Choices in writing utensils highlight cultural differences

Sometimes I find myself noticing and focusing on really small differences. Case in point: this past week I keep going back to the idea of how many of my students here use pencils. I find it interesting that in the three countries I’ve taught in the preference for a writing utensil has been unique to each place. In Guinea every one of my students came to class with a red pen and a blue pen. The majority of the writing was done in blue ink with the red used to highlight new entries in the outline form, or to highlight important information. I could never use more then two colors on the board because then my students didn’t know what to do in their notes. Blue and red pens were the only choice they had. I’m not even sure if they sold pencils in the market. I know that I switched to using pens almost exclusively while I was there (unusual for a math teacher). In the US I had to take pens as collateral for pencils whenever I gave a quiz or test. Since there was a greater variety of writing tools available I could be more demanding about what my students used on material they turned in. Pencils were required for any material I collected. However the majority of the time (not for every student) pens were more common. But these came in so many forms and colors that sometimes I felt like I could tell whose work I was looking at just by the ink color. Writing utensils in Savannah could best be attributed to a wide selection or options. In Turkey my students are most attached to pencils. Every single student has a pencil case in which you can usually find at least 2 pencils (usually mechanical), a separate eraser and lead for the pencils. All exams, no matter the subject are done in pencil. In fact I’ve had minor crises when my students couldn’t find a pencil for a quiz. While pens and available and used, it has become clear to me that pencils are their preferred choice. I also find it interesting to think about what these choices mean in terms of neatness. In Guinea, students were fanatical about their paper being clean. What this usually meant is that anything they did they wrote twice. One copy would include all of the mess ups and work; the final copy had to be almost pristine in appearance. In the US we tend to encourage our students to work steadily, simply crossing out anything that they don’t want considered. Sometimes this results in a rather messy final product, but I think actually gives a student more time to think about what they are putting down. In Turkey, like in Guinea, they really don’t like to include work that is not correct. Oftentimes I receive problems which show two little work, where I can tell that some of it has been erased. The benefit of the pencil is that Turkish students don’t have to completely start over if they make a mistake, but they definitely make liberal use of the eraser to end up with a copy that is neat enough and accurate enough in their mind.