Amparo B. Ojeda, "Growing Up American: Doing the Right Thing"
Evaluating the Text
1. What markedly different assumptions about child rearing did the author have to confront when she came to the United States from the Philippines?
Extending Viewpoints through Writing and Research
1. If you could choose between the American or the Philippine lifestyle, which would you choose and why?
2. Are there child-rearing practices to which you were subjected that appear arbitrary or were they founded?
3. Describe your experiences?
Stephen Chapman,"The Prisoner's Dilemma"
Evaluating the Text
1. What are the five objectives that imprisonment is supposed to achieve in Western culture?
2. How satisfactory do American prisons perform these functions?
3. How do the practices of punishment in Eastern cultures differ from those in Western societies?
4. What is Chapman's attitude toward these practices in comparison with Western methods of punishment?
Stephen Chapman,"The Prisoner's Dilemma"
Extending Viewpoints through Writing and Research
Write a short essay that answers Chapman's question, "Would you rather be subject to a few minutes of intense pain and considerable public humiliation, or be locked away for two or three years in a prison cell crowded with ill-tempered sociopaths?
PoraneeNatadecha-Sponsel, "Individualism as an American Cultural Value"
Evaluating the Text
1. For the Thais, what are the kinds of private topics about which it would be rude to inquire? How do these differ from the topics that are taboo among Americans?
2. How do the examples involving the child who has fallen, the way food is served and eaten, and the newspaper route provide the author with significant insights into American Culture values? Do you agree with her interpretations?
Exploring Different Perspectives
1. Compare the experiences of Natadecha-Sponsel from Thailand and Ojeda from the Philippines in terms of similar conclusions about Americans.
Extending Viewpoints through Writing and Research
1. What incidents in your own experience illustrate the value placed on individualism in American Culture, a value that those from other cultures might find strange?
Elizabeth W. and Robert A. Fernea, "A Look Behind the Veil"
Evaluating the Text
1. Why, according to the authors, is the practice of veiling women in the Middle Eastern countries most frequently encountered in affluent male-dominated extended families?
2. What attitudes toward female sexuality help explain the veiling of women and practice of purdah?
Exploring Different Perspectives
1. What roles do veiling and social barriers (that both protect and exclude) play in Middle Eastern cultures as revealed by the Ferneasand by Aciman?
2. How do both veiling practices and punishment as described by Chapman rely on public versus private display?
Extending Viewpoints through Writing and Research
1. Select one of the following and write an essay in response. Create a dialogue between someone who is in favor of the practice of veiling and someone who is very much against it. If you were a woman living in a society where wearing the chador was a matter of personal choice, would you choose to do so or not? Explain your answer. If you were a man in that society, would you prefer to see women completely veiled? Why or why not?