Young people in the West were allowed romantic love while the young people in the East are more restricted in terms of relationships" into your reflection, the comparison is good one as you are able to conceptualize different ideologies and compare them.
I think you have done well.
Yo!
ReplyDeleteI am really impressed by the length of the reflection! And it is quite rue that the lower secondary humanities are a bit boring. CDE had taught us many things about the different cultures and values between the East and West. You had made good comparisons between the east and the west like what Gao Yang mentioned above. I also like the videos about Google, the company is so amazing and i really like the facilities and food there. I believe your reflection is really good and i hope you would enjoy your future CDE lessons!
-Yikun
Hi Sherwin
ReplyDeleteYour reflection on the CDE lessons until now is quite in depth and shows that you have been paying quite a lot of attention in class. I have to agree with you that the lower secondary humanities was dry and uninteresting. Personally, I wasn’t really interested in Geography and History. With this new CDE lesson, I sincerely hope that it is going to fun in CDE lessons and I hope that you will enjoy it too. About your reflection on our first lesson, I think that understanding the difference between China and USA is indeed very important and might even be useful for us in the future. Our class seems very interested during that lesson too and as you said, they were asking intelligent questions which benefited us quite a lot. About your reflection on our second lesson, I am glad to see that you took the video about Google with a pinch of salt. I see that you have been paying close attention during Mr Karplus’s class and you are able to summarise his lessons quite well. You have done a great job for your reflection and I hope that you would enjoy CDE this year.