Having worked with young adult international students in a private ESL school for the last 10 years, I am curious to better understand how students experience cultural difference while they are studying overseas, how it becomes internalized, what transformations occur and whether it creates notions of global citizenship. While for some the cross cultural learning is huge, it can be almost completely absent in others. ESL schools are wonderful opportunities for exchange in this area, but the neutral, surface way it is taken up in many classrooms is concerning. While the notion of the ‘global village’ is used as a marketing tool, explicit learning about cross cultural communication or discussion about how one perceives, understands and co-creates their own cultural identity is conspicuously missing in language learning. In short it is risky business, and risky for business. My personal concern is that when I ask myself whether students’ perspectives have broadened, stayed the same or narrowed, I fear not nearly enough broadening has occurred, and that rather than increasing understanding, further reinforcement of perceptions found in the media is taking place. When I consider what it means to truly examine and deconstruct cultural understanding and biases, we are only moving forward marginally and that as educators, and citizens, we could and should do much more in debunking and challenging media created and reinforced notions of culture. A commitment to this goal is, in part, how I define global citizenship.
Sister B, Vancouver, Canada
