The Status Quo

In my Dutch lessons, we use a book called TaalRecht, and just in case you speak Dutch and want to check out the company website, it is here.

The book is very helpful for my learning and I am doing very well with it.

That being said, the content of the book is questionable at best.

I understand that the culture here is different in that people call it like they see it, instead of being so obnoxiously politically correct all the time like they are in the States. However, I am infuriated when we sit in class and are forced to do read an exercise called "Ik doe niet mee!" (translates to "I don't do along," or in this context, "I don't play along,") which talks about how girls don't play enough sports and therefore have health problems. Here is the original offending text, in Dutch, followed by a Google translation that I edited myself to be more accurate (because we all know Google translation likes to tell us some funny things sometimes).

"Ik doe niet mee!"
from TaalRecht 2.3 by An Wuyts and Ingrid Van Doninck


"Vrouwen doen niet genoeg aan sport. De belangrijkste reden die ze hiervoor opgeven is: gebrek aan tijd. Maar dit is volgens onderzoekers een zwak excuus. Als vrouwen meer tijd hadden, zouden ze nog niet meer gaan sporten."

"Daardoor is de conditie van vrouwen beneden alle peil. Vrouwen hebben veel meer last van kleine gezondheidsprobleempjes dan mannen. Ze gaan vaker naar de dokter en voelen zich niet goed in hun vel. Ze zijn sneller moe, hebben last van hoofdpijn en lusteloosheid. Als vrouwen meer aan sport zouden doen, dan waren hun kleine probleempjes zo verdwenen."

(omitted a paragraph here)

"Meisjes in de leeftijdscategorie van 16 tot 25 worden sterk beinvloed door wat de mensen rondom hen doen. Meisjes met een sportieve broer of zus, doen vaak ook zelf aan sport. Maar als die broer of zus niet aan sport deed, zouden ze zelf even lui zijn als hun vrienden. Vraag je aan meisjes waarom ze sporten, dan is het antwoord vaak dat ze er goed willen uitzien. Maar als dat niet lukt, haken de meisjes snel af."

(omitted another paragraph here)

English Translation:
"I don't go along!"


"Women don't do enough sports. The main reason they give is this: lack of time. But this is a weak excuse according to researchers. If women had more time, they would still not work out."


"This is why the condition of women is worse. Women are suffering more from small health problems than men. They often go to the doctor and do not feel good in their skin. They quickly tire, have headaches and lethargy. If women would do more sports than they do now, these small problems would disappear."


(paragraph omitted)


"Girls between the ages of 16 to 25 are strongly influenced by what people around them do. Girls with a sporty sibling often make the game themselves. But if that brother or sister did not participate in sports, they would themselves as lazy as their friends. You ask girls why they exercise, the answer is often that they want to look good. But if that fails, the girls quickly stop."


(paragraph omitted)


To be fair, the last paragraph of this story, which I omitted, talks about how men also don't do enough sport. But the tone and message of this piece is thoroughly damaging, suggesting that women only care about fitness in terms of their looks, that unless they are inspired by a sporty sibling that they will always choose to be lazy, and that even in the case that women are bothered enough to begin sports, that if they don't see quick results in their figures that they will soon stop.

Without academic references backing these statements up, I refuse to accept them. And perhaps those studies do exist, but up until I see proof included next to every sentence, this kind of garbage talk does not belong in my textbook.

I have considered the fact that the authors of the textbook have inserted these sorts of opinion-statements in order to spark lively discussion in the class. In that case, bully for them, but then they need to be more overt about it, instead of simply including this sort of material without any clarifying information whatsoever. And the problem with the book, the way that it stands, is that nobody (except for me, and one other civic-minded classmate) ever raises a peep in protest. To my horror, other students in the class shrug and say "It's just a textbook. It's just an example."

Well, it's not just an example. Every classroom digesting this sort of input without question is perpetuating negative stereotypes through acceptance. "But girls DO do fewer sports than boys," you might say. Well, let's stop and ask why you think that is. It's because a generation after feminism, we still have pieces like this in our textbooks.

Would you want to read this to your daughter or niece? I certainly wouldn't.

Just in case you are wondering, I plan on writing to the publishers. In Dutch. And letting them know exactly what's on my mind. I bet I will learn more than a few new words in the process.

As always, thanks for reading.
xoxoxo
meg

I promise I will do another skating-instruction post soon...I've got a few cooking. But I just couldn't NOT write about this today.

Dutch, English, Spanish, French

Ok, so this has to be fast because the weather is GORGEOUS and even though I am quite tired today, I don't want to miss the opportunity to get outside in this autumn sunshine, because if I don't, I'm not sure I will get the chance again this season. The weather here is so changeable, "wisselvallig," is the word they use, but "changeable" is actually not a proper translation, from what I can surmise. The only word for it really then is "wisselvallig," and it's the word that pops first into my mind when thinking about the weather in Belgium, even before any English word comes to mind.

So, wisselvallig it is, but vandaag is het niet. 

Arrgh. I get all mixed up when I come home from Dutch class. 

The biggest problem I am having with speaking Dutch is not speaking Dutch. That is, I can already speak fairly well and the more I attend class, naturally, the better it gets. I am not worried about my ability to speak Dutch. What I worry about is my WILL. Going to class five days a week is instilling in me a kind of language resentment which I did not expect to encounter. I LIKE English. I am really GOOD at English. I can say exactly what I mean, and I even feel like I have COMMAND of this language. Granted, I only started Dutch class a few weeks ago, so maybe it's just the early mornings combined with the 40 minute bike ride to get there, to which I am not really accustomed, in spite of skating. Well, the bike ride is not going to last long, I can guarantee, because the weather is becoming bracingly cold in the early morning and I can't be bothered to push myself out into that kind of weather on a bicycle, no matter how buttoned up I get, so the bus and I are about to get acquainted. 

But anyway, now that my Dutch is better it's also possible that I'm just harder on myself for the mistakes that I make. Upon first arrival here I would pluck out any applicable words I knew and string them together in the hopes of making sense. Now I'm struggling with more nuanced phrasing and the problem of switching back and forth between languages for different parts of the day. It's literally hard to think in English when I leave class. And then it's hard to think in Dutch when I've spent the whole night before writing assignments in English for my graduate program. 

There is a Chinese girl in my class with whom I was speaking in English during a break from class. She kept mixing up her Dutch and English, and while her mistakes made perfect sense to me, I am sure it is hard for other people to understand her. And now this is what is happening with my Dutch and my Spanish.

I am sure I just need to practice more Spanish. I understand everything, as always, but it's much harder for me to speak than it was before I started learning Dutch. It's frustrating, because Spanish is also my mother tongue. Granted, I used it far less than English and it was never all that great (like many other Spanish-speaking Americans of Latin American descent), but now it's degraded, to my chagrin.

The good news that comes from this is that, living in Belgium and with a romance language already under my belt, it has opened up the door for me to learn French quite easily. I can already understand a lot of written French, and the more I listen, the more I understand. I can even parse together some simple sentences now, and this is without having studied anything. So, I am optimistic about my future French, and although I am concentrating on the Dutch now, I think it's something for me to learn next year. L'anne prochaine. 

So it turns out I am doing quite fine with learning all the things there are to know if one wants to assimilate into Belgian culture. Well, perhaps "assimilate" is not the right word. Yes, I want to learn what I need to learn in order to be successful here. I want to speak the languages (plural!) and understand the part of the cultural iceberg that lies beneath the surface. That's all fine. But I also want to continue to be myself. There is only so much changing a person can do without feeling like he or she is giving up his or her own identity. Sure, identity changes over time. But some things will last my whole life, like my appreciation for good old American sarcastic humor, naturalistic gardens (what's with every plant around here being espaliered and trimmed and otherwise whipped into submission?), warm hello's and nice to meet you's, big smiles and of course, American breakfast! 

Opening a diner still might not be such a bad idea, after all. The bottomless coffee mugs alone would astound the people in this country.

Anyway, as always, thanks for reading. I'm gonna go skate now. WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!