Some Cultural Differences

Something interesting about Lent which is coming up. Normally we Catholics give up meat on Fridays. However, that doesn’t make any sense in the islands. So at Sunday at mass Fr. Arthur told us that we’d be giving up rice. The students gasped. That makes more sense since we give should give up something big.

Also, I’m teaching SAT prep, and the new SAT has a section that involves essays. The principle gave me an SAT practice book, and I looked through all of the essays. Some of them are impossible for the Juniors to do. Not because they’re too hard, but they’re geared towards American society. Here is one example:

“Have professional sports influenced the values of American society?”

That one is obvious. Here is one that you may not understand would be hard for these Micronesian students to write about:

Quote: “A man walking down a crowded street noticed a dog lying by the side of the road that looked like it might be injured; but since everyone else just passed by, the man was satisfied to assume that the dog was fine. The next day he learned that the dog had been hit by a car and lay injured for two hours before a concerned man stopped and took it to the vet. The animal recovered, but the man never forgave himself for leaving it for someone else to help.”

Now, the assignment asks you to write a well developed and clear 400 word essay on your view on individual responsibility in the situation described above. To be fair, I’m sure most of the Juniors could figure how to find a point of view on individual responsibility. However, this is not fair for a Micronesian for two main reasons. 1) They do not treat dogs like pets here. They’re all over the islands, skinny, dirty, dying and not really treated well by anyone. Why would anyone even be concerned about a dog in the first place. 2) The idea of a vet is foreign to people here. The only real animal you would be concerned about is your pig, which is where they get most of their meat from. But each family takes care of their own pig, so they are the vet. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting cultural difference.