Proposal #30: No National Nights.
I propose to remove the concept of the national/international nights/days and all other concepts based on nationality from the village program (and all other programs, for that matter).
Rationale
I think Nationality is a very exclusive concept based on a pretty much out-of-time way of thinking. I think, as participants in a CISV program, we are urged to identify with our country (bring the flag, sing a song, cook the food, teach the culture), and we look at others the same way (call them by delegations, associate Culture with Country). This way of thinking is very much encouraged by national presentations in camps.
In my opinion identifying with one's own country is always setting boundaries and excluding all those not belonging to it. It's a kind of Mine that is not shareable and therefore in my eyes not very constructive. It establishes distances rather than minimising them. And it excludes those who don't have a national identity and those who don't have the national identity they're supposed to represent.
Respectfully submitted, Eli (GER)
23 Comments:
As always, I believe in evolution and not revolution. Removing the concept of National Nights from one day to the next would leave a vacuum in the village concept.
I agree with some of your points, Eli. But I believe that each staff should sit down before the camp and discuss in which way they want the nations to present themselves.
To many kids, the national night is their day. Their chance to shine, their chance to be proud, happy and the centre of attention. How many of us haven't seen the shy girl blossom in confidence and popularity (and the JB buzzword 'included') because she can do some beautiful dance?
Staffs, consider your view on National Nights. I have always encouraged delegations in my villages to share national nights, thereby slurring the 'nationalism' and emphasising the evening as a show with acts that just happen to be prepared by delegations.
Eli, you don't have to feel that you can't identify with your country's general culture...but find the things you CAN identify with (you can't mean that the world can't learn things about Germany through you), and then otherwise present YOURSELF. Not as a German, but as a part of the German delegation. And as an individual.
This is a very interesting matter of discussion. If we look at the success of NN in camps, I think they are still a very good and important part of our activities. Kids love them, they are very involved in watching their new friends dancing or singing or telling a story. And, learning from other cultures is still one of our main goals. Isn't it? Approaching differencies, getting rid of our stereotypes, forming a new group, made of similar-different people.
NN are but a game now. I understand that nowadays we show the more and the more often dvds or cd-roms from turistic bureaux marketing a country and I also understand traditional cultures are a bit museal and not actually lived by the same kids that show them. But, yes there's a big BUT here, NN's aim (to me) is to show where do we come from. Not where we are headed to. And those who do not have a specific nationality, can still join the game of showing day after day the national diversities.
National peculiarities are alive and if we look at the world sometimes they are difended also with strenght and wars. I think NNs do not exclude. They only show. But the process of a camp will go towards the building of a united group flying over any boundaries and national identities.
On the other side I think we can think at a new form of organizing NNs. Can't come to nothing right now, but why not? Are we so sure, anyway, that we do not meet strong national feelings in our camp mates? Do we realy think nations are overcome? I see a multiplication of the indipendency movement claiming for autonomy from big nations to form little ones based on the similarity of a smaller community. I see something which contraddicts your discourse. I see a world in which people can reach the world through Internet and at the same time they can fight for some meters of land or for a flag or an anthem or a language or a name.
Tell me, how can you work on stereotypes if you cancell the big national thing that shows everybody how different we were/are at the beginning of the whole story?
Love&Peace
Luca
I like big BUTs and I can not lie.
Sorry...just had to.
LoL if we stop having national nights plz dont stop having big butts i cant lie either, love that song btw, especially when Ros (Friends)sings it. Cant agree more with you Vinh, about the importance of NN to some particular kids. Stop having them will have a huge impact to the cultural awareness villages are trying to achieve...
Interesting discussion. I would say it's good to re-think National Nights but not go to far as to taking them out of a village.
I belive there's a big contradiction in National Nights, at least in my personal experience. We show what our country is, how we dress, our typical dances and stuff like that. But in most cases they are just stereotypes. I'm dancing Tango with my delegation this summer at our village. And somehow i have mixed feelings about it, because it looks as if here in Argentina we go out on weekends to dance tango (and trust me, we don't!). So we are projecting an image that is not true to who we are.
I enjoy very much NN, and I don't think taking them out of a camp would be the best way to go... So maybe we could re-think them, and the role they have in a village. Could be a "delegation night" instead...
Hugs!
Ceci
at the very end or not NN show something very tipical from your cultural background...
and remember that as everything not well planned is not going to work out, and as everything well planned will be a success.
The strength of national nights is not only in giving each child a time to shine (because some children really hate being on stage - are those children as valued at village?) but in preparing a delegation through a project that brings five people together. Perhaps it depends on the culture, but in the US it is often really tough to plan a national night becuase as much as we have stereotypes, they don't transfer that nicely into song and dance (unless you choose the "music" prototype that is so popular) So, for some delegations from some countries, the national night planning is a very good way to look closely at your own culture, what you like about it and what you don't, what other people probably think about it and what to be prepared for (we have to do extra training because kids get shocked by anti-american sentiment a lot) and generally how we are presented stereotypically and whether we agree with that or not and how we want to present ourselves. Moving away from the cookie cutter national night would make them more useful both before and during the camp.
Ah...another great, never-ending topic!
I would like for people to accept the NN evolution (using Vinh's words). These could be well-thought educational activities or interactive games, thoroughly planned in relation to a certain shared aspect the five people would agree with portraying or exposing.
Perhaps the problem with NNs is the fact that some people still interpret that these "represent" or that they HAVE to "represent" the country you live in (or the one that selected you to go). Representation is not the same as interpretation and neither is the same as picking one specific thing about anything these five people have in common and portray it into a Village activity.
What if the next Costarican delegation you have in your camp does an activity dressed with kimonos? What if all four delegates and Leader have Asian grandfathers? Would it still be a "Costarican NN"? (Would it matter if it weren't? How do we determine what "is" and "isn't" Costarican?...What is a Costarican?)
All we might need is to interpret "National Night" in a weaker thesis, and accept and foster newer and (quite) different possibilities for them. This could probably raise awareness or change the name and the spirit of the activity.
If Village trainings worldwide foster delegations to do enclosed, cliche'd and non-creative activities for NNs, and thus, not paying attention to the potential after-effects of a five-people project towards a camp, then I want that to change, too.
I am one of those people who loves going to camps and see kids "in action", but dislikes to see the same lack of creativity in NNs...almost everywhere.
On a different note; I'd like to consider this discussion as the firestarter to "No National Delegations".
It might just work...
i really agree with sarah about the fact that national nights force delegations to think through what "their nationality" is and as a group, experience that confusion and discussion about their own country (because despite the fact that the world is globalizing countires play an incredible role in politics and society)
what i would like to see, instead of the removal of national nights, would be the creation of leadership training on how to use national nights as an educational tool and experience, both before and at camp.
providing a forum where leaders could discuss how to tackle the issue with other leaders from their own country would not only provide a framework likely to make NNs more engaging on programs, but would similarly enege leaders in an educational discussion during training
Kelly
(Canada)
National Nigts give kids the opportunity to feel proud of their own country. For me in particular, I became a better mexican after my village, and that was because I felt so proud of my country when I did my dance, food, or whatever, and people felt curious and happy to know more about Mexico.
Maybe the concept has lost the point, and maybe the idea of showing turistic videos and stuff is not really good, but I think is important to have national nights in the villages. it helps kids to be proud of their own country, as well as change their perspectives of other countries and think of them as faces and not as places in a map.
tats (MX)
the national night is just one tiny step of a much more complex education process based on understanding the differences, finding similarities and getting to know not just other cultures but also our own.
we are devils, and sometimes devils prefer not to do the home work.
but i would suggest to the interested ones to take a look on the section t of our infofile: the so called "cisv's core educational content" {you can find it in resourses}.
"The understanding needed has two parts: cultural awareness, ( how another person’s culture affects his or her behaviour ); and self - awareness, ( how our own culture
affects our behaviour ). It is not sufficient to understand how others differ, if we do not understand how we also differ."
paul grol in cisv's core educational content
National nights have many friends I see. Before advertising my idea a littlebit more I have two questions:
1. Is "culture" really so closely connected to "nationality"? (I think I actually did my homework in this case).
2. Is "being proud of one's own country" really a value?
Eli
fabulous discussion!
Pedro, your point is very good but falls under the basic fact that it isn't correct directly connect the concepts of culture and nationality.
Cultures are alive(changeable, flexible) institutions that only started to have ANY connection with sense of nationality with Napoleon (!!!) for army-purposes and, later, in the mass-movements of the 19th century. Cultures are not nation-based. period.
As someone said, NN are still rough over-simplifications and stereotypical (pseudo)"representations" of cultures that DOES NOT exist. Cultures are alive and being built on this very moment, not random traditions that have been lucky enough to be (rein)forced throughout the years.
The reason why we do this in CISV is because our educational content is based on cultural shocks that are not really that natural at this point. NN serves to make our pseudo-cultural differences more extreme so that we can feel any cultural difference at all.
This is why I like the idea Kelly and Nano gave of re-furbishing NNs, and make it almost like a deconstruction of the NNs itself.
So, if we really want to achieve cultural awareness we have to work on the REAL cultures, not on fake simplifications that are more similar to a collection of touristic cards - not lives.
ah! and answering to Eli's question #2:
No, I don't think it's a value. People should feel ownership and belonging to Humanity, not to built-on identities that are constructed based on excluding others for the most stupid reasons - such as where your mom happened to be when you happened to be born.
Providing a strong sense of belonging (and ownership) to Humanity is the key for a strong, truly intercultural, effective and empowering peace-building strategy.
This is a fabulous discussion - especially because I also have been in favour of establishing something else than national nights..
However, I really liked the idea about having specific training for the leaders about how to use the national night and especially also the preparation prior to the camp.
Maybe it's not that the conccept is bad, but that we have misunderstood it and need to be better trained?
This is interesting!
Good times!
A few more Thoughts:
- The concept of the national night HAS already been further developed in Summer camps, Seminar camps and IPPs (though not always put into practise very succesfully): Instead of presenting stereotypes, participants are asked to present an issue, or something theme-related, or even something that participants personally feel strong about.
- If National Nights are good for delegations to bond, and kids to build self-confidence, why not just have a talent-show? - Just kidding, but I really thing there must be more to legitimate NNs existance. Maybe I would add to the purpose that NNs are there to broaden an eleven year old's view: When I was eleven, I had never seen such colourful dresses (Costa Rica) or Japanese Kimmonos. NNs underline the concept of "we come from different backgrounds" but "we can still be friends".
So, connecting the two notions above, I believe, the real question here is, if this undelying principle of NNs still works with 11y-olds today, or if they, instead, should be getting a Summer Camp kind of educational activity.
1. "nationality" is the expression of the background of a group of people. it differs from each of the people which are part of the group "culture", but is definitely something they all share.
obviously is a semplification but i wanna see anybody able to explain the concept of culture apart for the nationality concept to 11 years old kids.
2. "being proud of one's own country" is a value as much as is not a value to be ashamed of it. i have no reason to deny i'm italian and i'm not doing it. that is somehow being proud of it.
Teo.. the point is not to discuss the existance or value of nationality (even though I don't agree with your definition. Nationalities exist. period.
The question is if we want, in our peace-building strategy, to reinforce and construct identities such as nationality (that are built upon exclusion of others) that emphasises the differences or if we wish to work on identities based on the similarities we have as human beings and construct a better world from then?
I don't think you eating 20x times more pasta than I do is such a big difference ;)
as a side-note, the European Union is right now, as a key to avoid future-conflicts between the european countries, revisiting the way schools teach National history in the different countries.
They call it "positive work of memory/collective subconscient", and it's about deconstructing the perceptions of Nationalities and national-pride and building a more Humanistic view of society.
this is the way to go, I think.
Maybe on a normative level it is important to recognize that nationalities are different from culture and that maybe disestablishing nationalistic ideas will help improve the world. However, both inside and, particularly, outside of CISV, nationality still is very much how we are seen. It is important at some point (and why not in a really great environment like cisv?) to look at nationality as an example of how people perceive you, and give individuals more control to shape that. National Nights may be a good vehicle for this, if done thoughtfully. In order to set aside nationality we don't have to define it, but maybe we have to try so that each person understands that it can't be clearly defined...
NN.. that thing you tend to hate when you've been to many camps...
I think you are pretty much discussing 2 different issues:
- showing part of your culture
Hey each one of us understand our own culture in a different way, do countries have like a pre-organised schedule of NN??? Ask your kids, if we don’t like Bullfights we don’t make bullfights, if we don’t dance flamenco, we don’t dance flamenco… do countries make their delegates do things they don’t want to? Do you think kids get back home thinking Swedish generally dress up like Abba, US delegates have Indian costumes for Wednesday evenings, and Italians exercise with la Bella polenta?
- making the kids responsible for their own "moment"
I will go into the second part which I personally believe is the real goal of national nights…
When you give everything to the kids they get used to it (in my point of view the weakest point of these camps). National nights might have a great impact on kids, depending on their leaders. If you make your kids responsible of their own activity, letting them organise it and run it, and then evaluating it afterwards benefits every single kid.
I don’t specially like NN, I would rather go for cultural activities in all programmes (do you think 11 year olds don’t know what is going on in their countries??) let’s stop treating them as babies!!!!!!!!!
I think we should consider villages as a start of CISV internatioanl experience for most of the kids, cause most of them will have their first international camp a village and the NN are really important to get to know each other and is part of the sharing process. If we think to far away we should also stop delegation time and also delegation as a term why not have a leader from costa rica with 4 different kids from 4 different countries to cut off any nationality concept and become international from the start.
But considering the NN we should think from the kids point of view or someone who is pretty new in cisv and not from a more international experienced CISVer pov, they see things totally different and they learn things from playing singing and dancing more then from a dialogue.
Cisv has certain steps in the educational process that we shouldn't skip, first kids should learn basic things about one another and learn how to share and then with age when they go to YMs seminar ans so on they learn and more complex things. Kids in a village aren't babies but at the same time they aren't grown-ups and we shouldn't make them do a big leap right into concerns of exclusion, nationality and so on before they have the chance to know one another and basic things about each others culture.
So NN facilitates the evolution from a local 11-12 year-old kid into a citizen of the international world, aware of the "challenges" surrounding us.
my 2 cents.
thx
Well i disagree. I think that by having national nights is sharing your culture , your country , the world you live in and making it part of theirs.
Well i totally disagree with all of you. I think having national nights is sharing your culture, your country, and your world and making it apart of someone else`s
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