Culture

This week I spoke with three people I know and asked them to define culture and diversity.

"Diversity means that there are a lot of different ways to live and that many people can live together with different ideas and morals and can help one another be more tolerant. Culture is the fuel behind diversity, it is essentially everything you do- all your behaviors, your values, your food, your traditions" (M. Night, personal communication, 27 May, 2017.

"Culture means the way you were raised by your family and by society, it defines you as a person. It includes things like the way you dress, your gender role, the food you eat, and how you raise children. Diversity is the idea that everyone has a unique personal culture and, in any area, there exists a level of diversity because of the people that are around you" (R. Hill, personal communication, 27 May, 2017).

"Culture stems from where you live geographically, your ethnicity and family history, your likes and dislikes, and more. It just means the way you live and how you navigate through society. As a teacher, I see children's cultures come out in their play on a daily basis. People sometimes think that children do not have culture, but in fact, they are learning culture by learning ways to behave and think. Diversity means that everyone has different values and ideals about how to live" (R. Frazier, personal communication, 27 May, 2017).

In our course, we have studied culture to mean the ways in which you live your life, including your behaviors, your values, your social identities, and more. My three contacts this week touched on each of these points, noting that culture means the way you live, demonstrating how "everything we do and think is related to culture" (Laureaute Education, Inc., 2011, 0:24). Janet Gonzales-Mena describes a set of unconscious rules that govern us and that are learned and inherited by the people around us, including perspectives, beliefs, world-views, food, music, customs, literature, and more (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011). Additionally, Smidt (2013) demonstrates culture as highly visible in the early years in the ways that children play and take on roles, something that Frazier discussed during my interview.

Some things that my interviewees did not discuss are things like raising your own children, clashing of cultures, dominant cultures, cultural alignment, and culture loss or cultural tension. Even when I spoke to an early childhood educator, Frazier did not mention any kind of issues that have arisen in recent years about cultures in the United States. Derman-Sparks & Edwards (2010) detail the challenges of the early childhood educator (and of parents and families) to help children maintain strong ties to their family cultures even when it does not align with a dominant culture.

What I am realizing is that people in dominant cultures may not have a lot of knowledge about the difficulties of raising children in today's society and helping them maintain strong social identities. For me, this is important knowledge to have because I eventually want to teach professionals in the early childhood field. Many professionals that choose to embark on careers in early childhood may not be aware that they are strongly aligned with a dominant culture and may not know the ways in which having this priviledge has changed their perspective. I hope to help new and young educators learn more about cultural loss and how to support family cultures in the classroom.

References

Derman-Sparks, L. & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, D.C.: NAEYC.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011). Culture and diversity [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu
 
Smidt, S. (2006). The developing child in the 21st century: A global perspective on child development. New York, NY: Routledge.