Seven Billion

“Chen.”

“Chen.”

“No, you’ve to pronounce it like this: ‘Chi-un, but in one go. Chen.”

“But that’s what I said!”

“No, the tone isn’t right.”

I sighed and leaned further against the escalator, wondering why Vietnamese names had to sound so differently from the way they were spelled. Tran, Chen. Tran, Chen.

I have spent nearly five months living in the midst of people coming from places I have only seen on printed paper, or big digital screens. And the journey will probably carry on long after this first semester, with more experiences and discoveries to snapshot and file away in the recesses of my mind. This article takes a look at one very important aspect of that journey so far, the people, with two conclusions.

A few years back, I watched a movie set in India. I can’t remember what the movie was; in fact, now come to mention it I’m not even entirely sure whether it was a movie, or a novel I had read. But whatever the case, it was a story about India and Indians. Again, the plot and characters are fuzzy fragments in my brain now, but what struck me about the story was that it painted quite a different picture of life in India than what we outsiders are used to seeing. Through popular media, we often see perspectives of the country from the very rich, or the very poor, but this story had characters mostly from the middle class. The approach, in fact, was so bent towards the mainstream that it actually became a novel idea; I was aware enough of the immense problem of the stories and tales of India that I’d encountered before this: they didn’t give me an idea of how it was like to be a normal Indian. Finally, there was a view that I could wrap my head around, an understanding of how a normal life there would be like, a general idea. Something that I much wanted not just for India, but for any other country in the world.

Then I met a batch of scholars from India. And everything changed......again.

Over the past months, I have slowly come to terms to the fact that my goal of understanding how it was like to live in other countries would never be fulfilled. When we were young, we would often have these little picture books depicting the lives of people from other countries. But the fact is, there is no normal, no general theme to follow in learning about other countries and their people. Accomplishing my goal would take millions upon millions of picture books, all neatly stacked with each one dedicated to a different individual. It’s mind-boggling, it’s impossible.

And herein lies the problem: our education systems ignore that.

This is not the usual rant on how a one-size-fits-all system never works. That’s a story for another day, another article. The problem here is that education systems like to put things into boxes. Categories, labels, groups. It likes to keep stuff simple and politically correct, especially when it comes to situations that have multiple sides to them. And this includes people.

I remember civics and moral classes back in primary school. In the textbooks, they would have these people from different ethnic groups dress up in traditional costumes and then go on to explain their culture and how they each lived their lives. And I couldn’t help thinking at the time how irrelevant it was, as probably, by a very rough estimate, more than half of the Chinese, for example, don’t follow the old-fashioned lifestyle described so enthusiastically in the books. This is even disregarding the fact that racial lines are becoming more and more blurred every day.

The reason why this is such a big problem is not so much the content of these teachings, but the way they wire our brains to think. Our minds have become two-dimensional, in the sense that we subconsciously assume only one side in any matter, making it harder to accept that in the real world, there are so many variables and possibilities. We have become ‘textbook people’, expecting things to be in a certain way after reading or hearing about them, while in reality things may be far, far away from what we assume them to be.

Although it was to be expected, I still find it fascinating every time I think about the vast ocean of different personalities that populate this world. It makes it so much more interesting, and it makes my stay here so much more enjoyable and unpredictable. And curriculum needs to reflect that. It’s fine that my Social Studies textbook tells me about the conflicts in North Ireland, but it’s not fine that in the entire syllabus, I won’t find another mention of North Ireland and its other characteristics. While thankfully, it gives me several views from different parties about the conflict, it still leaves a lot to be desired. A good education system shouldn’t teach us what to think, it should teach us how to think, how to form opinions and analyze for ourselves. Spoon-feeding us a single perspective of things isn’t going to help that.

Before I end, one more thing: I mentioned there were two conclusions.

With all emphasis on acknowledging the differences in all of us, I have realised an ironic thing: us scholars are mostly the same.

We’re mostly from the middle class. We generally do okay in our studies. We don’t like something or other about our government/our country. We’re quite sociable. We love sarcasm. A lot of us like to read. We’re generally rather fun-loving.

While these characteristics certainly don’t apply to every one of us, a surprising majority fit the bill. In fact, come to think of it, we’re probably more alike than a group of individuals from the same country.

Make what of that if you will.