Eng 305

9/28/02

I still remember the day when my daughter left home, for the first time, to live in a Stanford dormitory. Being very nervous of the new environment she would live in for the next four years, my daughter just wandered around the house while I packed her possessions including clothes, books, shoes, soaps, pins, shampoos and hair conditioners, lamps, clocks, and dolls which she has been carrying around since childhood, as well as family pictures to hang on the dorm wall. She did not seem to hear anything I said on that day; whenever I asked her what else she wanted to take, she responded bluntly and apathetically, "nothing." Nothing in her face showed the excitement and happiness that were once there when she received the Stanford admission packet. From my point of view, however, she seemed to be the happiest girl in the world studying at such a privileged university, without any worries of paying the tuition. She had passed a long, dark tunnel of studying in high school, finally to walk the path of light, hope, and excitement. As a minority in the America, she was educated to believe in the importance of college education in order to be acknowledged by the society still infiltrated with racism, although improvements in bringing equality has taken place in the U.S. Therefore, entering a renowned college, for her, was a mean of gaining acknowledgement and success in the future.

I could read from her face what she was worried about the most. She wasn't afraid of studying in college, but she was afraid of making and associating with friends who will mostly be from the dominant white culture. Her silence in the airplane on our way to Stanford made it all the more clear of her nervousness. To ease her feelings, I told her, " Mi-sun, I think you are lucky, because you can meet many friends from diverse backgrounds and learn their diverse cultures. Also, you are lucky to be a student at the best school in which you can learn more about the culture of the United States. But you should remember that you are Korean American and that you should never forget your roots. You should be proud of being as a Korean even when the majority of the students are of different race. You should always remember your father and relatives who care about you, Okay?" Event though she didn't break her silence of keep staring at the window, I believed she knew what I meant.

Just as America is made of different ethnicities and cultures, American colleges are made of ethnically and culturally diverse students. I actually find out that in our English class, many of them came to America less than 10 years ago. They are all new citizens in America, still speaking English with unique accents. Since they study in an American college, their one of the duties is to learn the majority culture to better understand the new environment they are living in and to be part of the society. In the writing called "How to Get a college Education" by Jeffrey Hart, students are instigated to take "ordinary" classes, the classes that "have always been taken and obviously should be taken"(129)." What he means is that "[the goal of education is to produce the citizen (129)." Being American citizens, students should know the American culture and its origin first rather than that of other cultures. Being a new citizen is just like when a wife is married to a husband, the wife should know her husband's background, his heritage, and his family customs.

Then, should the husband know the wife's background? In order to live harmoniously, both husband and wife should know and be able to understand each other's backgrounds. They should embrace their differences and learn to resolve conflicts that arise from them. The college education should be the same as the relationship between married couples so that the students can graduate with the ability to make the society a more harmonious one. At least in the Asian countries, husband can be analogous to the majority culture and wife as the minority culture. As if to oppose the idea of learning both the majority and the minority culture, Jeffrey Hart extols only the profoundness of the Western civilization by using the "Athens and Jerusalem" paradigm: "Athens" meaning philosophical and scientific aspect and "Jerusalem" referring to the spiritual side of the Western civilization. He notes that the Western civilization is incomparable to that of the static Chinese civilization. Relating to the husband and wife relationship, college students should learn both the majority culture and the minority culture simultaneously so that they are able to reconcile the cultural differences present in most college campuses and be able to make harmonious, cross-cultural friendships.

Through the college education, where students are often influenced to assimilate to the dominant culture, the minority students should not discard their past. According to Bell Hooks, " It is important to stand firm in the conviction that nothing can truly separate us from our pasts when we nurture and cherish that connection. As important strategy for maintaining contact is ongoing acknowledgment of the primacy of one's past, of one's background, affirming the reality that such bonds are not severed automatically solely because one enters a new environment or moves toward a different class experience (100)." As an analogy, even when a wife is married to a husband and is instigated to change her last name to that of her husband, she should maintain and value the connection to her family. In the same way it is important for the whites to be exposed to the minority cultures. Learning Standard English in order to speak for the majority audience is also crucial for the minority students. For most minority students with language barriers, learning the Standard English is the primary goal of college education. However, as Bell Hooks points out, minority students should be able to speak in their community dialects or native language so that they can include their community people as the audience. Hooks, as an African American, notes that her own dialect is far different from the Standard English and goes on further to say that this should enrich the minority students' experience in college, not disturb them. Minority students in college should be able to resolve the contradictions and the conflicts that arise from learning the majority culture while preserving and valuing their cultural background.

One day, my daughter Mi-sun called me with an excited voice, " Mom! I am so proud of being able to speak Korean fluently." She explained that she gave speech in Korean to about 100 Korean adults from the Dry Cleaning Association of San Francisco. They were having a monthly meeting at a nice restaurant where my daughter was sent as the speaker for the Asian Liver Center at Stanford Hospital to raise the awareness of hepatitis B and liver cancer and organize a screening event after her presentation. There, my daughter spoke in Korean about the prevalence of hepatitis B among Asian Americans and the desperate need for the Asian population to get tested and vaccinated for hepatitis B infection before it is too late. When she called me the day she gave that presentation, my daughter told me how proud she felt when she was the only one who could speak Korean that fluently and how she regretted about once thinking that Korean is useless in America. Indeed, preserving the minority language and culture is valuable, and the true goal of college education is not discard the minority past, but to connect it to the majority culture to enrich oneself.

Beyond that of embracing both the majority and the minority culture, the most important of college education should be the learning to discern what is right or wrong. Through the college education, students should take on the habit of critical thinking and contemplation. If some aspects of the majority culture are morally correct, students should learn from those aspects. However, if students find other aspects morally wrong, they should learn not to assimilate to them. Merely extolling the dominant culture and discarding the minority culture will only lead to strife, chaos, and conflicts between the majority and minority communities. The same idea applies to a husband and a wife. If a husband insists his wife to follow every aspect of his culture and habit, and if the wife resorts to mere extolment of her husband, the marriage cannot be said harmonious. In addition, the wife will sooner or later realize her lowly and pathetic status, while the husband will continue to treat her as a servant and disregard his wife's culture and background. To live happily and harmoniously, husband and wife should learn from good aspects and be able to correct each other's bad aspects.

In conclusion, the true goal of college education for minority students is to see the reality meticulously with critical perception. Jeffrey Hart, a professor at Dartmouth College, is geared toward the conservative wing, hinted by the fact that the essay "How to Get a College Education" first appeared in a conservative journal. He extols the dominant culture and appears to devalue the minority culture in his writing. On the other hand, the Bell Hooks "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education," refuses to disconnect herself from the minority past and learn only the good aspects of the dominant culture. If Hart's idea is that wife should follow and assimilate to her husband's culture and background in order to bring harmony in a marriage relationship, Hook's idea is that both wife and husband should value each other's backgrounds so that any conflict that arises in the marriage can quickly be resolved. I believe the true goal of college education is to educate students to embrace both the majority and minority culture, not just discard the past nor follow the dominant culture.

This year, Mi-sun became a sophomore at Stanford. After a long summer vacation, she packed the bags, and this time, she did it all by herself. Three days after she left home, she called me and said, "Mom, I enrolled in a jazz and hip hop dance classes in addition to my pre-med classes!" She is not only taking classes like organic chemistry, biology, and philosophy, but is also enjoying her college life by taking dance and piano classes. I told her on the phone with an excited voice " Hey, that looks fun for you; I like your idea...have fun in learning new cultures and expanding your horizons."

Citation The Presence of Others: Voices and Images that call for response: Lunsford, Andrea A., Ruszkiewicz, John J.: Boston New York, 2000.