Culture and education

In today’s society there is one topic which is challenging all aspects of the economic, academic, social and religious arenas, and that is “diversity”. Diversity has found its way into the center of human development, behavior, paradigms and it’s a topic that we need to address, analyze, and tackle in order to advance into the next stage of global progress. In the following dissertation I will be commenting on how can culture and schooling effect students’ development?

Culture has been an issue of debate since the birth of this country. From the early migration of Europeans to the enormous exploits of African slaves, we as North Americans have been forced to face the challenges of cultural indifferences throughout society. These indifferences have also plaque our classrooms, and student responsiveness in developing an effective multicultural community within our schools. A difference in behavior, religion, attitudes, traditions, and language has challenged students to separate, segregate, and even marginalize themselves in order to adjust to this endemic process. The fear of losing one’s ethnic identity has been at the core of multicultural development and the greatest challenge facing most academic institutions today.

Teaching students the concept that they do not need to “assimilate” in order to “integrate” is vital in the process of creating a paradigm shift. For over two hundred years our school systems practiced an enculturation process which negated immigrants from keeping their ethnic identity, and acculturating an Anglo-American perspective. With the majority of European instructors populating our North American schools we need to invite and welcome minority leaders and teachers to take a role in the academic development of our children. Not until the venues of color and cultural partisans have been removed from our paradigms, social structure, and classrooms will our students ever have a chance of overcoming the affects of cultural indifferences.

Everything begins in the classroom, whether at home or in a prestigious academic setting, it is our duty as a nation to path a new way for our future generations to adhere to. Each institution has the responsibility to notice and adjust to change. Not learning from history can clog our progressive arteries and stimulate a cultural “heart attack”. By implementing a rich mandatory curriculum full of diversity, socialization, integration, and inclusion we as an academic institution can help turn the classroom into an attractive “melting pot” of multicultural flavor. It is my contention that we must reevaluate our focuses on whether we are spending too much time on issues that differentiate us, rather than on issues that brings us together (similarities). From the formal curriculum to the informal curriculum I have noticed that there is one common denominator and that is time. Let us do our part in planning, instituting, and allowing for the seasons of cultural evolution to take its course.