Saturday, April 24, 2010
W13 - Discussion Question # 2
Five cultural barriers to creativity listed in our text include: a requirement for conformity, an expectation of practicality and efficiency, particular arenas for competition or cooperation, an expectation of politeness and following rules for social order, and a reliance on statistical proofs (pg. 188). The reason why these barriers along with the others mentioned in the text would keep a group from being creative is because group members may feel bound by their cultural expectations and norms that they have been embedded with from the time that they were just children. Within this list, the one cultural barrier that I am very familiar with is the “expectation of politeness and following rules for social order” (pg. 188). Growing up in my Korean culture, it was expected that as a female, I was always polite and lady-like and that I should always be soft spoken and keep opinions to myself, especially when it came to talking with people who were older than me. Even if I knew that my idea may be beneficial or make things easier I felt trapped by this cultural barrier and therefore did not speak up often, especially when I was amongst other Koreans. However, as I got older it did not take me too long to overcome this because I feel like the schools here in the States promote cultural diversity and allow and encourage students to really engage and participate in sharing their different ideas and foster creativity.
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There are a lot of cultural norms and expectations that often end up being a barrier in group situations, just as the examples you mentioned. Growing up we are always told to respect out elders and while most of the people I've worked with in groups at SJSU have been mine own age group, there are a few exceptions. In one class I was in a group of four; myself, a guy my age, and two older ladies. During the course of the semester working on our group project, myself and Jerome frequently noticed the two elders making all of the decisions...and we sat by and let them without speaking up with our own ideas. We felt like disagreeing with them would come off as arguing/debating and therefore would come off as disrespectful. The group as a whole missed out on a lot of creative ideas that Jerome and I could've offered, I'm sure. For this reason I now prefer to work in groups where everyon is in the same age bracket so we're all on an equal playing field, sort to speak. I know this isn't really realistic though since diversity is so prevalent in our culture.
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