It's not easy being an anti-nationalist cultural-syncretist rationalist atheist quasi-trans-humanist singulatarean when your kid's school is looking for volunteers for the international cultural day.
We're one of the many international families sending a NZ-born child to Ilam School. I'm Canadian, Susan is American, the kids are Kiwis who are eligible for the other citizenships. While there exist things that are certainly Canadian and American, they're not really part of our culture, even if they're part of the culture of the places where we were born. And the things that we do do are really close enough to the things done by other Kiwi households that it would be pretty boring. Presents at Christmas, pancakes with maple syrup, sledding when there's snow... hohum. There's more curling in Canada, but Kiwis do it too. Same for hockey, which here you must preface with the word ice to distinguish it from the silly field variant with the tiny tiny sticks. Bad weak coffee is Canadian culture, but not my culture. And a cultural demonstration of arresting people for selling wheat or milk outside the marketing board doesn't really show the best of Canada, isn't my culture, and is a bit too didactic for my taste anyway.
It's not like our family doesn't have a culture. The kids get more Canadian stories and songs at home than would most Kiwi kids, but I expect that they also get a lot more of the Wotanic and Greek myths too. The kids have heard and enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, but it's no more a part of our culture than is the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, TinTin, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, Little House on the Prairie, Wagner's Ring Cycle, The Iliad & Odyssey, Tennyson, Coleridge, Poe, Kipling, Freakazoid, Pinky & The Brain, or any of the international fairytales from the kids' audiobooks to which we listen on the morning commute. Inuit artwork is overrepresented at our house relative to a Kiwi norm, but so too are the amate paintings of San Agustin Oapan.
And so I haven't a clue what to fill in for the international day questionnaires. Our at-home culture is chaotic good / rationalist-geek-science / pluralist libertarian. When they're a bit older, they'll get the Yudkowski treatment, but it's kinda built into a lot of stuff already.
Our kids play Paper-Rock-Scissors-Lizard-Spock. Maybe we could share that as being broadly representative. It's closer to right than making poutine and having him wear his Winnipeg Jets sweater.
Something with Maple Syrup, surely - assuming you cannot do the dog-sled thing!
ReplyDeleteMaple syrup is common here too though.
ReplyDeleteI have enough trouble answering the "ethnicity" question on the census, and I was born and raised here. Pity the people (some of whom are related to me) who were born in one place and raised in another, and whose parents are from a third and a fourth place.
ReplyDeleteAs for "Wotanic" myths, I'm guessing you don't mean this, from the Wikipedia page on Wotanism: "Based on the essay entitled Wotan by Carl Jung, the term Wotanism in modern times heavily emphasizes white supremacy and National Socialism".
Ok, I was absolutely unaware of that interpretation. I meant the stories of Wotan/Odin, both in their more traditional form and as delivered by Wagner in the Ring Cycle. We started the now-5-year-old on the excellent graphic novel version of the Ring Cycle when he was 3; twas his favorite story for rather a while.
ReplyDeleteTrue - but its usually rubbish artificial syrup. I think the chance to be served real Canadian syrup from a real Canadian with a real Canadian accent would please most locals
ReplyDeleteBut real Canadian syrup is on the store shelf at every Countdown. And costs $10/200mL. I'll do it if the French parents bring in real truffles.
ReplyDeletePretty sure that those Ilam kids would rather have real Maple Syrup than truffles any day. Canadians are also known for their excessive politeness - am sure the Ilam kids could learn something there??
ReplyDeleteStrangely relevant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMyAbFmsb4
ReplyDeleteJust dress 'em in Wayne Gretzky jerseys and be done with it.
ReplyDeleteSo, the actual learning is that you don't want to spend money?
ReplyDeleteI think you're way over thinking this. They want parents to turn up and do something trite that originates in their "culture", giving the kids the opportunity to marvel at how different people around the world are. Maple leaves, ice hockey and maple syrup are all good. Stories about excessive cold and block heaters on cars also go a long way. Pictures of snow blowers and snow plows on F150 trucks will impress the boys too I'm sure.
Poutine could be excellent of course - what's not to like about fries and cheese and gravy? Are you allowed a deep fryer at school?
Your alternatives to that appear to be:
- the anti-establishment path of asserting that things aren't all that different around the world, and therefore aiming to demonstrate that in fact someone going to Canada wouldn't experience any different cultural artefacts than just staying in NZ. I'm not sure that it would be true though.
- the economist route of focusing on things like supply management, and aiming to demonstrate how that's condemning Canada to a slow descent into insignificance, as opposed to NZ's more enlightened path. Peppered of course with stories about strategic stocks of maple syrup, and lashings of beaver tails with said maple syrup on them
1. Cheap is part of my culture.
ReplyDelete2. Would have said you're talking about climate, not culture. But, there's "Mon pays, c'est l'hiver." So maybe you're onto something there. Whenever we get snow here, ours is about the only sidewalk that gets shovelled...
I wasn't hungry before I watched that....
ReplyDeleteIf you want something specifically part of your family's culture, why not go for the Keynes versus Hayek video? People expecting something stereotypical of your country's culture can assume that you're showing them the ubiquity of rap in public discourse in North America.
ReplyDeleteCan you post a snapshot of the survey? I'd love to see it.
ReplyDeleteI emailed my reply back to the teacher; will get it to you by +.
ReplyDelete