Culture and Identity

The aim of this workshop is to offer students several positions from which they could be aware of their own identity in contrast to others in their community and to arrange dialogue between them. In this way, students have the chance to meet others and to present their own personal and moral stance toward the Self and the Other in ethical sense.

First, students are divided into pairs. They have a hard task of looking directly to their partner's eyes for two minutes. In reality, this becomes a hard task in such period. Students need to keep focused and stare in each other without any comment. Comments come later, after the task is done, when the teacher asks them about their experience, and how did they feel, or what do they think of their parnters. They should finally describe the entire experience in one word, and teacher then enquires about their choice of words.
In main part of the workshop, each student is given two pieces of paper. One paper ib blank, and the other is here attached as PDF document titled: Cultural Position. Each student needs to fill their documents. In paper Cultural Position they need to mark fill the papers and in their blank papers they need to create their own profile, similar to those on social networks, with some information they feel comfortable sharing with their peers. They should also make their profile photo drawing it on the paper. Teacher is the one who sets a few examples - place of birth, favourite animal, favourite food, etc.
Once they fill both papers, they present it to their previous partners from first task, and discuss with each other answers and profiles in order to get to know their own cultural positions and their identities.
Finally, after this task everyone engages into general discussion on the topic of personal identity and how our cultures shape it and how we as individuals develop inside those cultural frames and relations.

Students use several approaches to learning about the topic and sharing their perspectives. They engage into looking at each other and getting to know Levinasian "Face of the Other" and what it represents, only later to know that there is an entire person behind it - a whole profile or a personality, which has already developed identity, which they will later also meet and get to discuss with them.

Students will create their own materials, as their profiles, and also use a questionnaire prepared for them, which they need to fill and then reference it once they present their profile to their partners.

This workshop was done as part of Ethics curriculum in high schools in Croatia. The workshop was done in high schools in Vukovar and Dalj with students age 14 - 18.

This workshop can be done in a 45 minutes long class, as they are in Croatia. However, depending on teacher as facilitator, it could be prolonged to 90 minutes, given that many new materials or questions could be presented. The time will always depend on the facilitator and their own judgement which parts of the workshop are most important and the dinamic of the group.

Teacher is supposed to lead the workshop each step at the time and instruct students taking into consideration time in hand and their need to express. At the end, the teacher should engage into Socratic style of investigation and questioning in order to motivate students to discuss the tasks they have done and to describe the entire experience they went through getting to know each other.

Students will mostly work in pairs since the beginning, untill the group discussion.