The Cultural Divide

Believe it or not, there are some cultural differences between Canada and the U.K. This was made apparent to me this week at school when we were talking about some of the winter Olympic sports. I think I've mentioned that my topic this term is The Olympics, so we were discussing some of the winter events since the Vancouver Games start in less than a week - Go Canada!

The first one we started with was curling, and to get things going I asked my kids what they already knew about curling. A bunch of them were convinced that the brooms were used to sweep the snow out of the way as the stone goes down the ice. Others thought the whole point was to see who could throw the stone down the length of the ice the fastest.

Now, I'm not pretending to be a curling expert by any means at all. I've 'played' a grand total of two times and was by no means exceptionally gifted at the sport. However, I do have a bit of background knowledge about curling, and would like to think I knew a bit about it as a kid also. I'm sure there are Canadians who know less about it than the kids in my Year 4 class in east London, but I found it a bit surreal to be discussing the surface curling happens on (others thought it was snow, because it's white) and going over the basics of a sport that's pretty well known at home.

The next sport we discussed was hockey. Again, you have to specify 'ice' hockey over here, or else people think it's field hockey. I showed them how the rink is marked, and tried to relate it to a football pitch (crease = penalty box, goals at either end etc.). Then I said how instead of a kick off in football, the start of a hockey game is called a face off. This, of course, had everyone thinking you tried to take your opponents face off at the start of the game. Once everyone was calm, I explained that it's called that because you are face to face with your opponent.

It's funny, because when living in Canada, I never thought that this stuff was important to me (am still not really sure that it is), especially since I don't play either of these sports, but it's just the kind of stuff that everyone knows about and it's assumed that people have some sort of background knowledge about. It's a bit weird when you have to explain it to people.

It goes the other way as well. The other day in the staff room, people were talking about shows they watched on t.v. when they were kids, and I had no idea who/what they were talking about, and wasn't really able to participate in the conversation. Postman Pat?

One thing that is cool, for someone in my position, is to be able to tell my students about hockey, maple syrup and blizzards and expose them to stuff that they wouldn't otherwise necessarily have a first hand exposure to. And also to be able to adopt cultural stuff here that I never thought I would - like drinking loads of tea, and going to the pub on a Tuesday night without a second thought. Live it, learn it!