What makes you anxious? 

Thursday night there was another shooting in front of the apartment building a block and a half from my house. This is probably the 5th shooting I know about in as many years. Other than a listing on the crime map of the Gothamist of a "shooting, 8/21/2008 7:44 p.m."there has been no news to be found. Information on the neighborhood blog from a "newbie" to the forum said that "someone was shot in both arms and legs." Another posting on the same forum came from someone who said the police told him the guy would live. While this was happening, I was thinking about anxiety as it relates to the research I've been doing, and reading a colleague's blog about her recurring panic attacks. But I heard nothing. I only found out about the shooting when my husband came home and asked me what happened. Our road was blocked off and the police were out in force but I had heard nothing. 

I  am not an anxious person by nature but I see how even a little level of nervousness affects me when it comes to interacting with the many people that live in that apartment building. I smile and say hello to the mothers and children on the stoop, but I don't know any of them by name. I recognize and greet several in the group of mature gentlemen who regularly sit out front on folding chairs and we joke a little. I like them, and feel comfortable around them, but nevertheless very soon I continue on my way. I can't call this a real relationship, but we know each other a little bit. When these men are not there and when no children are playing on the sidewalk, then very occasionally someone or something I see on that block makes me suspicious and I watch carefully while also trying to make it seem that I do not notice anything unusual. In these moments, I am nervous, and I greet no one.

The research I've been doing at AFS looks specifically at the level of anxiety or discomfort or awkwardness that people report feeling when they are interaction with people from other cultures. It also looks at how safe they feel in their own neighborhoods, and while traveling. From Mitch Hammer's research in 2002 we learned that AFS students generally have substantially less anxiety around other cultures after their experience with AFS than the did before they left, and this is much different from their friends who do not go abroad. We now also know that this lower level of anxiety around other cultures is also found among our older alumni, who are significantly less anxious, or more comfortable, around other cultures than their peers. Reports on these studies can be downloaded from www.afs.org/research.

Considering the effect of my own anxiety barometer around the nearby apartment building, I realize how important it is to be able to reduce anxiety and how powerful the AFS experience is. By providing a teenager the opportunity to live as a member of a family in another culture, they are expanding the definition of what is safe and comfortable for them to do. I firmly believe we are enabling them to establish more friendships and deep relationships with people who are very different from themselves.

Bettina Hansel
Director of Intercultural Education and Research
AFS International

Classroom Cultures

Every year, AFS sends close to 10,000 secondary school students from some 50 countries to attend high school in another country, for a year, a semester, or a few months. For most of these students the first days in the new school are as confusing as they are exciting. Their challenges with the language account for only part of this confusion. In many cases they hardly know what is expected of them. Teachers and students in the classroom in their host country behave very differently than they are used to. Students going to Japan may be quite surprised to find that they are expected to clean the school building. Students going to the USA may be unprepared for the weekly schedule that has them shifting to a new classroom with a new group of students every hour. Students used to listening to formal lectures and remembering what has been taught may wonder what is going on if the teacher walks in, sits on the edge of the desk, and starts asking the students questions.

Learning Styles

In the USA these days there are many educators who feel it is much more important for the student to learn how to think and how to learn, and that the particular "facts" can always be easily looked up on the internet if they are important. An example is this older post from the blog, Dangerously Irrelevant.  In this post Scott McLeod may seem to compare the available memory space in the human brain to that of a computer's hard drive. Why not off load some of the facts that aren't immediately needed to some external hard drive like wikipedia where they can always be found?

I apologize here to Scott for misrepresenting somewhat his more thoughtful and nuanced perspective so that I can highlight a contrasting perspective. I do agree that learning how to learn helps a student achieve and grow in the USA. However, when one relies too much on the ability to look up information when needed, sometimes facts are simply ignored. We have seen many times over the years in our US political system, where candidates will state opinions and present their solutions to national and world problems supported by "facts" that could be seen as merely placeholders for a URL hyperlink to the actual statistics, which anyone could find if they felt they were really important, but few people really know or can even judge if the facts are true or misleading.

In classrooms in many other parts of the world, learning facts is critically important.  Facts are seen to be important pieces of information that are known to be true, and on which to base your understanding and conclusions about the world. I recommend seeing Jaime Wurzel's video, The Intercultural Classroom. The trailer on the site gives you a taste of this and other cultural differences in teaching style.

Teachers may not be aware of how much of their pedagogy depends on the cultural context the students bring to it. Even exchange students who have excellent language skills may talk less than expected because they don't know what to talk about. They may not be used to a format that asks them to state and defend their own opinion about anything from abstract art to environmental policy. "How do I find out what is the right answer?" they may wonder. It can be difficult to understand that the teacher believes there is no right answer, only good arguments. Well, what makes a good argument? In cultures that emphasize harmony rather than debate, arguments may be avoided in favor of relationship building. US teachers in particular who have exchange students like this in their classrooms can help, first by being aware that the student is working from a different context, and then by deliberately teaching the expected structure of a logical argument.

Similarly, US students who are used to being asked their opinion on all sorts of issues may have more trouble remembering the key facts that may be required of them, or starting their essays with a relevant theory rather than with a specific anecdote or example. The inductive approach of drawing connections between individual examples to create a theory is more popular in the US, while in France, it is more typical to create the theory on principles and then deduce the examples. Again, being aware of this potential cause for the students apparently poorer performance can provide some insight on what hidden lessons need to be deliberately taught to these students.

These new challenges for the exchange student are an important part of the learning that takes place through cultural immersion, and AFS thanks the teachers around the world who are welcoming our students into their classroom. On our AFS International web site we hope some of the information we have provided for schools will prove useful for the teachers and school administrators who work every day with exchange students like ours.

Bettina Hansel
Director of Intercultural Education and Research
AFS International

Private Lives

In the early hours of the morning when I was somewhere between awake and asleep and with my eyes still closed, my attention was drawn to a slightly smoky, slightly spicy and faintly familiar odor. I hesitated a minute before I recognized what it was. It was a smell I remembered from India. Opening my eyes I realized where it was coming from. I had put an Indian bed sheet on my bed for the summer when I don't need the additional warmth of a blanket. And it's a beautiful sheet which I brought back from India ... in 1992. It's been through numerous washes over the years but still has not lost its color, nor has it completely lost its odor, at least in my dreams.

It reminded me of the lingering traces of the cultural assumptions and patterns of behavior we learn in childhood that still cling to us long after our context changes and we intend to take on a new pattern. Like the storks who no longer bother to fly after living under nets as fledglings, we sometimes find it hard to escape those ingrained patterns and beliefs even when we have every reason to escape them. One of these ingrained patterns for me is my reluctance to ask people about their relationships, their feelings, their opinions. It's somewhat of a joke that I am always the last person to know the office gossip.

And I know where it comes from:

"Mind your own business!"

Somehow the pattern emerged when I was still a child that some questions I asked were perceived as prying into affairs that were private to the individuals involved and therefore should be none of my concern. Not wanting to be a "busybody" or gossip, I learned to refrain from asking people questions about their personal lives. If they wanted me to know, they would tell me. I learned I shouldn't ask. Now this seems to me to be an extreme form of the concern for privacy that was characteristic of the US culture during the time I was growing up.

"Don't ask. Don't tell."  

A familiar restriction on asking about other people's private lives was made a policy in the US military during the Clinton administration. While intended to find a way to allow homosexuals to serve in the military rather than automatically being discharged, the essence of the policy was this: Your private behavior may be contrary to military regulations, but at long as I don't ask you about it and you don't tell me about it, then we agree that it doesn't exist.  But of course, this does mean that I can't know you very well or really be a close friend, and I may have to pretend not to recognize some essential aspects of your identity because they are different than what is allowed.

Today, one the one hand there are myriad privacy policies that we acknowledge reading even when we don't, while on the other people seem very willing to tell all sorts of things about themselves to almost anyone. And they are being judged on what they put out there, with stars, comments, and sharing on Facebook.

"I don't mean to pry, but . . . "

I still worry about invading someone's privacy. Am I someone you trust enough to share these details of you life with me? This timid restraint that prevents me from getting to know you is not so useful to me these days. I now believe that it doesn't so much protect your privacy as it locks out our opportunities for meaningful exchanges. And for relationships across cultures, or even across genders, it is absolutely necessary to ask questions and show my curiosity and my interest in your life because I cannot assume that my own experience gives me the basis to understand yours. If I am to understand who you are, will need you to tell me, and if you don't think to do so, I'll have to ask.

"Curiosity killed the cat."

How many times did I hear this growing up? Don't be curious? Curiosity is dangerous? Why was this value promoted? But it's not so easy to lose the old habits. I still hesitate.

Bettina Hansel
Director of Intercultural Education and Research
AFS International