Moving to another country creates great pressure. The concept “culture shock” first appeared in 1958 in order to explain the stress that often follows moving from one culture to another. People don’t know how to behave in a new place and is not able to use previous knowledge to deal with a new situation.
It is important to understand the nature of culture shock to make it possible to react to it in a appropriate way.
When people move from one country to another, it can be compared to a fish on dry land. As the fishes, they have been swimming in their own culture all their lives. A fish doesn’t know what water is. In the same way we do not think that much about the culture which has molded us. When we suddenly find ourselves in a new and alien environment and culture, everything becomes complicated.
Emotional strain can be unbearable for children and especially teenagers. The children meet a number of new people and they must learn new habits and a new language. They have been torn away from relatives, grandparents, friends, playmates and teachers, supportive people they seek to in trouble.
It can be difficult and painful to be without language in a strange place because the language is the key to all communication.
The pain can also come from the parents’ disability to help the child because they don’t know either how to behave. Other aspects are not as obvious. Familiar sounds, view, smell and taste is not there anymore.
In all cultures, there are unwritten rules about people’s dealings with each other. They appear for instance in body language and voice.
Many students of foreign origin become confused because of what for them appears to be a lack of disciplin in Icelandic schools. Children who are used to military discipline and formal relations in school, can react to freedom and unformal relations with wild behaviour. They have been deprived of all referential limits for behaviour and they have to look for new limits. They become confused and insecure under such circumstances.
Therefore it is important to inform students and parents about the school system and personal relations in school.
It is important to create conditions that make adjustment easier. Difficult circumstances further increase the pressure.
Teachers must be patient to take time to explain the simplest things that the Icelandic children learned when they started going to school. Perhaps the ideas of many students are narrow about studying directions, or their ideas are just different from ours. It takes time to figure out the studies in a school that has very different values and ideas from the schools in the old country.
For instance:
– to acquire knowledge in an independent way.
– that help is available when one asks about it.
– that one is studying for oneself in order to enhance ones development and knowledge.
The informal freedom that characterizes the Icelandic schools can be hard to handle, perhaps the most difficult aspects for all, students, parents and teacher. If cooperation between the adults and the students is not achieved on this stage, it can have negative influence on the studies in the long run.
Simple habits in Icelandic schools can also be difficult for people.
Some children don’t know for instance why everybody is sent outside in recess, no matter how the weather is, or why everybody must take off the shoes. In fact, many Asian peoples are used to that custom.
To take a shower after gymnastics is a special Icelandic custom and often creates big problems. To take a shower before and after swimming lessons creates no problems. All children who enter the reception department and have not learned to swim, are eager and ambitious in the swimming lessons.