Losing Our Identity

When I was in high school, I hated learning about American history. Maybe it was because it was something that was so fundamentally a part of me that I did not want anything to do with it, but regardless, I never enjoyed US History. As far back as I can remember, I have always enjoyed learning about the history of other people's cultures. I will never forget the sixth grade because that was the year I was introduced to world history: Mesopotamia, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, Elizabethan England, the Renaissance, etc. I remember a picture of Katherine the Great on my history teacher's bulletin board in my sixth grade classroom, and I was transfixed by the idea that there were so many stories that I had not heard. There were so many different points of view that I hadn't considered, and my world was blown wide open in that one year in school. Benjamin Franklin couldn't hold a kite next to Tutankamen. And Betsy Ross? Please. In my opinion, Michelangelo blows that lady out of the water. Yes, they all have their place in history, but to me, there is more to this world than just the United States. Given this little bit of information, it isn't hard to guess that I love having students from other countries in my classroom, and this year I have a student from China.

I love having Lin* in my room because she has a very unique perspective about the rest of my students. The rest of the kids often complain about not having this or that, or if we don't give them what they ask for, they whine. Lin,* on the other hand, works for her parents in a local Chinese restaurant, and from what I can see, she has a hand in running the business. When she returns to China each summer, part of her job is go to the town's well to pull water into buckets to take back to her house because they do not have running water. Yet her story is often untold because she is quiet in class, and only opens up to me after school while she waits for the bus. I suppose I know as much as I do about her because I ask, and because I am genuinely interested in her stories. I wish I could tell her stories to the rest of the kids, but I don't, because as the teacher, embarrassing a fifth grader is the worst thing to do. Today she and I began to talk about traveling, which began with my question of which city is from, because I had forgotten.

Lin pulled down the large globe and pointed to her city, and then she asked me where I wanted to go, and we began to point to all of the places in the world where she and I both want to go. She wants to travel all over the world, as I do. As we continued to talk about traveling, she confided that she wished that we weren't all the same. I looked at her and was puzzled for a second, but then a picture of a Kenyan wearing a Nike t-shirt in the Kenyan grasslands flashed through my mind, and I understood what she meant. She told me that in China, people don't wear special clothes anymore, and it makes her sad. So in adult words I said, "So you think people are losing their culture." and she nodded emphatically. She said that she wished that wherever she went, no matter the place in the world, she could see each country's unique identity, but to her, it's all gone.

I really found what she said to be interesting. When people think of China, they think of pandas, dragons, the Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City, temples and many other things that we think are uniquely Chinese. But to her, her country has lost itself. Like so many other countries that are eager to develop and have their piece of the globalized pie, China has traded its unique identity for commercialism, and in the process, has begun to lose itself. But I wonder, to what end?

I have always been on the fence about globalization. On the one hand, it can be a great means for stabilization of relations between two countries that may be enemies if they did not trade. Yet on the other hand, jobs that our country needs are sent overseas to lower wage workers who continue to be oppressed by their own society. If the government wanted them to make more money, and to be uplifted, then they would have paid them more. Proponents of globalization argue that the wages paid to the workers, while lower than US wages, are still higher than the wages paid by other companies in the same countries. And along the same lines, thousands (notice I did not say millions) of Chinese have grown wealthier through the economic boom (which is now a bust) and are able to afford things like cars. But in that growth, globalization has also spread across global brands and it has also taken away the unique identity of the people who live in that country. Is that what we really want? Perhaps it is to US-centrically minded people who do not want to change to travel, but I personally want to see other people's cultures and points of views. I don't want to go to another country and see a thousand McDonald's. It just might be my husband's saving grace, but I would prefer to well, be a Parisienne if I am in Paris. I don't want the world to be like me. I want to see the world for who it is.

Maybe it's a good thing the world economy has, in Warren Buffet's words, "fallen off a cliff." Maybe countries who have so heavily relied on the labors of others will have to return their focus back to themselves and look to strengthen from within, and in return, retain their unique identity.

I asked Lin if she would bring one of her ceremonial dresses to school. I would say that I want the other kids to see, but I would be lying. I really just want to see it for myself. I know she has so much contribute to my classroom, and it is my hope that when I have more students from her country, that they will still have their own unique identity, and that they, too, will still have their ceremonial dresses to share. I can only hope, because then I will know that they did not completely lose themselves to KFC and McDonald's.