How To School Self-Dependent American Culture

On The Way to School is a film that reveals aspects of our culture by looking at anecdotes from other cultures. Through looking at the children’s stories, we get a deeper glimpse into differences in the elements of chronemics, uncertainty avoidance, and individuality versus collectivism, among other things. It is always difficult to consider flaws in one’s own culture, and it is nearly impossible without looking at other societies for contrast. One of the strongest points of contrasts that arises is that of a very strong collectivist influence on the lives of each of the children. The film includes many scenes in which the viewers can see just how reliant the children are on each other and those around them. In the film, the strong evidence for the collective further reveals how self-dependent American culture is. …show more content…
He has a severe medical condition that prevents him from walking and little access to good health care. The circumstances seem to be the perfect recipe for a short, miserable, and insignificant life. And it would be, if he were let alone. But he's not. His family invests everything they have in him. His mother takes valuable time out of her day to take him on outings to the beach and massage his pinched nerves. His brothers make a sacrifice each day to pull him to and from school each day, and to top it all off they are filled with happiness at the prospect of helping their brother succeed. His schoolmates are ecstatic when he arrives and they immediately begin pushing him around the schoolyard in preparation of class. Samuel has extremely high aspirations with regards to the future, and the collective of family and friends that support him enable these dreams to be somewhat within reach. Because Samuel lives in a collective culture, he is able to do things that would otherwise be entirely impossible, such as attending