Teacher Relationships In Hong Kong

Register to read the introduction… For instance student teacher relationships in North America are not the same as other countries. Hong Kong students for instance have a high regard for their teachers. In Hong Kong students never call their teacher by their first name, because it's not respectful to the teacher. Also, they hesitate to ask or to answer questions in class because they don't want to lose their face in showing their ignorance in front of the class, and sometimes because their English is not good enough to form a clear question. And if they give the wrong answer it not only humiliates them but also brings shame on their families. Hong Kong students are taught to be modest and not to display their knowledge freely until being specially called for. All these things can lead to misunderstandings since most American teachers highly promote class participation. It's a normal thing that American teachers expect Asian students to ask them to explain something difficult. However, most Hong Kong students don't do that as we have seen earlier. Moreover, their feedback sometimes leads to more misunderstandings. When teachers see their students listening to them, smiling or nodding, they imagine that these students understand the subject very well. In reality, some students mask their emotions and just act like that to be polite, since they think that if they would ask a question, the teachers would be hurt for their teaching was not clear enough for the class. (Watkins, David) Many teachers do not treat their minority students as intelligent students, and perhaps as a result, their minority students fail in their classes. In Hong Kong, students stay in the same classroom with a fixed seat everyday in a same year while their teachers come to their class to teach them. Therefore, students can have many friends who always do the same things with them. This …show more content…
This is called ethnocentrism, which is the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture. (Spradley, James) Ethnocentrism also generates misunderstanding and sometimes conflict. I agree that I am ethnocentric but I think ethnocentrism is difficult to avoid because culture is learned though enculturation rather than inborn. You can never know the values and norms of a particular society unless you're living there and trying to learn the culture. On the other hand, the idea of cultural relativism is the practice of judging a culture by its own standard. This means what is right or wrong is only determined by one's own society. So there are no standards to judge other societies and there is no universal morality. This idea may be very persuasive and reasonable to many people. But I think there is always a universal truth in the world and that there is a true wrong and a right; we can sometimes try and judge other society in a logical way. For example, today in Indonesia, Chinese people are discriminated against. Many Chinese Indonesians are being killed, raped and attacked simply for being Chinese. (Angle, C Stephen) And let's not forget about the Tutsis of Rwanda who hid in churches, schools, and relief agencies in an attempt to hide from the Hutus who were coming to murder them. After it was all said and done over 250,000 Tutsis were slaughtered simply because they were deemed different by another group of people. (Gourevitch, Philip) No matter whose eyes you experience atrocities through, they are still atrocities and they are wrong. If cultural relativism is totally true, then there is no reason for us to think that our peaceful society is better than the violent societies that still practice genocide. Inside this country,