What Makes Kids Interested in Other Cultures?
Genetics, early exposure or both?
Why would some people show an early interest in other cultures, while others retreat into an us versus them mentality? Your narrator looks into his own past….
In the weird way that personality or physical traits can re-manifest in alternate generations, I’ve long thought I owe a lot to a grandfather that I never met. My father didn’t have an academic neuron in his body. But he was well read in history, specifically South African history. Dad was South African, and an enthusiastic supporter of apartheid. Go figure (that’s a story for another day). My mother (at least until the mishaps of the past few weeks) has always been a voracious reader of science, theology and anthropology. She did extra mural university courses and curated an insect collection. But it was her Dad, who died when she was just ten, who somehow seemed to express in me.
For instance, I’m a geologist. When I took Geology at University, I was so enthralled by ‘Plate Tectonics’ (the study of how the continents have moved around the Earth) that I tried to spin every exam essay question into something about the topic (it seemed to work). The funny thing here is that my mother has a little cork globe of the world, on which she remembers her father pointing out how the east coast of South America fits the west coast of…
