Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: Japan, China, and the United States

The CCSRE recently screened the film Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: Japan, China, and the United States. The film employed a new ethnographic research method of multilayer voices. The method combines primary observation of an “average” preschool day, secondary feedback from the teachers, and tertiary responses from the teachers in the other two schools. Students and professors from a variety of disciplines, along with some folks who work at local daycares, came together for the film and a dinner discussion. Below are some responses from attendees about the film:

“I very much saw this kind of paradigm conflict in, in especially the United States (um) where we say that we emphasize the individual, we champion the development of the individual and we’re really trying to get them motivated in very like productive ways […] but then there’s so much bodily control put on them, it’s always express with your words, use your words.”

“What we did see was kind of this intrinsic effort to help the kids police themselves and bring that out in their own behavior without intervening until, or having an adult tell them.”

“Because I grew up in Japan, I can really understand why they did what they did. […] What’s really, really valued in Japanese culture is like understanding of other peoples.”

“The whole time I was watching the American section I thought, Hawai’i, really? […] I just feel like of all the places to represent like America, like my first thought wouldn’t have been Hawai’i. So it was very interesting to watch that. Um but I thought the teacher intervention part was definitely the most interesting. Like thinking about Kindergarten and like, or Pre-School and how much everyone’s like don’t get hurt, don’t ever like climb anything, don’t break a leg. […] In the other schools, in, in the, in the Chinese Japanese schools like those kids were like fighting and punching each other and nobody said anything and I thought that would’ve been great ‘cause then we could’ve actually learned how to solve our own problems.”

“The Japanese schools made a really good point, like the teachers being there isn’t gonna stop them from getting hurt, they’re still gonna get hurt it’s just the teacher’s gonna be there.”

“They way we view it is going to be from a very American society point of view […] I think there’s a lot of things that we can’t see because we’re from this group and we take a lot of things as, for granted, or we think that they’re norm. You know, such as, um I think in our society we forget that there’s a big emphasis on authority, and so, you know, I think that’s another reason why the teachers are so eager to intervene […] I guess a teacher has to show the students that you know that there is authority in the class, that she is over them which I didn’t see that in the Chinese nor the Japanese scenes. But nobody mentioned that and I think that’s because to us it’s normal that they take that position.”