A while back, after class, I was thinking about the fact that one area in which my knowledge is embarrassingly slim is geography. As we discuss the theatre and performance practices of other countries, I find myself trying to picture where they are on a map and what countries surround them. I noticed that I only have a very general idea of world geography.
So I looked online to see about some quick lessons and found these sites. If you're interested in improving your grasp of where in the world certain countries are, they're helpful and kind of fun. This one asks you just to name as many African countries as you can in ten minutes. And this one has a number of different interactive quizzes on world geography. Since we're studying Japan right now, here is the quiz over Asian countries.
Also, a month or so ago there was a very interesting article in the New York Times about American universities seeking a global presence. It's interesting to consider how this expansion of American education relates to colonization, in the sense that our economy is based quite a bit on knowledge. I doubt very seriously if any of the overseas campuses offer theatre classes, but it would be interesting to consider how a class like this one would be different if this campus were not on U.S. soil.
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I was struck with our (Americans) lack of geographic knowledge when I was teaching a high school world cultures class. The students had no idea were so many countries were.
Though they disliked me for it I made them take quizes on various countries so that they would have at least a general idea of where places were located.
I started our study with a story from a friend of mine who was planning a visit to South Africa. She was trying to find out if she could get phone coverage while there. She called up the phone company to try to figure this out and asked if she could get coverage in south africa. The woman from the phone company said after asking my friend to repeat the country several times, "I don't know how to make you understand this - but it's kind of like a state - what's the name of the country." To which my friend replied South Africa. After several disgruntled comments from the women she said, "Oh I didn't scroll down far enough - it is a country." She had not even realized that there was country named that - but rather thought that it was a region.
In class today we discussed how difficult it is for us as Americans to even consider other cultures and our interactions with them. We are so self contained that we don't even find value in having ideas about where other countries are located.
I know that there are various reasons for this and often for me it is the fear of stepping into the unknown that keeps me from trying or learning new things. But it is rather humbling to realize how much the rest of the world knows about us and how little Americans often know about the rest of the world. And I wonder if by fearing colonizing we have gone to another extreme by ignoring others outside of our country. I realize that our country has contradictions and ways in which we do colonize - but i do see ways in which we also hide or are oblivious to those who are different from ourselves. It seems that there are problems in either extreme.
Today I was reminded of some books that I really love that deal with this idea of our global world as well as the variety of our world. One of the things that I love to look at is how much we can learn about someone and where they are from by the food they eat. I was struck by the global sense of food when I read the book
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (Paperback)
by Peter Menzel.
This amazing book is one man's travel around the world to consider what people eat and the impact of their food on who they are. One of the reasons he decided to create this book was his observation of a young child in a remote area eating Ramon Noodles. He was struck by the ways in which globalization has impacted even the ways we eat and prepare food.
He has several other books that look at culture and people -
Material World: A Global Family Portrait
by Peter Menzel (Author), Charles C. Mann (Author).
This book again looks at multiple families around the world and looks at their material possessions and goals that they have as individuals and families. What strikes me about the various people he interviews is the many common desires shared among families and people throughout the world. The common desire to take care of family and children.
He also co-wrote a book called
Women in the Material World
by Faith D'Aluisio (Author), Peter Menzel (Author), Naomi Wolf (Author) that considers the lives of women throughout the world.
There are so many questions when it comes to the tricky business of learning about other cultures. And many mistakes can be made in our assumptions or desire to "fix" things that we may deem wrong within in a culture.
In this often confusing discussion I am interested in the ways in which this author is able to help us learn and respect one another. And sometimes that process comes from a simple look at the basic needs we all have in life - for food and shelter.
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