English teaching community in general and current Blogathon in particular are focused on the idea of teaching not only language but culture as well.

This issue has been thoroughly discussed in the course of the conference held this week by the university I work in. http://conference.osu.ru/ And my colleagues touched upon an interesting but utterly controversial issue of language and culture.

The problem is while teaching a foreign language to our students we concentrate on culture of the countries where it's spoken or accepted as official.We tend to discuss their history and achievements in various domains i.e. cinema,theatre,art,technology.etc.Sometimes the basis of our discussions is comparison of native and foreign cultures.But this is not a regular basis and even when it is, the comparison tends to show the advantages of foreign culture and disadvantages of the native.As a result our students are more oriented towards foreign culture and values and they tend to understate the native ones.At our classes we use mostly authentic books,films,videos,music and we perceive them as the best materials.We discuss various topics and in most cases our students jump to the conclusions that foreign culture is more interesting,vivid and appealing to them.

So are we to blame that more and more young people (I can judge by our faculty graduates at least) tend to go and live abroad?And is it possible to teach a foreign language and still develop patriotism in our students' hearts?