Culture School is in session! In this series, we take an aspect of intercultural theory and apply to daily life. Basically, our goal is to expose those cultural moonwalking bears. And because this blog is about culture and education, we consider each topic in the context of the classroom.
photo by maryatexitzero
You walk into a all-staff meeting, where there will be more people than chairs. Some people are sitting, some are standing. Do you sit in an empty seat or do you stand? What factors influence your decision?
A Short Story About Chairs. And Culture.
At work we have an all-staff mini-meeting every Friday morning. During this meeting, I just can’t take a seat if there are people from the management team who are standing (there are more people than chairs at this meeting).
Even if there are empty chairs around, chairs that my colleagues from the executive team CHOSE to ignore – I still can’t do it. So, I end up standing for the entire meeting. Because they are standing.
Sometimes they put me out of my misery (unknowingly so) by sitting down mid way through the meeting. I perceive this as an indirect invitation to take a seat as well, and I happily do it.
What does this have to do with culture? Well, it has everything to do with the next next cultural dimension we’re going to talk about: Power Distance (if you remember, the first dimension was individualism/collectivism).
Geert Hofstede defined Power Distance as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.
What?
Let’s go back for a second to my meeting example.
If you come from a high power distance country, like I do (I’m from Romania), then you understand my seating predicament perfectly well. Chances are you have been in my shoes.
But if you were born and raised in a low power distance country (such as the U.S.), then my example might seem a bit odd.
You might wonder why in the world wouldn’t she just sit down in the meeting? Nobody cares whether she’s sitting or standing! Well, the answer to that is simple: I can’t take a seat if a “boss” is standing, any more than you could attend business meetings naked.
It was only when I was hugely pregnant, that I finally decided it was time I culturally unprogram myself, and take advantage of the empty chairs. However, the interesting thing is that, even though I was sitting, I did not feel comfortable.
Physically yes, but mentally, no. Mentally, I felt … well, I felt ashamed.
I felt shame because I was going against what my high power distance culture had taught me. I was taught to open the door for people of higher status (such as teachers, or older people). I was taught to not take a seat until everybody of higher status than me has taken a seat first. I was taught to give up my seat (in a bus, during a meeting) if a person if higher status was present and standing.
I was “culturally programmed” to do all these things. And just because I now live in a country where people do not expect this type of behavior from me, that doesn’t mean that I can just give it up. Or easily switch to something else. Behaving according to my high power distance cultural rules is part of who I am. It will be forever, no matter how long I will live in a low power distance culture, such as the U.S.
But enough about me. Here’s what’s next in this series.
Throughout the next few weeks we are going to take a closer look at this cultural dimension called Power Distance. We are going to explore it in the classroom, and look at it from different angles.
We’ll also explore questions such as:
- How do students from high power distance cultures communicate with each other, as well as with their teacher?
- What about those from low power distance cultures?
- Does a teacher have a say as to what students’ hair styles are in their classrooms? Why, or why not?
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What I have noticed in my classroom is that I usually like to stand in front of my kids when I teach them or when we have whole-class activities, while when we have group work, I prefer to sit with one group or another. My studnets come from high power distance countries. In 6th grade, they are at the age when they have not assimilated their own culture very well, and I assume that they will embrance the culture they are living in and will be more familiar with the low power distance culture.
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