Culture and Education Work Hand in Hand
What do we understand by culture?
Most of us will prompt out with an answer that it’s a way of life. Which to some extent is true but does culture means just a way of life?
It is more than that.
It is the beliefs, customs, values, and norms through which a society or community is shaped.
Culture is a part of everyone’s life. It is reflected in everything we do. It influences how we perceive and look at things and the world itself. Culture includes how we communicate, behave, and learn, and therefore it includes learning and teaching styles also.
In the current era, culture-based education is essential. Culture-based approach toward education involves values, norms, and traditions as well. Culture is to be sustained in classrooms as it helps a child in interacting with people and the environment around him/her better. It helps one develop language and communication skills and helps them imbibe values.
There is a saying by a Harvard Professor Jerome Bruner:
“Culture shapes mind, it provides with the tool kit by which we construct not only our world but our very conception of ourselves and our powers.”
This saying conveys that culture is involved in our daily life. It should be assimilated with learning and educational practices and shouldn’t make the children alienated in any situation. Its cognition with education results in meeting diverse needs. Culture does not only mean going by the books and following traditions; it provides us with thinking skills and growing learning motivation which improves our academic and life outcomes.
There is ample evidence that culture enhances the quality of education and positively affects learning outcomes.
For example, there is a Portugal project called the 10X10 which is administered by FGC and Postgraduate Medical Education Committee (PGEC). This project works towards bringing artists and teachers together to develop innovative and different teaching practices in a classroom using cooperative and innovative teamwork.
The initiative is towards promoting or developing broader learning and application regarding how art practices may contribute to making the curriculum relevant for students by linking it to their own experiences which in turn will result in improvement in critical thinking, learning development, as well as vocational skills.
There is also a concept called CSP formally known as Culturally Sustained Practices which allows students to hold their culture close while in school and makes them feel welcomed. It is a very well-known practice in New York City schools that helps children to overcome their insecurity and the fear of failure. It helps them to cultivate a new attitude toward their life by finding solutions from their own cultural contexts. It also helps children be proud of their culture instead of being timid. CSP is a mandate in New York City schools. This requirement emphasizes the need for teachers to embrace diversity and make children feel welcomed. This is very helpful to children as they don’t feel cast out or feel weird about themselves.
This practice should be endorsed in every school because school practices usually involve all students of diverse cultures and traditions, which often results in excluding students from different backgrounds and cultures that are rarely discerned.
Students who don’t fit within these norms are seen as a deficit lens, which results in teachers or school personnel pointing out poor academic performance or rude behavior as the students’ faults.
That should not be the case; an educationist must respect all cultures. He or she should not make the children feel driven out, but instead put in his/her efforts to make the children feel like their culture and their presence matter and is important. An educationist must keep in mind the mental health of his/her students before making any hurtful comment.
Harnessing the synergies between culture and education better equips the students and educators. Therefore, it should be seen as an enriching link in providing a positive dimension to learning content and education as a whole. It connects us to our history and heritage and gives us a sense of self-confidence along with nurturing the quality of critical thinking.
The interdependence or co-dependence of culture and education is vital to human development and also the economic development as it advances or boosts several areas of it like culture ensures unity during a crisis and it is important for nation building. Culture also plays an important role in advancing sustainable development goals with socio-cultural respect, community participation, and political cohesion.
For instance, UNESCO has made it mandatory for culture and education to be involved in the curriculum of the education centers as they are essential for human dignity.
UNESCO focuses on raising awareness about the union between culture and education.
It also has stepped up its engagement recently via an online program named ‘Clearinghouse on living heritage and education which provides a platform for open access tools and case studies from all around the world. It is a great initiative as it helps people and provides them with a chance to learn and know about new cultures while enriching their own culture.
So, let’s get back to where we started, to our point of origin that education and culture are equally important for the all-round development of a human being which starts with their first formal social brush with life.
To remember a quote said by Marjane Satrapi, wouldn’t put us off to an abrupt end:
“Culture and Education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism.”
May we keep growing and glowing in its warmth and have an atmosphere of customary love hugging us through life in its expanse.
Written by Dhruti Gohil
