It has been 2 weeks since school has started, and I have been through 3 lessons of CDE. At the start for the first lesson of CDE, I totally had no idea of what CDE was and did not know what to expect. Well, after some explanation from Mr Karplus, my impression of CDE was to help us understand the cultures of the east and west, while also giving us an insight of their differences. I personally believe that understanding these will allow us to better view this world and understand people from other societies. This knowledge will also allow us to have a edge next time when we enter the workforce as when we interact with people from USA or China, we will be able to know what to take note of during the interaction.
For the first lesson of CDE, other than telling us about the curriculum, Mr Karplus also showed a few HSBC advertisements that displayed the importance of understanding the culture of people from other countries. For example in one of the advertisements, a foreigner went to China and had a business dinner with his Chinese counterparts. The main course of the dinner was a bowl of eel soup. He felt that it was rude to reject and decided to finish the whole bowl. However, he did not know that in Chinese culture, finishing your food shows the lack of generosity of the host. Thus, he was offered 2 more bowls of eel soup. This hilarious episode showcased the importance of understanding the culture of others.
After that, Mr Karplus also told us that a lot of the things we think we know about another culture often are only the tip of the iceberg, and there is a whole lot more about a culture than what we perceive. We definitely have to dig deeper to have a more all rounded view of the culture of others. We also have to try to minimise the amount of stereotypes that we chose to believe in about the other culture so as to better understand it.
For the second and third lesson, we looked into the 15 different values in the American culture. After analysing them, we also looked at the differences between these values and our traditional Chinese values. After that, we also looked at Google as a case study and try to understand their work cultures. The Google work culture is very different from many companies around the world in the fact that theirs is more relaxed and allowed their employees to enjoy their time at work. They had many facilities that provided material comfort for their employees and also canteen that serve up top quality food for free. They also have the rule of "20% time". All these show that Google looks at improving the welfare of their employees in order to get the most out of them.
Overall, I am looking forward for the CDE lessons this year and I truly hope that I can learn and understand more about the cultures of others. Other than that, I recognise the importance of CDE for BSP. As students learning to be bilingual and bi-cultural, CDE is crucial for us to accomplish that.
