I Wanna Live in Amer-ika

So I went to Christina's school yesterday to get another view of Danish schools (the program I'm enrolled at DIS is psychology and child development). Christina works as a preschool teacher, while my practicum site is a kindergarten (American version of day care), so it was nice to observe a basic school (American version of elementary school). While there, I had two meetings, one with a parent and one with a 9th grade English teacher (oh yeah, Christina is also my assistant/manager :-D). The parent I met with is actually also an English teacher. Her and her family had lived in Singapore (or Indonesia I don't remember) for 5 years (her husband is in the shipping industry), and they moved there when her son was 2, so he pretty much grew up there. While in Singapore, the child attended an International school (taught all in English, so that was pretty much his native language). In Denmark, they start learning English in 4th grade, so the child is way ahead of his peers, and his mom wants him to continue the language so that he will remain fluent in it. Thus my role: getting paid to speak English with her child through mini lesson plans!

Next meeting: with a 9th grade English teacher who has been teaching her class about New York City and the U.S. So she wants me to come in and talk to her class about America! We met and we talked about a lot of things: prom (two of the teachers at her school went to Minnesota and studied American high school students and then wrote a book about it for Danish students, and one of the topics discussed in-depth was prom), Obama, Muslims, New York City, cars/driving/getting your license, etc. So I'm excited about the interactions I'll be having with Danes, comparing and contrasting cultures. It's a strange feeling being asked to come in and talk to others about America, because I'm just a normal college student, it's not like I'm a professor in Sociology or something, who would have factual information. It's also interesting because many people here are fascinated with American culture, they know so much about us, but what do we, know about Denmark? Absolutely nothing. Almost everyone I spoke to before I left didn't even know where the hell Copenhagen was on a map. "Oh, is that in Holland?" Or even worse, "is that in Amsterdam?" Not only did people not know that Copenhagen is in Denmark, they also didn't know where Denmark was. When I told people that the Danes are rated the happiest people in the world, many individuals thought it was because of the weed. No, weed is not legal here. That's only Holland. So I think it's kind of sad that every country in the world knows something about America, but the same can't be said for the reverse. Americans can't even name or locate all 50 states on a map, so forget our world geography.

We need to be more worldly, why are we so ethnocentric?