Coloring Culture

10/6 Colored pencil on newsprint. Awareness of cultural differences can come from the most unlikely of places. Reviewing drawings from class today, I'm struck by something I doubt you'd find in an American classroom. Repeats. And I mean total, complete, absolute repeat drawings. I can't remember searching my nearby classmates' desks for what to draw. More likely the window, class pet, or my own mind. Yet here are my students, tentative to sketch freely, opting to copy entirely their neighbor. And in the most prominent case, they were even copying a copy. 
Weird, huh? Or did I view a difference in cultural values? In the U.S. we like the new, creation, originality, innovation. "Out with the old and in with the new," right? Not so in Micronesia--nor the Pacific in general, I'd wager. 
The old, tradition, custom, time-tested, time-weathered, proven ways of life. Repetition made perfection. Shit! you should see them wield knives here! They know b/c their parents know, b/c their ancestors knew. They pay heed to the path that's brought them here, that allowed them to survive on scraps of land that entranced and terrified early Euro-American explorers. 
Straying outside the bounds isn't associated with increased market share, here. Just try and do your own thing building a local sailing canoe. Sure you'll make it back from outside the reef? Go ahead, tamper with the way you brew faluba. Sure it won't make you blind? 'Cause fishing's gonna be a bitch if it does. Wanna throw some new ingredients into the soup? Better hope it doesn't kill your grandma or the baby.
 I'm not saying it's definitely better this way than in The States. It bites back, as in he case of just tossing trash wherever you finish with the good. Coconut shells don't mess the island ecology up, but discarded batteries'll sure give you trouble over time. It's just different, and with reason behind it.
And that's what I saw today when I held up those copycat pictures. Culture comes into the classroom. Can we hope to inspire creativity in drawings, the written word, in thought, without undermining the cultural foundation of cooperation and community on the island? I like to think so, but this brainwave tells me to relax when students don't show the originality my Western mindset expects.