One person I interviewed was my friend Gloria who is African American and her husband traveled all over the world in the military. Gloria felt that culture was where you came from such as, your family and your traditions and the way you were raised.
The second was my cousin Henrietta, who is African America thought culture, included your way of thinking, food; dance and religion were all a part of your culture. There was a time when all you had was family, which included the community and the church. You developed culture based your own values and traditions from the placed you lived in. They both felt that culture and diversity were a combination of race, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs and even your political beliefs.
The third was my neighbor Lena, who is white and I felt comfortable asking her about culture and diversity since, she has taught elementary school for about seven years now. Lena says that in her classroom they try to teach that because, our values and traditions may differ from the culture we live in, it is so important to respect the values, traditions and experiences the children and their families come from.
The aspects of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course and what was included in the answers I received were only surface culture. Some of the aspects I think were overlooked were deep culture. Most people believe culture comes from, holidays you celebrate, foods you have learned as a part of culture. Deep culture could be gender roles, roles of children; how you show emotion and they way you speak (Derman-Sparks, & Edwards, 2010 p. 56).
In the ways in which thinking about other people’s definitions of culture and diversity, influenced my own thinking about the topics were, people think that culture and diversity are the same but, I believe that are joined together because diversity is an acceptance of other cultures and even though we have different cultures, we should be able to understanding that each individual is unique, and recognize and embrace those individual differences
Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
I agree that opinions of others sometimes influence the thinking one might have regarding topics. In hearing the definition of others regarding diversity and culture I constantly revisited my definition of the words. In revisiting my definition of the word I found myself extending and modifying my original thoughts. I can only imagine the influence adults have on children when others were influencing me, an adult. It is with this in mind that I believe it is critical that educators avoid stereotypes and bias behaviors because our influence is so huge in the lives of children
ReplyDeleteHi Kathleen,
ReplyDelete-I think that for this assignment many people gathered similar responses. My views were actually quite similar before taking this course. Why do you think that many people share the view of the surface culture?
-I think that courses like Perspectives on Diversity and Equity are very beneficial. I feel that in the past few weeks I have learned a great deal more about diversity, culture, social identities, individual differences, etc.