The Difference We All Share by Nhu

The Difference We All Share by Nhu - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

“Chào mẹ”, “Good morning!”, “Ça va?”, “我很好.” My days go by with me constantly switching between languages and emerging in different cultures. Having to move from Vietnam to America at the age of 10, I thought that packing and picking a favorite teddy bear to bring with me were the most difficult months of my life. However, I was soon proven to be wrong. The first few weeks of school were extremely difficult; everyone was either speaking too fast or I was replying with an accent too heavy for them to understand. With my broken English, I made zero friends, except for one girl who is patient enough with me and a few Vietnamese friends from my ESL class. The sad truth is, despite living in such a modernized world, most teenagers’ first reaction to hearing someone speak in another language is to scoff at them.

I remember my first Diversity Day at school, which was a total disaster. As part of the diversity team, I helped to carry the ethnic food cart around the school, gave presentations on my culture, and talked about embracing each other's’ differences. To my surprise, however, the food was hated on, kids looked at them disgustingly and threw their whole portion into the trash can. In addition to that, many made sarcastic remarks, mocking the different cultures being presented to them. Growing up in another country and speaking multiple languages, I struggle—even to this day—to grasp the reason behind those reactions.
Speeding forward to my freshman year in high school, that year, we had a Japanese exchange teacher, Hayashi Akane. The Diversity Day repeats itself again as Ms. Hayashi presented about Japan: confusion, mocking remarks, and indifferent. Seeing pictures of vending machines in Japan, one student asked, “Why does a can of Coke costs $120?” and ironically, followed her question wasn’t the mocking expected laughter as the price is clearly in yen, but instead, it was confused statements bombarded at Ms. Hayashi about the overpriced Coke.

It wasn’t until sophomore year that I realized why cultural differences are not valued and respected in school. That year, I took World History and throughout the year, random questions would be ask such as “Do people in China have to kowtow to their boss and president now?”, “Why do Muslims have to cover themselves if it is so hot outside and they’re living in America?”, ”That language sounds funny, everyone should just learn English”,... That’s when it clicks; I realized that the lack of respect and knowledge on other cultures in school and in America comes from the obliviousness towards the current state of the world and the superior feeling of being an American, thinking that other countries are less advance and their cultures are less “civilized.”

Taking World Culture in the 6th grade, I remember being taught about different cultures, government, and beliefs in various countries. I absolutely loved the class; however, it has many flaws. The government systems that we learned generally do not define the country accurately; for example, despite being communist countries, China and Vietnam are not as extreme as North Korea. With that comes an outdated system of beliefs. Many traditional cultural beliefs that we learned are no longer the dominant beliefs and are not widely practice. The World Culture class, therefore, engraved in our heads century-old, blurry, and outdated pictures of different countries instead of its main purpose—to introduce students to unique and diverse cultures around the world today. So, if the roles were to be reversed, I can definitely see myself as a World Culture teacher, illustrating vivid pictures of the current world that we’re living in and letting students immerse in the beauty of various cultures. After all, it is the difference we all share.