(no subject)

[merchimerch]

Today I went to my Persian teacher's English class. The nationalism in these kids is really overwhelming. I got questions about if I knew Uzbek history (and the greatness of Amir Timur/Alisher Navoi), what my favorite Uzbek food was, if I knew Uzbek singers, if I knew about the national clothing....everything seems to come down to national something, even with 9-11th graders. It seems so foreign to me that nationalism would be so prominent in everyone's minds. American youth certainly wouldn't ask foreign guests what their favorite American food was, if they knew what the US national attire was, etc... I'm not sure how to fit this into my work, but I want to emphasize how much people talk about national stuff here.

Also, the teacher said something very interesting - despite all the talk of nationlism here, he said that in the 80s he saw lots more women wearing national fabrics. He said that the dresses were very short, but that they were of national fabric - his mother and her friends wore them, etc. Now he says that women and girls don't seem to want to wear the national fabrics as much anymore, not even on holidays (apparently it is traditional to wear national fabric on holidays). So it seems like the rhetoric about national items is quite prevalent, but the practice is declining in places. People talk a lot about the population losing interest in traditional music, even though it seems to me that there is traditional music being propagandized all over. Very interesting situation.

By the way, the best moment of the class was when one of the boys in class asked me "What do you do with your husband?" I couldn't help laughing, and it turned out he was trying to ask what my husband did for a living...

Comments

[iyindo.livejournal.com]

lolz -- that question was awesome! i would've laughed too.

[sps.livejournal.com]

...But even before the planebombing I visited the US on several occasions and was absolutely floored by the level of nationalism. Of course, Americans don't ask you about your favourite American food, because many of them don't take any non-American foods seriously (and of course the answer is probably McDonald's anyway, statistically speaking). As to national dress, do y'all have one?

But the flags! There are flags everywhere in the US! It looks like a permanent fascist rally - and they're on libraries and schools as well as on people's houses. Or to put it the other way, they're on people's houses as well as the schools and the libraries.

And more recently there have been things like the french fries matter. We thought that was a joke until friends started bringing back reports of menus. A country's national best friends point out that it's making a mistake and the response is try to expunge them from common language - this may be the craziest piece of nationalism I can ever remember hearing.

Well, all I'm trying to say is that nationalism takes different people differently. In Jamaica the national dish has two parts, one is poisonous and the other comes from Canada. But I was going 'national dish?' because that isn't an idea we had. I thought we in Britain had a national railway system until they sold it.

But we unconsciously expect nationalism to take familiar forms, while it's perhaps the objective of nationalism that it doesn't.

Then again, what it's all about I have no idea, because if anyone can persuade me that a 'nation' is more than a line on a map and an educational curriculum, I'll be surprised.

[merchimerch.livejournal.com]

yeah I do think that nationalism takes different shapes in different countries, I also just don't think that teenagers in most of the world are interested in carrying the mantle of nationalism.

If I were a foreigner in a foreign language class in an American (or Canadian, or French) highschool, I wouldn't expect the question answer session to turn into a quiz about how well I understand the national identity of the country. Most teenagers seem to want to talk about music and sports, etc. I really don't think all the flags adorning businesses and houses in the US were put up by 15 year olds.