Driving a Car in Saudi: An Illustration of the Power of Norms and Values Using Multicultural Data

The sociological literature on teaching and learning includes a number of discussions devoted to the importance of multicultural education. Much of this literature encourages educators to revise the curriculum and shows how the experience of multicultural education can stimulate student's sociological imaginations. To this end, some scholars have focused on transforming the curriculum as a whole, while others have hoped to improve it through the development of specific activities to promote multicultural awareness. The authors collected data from two small introduction to sociology classes in Saudi Arabia to use in their large enrollment introduction to sociology class lecture sessions. In this teaching note, the authors describe how they use these data to facilitate a classroom discussion of norms, values and cultural practices, to reveal the interaction among age and gender and the importance of sex segregation rules in Saudi Arabia. Through formal and informal assessment, they find that the activity and ensuing discussion helps students gain insight into the importance of culture while providing them with the opportunity to do so in an interesting and fun way. (Contains 2 tables and 3 footnotes.)