Cue my eye roll/face palm/spontaneous combustion. I think my class could feel the "are you fucking kidding me?" emanating from my body language alone, haha. I was really quite taken aback for a few reasons. First, if you're in the Bay Area, chances are pretty high that you know a language besides English for a big reason - to communicate with your parents. Second, it's a UC/CSU requirement to study a foreign language for 2 years - as in, if you're trying to be an educated adult, the state of California has declared that you need to know another language. Third, it's not even the most widely spoken language in the world (counting native speakers only, that goes to Mandarin then Spanish according to this. Counting natives and non-natives, then English is second, according to Wiki). Fourth, there are 7 billion people in the world - why would you intentionally shut yourself off from communicating with a vast majority of them by limiting yourself to one language?
Of course, in the brief span of time between the kid asking that and me having to respond, those thoughts just briefly ran past my mind as I asked back - "Why would it be?"
Here
- "because everyone knows English!"
Even as I'm writing this up, I can't think of any other reason why someone would think what that student thought. The only excuse has got to be plain ignorance or oblivion, right?
Unfortunately, wrong :/.
The student said "I don't know, I feel like it's not my language to learn. Like I would be appropriating culture" - at which point my mind, if not my physical head, exploded. If you're familiar with it, picture the Jackie Chan meme where he's clearly perplexed - that was me. I responded, "What do you think people have been doing this whole time??"
At this point, I'm going to step back from the exchange and go in another direction - namely, what the hell happened to this kid? I don't doubt the existence of cultural appropriation, but to have even gotten the idea that something so simple as learning another language counted as that just left me stunned and honestly questioning the world we live in.
The optimistic part of me understands that it's possible, even likely, that this student just misunderstood the concept of cultural appropriation. Still, though, I think if one kid could misunderstand, so could many others. And it just got me thinking - how twisted are things in the world we live in? It's 2018 and we got at least one person (if not many more) that is worried about how learning a language could be considered appropriating culture.
This is just incredible on quite a few levels - one thing I think of is, how can you even construe learning a language as anything besides respectful and well-intentioned? Another thing is - did she misunderstand, or did someone actually plan to convey that idea to her? A third - how sensitive do you have to be to let that consideration override the importance of shared communication with other people?
There's a host of other thoughts I'm not verbalizing because it all just seems so surreal, but the point I want to get to is - where are we supposed to draw the line between consideration and pragmatism?
Something that's off the top of my head is the gender-bathroom "issue" (which, if you can't tell, I'm flat-out embarrassed I have to even label it an issue. Hence the quotes). Some people are offended, while others feel the need to have a space where they can shit and piss in peace. Meanwhile, I'm like... the fact that we have workable sewage throughout the country is impressive enough - who cares who goes where? You can say I'm coming from a place of privilege as a male who has never had to worry about which restroom I'm going to (which, btw, ask me about this some time if you like to hear a funny aside about it) - but that doesn't make me wrong on principle. In a more egalitarian society, we'd probably just have shared facilities with a trough and, like, 6 stalls.
So, please help me figure it out - are we being too sensitive? Is basic human decency not enough - must I also recognize every facet of your identity which I (frankly) don't care much about? What are we even doing with our lives that we get bogged down by these considerations regarding identity that can genuinely be solved if we all just treated each other the way we like to be treated, and held others to the same standard?
At this point, I'm going to step back from the exchange and go in another direction - namely, what the hell happened to this kid? I don't doubt the existence of cultural appropriation, but to have even gotten the idea that something so simple as learning another language counted as that just left me stunned and honestly questioning the world we live in.
The optimistic part of me understands that it's possible, even likely, that this student just misunderstood the concept of cultural appropriation. Still, though, I think if one kid could misunderstand, so could many others. And it just got me thinking - how twisted are things in the world we live in? It's 2018 and we got at least one person (if not many more) that is worried about how learning a language could be considered appropriating culture.
This is just incredible on quite a few levels - one thing I think of is, how can you even construe learning a language as anything besides respectful and well-intentioned? Another thing is - did she misunderstand, or did someone actually plan to convey that idea to her? A third - how sensitive do you have to be to let that consideration override the importance of shared communication with other people?
There's a host of other thoughts I'm not verbalizing because it all just seems so surreal, but the point I want to get to is - where are we supposed to draw the line between consideration and pragmatism?
Something that's off the top of my head is the gender-bathroom "issue" (which, if you can't tell, I'm flat-out embarrassed I have to even label it an issue. Hence the quotes). Some people are offended, while others feel the need to have a space where they can shit and piss in peace. Meanwhile, I'm like... the fact that we have workable sewage throughout the country is impressive enough - who cares who goes where? You can say I'm coming from a place of privilege as a male who has never had to worry about which restroom I'm going to (which, btw, ask me about this some time if you like to hear a funny aside about it) - but that doesn't make me wrong on principle. In a more egalitarian society, we'd probably just have shared facilities with a trough and, like, 6 stalls.
So, please help me figure it out - are we being too sensitive? Is basic human decency not enough - must I also recognize every facet of your identity which I (frankly) don't care much about? What are we even doing with our lives that we get bogged down by these considerations regarding identity that can genuinely be solved if we all just treated each other the way we like to be treated, and held others to the same standard?
