Year of the Snake: A Children's Lunar New Year in Missoula

The focus of this project is to analyze and examine the process of child culture acquisition and engagement. Both are being examined through participant observation during a children’s Lunar New Year event at Missoula public library. The author examines the participation, ease of access and focus on children's activities observed at the event and compares them to child language acquisition, as a means of examining culture shock. With more time the author would like to interview organizers of the event, and examine immersion language learning practices in Missoula, especially with young people, but both fell outside of the scope of this work. The author readily argues that children, as previously implied, access foreign, and otherwise non-mainstream cultures with more ease than adults in a similar manner to the process of infant language development. These aforementioned statements all lend themselves to the question, can children acclimate to other cultures more quickly than adults? In the process of research the author believes that this is likely. In addition the author argues that analysis of child education has merit insofar as the audience believes in the value of education. If making children more able to accept other individuals and cultures is plausible through similar events, then there could be numerous benefits including a reduction of discrimination, by allowing young individuals to lessen their concept of ‘the other’, greater understanding of historical records via easier access to and understanding of other cultures, and greater social cohesion. Nonetheless, the author believes child education should be a priority for all members of society.