I found this week’s readings to be particularly interesting because as an education major, especially a bilingual one, culture is a huge topic of discussion. It is an issue that we are constantly debating and constantly trying to understand. In every class that I have, we discuss the definition of culture and how it impacts education. We always get a variety of different answers about what we believe to be culture, and I found it interesting that in the Kumaravedivelu article, it states that even experts cannot come up with one single definition for the word. It said that it is used in so many different schools of thought that it is difficult to come up with one overarching definition. One particularly interesting comment that the article made was that people use the word ‘culture’ as a noun. They say that this is problematic because it implies that culture is some sort of an object or thing. They suggested that instead it should be used as a verb because the most important part about culture is what it does, not what it is. I thought that was an amazing statement because culture has many functions that a simple definition would not express.
Another topic that stuck out to me was the different views a society or person may have. The first one is collectivism vs. individualism. I had a hard time with this when I was reading it because the article said the Western countries tended to be more individualistic. I personally feel it is hard to label an entire society with one single term. In the United States, people do tend to be individualistic, but we have a lot of collectivist tendencies as well. We are constantly worried about how others view us and how we fit in in the collective. Just like with culture, I believe it is difficult to put an entire group of people under one single category. The second set of views is the essentialist vs. non-essentialist view of culture. The table in the book described the essentialist view as the easy way of looking a culture. It is the way that many choose to look at culture because it is the easy way out. The book stated that this view of how people and culture is seen is the same view that drives sexism and racism. The book showed great insight as to how a variety of people may view culture and people.
The most impactful of the readings was the article by Atkinson because it spoke directly about teaching second language learners. I was completely taken aback when I read that there are people, even scholars who believe that culture has no place in education. They claimed that “students should be looked as individuals and not as members of a cultural group” (pg. 636). This is completely mind-boggling to me because I have always believed that an individual is greatly influenced by their culture and when you look at an individual you are looking at pieces of their culture as well. This is something that Kumaravedivelu touched on as well; his article states that culture “presents a basis for identity formation…and plays a huge role in the development of an individual” (pg. 10). All in all, these articles were very informative and in some cases eye opening.
