Putting the Principles of Cultural Humility Into Practice

What?: In the book, “We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change” by Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, Myles and Paulo talk a lot about the relationship between practice, theory, and knowledge. Paulo describes the relationship between practice and knowledge when he states, “But I also know that without practice there’s no knowledge; at least it’s difficult to know without practice. We have a certain theoretical kind of practice in order to know also. But practice in itself is not its theory. It creates knowledge, but it is not its own theory” (Horton and Freire 98). The relationship of practice with knowledge demonstrates how people need to have experienced a certain event first before they come to have knowledge of the event. For example, learning about an issue such a poverty and having experience or practice with poverty brings knowledge in completely different ways. It is easy to learn about poverty, but it’s hard to gain knowledge about the feeling and difficulties of poverty if a person hasn’t experienced what poverty feels like. Just as Paulo says, it’s difficult to know what poverty really is without practice, which is the experience of how poverty actually feels like when a person goes through with it. Even if a person cannot experience what a certain event may feel like, it is important to learn about the experience of a person that has experienced poverty. This allows a person’s knowledge about the topic to expand. In addition, practice is not its own theory because theory is more than just feeling a certain way about an experience and having knowledge about that experience. Myles presents his definition of theory when he states, “ But then if you don’t have some vision of what ought to be or what they can become, then you have no way of contributing anything to the process. Your theory determines what you want to do in terms of helping people grow. So it’s extremely important that you have a theory . . . that helps you decide” (Horton and Freire 100). To Myles, theory is something that allows an educator to have a vision of helping people to grow and contribute more to the issue or topic that they are currently learning. Theory also means having a vision of what a person is going to do about the issue or the topic. This relates to both practice and knowledge because practice allows a person to understand a certain experience and therefore, have knowledge about that experience. With theory, the person is able to contribute to the experience by having a certain vision about educating other people about the experience, helping them grow in knowledge about the experience, and taking action by doing something about that experience.

Practice, theory, and knowledge are significant in terms of the way I understand education/knowledge because they are the key factors in understanding any situation. The goal of education is to teach a group of people something that I know. In order to do that, I need to establish my credibility and show the people that I know a lot about what I am talking about. As defined above, practice is based on one’s own experiences with an event, and it creates knowledge. Without practice, it is hard to have lots of knowledge about a certain event. If I am the educator and I am teaching something, I have to make sure I know enough about what I am teaching to the people. One current event that has been happening for a very long time is the issue of poverty in the world. If I am teaching about poverty, I have to make sure that I look at it from the different perspectives of people who have experienced it so I can gain a lot of knowledge in that topic. Although I may have a certain practice or experience of poverty, I have to look at the practice/ experience of those who have experienced poverty in order to build my full knowledge of the topic. From there, the theory, as Myles defines it, is the vision of what that issue will become next. The theory will allow me to contribute something to the process, issue, or experience that I am currently facing. In this case, if I am an educator about poverty, my theory will allow me determine what to do next about the issue of poverty and educate my students about what to do next. This not only helps the people who I am educating grow further in learning about the issue of poverty, but it also helps the people understand the experience of poverty, gain knowledge about it, and have a vision of what to do about it as well.

In “Close Encounter of the Human Kind” by Abraham Verghese, Verghese learns that his patients have so many medical needs and are suffering a lot due to the lack of attention that they have received. Practice is intertwined in Verghese’s experience with the patients because he comes to understand what the patients are suffering from. He gains his knowledge about what the patients are suffering from when he listens to their story about what happened to them. At one point, the doctor is talking to a patient, and the patient tells the doctor that he needed help, but he wasn’t able to receive the help that he needed. He tells the doctor that his own country treats the refugees from other countries much better than they treat him and the refugees representing their own country. Because of that, the doctor apologizes, and the man says, “‘Thank you, Doc. I needed to hear that. All they got to say is sorry. All they go to say is sorry’” (“Close Encounter with Human Kind). This shows how the doctor implements the definition of practice. Even though he doesn’t know the whole experience of what the patient is going through, he decides to listen and hear the story from the patient’s perspective of what happened. This allows the doctor to gain knowledge of what his patient, along with all the refugees are suffering from. After the doctor apologizes to the man, the man thanks him. The doctor practices Myles’s definition of theory by doing something to help people grow. The man who thanks the doctor is able to grow by moving away from his hurt feelings by knowing that there is actually someone from his own country who cares for him. The doctor realizes that the best way to help the people grow is to relate to the refugees that feel hurt: “Driving home, I remembered my own metaphor of strapping on armor for the night shift. The years have shown that there is no armor. There never was. The willingness to be wounded may be all we have to offer” (“Close Encounter of the Human Kind”). The approach to be wounded helps the refugees to grow out of their suffering because it allows them to see that there are people that are willing to understand the pain they are going through, just as the doctor tries to understand the pain of his male patient. Therefore, the doctor is able to practice and understand the experiences and perspectives of the refugees, gain knowledge from those experiences, and carry out the definition of theory by taking action to care for the refugee and help him grow away from his feelings of suffering and sadness.

Practice relates to the first tenet of cultural humility. In the video “Cultural Humility”, Jann Murray discusses the first tenet of cultural humility. “The first is lifelong learning and critical self-reflection. It is the understanding of how each of us, every single one of us, is a complicated multi-dimensional human being. Each of us comes with our own histories and stories, our heritage, our point of view” (“Cultural Humility”). Practice relates to the first tenet because practice involves understanding the experience that a person has been through. This parallels to the first tenet because it discusses how it’s important to understand that all people have their own stories, perspectives, and experiences in life. Knowledge about a person relates to the full understanding of a person because it is important to understand all the stories, perspectives, and experiences that a person has gone through in order to fully know that person. Finally, theory is similar to the first tenet because theory means having a thought about something, which allows one to have an opinion about a certain topic. “ Your theory determines what you want to do in terms of helping people grow” (Horton and Freire 100). Therefore, knowing the experience, story, and perspective of a person and having a theory based on the experience, story, and perspective of that person allows one to help understand the background of that person and help that person grow in qualities, education, and opportunities that the person may be lacking. In addition, Paolo states, “Knowledge is always becoming. . . . Knowledge is changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes . . .” (Horton and Freire 101). It is important to understand that knowledge is always changing because every person’s experience is always changing as well. Therefore, even though it might not be possible to know everything about a person since his or her experience is always changing, it is important to try to know about as many experiences that have happened in a person’s life as possible in order to help a person grow.

So What?: The historical context that brought about the principles of Cultural Humility is the experience Rodney King had with the police. According to the Cultural Humility video, “Rodney King (1965–2012) became a symbol of police brutality in 1991 when his severe beating by Los Angeles police was caught on camera and broadcasted around the world. The police were acquitted by a jury with no African Americans, leading to the most violent riot in US history.” The police stopped a 25 year old black man and kicked and beat him up. This upset so many people of color, and it brought about so many different riots due to the anger people of color felt toward this incident. The principles of cultural humility ensure that people are respected and understood, and every person has his or her own story. The police brutality shown toward Rodney King indicates no respect and understanding that every person is a complicated, multidimensional human being. Instead, their brutality shows how they see Rodney as a person of color, and immediately stereotype him as a person who commits crime. This is very upsetting because the police are generalizing that all people of color are people who commit crime. They fail to understand the first principle of cultural humility, which is the fact that all people, regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation have a story and a history that make up their identity. Rodney is a unique multidimensional human being who also has his stories, and it is wrong to beat him up and assume that he is a criminal because he is a person of color. Another event that prompted the founder to create and implement the principles of Cultural Humility was the case with an African American nurse that was caring for middle aged Latina woman several hours after the Latina woman had undergone surgery. A Latino physician that passed by noticed that the Latina woman was making noises that indicated she was in pain. “The nurse dismissed his perception, informing him that she took a course in nursing school about cross cultural medicine and knew that hispanic patients over express the pain that they are feeling. The Latino physician had a difficult time influencing the perspective of this nurse, who focused on her cultural claim and cultural expertise” (“Cultural Humility”). Due to the historical context and this event, the principles of Cultural Humility were implemented so the voices and identities of all people could be respected, and heard. The story of the African American nurse shows the cultural competence that she nurse had. According to the video “Cultural Humility”, “cultural competence implies that a person knows everything, and if the person doesn’t know everything, then he or she has a lack of intelligence.” A lot of the times people have cultural competence because they want to appear to everyone as people who know everything. It hurts when a lot when people admit that they don’t know the answer to everything. In the event with the Latino physician and the nurse, the Latino physician might have been a resource for that African American nurse in the moment that she didn’t feel like she needed his input. For medical researchers and healthcare providers, cultural competence implies that they are all knowing and all powerful. Unfortunately, cultural competence was becoming a problem because families were coming to hospitals, and their voices weren’t being heard due to the cultural competence that many healthcare providers had. It’s the job of the healthcare providers to help and serve the patients, but when the patients’ voices aren’t being heard, that becomes a problem from them and their community. Therefore, the women in the video found it so crucial to identify and address unjust power structures as part of their job as healthcare providers so the voices of the families, communities, and patients that they were serving would be heard. To them, cultural humility implies that life does not mean that a person will always know the answer to everything in every single situation. Cultural humility is about how you as a person approach the situation, and it is so important in a healthcare provider’s job because it involves putting aside the beliefs and knowledge that a healthcare provider may have about the patient and hearing the experiences of the patient in order to help him or her. When a healthcare provider follows the principles of cultural humility, the first principle of cultural humility allows the healthcare provider to hear the voice of the patient, family, or community. The second principle of cultural humility allows the healthcare provider to challenge those who have cultural competence when they refuse to hear the voices of their patients, and the third principle of cultural humility allows the healthcare provider to model these principles and do something to help the families or communities in need. Hearing the voices of communities in need and helping them out is crucial to helping communities in our society thrive, which is why it became so crucial for the women in the video to identify and address unjust power structures as part of their job as healthcare providers.

A connection between Freire and Horton’s dialogue and the Cultural Humility video are the similarities between the topic of knowledge. According to Freire and Horton, “Knowledge is always becoming. That is, if the act of knowing has historicity, then today’s knowledge about something is not necessarily the same tomorrow. Knowledge is changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes. . . .” (Freire and Horton 101). This quote talks about how knowledge is always changing, and how knowledge might be one thing the first day, and then something completely different the next day. It is impossible to know every single thing, since knowledge is always becoming, and there is always so much more to know. This parallels to the Cultural Humility video because at one point, one woman mistook not knowing for lack of intelligence. However, after she talked to a friend, she realized that that just because a person does not know something, that doesn’t mean that he or she has a lack of intelligence. It just means that the person has a lack of knowledge in that subject because the person was never told or never heard about the topic before . Knowledge is always becoming, and it is always changing, and it is impossible to know everything. Therefore, not knowing something doesn’t mean that a person is not intelligent. Rather, it means that the person has not become familiar with the piece of knowledge and needs to learn more about it. Also, at one point in the video, Pamela Simms-Mackay talks about the difference between cultural competence and cultural humility. According to Pamela Simms-Mackay, “cultural humility is a philosophy. It is an approach, and it is a tool. It’s not something about whether I’m going to master it or not. It’s an approach about how I will handle this situation” (“Cultural Humility”). This means that knowing about a specific situation is one thing, and actually doing something about the situation is a completely different thing. This relates to Freire and Horton’s dialogue because both Freire and Horton talk a lot about taking a side in a situation and figuring out what to do about the situation. They emphasize that being neutral is not good because it is “following the crowd” (102). Rather than just following the crowd, they stress the importance of taking a side and doing something about the situation. Freire states, “The next step is to figure out what to do. As I said earlier, I decided long before that I wasn’t interested in being good, I was interested in being good for something” (102). This shows how it is important for one to take a side and figure out how to handle the situation. The idea of taking action also relates the third principle present in the Cultural Humility video, which is institutional accountability. The third principle relates to how one models the principles and takes action in unjust situations. Therefore, there is a strong emphasis placed on taking action in both the Cultural Humility video and Freire Horton’s dialogue, which shows the strong connection between the two sources.

In “Close Encounters of the Human Kind,” Verghese is not “neutral” about the suffering of his patients. According to Myles, “Neutrality is just following the crowd. Neutrality is just what the system asks us to be. Neutrality, in other words, was an immoral act” (102). According to the patient that Verghese had helped, the patient’s own country did not help him in any way. The patient described his painful experience and how miserable he felt: “He told me that for two nights after the floods, he had perched on a ledge so narrow that his legs dangled in the water. At one point, he said, he saw Air Force One fly but no help came” (“Close Encounter of the Human Kind”). This shows how the patient’s own country was not willing to help him despite all the suffering that he was going through. If Verghese was truly “neutral” about the suffering of his patients, he would have refused to help this man. However, Verghese chooses to treat the man and even apologizes on behalf of his own country. This shows the care Verghese feels for these patients, and it demonstrates how he doesn’t follow the crowd by choosing not to help these refugees. Verghese is practicing the first principle of cultural humility because he is able to understand that all his patients are complicated, multidimensional human beings. Because of that, he is able to understand the pain that his patients are suffering from and do his best to treat all those who need his help. The doctor looks at the pain all these people are suffering from, and he does his best to empathize with their pain. He is constantly learning about the pain that they have to go through. At one point he even takes a moment to reflect on how he can help these people who are in pain: “Driving home, I remembered my own metaphor of strapping on armor for the night shift. The years have shown that there is no armor. There never was. The willingness to be wounded may be all we have to offer” (“Close Encounter of the Human Kind”). He takes the time for critical self-reflection, and he realizes that putting himself in their position and trying to understand the pain that they are going through is one of the biggest ways to help the patients, which demonstrates that Verghese is practicing the first principle of Cultural Humility.

Now What?: Some concrete actions or steps I can take to practice cultural humility in my community partner experience is hearing the stories of the children I will help at Davidson Middle School before acting on my beliefs about them. I need to practice the first principle of cultural humility, which is understanding that each student at Davidson Middle School has his or own history, and it is important to understand that before teaching him or her. If a student is not following my directions, understanding the student’s background and the hardships that the student may be facing will help me be more patient with the student. In the video, the African American nurse did not listen to what the Latino physician had to say because she thought she knew more than him due to a class that she took in nursing school. When doing my service learning at Davidson Middle School, if I have worked with a student for a long time and think I know that student more than anyone else, I will still make sure to listen to anyone who gives me advice about the student. This will help me to learn from the person giving me advice, and it will also help me to help the student get even better in what he or she may be doing. In addition, if a student tells me his or her perspective about something I’m doing wrong, I can practice my cultural humility by listening to what the student has to say and change the action that I may be doing wrong. Changing my actions and listening to the experience of the students models the third principle of cultural humility because I am walking the talk by modeling the principles through my actions. Finally, I can model cultural humility by accepting that it is okay to not know the answer to every single thing. At one point “Cultural Humility” video, a woman mentions how someone told her that not knowing the answer doesn’t take away from one’s intelligence. Instead, it just means that the person hasn’t been told about the piece of information. As a college student doing my service learning at a middle school, I know that I will come across a lot of information that middle scholars may know more than I will. Although it may hurt, it’s important to accept that not knowing something does not take away from my intelligence, and I can learn from anyone regardless of that person’s age. Therefore, rather than being ashamed that I do not know the answer to something, I can practice cultural humility by accepting that I don’t know something and being open to learn. This perspective will also help me to comfort students who may feel ashamed of themselves when they don’t know the answer to something. Therefore, these are some concrete actions and steps that I can take to practice my cultural humility in my community partner experience.