[blparent] Teaching Kids Manners

[LynnZ]

I don't know if there is a point to saying this here, as it's not a 
list for teachers or school administrators, but  I would  suggest 
that there is nothing inherently problematic with requiring certain 
protocol in a classroom. If a teacher feels more comfortable having 
the kids always say please and thank you then that is a fine thing to 
ask.  The way to do it, though, is to simply state that these are the 
rules for this classroom. Yes, teachers are there to teach math and 
geography but to do so, they need to be able to teach. classroom 
teaching is a difficult job and does require establishing some kind 
of environment that works for the teacher as much as for the kids. As 
long as you stay away from protocol that would cause any group to 
violate their beliefs or cultural norms. Like, stay away from 
protocol that involve requirements to cover or uncover one's head, 
make or avoid eye contact, or mention or abstain from mentioning a 
deity, etc. I think the problem comes in making statements like"this 
is how we act in America" or "in polite society" or other 
generalizations. In other words, don't generalize or put value 
statements on it.

I also feel ruffled by the implication that one culture is "American" 
culture. When people start saying that, they seem to mean "light 
skinned Protestant Christian immigrants from Northern Europe and/or 
their descendents". That group is not the first, nor is it even the 
majority if that matters. If you are part of that group and have been 
loudly proclaiming your own cultural norms as :American", you might 
want to ask yourself why, exactly, you feel you can claim that 
distinction. A note on that example that is floating around - an 
Orthodox Jew would never walk up to  anyone and grab the pork chop 
out of their hands, especially not if they are not Jewish. That would 
be considered stealing under Jewish law and would be prohibited. 
Forcing Jewish practices on non-Jews is also prohibited under Jewish 
law. Other cultures have similar divisions between rules for insiders 
versus outsiders. And there are some religions that do believe they 
are required to try to get others to take on their beliefs. notably 
some forms of Christianity. But just because you believe God wants 
you to do so, doesn't make your way either the  norm nor the American way.


Every society has it's problems and I'm not saying it is the perfect 
model, but I had a really interesting visit to Malaysia six or seven 
years ago where I saw some very interesting adaptations to living in 
a multi-cultural society. Malaysia has three strong cultures - the 
Malays who are Moslems, Chinese, and Indians who seem to be primarily 
HIndu, as well as the smaller indigenous groups and  some European 
Christians. They talk about the cultural contrasts a lot and it is 
not unusual to be sitting at a table where Moslems are eating with 
forks and spoons - no knives because there is some kind of taboo 
against knives on the table, Chinese people are eating with 
chopsticks and Indians are eating with their hands.  On religious or 
cultural holidays for one group, it has become the practice to hold 
open houses for people from the other groups. This is done at every 
level of society. For example, I was there for Chinese New 
Year.  There was a big celebration open to the public where Chinese 
officials hosted everyone to entertainment and a sit-down meal 
and  Individual Chinese people also had small open houses for their 
non-Chinese friends. I also know there are significant cultural 
tensions in Malaysia, but I thought the amount of communication 
around these issues that went and even the amount of knowledge each 
group showed about the others when talking to me, the  foreigner, was 
something we could do well to emulate.

The role all this plays in parenting is probably less relevant on 
this list, but many of us do parent via adoption and for many of us 
that means parenting kids who come from different cultures than we 
do. For some it means parenting children they bring into their homes 
from another country. In the US that can often mean bringing the 
child into a place where his or her culture doesn't exist or is not 
respected.  Everything we do as blind people where there is so much 
we don't' have decent access to and so many places and situations 
where we are already marginalized, interacts with  the way we parent, 
especially in areas where we are dealing with how others relate to 
our children, situations where we may need to advocate for them, 
situations where they themselves are marginalized, etc. These 
subjects aren't coming up on this list which seems to be 
predominately made up of biological parents parenting babies and 
young children, but the topic definitely has relevance to some forms 
of blind parenting.

Lynn