Culture and Schools

[Szechuan]

Echo from the LiveJournal:

I had a conversation with a black friend today. They are 21, and were telling me how they only learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and all he stood for yesterday. This has ignited a much greater interest in black history for this individual, who is spending more time reading up on the subject. I'm not bashing learning on your own. I'm very glad she decided to pursue the subject in greater detail and learn more about it. My problem lies in the fact that she is upset that this wasn't taught to her during school.

I, personally, don't think specific cultural histories should be top priority in school, especially in a very diverse multicultural nation such as Canada. If we covered ever native, inuit, black, hispanic, anglo, french, italian, asian, german, and middle easterner's cultural growth in detail, we wouldn't have time to learn about how the world works - our maths and sciences. Our mandatory history courses concentrated on what's more specifically relevant to Canada - the world wars, the isolation and segregation of natives, and Confederation. We touched more on black history in our english classes via books like To Kill A Mockingbird and Black Like Me, than we did in any actual history course.

How important is cultural history? Where would you prioritize it, were you organizing your own school system? Is it the role of the school at all, or of the parents and relatives sharing that culture?

[Cain]

All history is cultural. Without cultural relevancy, history becomes nothing more than a dry, dusty, recitation of dates and names. What makes history important is the lessons it teaches us-- and that depends on our cultural understanding.

[Szechuan]

All history is cultural. Without cultural relevancy, history becomes nothing more than a dry, dusty, recitation of dates and names. What makes history important is the lessons it teaches us-- and that depends on our cultural understanding.

I started down this line of thinking myself, and then discounted it. While every branch of history has arguably affected all of humanity, I see a distinction between how different ethnic groups were affected. To use my earlier example, studying the world wars, which literally did affect all of humanity, versus MLK and how he affected black america in particular.

Please, someone smarter than me tell me if I'm misusing the word 'culture', if there is a better word to describe what I'm getting at, or if Cain is just tossing around so much dust and feathers as usual.

[3278]

Well, he's right, and you're right, too. Without educating students about culture, the understanding of history is devalued, because the information comes without context; it's teaching comprehension, and not understanding.

But as you say, there's only so much time to teach history or culture, so some must be taught in greater detail than others. In general, those most significant to history and/or current events should be taught, with enough detail on rare or exceptional cultures so that the student understands that the world is not just those cultures on top. [Too often, histories of the world - and cultural education, as well - concentrate on what we would consider the most significant cultures - those on top - while ignoring peripheral, small, or isolated cultures; when I was in school, I was taught much about ancient Egypt, but nothing at all about ancient India or China.]

It is important to teach some "black culture" in countries with high african-american populations, so as to teach the context of civil rights and the conflicts we have today. However, there is not enough time to teach everything; we must teach as much as possible, as little as practicable, so we can teach everything that should be learned.

[UncleJoseph]

I think history and culture are /almost/ interchangeable. History is part of what defines a culture. Culture is created by social, political and biological events, to name a few. History is what happened, in response to the cultural context at the time it happened.

If we consider the civil rights momement of the 1960's in the United States, it would be difficult to expose students to it without relating it to the racial tension in the coutry at the time.

If we consider the story of the Trail of Tears, it would be hard to teach it without comparing the background of the culture of the Native American people to the background of the settlers.

If we're teaching students about the history of the United States, we are concurrently teaching cultural history of the United States. That does not necessarily mean we are teaching specific sub-cutural history.

History/culture that focuses on a specific ethnicity, and the unique characteristics of that ethicity may or may not be appropriate. Any event or state of affairs, whether culturally based or not, that affected history should be taught in any well-rounded curriculum.

[Cain]

I started down this line of thinking myself, and then discounted it. While every branch of history has arguably affected all of humanity, I see a distinction between how different ethnic groups were affected. To use my earlier example, studying the world wars, which literally did affect all of humanity, versus MLK and how he affected black america in particular.

I see where you're going with this, and you're right to a degree. However, the whole point of history is to show how things affect us, and how we can do better in the future. What's more, things that seem to be centralized to one area can have dramatic effects on others.

For example, Gandhi's actions might seem to be restricted to India. But in actuality, his actions influenced people world-wide, including Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King, in turn, affected black rights activists worldwide, such as Desmond Tutu. And the both of them are key influences on the worldwide civil rights movement-- the end of Apartheid, of Communism, and so on. While MLK himself might not seem to be much, his effects on the policy of "passive resistance" has had dramatic effects worldwide. But we can't understand Gandhi without some understanding of Indian culture under the British occupation; and we cannot understand MLK without some understanding of Black American culture. So, we need to know at least a little of that to understand the overarching concept of passive resistance-- and *that* has effected all of humanity.

As a more recent example, 9/11 and the "War on Terror" can be viewed as a clash between extremist Arabs and a semi-mythical Isreali/American cabal. Without at least some framework to understand their actions, we lose the ability to anticipate their next moves, or how to prevent future attacks.

Culture can also give us foresight. Without an understanding of German culture in the early 30's, we cannot understand how Hitler came to power. And, as you pointed out, Hitler's rise led directly to WW2. We need to understand other cultures in order to see if similar things are happening. Ideally, this will allow us to stop future world wars before they happen.

Teaching other cultures is necessary to understand our own. And not just because everyone is interconnected-- we can also learn from their mistakes, using their experiences as an analogy for our own.

[Paul]

Teaching other cultures is okay as long as there is more than say just one that gets "air time".

[Szechuan]

Wow. I've gained a lot of insight within just a few posts. Thanks a lot, guys.

A humdinger of a question came to me just now: Going back to my question of what you'd do while controlling the curriculum, is there any material besides the World Wars and the cradle of civilization that you think all countries should be taught, even if they weren't specifically involved or affected?

Put another way: What do you think everybody should learn?

[Cain]

Well, the flip answer is: "A short overview of everything", but that's not really useful to this discussion.

IMO, we'd need at least an overview of the cultures of all First World nations, as well as the prominent Second World ones. Those are the ones who are most likely to affect us, and the ones we'll need to work with. For Current Events classes, we should also focus on any major hot spots that aren't prominent, such as Afghanistan-- the country itself isn't a major world player, but events there could mimic WW1, and spiral out of control.

Within those overviews, we'd need to spend at least some time on the treatment of their minority ethnic groups, since those can come up without warning. For example, we'd need to touch on the Islamic minority in India-- IIRC, India has the highest raw number of Muslims of any country, so many Islamic-related issues could come popping out of there. If we restricted ourselves to studying the Hindu majority, we'd miss a huge (and potentially important) part of their culture.

[Paul]

How long should school be? That will directly affect how much and what you can teach. It's all well and good to say "teach a little bit of everything" but, it has to fit into the curriculum some how. Or you change the curriculum.

[Anguirel]

First of all, it depends on teh school you have in mind. If I were to design a public school for backwater Saskatchewan, I would use a different courseload than if I were doing a globalized prep school for multiple nationalities.

In the case of the former, I'd probably do whatever relates most to that community. Their own personal likely history. If that means white immigrants, then we do Africa to Egypt to the Mediterranian to Europe in more detail than other regions, probably 5 or 6 years will be focused on this at various points, starting with general trends and probably some shared cultural mythos (Greek and Roman myths, famous battles and heroes of various times, that sort of thing) along with general context, and subsequent returns taking specific concepts more in depth.

If teaching in teh backwater means a mixed population of natives and others, or even pure native, then you add in a lot more of the Trans-Siberian and ancient Chinese and Polynesian cultures. Either way you also spend at least a year on very local history -- just the province -- and at least 2 year on purely Canadian history, including as much as possible of what happened before the European invasion.

That's 6+2+1, or a total of 9 years so far, so you do at least two years covering everything you didn't cover yet in global history. Specifically you focus in on the Indian and Chinese cultures one year, and cover Native American cultures, and smaller African and Polynesian cultures another. Remaining year is an elective for specific study of choice. 12 years. That could well mean missing out entirely on someone like MLK if you aren't in the US. His impact is fairly large in the US, but probably not so large outside.

Incidentally, for the global school, you do the global history stuff all the time and just rotate major power each year. European, Indochina, American, and push it forward on each iteration. Last three years will be fully global.

[TheScamp]

One of the problems is that history always gets taught in the wrong direction. School systems start way back in the beginning and work their way forwards instead of starting now and working backwards. When you start from "the beginning", you lose all of the cultural tie-ins that make the information useful. It's not until you get to more recent history that students can really start making connections between they way things are now and how that was influenced by things that came before. You learn about stuff like Egypt really early, but it doesn't really mean jack squat other than having this little pocket of information.

[Thorn]

One of the problems is that history always gets taught in the wrong direction. School systems start way back in the beginning and work their way forwards instead of starting now and working backwards. When you start from "the beginning", you lose all of the cultural tie-ins that make the information useful. It's not until you get to more recent history that students can really start making connections between they way things are now and how that was influenced by things that came before. You learn about stuff like Egypt really early, but it doesn't really mean jack squat other than having this little pocket of information.

I agree with this. Or at least, the idea that more "recent" history needs to be taught earlier on. I know that's not always easy to do, what with turnaround time for churning out textbooks and the like, but I know when I was growing up, most of our history teachers were Civil War buffs. Which meant we spent a seriously long time on the Civil War, and then it'd be the end of March and we'd have another century to get through before the end of the school year. We never made it - always got tied up on one of the world wars.

So for years, I knew all this stuff about America's infancy and childhood, but practically nothing about the preceding 30-40 years. Which made it hard to understand what was going on in the world, because there was this gulf in my knowledge from say 1945 to 1985. So when I'd watch the news, I had no idea how we'd gotten from the end of WWII to Reagan. I knew there'd been Vietnam and hippies and the Civil Rights Movement, but that was about the extent of it.

[Paul]

I think recent history/current events should be an ongoing theme in it's own class, and the rest dividedinto toher classes. (You take them one a year or something.)

[JongWK]

One of the problems is that history always gets taught in the wrong direction. School systems start way back in the beginning and work their way forwards instead of starting now and working backwards. When you start from "the beginning", you lose all of the cultural tie-ins that make the information useful. It's not until you get to more recent history that students can really start making connections between they way things are now and how that was influenced by things that came before. You learn about stuff like Egypt really early, but it doesn't really mean jack squat other than having this little pocket of information.

The opposite is also true, you know.

[TheScamp]

The opposite of what?

[Crazy Elf]

Okay, the problem is that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you teach people only a little bit about what's happening or happened in Ireland, you get some heavily slanted opinions depending on what light you colour it in. Same's true for Afghanistan, or Israel, or a thousand other current and ongoing themes in the ever increasing global perspective we have access to today.

Teach someone only a little on something, and suddenly you're a racist, or a reactionary, or a terrorist. It's much easier to talk about the Romans and Hannibal, because you're unlikely to be accused of much in those discussions.

[Cain]

That's only true if you teach history in a vacuum. If you combine history and culture lessons with critical-thinking skills-- which, naturally, is part of what they're *supposed* to teach us-- then people are less apt to mindlessly repeat what they've been told.