Alecrem

Last week I spoke at Kokusai Hiroba, a space for international activity in Acros Fukuoka. My lecture was for a program they have for fourth-graders to understand the international world.

What I did here is explaining the multicultural world using three axis: the space axis, the language axis and the culture axis. For instance, if you take a look at the space axis you’ll figure that Spain and Latin America are far, but share a language and some common spots in their culture too.

A not very serious graph for you to picture the axis

To understand the world as a whole, I think one has to understand there are spaces which hold several languages or cultures. Japan, the Japanese language and the Japanese culture, however, are in a very unique position and don’t overlap in a significant way with any other regions on any axis. I think it’s important for Japanese children to understand this, as they have no examples in their own environment.

But this time it had to be explained for fourth graders (10 years old) so I couldn’t use the axis expression. I spoke about this without using the “a word”, and mixing in pictures and stories about Spain so that the kids had tangible references.

And when one explains things about far places, it’s better to do that through comparisons with things they all know. For example, if we tell the children Spain’s area in square kilometers they will ignore the information. But if we tell them Japan’s area is 3/4 of that of Spain they will get an idea. Actually, I like explaining things this way for adults too.