cultural education

I was teaching my 11th grade bilingual students this morning, and the lesson was entitled: "What Things Do." The lesson proceeded well as we learned that snakes slither, butterflies flutter, wings flap, lightning flashes and strikes, etc. With two minutes left in the lesson, I said, "Ok, here are the last 3 things and you tell me what you think each of these does: arms, lips and life." The shyest boy in the class said, "Arms hug." The prettiest girl in the class said, "Lips kiss." But the most interesting and in a way, the "funniest" response came with the last word: life. Of course I had my own answer, but I wanted to ask the students. One boy piped up, "Life ends!" Another one said, "Life sucks!" My answer was: "Life goes on!" And herein, blogspot readers, is your cross-cultural lesson for the day: the American is the optimist, whereas, true to stereotypes, the Hungarian is the pessimist. It has been said that pessimism is in the Hungarians' blood. Well, I decided to poll some more Hungarians as to how they would follow the word "life". ALL of them (from a huge poll of 4) said similar things: life ends, life dies, or life comes to an end. This is not surprising to me because a few months ago I learned that while American fairy tales end with the line: "And they lived happily ever after!" Hungarian fairy tales ALL end with the line: "And they lived until they died." Here's the conclusion of the matter: LIFE IS INTERESTING!

ceo for the kids