Culture Shock

You don’t have to be a stranger to face a culture shock. For most of you life is easy anyway. The color of your skin or depth of your pockets may buy you entry into any society.

Being strangers in their own country, that’s the reality for millions of Thai people. The exception of the paper plane boy Mong proves the rule. Bias, prejudices, ignorance, you name it.

The Asia Foundation attended to this issue with a project called Culture Shock. Explains the foundation: “Each year in Thailand, many graduates of the Pondok schools, private Islamic religious schools in the southern regions, have the opportunity to continue their studies at esteemed universities in Bangkok. But once they arrive, students often find adjusting to life in the big city confusing and challenging. As a result, many choose to withdraw from their schools.”

The foundation’s project helps high school students in southern Thailand prepare for this by giving them tools:







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September 17, 2009 | Filed Under Culture & Arts, Society 

Comments

2 Responses to “Culture Shock”

  1. Chdarat on September 18th, 2009 2:33 pm

    Very well put introduction!

    Yes, it is true that you can face a culture shock in your own country! I have and it doesn’t feel right.

    This display of ignorance that in the video shows lack of depth in our youth culture, a very sad fact!

    Most Bangkokoians are so cocooned in their ways of life that when new people arrive, they instantly made to feel different.

    Thailand is multiethnic and has been for thousands of years. This is something we should be proud of and we should celebrate this fact!

    Yet, some people arriving in Bangkok will be made to feel alienated by their kinsmen. So isn’t time we actually think about what we do and say and acknowledge that some of our cultural habits are divisive!

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  2. bosunj on September 18th, 2009 11:24 pm

    I imagine that some country kid from the central valley of California would find L.A. overwhelming and would quit too. Perhaps one from Deer Lick, KY would be equally overwhelmed by New York.

    Plausible though as I experience culture shock when forced to go to Duhmerica every few years after having lived outside Duhmerica for more than 16 yrs.

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