Creative Work

In the last 2 weeks, I had completed a creative work for my Culture, Cognition & Power in Education class taught by Dr. David Hemphill. We had a choice of either writing a discussion paper, a curriculum plan or a creative work. I have done a total of THREE curriculum plans for Dr. Hemphill in the span of last semester and this semester. I thought I'd try something new, and get out of my comfort zone. The last thing I want to see growing on me is complacency. It's important to keep trying new things not because one is bored, but to learn something new in the process.

I decided to write a short story and create a photo essay as my creative work. My subject was my father. The short story is about my father's social, cultural professional, personal and intellectual journey from his upbringing in the small town of Nam Tou (near Shenzhen) to China's former capital Wuhan, Macau then to Hong Kong and eventually to San Francisco. The themes in his story were about wealth, poverty, higher education, war, political and social injustice, humility, humiliation, family and culture.

It is the most personal and most difficult work I have ever done. There were moments where I kind of regret choosing the creative work. But, I just stopped pitying myself and got on with it. The two theories that I reflected on were diasporas which is the flow of people, money, goods, between two places. It continues to shift and move throughout the globe, constituting two geographical places into one 'imagined' community. There's the Chinese diaspora, the Jewish diaspora, the Armanian diaspora, etc... The other theory is the social-cultural approach to understanding the cognitive process in human beings. It is based on the argument that culture and society have facilitated the thinking, learning and knowledge in human beings. It is a departure from the traditional way of perceiving knowledge as embodied in the brain, and whether one is 'intelligent' or not. The social-cultural approach sees cognition as a process constantly being reinforced and facilitated through and within social interactions and the culture of our socialization process. It makes perfect sense to me.

By writing my father's narrative, I am able to explain, uncover and discover that the cognitive process and the cultural, social and political (which I added) shaped his thoughts, and decision-making thus facilitating the movements that he and a lot of young 'educated' men in his generation have undergone in creating one context of the Chinese diasporas. Of course, there are multiple and different experiences within the Chinese diaspora. I won't share the short story here on my blog since it's deeply personal. However, I like to share the old photos that accompanied the short story. I really intended this creative work to help me learn more about my own cognitive process. I feel my family and I have 'inherited' from my father, his oral narratives, which are stories, that were meant to be a learning tool to process life's lessons.

I have yet to receive a grade for this creative work. I submitted the creative work on TUE - November 10. At this point, I am relieved to have it done and I feel good that I have stepped outside of my box, and tried something new in academia. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the old photos below! ;-)

"Culture & Cognition"

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