What is Culture?

I am very interested in the topic of culture. Unfortunately, the class created more questions in my mind than answers. What is culture? How do we get it? Are we born with it? Do we each have an individual culture? Is this the same as personality? What does it mean to have our own culture? Why is culture power?

I think this topic interests me more than any other because it is something that I teach in my own classroom, so it is very real to me. I define culture as everything about how you live. But I am not sure that really covers exactly what culture is, at least not according to the authors that we read. I am not sure I am really teaching culture correctly to my students, and that worries me.

So, that brings me back to my first question…what is culture?

In Edward T. Hall’s selection he says that “culture is a form of communication…culture is the study of our own lives, of our own ways of thinking and living.” (pg. 44)

This makes culture much more personal to me and my students. It is no longer surface culture such as languages, customs, religions, and traditions but it becomes more personal.  Hall goes on to say that “one of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details in which differentiate them from you.” (pg. 45)

Hall makes an important point here. It is just as important for us to study other cultures so we can better understand our own. In the process we become more knowledgeable about other cultures, but it helps us focus on our differences and similarities and how we can relate to each other better.

I am also interested in the idea that there is power in different cultures. In her article The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children, Lisa Delpit says that there is a culture of power. (p. 46) Of her 5 aspects of power that she talks about the one that interested me is the 5^th and last one. “Those with power are frequently least aware of – or least willing to acknowledge – its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence.” (p. 46)

This really struck me as incredibly true, especially when you work with high minority, low SES populations. I see this in my own school. I am definitely in the culture with power and many of my students are not. I sit in parent conferences where the parents just want the students to pass and learn. These are the parents in the culture that is not in power. Delpit explains the difference middle class parents what their students to critically think and the parents outside of the culture just want them to learn so they can be successful in society. (pg. 47)There is a big difference between the two. I often find myself asking the question of why? Why do some students and parents get it? And others do not? Were they let in on the unfortunate secret that is how to become part of the power culture?

So many questions. And maybe that’s the point. 

The Town, the School, and the Students

“The process of confronting and adjusting to change is a painful one.”(pg. 40)

While Jonathan Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools” made me pause and think a little bit more than any of the other selections from last week’s reading, it was Guadalupe Valdes’ “The Town, the School, and the Students” that I could relate to the most. In it, I felt like she was writing about my hometown, my schools, and my students.

I grew up in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. I often describe it as the second phase of “White Flight.” It was a middle class community where professionals who didn’t want their kids going to Dallas ISD schools lived. Perhaps my parents actually chose Carrollton because my dad grew up there as well and the schools were good. I grew up with parents who both had college degrees, my father is an engineer and my mother is an accountant. Before they had kids, they both worked full time jobs, but once they had my sister, my dad continued to work and my mom stayed home.  I had a dream childhood. It wasn’t without its sacrifices, we never had the newest toys, or went on grand vacations, but my mother was at my school ALL THE TIME. My parents helped me do homework, went to any and all parent meetings, volunteered at school, on field trips, on weekends, and went to every activity I was ever in. And my parents knew where I was academically. My mom could recite my test scores, my IQ, and my grades. I always knew I was going to college. If wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ more a matter of ‘where.’ My friends knew they were going to college. Again, it was more a decision of ‘where’ not ‘if.’ And when the time came, I chose Texas Tech. I attended for 4 years, earned a degree in political science, attained my teacher certification and came back to Carrollton to teach. I was going to teach kids just like me. While teaching in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch public schools was not my first job out of college, it was pretty close. And I still had that ideal image of what awaited me in my home town.

And then reality hit.

And I soon realized the middle school I walked into as a somewhat idealistic 24 year old was NOT the middle school I walked out of as a naïve 14 year old. It was different. Valdes’ words are much more accurate at explaining what I walked back into.

“In the face of rapid population shift, the entire character of both the community ad the schools change. “New” children are unlike the “old” children. Expectations that teachers have about study habits, background knowledge, language and discipline are found to be inaccurate. Assumptions about children’s futures must be questioned. Views about curriculum and standards, as well as opportunities to learn, cannot be taken for granted. Some teachers feel angry. They feel cheated at not having the “good” students they once had. They join together to complain to the principal. The solution, they argue, is to hire more new teachers to handle students who are not up to their standards. Principals, however, do not have easy solutions. Sometime they, too, wish that the new children would simply go away.” (pg. 40)

So many questions ran through my mind. Was I prepared to teach these “new” students? Could I ignore all the negativity about them from the other teachers? What is the district doing to help me teach these students, and help them learn?

What I found out surprised me. While I was living a dream childhood, naïve to any shifting population surrounding me, the district was putting in place steps to help these “new” students. I go to know my students; their culture, stories, home life, and goals. I very rarely met their parents but I was able to meet their needs while they were in my class.

Valdes’ does a good job of describing where these students are coming from. But she is short on solutions. As a teacher, I want to fix things. I want solutions, and ethnographic studies provide little solutions. Stories are good, but I want to know about the next step. What can we do for these students that are sitting in my classroom right now.

My district is still changing. There are still people who feel the same way the teacher’s that Valdes’ described. There are still students that I will never reach or understand. But my district is trying; I am trying; Together we are trying to change and evolve in education. But like Valdes’ says “The process of confronting and adjusting to change is a painful one.”(pg. 40)

.

Valdes, G. (1989). The Town, the School, and the Students, Learning and Not Learning English: Latino Students in American Schools. In J.  Noel (Ed.), Classic Edition Sources: Multicultural Education (pp. 34-38). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.