American Values

After Friday's class a number of students came up to me and asked if the teachers would talk more and in particularly if they would talk about American culture. Their main point was that they don't often get a chance to hear native English speakers and that by giving them a lot of group work we were letting a golden opportunity for them slip by. So I decided to try to put together a program for today that would allow for a lot of speaking on the instructor's part but would also tell them something about American culture. I had a number of ideas over the weekend, including going over the top ten American films as listed by the American Film Institute. But the lesson I finally decided upon was based on what I dubbed "American Values." In short, I took seven questions from actual American opinion polls. The issues were: abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, evolution, gay marriage, burning the American flag, and global warming. After explaining the vocabularly in the poll questions I had myself and my fellow teacher debate these issues, him taking the right wing positin (calling him Mr. Right) and me taking the left wing view (calling me Mr. Left).

The goal was then to have them to discuss these issues, vote on the opinion poll questions and compare their answers to the American answers. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to fit everything in. In particular, I did not have time to tally all the answers and they did not really get enough time to discuss all of the questions. In addition, I am not sure that they understood all the questions because the language really needed to be simplified on some of them. Not surprisingly, they took very different position on evolution than the American ones, with almost all ascribing to a view that God had no role in evolution. They were also overwhelmingly in favor of capital punishment and against flag burning. But on other issues their views were not so monolithic. There was a surprising tolerance for some recognition of gay marriage, not quite as high as on the American poll where it was nearly fifty percent, and there was a real concern with global warming and a near even split on euthanasia. For a number of reasons it was impossible to get a clear read on the abortion issue.

But I think the most interesting thing to come of the discussion was I hope that they had a chance to see that there is not one distinct American opinion. They often ask questinos "what do Americans think of 'x' and it was important for them to see that there is a real division in American opinion. At least I hope that is what they got out of it.