Thinking About My Job

In the previous exercise, you discovered a number of differences in the way American and host country people view certain key topics. These differences are bound to show up now and again as you go about working at your Peace Corps assignment. Below are five of the categories from the previous exercise, with examples of typical work-related problems.

Read each incident and note what you would do.

1. Attitude Towards Age

The American emphasis on achievements and doing means that age is to be feared and not respected; the older you are, the less you can do or contribute to society. Age is also suspect because new is usually better in American culture, and the elderly are generally out of touch with what is new.

Suppose you're a technical expert in crop rotation assigned to a co-op of village farmers. You discover they do not consult you or even pay much attention to you because they think you're too young to know what you're doing.

2. Attitude Towards Change

Change is considered positive, probably because Americans believe in the march of progress and the perfectibility of man. Improvements will always move us closer and closer to perfection. Traditions can be a guide, but they are not inherently superior.

You want to introduce a new teaching technique to your colleagues. It is a faster and more efficient way of presenting certain concepts. When you approach them, they respond: "This is the way we have always been taught." You say, "But this is faster and more efficient." They say, "No doubt."

3. Concept of Equality

In a strong reaction to the repressive class structure in Europe, Americans created a culture built around egalitarianism: the notion that no one is inherently superior to anyone else because of birth, power, fame, or wealth. We are not all the same, but we are all of equal value.

It has turned cold the last few days and you feel sorry for the tea-boy who is stationed just outside the entrance to your building. He doesn't seem to have any warm clothes and huddles over his charcoal fire to keep warm. You approach your boss and ask if you can tell the boy to move into the hallway out of the cold. "Certainly not," he replies. "This building is for faculty, not tea boys."

4. Attitude Towards Taking Risks

There will always be enough opportunity to go around, so taking risks involves no real danger. For the truly ambitious, failure is only temporary. Experimentation, trial and error are important ways to learn or to improve your product or service.

You want to try a new way of filtering drinking water for the village. The environmental engineer asks you if this technique has been tried anywhere else in the country, to which you answer, "No. "And what if we fail?" he asks you. "Then we go back to the old way," you respond. "And what happens to my job?" he replies.

5. View of the Natural World

The natural world is a kind of mechanism or machine that can be studied and known and whose workings can be predicted, manipulated, and ultimately controlled. It is not to be feared.

Books need to be ordered now to arrive in time for the start of classes in the fall. You go to the head librarian to put in your request, and she asks you how you know how many students you're going to have. You don't of course, but you're projecting, based on previous class size. "It's better to wait," she says, "so we don't waste money buying extra books." You know that if you don't order now, you'll have to teach for several weeks without the books while you wait for them to arrive.

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