8th February 2019 Cultural Differences concerning Time
This is a very interesting topic. While doing this lesson there were a couple of things that stood put to me. With living in South Africa, our people normally go on Polychronic time. We call it African time. Most of our professional people like doctors, lawyers, dentists etc also all work on Polychronic time. They are not as bad as the hairdresser Bro Ives spoke about. They do not book 2 to 3 patients in at the same time but if their patient needs double the time, it is okay for everybody else to just be late.
I come from a family who are monochronic where you need to plan and see that you get to where you are going on time, even if it means that you are 30 minutes early. My husband and I are total opposites. He is totally Polychronic as he is late for every appointment. With saying that, he has lots of friends in the business world and they just accept him like that. Our family actually tell us to be at a function an hour early so that we are on time. Len now asks what time must we actually be there? Standing family joke.
How would this have an impact on teaching children of a different culture? Firstly we would need to learn as to whether they are from a Monochronic or Polychronic society. Personally I feel that you must allow for those that are Polychronic because they do not understand the difference. We have the tools to educate them that they understand that you also get Monochronic people who do not understand that being late is okay. Once again we need to obtain knowledge of different cultures and educate about the differences.
This was a very interesting lessons.
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