(Cont…)

During a presentation in a Journalism and Media within Globalization: The European Perspective Masters a class in Denmark, a professor told forty international students that people in Africa like to use one computer in groups because in the African culture people like to work close to each other. Why do people want to talk authoritatively about cultures they have 2% idea about? God, Allah, Budha….please forbid. Another junior lecturer in Holland gave an example of an African Masters student studying in Europe who went deep into the rural areas of Africa and dished out a fill-in questionnaire to illiterate people. I wondered whether it was the African researcher who was too naïve or too dumb to think or whether this was the problem of his lecturer who did not teach him proper research methods. A Dutch classmate of mine, severely appalled with the so called cultural misdemeanor of certain unsophisticated folks who perhaps belong to a primitive culture, said that “in Holland we do not start packing our bags until the lecturer has finished speaking as it is considered rude”… Well, in other cultures it is also considered rude. There are some ill mannered people in every culture, so it has nothing to do with culture per se. It now remains to be seen whether the Journalism and Cultural Diversity course would dramatically enhance the cultural understanding among us-without this initiative falling into the category of “Political Correctness”.