BANGKOK’s third culture kids

Students at Ruamrudee International School shared their impressions and insights about their lives as TCKs with learning post. Seated, from left: Mia Sakai, Tanat Tananuchittikul, Chin-Hao Huang, Komal Daswani, Ka Ying (Candice) Ng. Standing, from left: Joshua Chipman, Goldey Khanna, Proud Limpongpan, Shishir Shinha. (RIS).

Masahiro Ueda, ISB

In fact, it was just a preliminary interview for a place in a prestigious Japanese university, but Masahiro Ueda, an International School Bangkok (ISB) senior, knew he had to have totally black hair for that occasion.

Back in Bangkok, he went blonde again and believes that university in Japan will give him the same freedom. That remains to be seen. But like all third culture kids (TCKs), Masahiro looks to the future with skills and a worldview that have been shaped by his experience outside Japan.

That’s what defines third culture kids — living outside their parents’ home culture during a significant part of their developmental years.

David Pollock, one of the prominent writers and speakers on TCK issues, explains that adults who move to another culture already have their value system and deep cultural identity in place. They have learned the rules of their society; they know what is expected of them and they understand the behaviour of those around them.

By contrast, the children of diplomats, missionaries, military personnel and business people who accompany their parents on international moves have not yet shared sufficiently in their home culture. Researchers have documented their difficulties adjusting first to a new country and then to resettling back home.

As they grow up, these children learn how to think and act from the environment around them — a host country and a school different from what they would experience in their parents’ home. Yet they cannot be completely involved in the society of their host country because they have not been born into it. They live in a third culture.

Unlike Masahiro, Patiweth Sethchindapong didn’t know he was a TCK. He had never heard the term and certainly had never had a chance to talk about how growing up as a Thai in Canada would influence him. Coming to Thailand as an adult, he experienced frustration trying to work under a Thai management system. He gave up and returned to Canada, only to find that he wasn’t content there either. Back in Thailand he is working on reconnecting with his Thai roots.

So what makes kids like Masahiro different from Patiweth? Who are these TCKs now growing up in Bangkok? The learning post visited three international schools and talked with students and teachers to learn more about what they think and how schools help them deal with issues of cultural identity.

According to those who have studied TCKs, there are two important factors that shape the personality of people who grow up away from home: high mobility and a cross-cultural environment.

Emma Backstrom, NIST

Emma Backstrom, a year 12 student at New International School of Thailand (NIST), moved from Colombia where she was born of a Thai mother and Swedish father, to Sweden, to Bangkok, China and Hong Kong before settling back to Bangkok four years ago. "I had to work very hard in order to keep up (at school). Luckily, I passed," she grinned.

It’s not just studies that are difficult. "You have to meet new friends every single time," she says. "Its difficult to develop really close relationships with friends you’ve only been together with for a year or so."

Caroline Chabollausc, NIST

It’s not all negative though, as Emma’s classmate Caroline Chabollausc points out. "The fact that I’ve moved so much, that I’ve changed countries so often, I had an easier time adapting to different countries."

Goldey Khanna, a grade 8 student at Ruamrudee International School (RIS) agrees. "Making friends more often, you get good at it," he laughs.

It’s those friends that are the greatest gift and one of the strongest influences of the third culture experience.

"The fact that I have a number of Chinese and American friends has helped me to understand their cultures better. I find more links between our cultures," says Komal Daswani, an RIS senior. "I have a Chinese friend, Charlie," she explains. "We both participate in model United Nations. I understand him on a different level than I could another Indian person if they didn’t have international experience."

Sometimes, it would seem that friends are closer than family – especially when family members live in a home country and visiting is a summer break event.

Namitha Vijay, NIST

Year 12 NIST student, Namita Vijay tells of the somewhat painful experience of visiting her grandmother in India, which she does each summer. "When I’m around my grandmother it’s, what do I say, what do I do? My cousins are really open and she’s closer to them. She does love me, but she’s more comfortable with them. It hurts at times."

Proud Limpongpan has a similar experience with her cousins. Her three years in Belgium led her parents to enrol her in RIS when they returned to Thailand five years ago. "My cousins and friends outside of school think people in international school are like foreigners. So we don’t really fit in there. Sometime we don’t really act the same or talk about the same things," she explains.

As a Thai living in Thailand, Proud feels the kind of ambivalence about where she fits that is common for third culture kids. "It’s as though you’re living in two different worlds. One world is here in RIS where you have all your friends from different countries. And another world outside of school which is where you have to be Thai and try to get involved in their activities, just try to fit in."

Not fitting in is a common theme in TCK conversation. And it’s not always the big issues of life but small things that can be easily unlearned and adapted to. Initially, though, they make you stand out.

Komal laughs about how she feels awkward and quite strange compared with everybody else when she goes home to India. "I want to use a spoon and a fork and I want to watch TV."

For classmate Chin-Hao Huang, going ‘home’ to Taiwan is just as strange. "I see myself as a visitor. I can read the signs to get around, but it’s like a foreign country to me because I’ve lived here (Thailand) most of my life."

RIS eighth grader Joshua Chipman adds that he hated going ‘home’ to New Zealand. "It was so different, I was the loser. They played rugby, they played cricket, I had no idea how to play any of those sports. When I come back to Thailand, I fit in more."

It’s not just sports he explains. "You hear different views – I can fit into that better. When there’s only one set way and when you’re outside that you’re an alien. That’s difficult."

RIS senior Mia Sakai is American but lived much of her life in Laos. "What I’ve come to think is, because I am a TCK, we don’t have one country that we call home as others might. When we think of home we define it by whether our family is there."

Like many Bangkok TCKs, Mia goes ‘home’ to the States in the summer break. Not fitting in has a lot to do with the attitudes she encounters among her American peers.

"I’ve noticed that when they talk about Asians – because all my relatives are Asian-Americans they’re really clear – ‘oh those Asian Asians’ – and they call them "Fobs" – fresh off the boat. They use that a lot," she cringes. "I would never use that because the people they call that name are my friends – people I go to school with. Sometimes it strikes me as ignorant," she comments. "But they definitely would not like to hear me say that."

Because Mia is aware of her own third culture, she has learned to accept other people and the prejudices that they have. "I don’t say anything," she continues, "but I know that I’m very different. There’s that kind of tension, but we still get along."

A friend of Mia’s family, a Dutchman who returned to the Netherlands with his family put it this way, "my kids had to learn to suppress their otherness." That seemed to make a lot of sense to Joshua, too. "You just learn to shut up. Some things I shouldn’t say," he quips.

But it’s not all about suppressing your feelings. Many third culture kids learn to accept that they are different and have found ways to express that. RIS senior Ka Ying (Candice) Ng tells of talking with friends about free-topic college application essays and finding that many of them had written about their experiences in RIS. "By this time we have come to terms with this supposed confusion that we have."

Candice and her peers in Bangkok international schools have had a lot of help in the process of coming to terms with their place in a multicultural world.

Not all schools tackle the issues directly, but, explains Rob Conley, Director of Pupil Services at RIS, many teachers have taken workshop sessions in cross-culture and TCK issues and are sensitive to the needs of students.

At RIS, Melanie Vrba’s higher level IB English class studies the novel Siddhartha as a way of getting in touch with their own and different cultures.

That sensitivity can find its way into curriculum planning as Melanie Vrba’s higher level International Baccalaureate (IB) English course demonstrates. The class studies the Hermann Hesse novel Siddhartha. The main character, much like Buddha, comes from a very prominent family, gives up everything and becomes a Buddha himself. "But," Melanie explains, " the author is a westerner and there’s this whole theme going through the book of individualism, of finding your own thing, which is really much more western than eastern. So it’s this strange dichotomy between the rebellion against everything which is very western yet he’s Asian."

The day learning post visited, Melanie’s class had read the book and were listing all the religious references. Students were then to find out and share as much as they could about terms assigned randomly. "It works with groups like this – there’s a good mix of Indian kids and Thai kids and one plus myself with a Christian perspective," Melanie explains. "My experience, especially with the Indian kids, is that they become very empowered with all the background of Hinduism they get to talk about. They see more in the book than many westerners," she comments. But it also helps western students to be more in touch with the cultures around them.

RIS also has values and religion classes, mandatory from grade one. Chin-Hao considers them a key programme for RIS students. "In elementary school it’s about things like caring and sharing. We joke about it, but as you get into the rough years in middle school and into high school, it fits in very well," he stresses. By 12^th grade, he explains, the values class is called personal development. "We’re looking into ourselves and making connections between ourselves and community. I think it’s a very relevant course. It actually better prepares us. One of the philosophies of the school is to make you a caring, global citizen. This is one of the courses that makes you more well-rounded," he asserts.

Pattarin Leksrisompong found the art programme at NIST was a way to work through and to express her ambivalence about being a Thai student living in an international environment. Whether she consciously created the feeling that ‘tradition’ is weighing heavy on the figure is not certain, her art teacher commented. But in her own reflection, as part of the project, Pattarin wrote this: This piece is a combination of myself and my culture. There is a contrast between me and the background such that even though I am Thai, I live in a western environment (more modern) but the background of this painting is where I originated from. ... Overall, I believe this piece works as it portrays the difference of myself and my culture. Even though on the outside I do not look like traditional Thai, I still maintain my culture as a Thai girl.

Schools have developed a variety of ways to help students deal with cross-cultural and identity concerns. At ISB, there is a compulsory freshman orientation programme as the term begins. Then in late May, lunchtime sessions allow 9^th-11^th graders to discuss transition issues. In addition, related issues are discussed in social studies classes and through the health curriculum which deals with emotional and mental health.

Masahiro is taking ISB’s optional Cross-Cultural Communication course. He explained that in class they talk about stereotypes, perceptions and cultural differences. At the time, they were dealing with issues of miscommunication. "Some people want to keep things secret, some people do not. If these two types of people are friends, those differences might cause a problem," he explains, recounting a recent class discussion.

Moving into a foreign country during school years is a difficult adjustment, but returnees like Patiweth, confirm that going home is often a lot harder. That’s the wisdom emerging from years of study with third culture kids trying to fit in back home.

With more than sixty percent of seniors going to universities in western countries, ISB deals very directly with transition issues. Jackie Douglass, Head of Counselling, explains. "We have a transition booklet that we have created based on some transition sources as well as our own experience." The booklet and sessions based on it discuss TCK issues, culture shock, re-entry shock and all aspects of college life.

"In addition," she says, "we have developed an alumni video taken from interviews with students who have graduated in the past few years, responding to various questions. This is the first year we have used this and the response from the kids has been great." The culminating session of the programme she continues, "is an alumni panel — students who return to visit sit on a panel on the Monday of the last week of school. We (counsellors) ask questions to get the panel going, and then the seniors ask their own questions." A bulletin board for farewell notes is important for those who are staying as well as those leaving.

Researchers have described returnee TCKs as restless and rootless. They are often unfamiliar with their home culture and their sympathies for other parts of the world often put them at odds with their home country peers.

Makoto Kashio, NIST

But that enlarged worldview makes them, as David Pollock observes, "the prototype of the citizen of the 21^st century." Increasing mobility in a globalised world means that more and more people will live in multicultural situations for part or all of their lives. They will speak more languages and be familiar with more world issues, like the TCKs of today.

As they prepare to move on to university, what do our Bangkok TCKs have to say about their third culture experience?

Mia describes it this way, "I think the third culture is a culture of acceptance, tolerance and adaptability."

Katie Jaruthavee, NIST

Masahiro explains that the Thai attitude of tolerance has rubbed off on him. On his March trip home, he watched a black man in a Japanese train station, obviously confused by the transportation system. "He asked for help, but no one helped him. I questioned why they ignored him. I think it’s because of their false impressions (of people), it’s because he is black. But I could help him," he said.

Carrying influences of other cultures, behaving in strange ways, may distance these young people from their peers in the future. Fitting in will be easier if, like NIST senior Katie Jaruthavee, they look for universities with multicultural student populations. But they have skills and an attitude of openness that will stand them in good stead.

"No regrets," claims Emma. "You should not regret being a third culture kid, at all."

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Last modified: May 26, 2003