Robert T. Moran, Ph.D. Neil Remington Abramson, Ph.D. AGING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES SENSU 2D) UU LO)Ns On a ae rsidad Anghuac Méxi i ii aGLOBAL LEADERS, A CHANGING WORLD ‘The worid has changed, and so must people living in this changed global world. But not everything has changed. The premise of this book is simple: just as no two individuals are exactly the ‘same, neither are two nations of societies. However, the people in the same culture share certain things in common which are not necessarily shared by people of another culture, This is the reality. ‘Our goal is to help readers think or rethink many aspects related to the attitudes and skills we all need to survive and thrive in today's global environment. Or, to write it more simply: to leam to live and work with differences. Hence, the title of our book, ‘Managing Cultural Differences. In the early stages of socialization, the parents or caregivers of children from all cultures have a major influence on how their children behave and their values and attitudes. The parental influence example illustrates this point.’GLOBAL LEADERS, CULTURE, AND A CHANGING WORLD = EBB AN EXAMPLE OF PARENTAL INFLUENCE When I began delivering executive seminars for a particular large global company about eight years ago with a professional colleague, his presentations to executives were good but not great according to the ratings of attendees. Feedback was that they were a little too academic in contrast with a different style which included *stories* to illus trate academic points. Over the years, he has included more and more stories to ilus- trate what he wants participants to remember and use. | suspect some of his stories have fabricated elements, but he recently told the following, which illustrated to me the influence of parents on children. “My wife is Republican and listens regularly at home and in the car to conservative talk shows. Often, our two boys are in the car with her, | am registered Independent but often vote for a Democrat, and | voted for Obama. My wife voted for McCain, the Republican candidate in 2008. On election day, the boys went to bed at the regular time, but | stayed up tillit was clear Obama would win. | was thrilled. My wife was depressed. My younger son, who was nine years old at the time, got up first and asked me, ‘Dad, who won? When | told him Obama won, he began to weep uncontrollably. | hugged him and told him itis going to be OK that Obama won, and don't worry. He then said, ‘But Obama will ax my allowance! When | told him that Obama was not going to tax his $2.00-a-week allowance, he stopped crying” Parents, indeed, influence their children. ‘As parents and caregivers gradually lose their ability to influence us, teachers, religious leaders, and textbooks, as well as our children’s friends and peers, become increasingly major influences in their lives. The following examples are from textbooks in several different countries taken from an article in The Economist. They are illustrations of how governments and schoo! districts in selected countries attempt to control ideology by the textbooks they allow and what is written in them. The examples cited are from the Georg Eckert Institute,’ which studies textbooks from 160 countries covering history and geography. From Saudi Arabian textbooks, ‘The Jews and Christians are enemies of the true believers” is written and probably results in intolerance towards Jews and Christians. In China, there was an attempt to introduce a curriculum of national education which omitted the events of the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square. In Japan, textbooks whitewash and gloss over Japanese World War Il war crimes.