Reflection on Nisbett, Geography of thought

Before reading this I had not known that in many non-western cultures children are taught to fit into the group as oppose to being unique and standing out from the group. This was important for me because I have been conditioned by family, school, and the competition of everyday society to stand out and be a unique individual. I think that this will become very important when it comes to asking children questions about themselves and their art.
As a future parent I thought the asian way of emphasizing feelings was very insightful. It made a lot of sense to me that in asian cultures they emphasize feelings by giving emotion to objects. For example an asian parent would say," the toy is crying cause you threw it against the wall." I thought this was a great alternative to the western version, which is, "Stop! Don't throw your toy against the wall." Giving feeling to the toy the child can relate and know that he doesn't like being hurt so he shouldn't hurt his toy. When someone tells their child no the child is never going to know what he did wrong or why he shouldn't do it besides the fact that his mother doesn't like him doing that. The article mentions that research finds that because of this family conditioning, " asians are more accurately aware of the feeling and attitudes of others than westerners.
As an art educator I found the " Styles of Conflict and Negotiation" section espescialy relevant. when teaching art a large part of it is about getting the students to share their work and express their ideas with others. In this essay the author says, " debate is almost as uncommon in modern asia as in ancient China"; meaning that they don't debate. Whereas in Western culture have a firm opinion and stating it to others is second nature. Because I am from here, the united states, it important for me to remember that everyone is not conditioned the way I have been. This is important to me because when I have a class critique with non-western students I can't assume that just because they're not participating in the discussion doesn't mean that they're being lazy or haven't done their work. They might just want to not "offset the harmony of the group."
This essay really opened my eyes to how people think about themselves and others in non-western cultures. The information is so crucial to a teacher in a large multi-cultural city like NYC. It's good not to blind to different cultures ways of thinking when teaching students who are a wide range of ethnicities.