Culture and diversity - week 3

My Blog- week 3

Comments from friends about culture and diversity:

King: Culture is about race. Each race has their customs, codes, dances, singing and habit.
Diversity means each culture is different and unique to its group. Cultural diversity refers to the differences in each culture.

Gi: Each country has its culture. American culture is very different from Chinese. Culture includes elements such as traditions, history, customs and race.
One culture is diverse from the other. Within each culture, there is also diversity. For examples, in China, the Chinese culture for each province is also different. The culture of the ethnic groups in China is also different from each other. That is diversity.

June: Culture should include the country or an ethnic group’s arts, writing, languages, clothing customs, cuisine, toys, lifestyles, houses and a lot.
Diversity simply refers to differences within a culture. For instance, diversity can be in religion. Same culture may have different religions. In countries like USA, everyone has the freedom in religion. It can be Buddhism, Christian, Protestantism, Muslin and others. Each belief is different from the others. So it can also be seen as diversity.

My reflection:

In a study of surface culture and deep culture, the above answers are all covered. I like the picture of “Iceberg concept of culture” drawn by Indiana of Education Department. It divides the culture to “surface culture” and “Deep culture”. Surface culture is above the sea level with relatively low emotional load. Deep culture is further categorized to unspoken rules and unconscious rules. Unspoken rules are partially below sea level with very high emotional load. The unspoken rules are completely below sea level with intense emotional load. Most of the description above belongs to surface cultures, such as food, dress, arts and language. Codes, customs, lifestyle and history are “deep culture” category.

For diversity, the concept is similar. It is about the diversity between cultures and within the cultures. It also related to the dominant culture concept how we should respect, accept and accommodate the other cultures as well. Furthermore, cultural identities, social identities, family culture and identities are also diversities of culture from different perspectives.
The omissions from the above definition are cultural continuity and discontinuity, cultural invisibility, and transformation of culture etc.

Culture can be very narrow or very board depending on perspectives and points of view and how much a person knows about culture. Most people will have very shallow view of culture covering the ‘surface culture” definition. Knowing other’s definitions will help me dig deeper into the “Deep culture” so that I can understand better the real meaning of culture and deep down to its roots. With cultural diversity, we as an early childhood educator have to develop “a culturally consistent and respectful program” (Derman-Sparks & Olsen Edwards, 2010) for the children so that they can accommodate the diversity in culture.

References:

Derman-Sparks L. & Olsen Edwards J. (2010).  Anti-bias Education for your children and ourselves pp56-61. NAEYC.

Indiana Department of Education. Iceberg concept of culture. Extracted from http://www.msdwt.k12.in.us/msd/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/iceburgofculture.pdf

Smidt S. (2013). The Developing Child in the first 21^st century, a global perspective on child development, pp 92-96.   Routledge.

Assignment 2 - Three items I will bring along...

The three items I will like to bring along are:

Genealogy showing the genealogical tree – this is the booklet showing the genealogical tree of a family tracing back to their original ancestor. Most Chinese families have this record. It is based on the surnames of the family. The most common used Chinese surnames in China are around 100. According to Chinese belief, we might all come from the same ancestor back to thousands of years before. To the old Chinese, this is an important document of the family.

Chinese perpetual lunar calendar – it is a Chinese lunar calendar showing the seasons of thousand years. It indicates all the seasons of the year particularly for cultivation and farming, such as when the best time to do seeding, harvesting, etc. It also shows the counting of the years of the 12 symbolic animals associated with a 12-year cycle. Information about when the rising tide and low tide time of the month, when to do the worship of ancestor, which date to build the house, which date to get married etc are all listed in the calendar. It is the collection of thousands of years’ history and statistics to come up with such calendar. It is very Chinese culture.

Photos of my family – I will pick a photo with all the family members together. Our family will always take a family photo annually during Chinese New year. This is the most treasure of all as everyone is there in the photo. Family is always the priority in our culture. Unlike western world, family overrides individualism and self-independence.

 
Genealogy tells the origin of our family, our culture and relationship with each other in the family tree as well as the origin place of our ancestors. The perpetual lunar calendar reminds our family the seasons and dates and time of the years for various activities. Of course, the photo is obvious showing the importance of the family concept. They are all meaningful to me.

I will be very upset to give up two of the items since these are things representing my culture and family culture. These things can remind my family our roots. If I have to give up two items, I will keep the photo as it is the most important to me.

This is an interesting exercise. It gives me a chance to think what three important things about my family culture and I never think of it before. Everyone’s answer may be different as the values of each family may be varied. That is why there is always diversity in the society. Even people coming from the same ethnic group, they might be different. Like in China, all people are Chinese. There are a lot of similarities among us. But among the Chinese, there are more than 52 different ethnic groups. Each group has their own culture, traditions, customs, values, codes of behavior and languages. Diversity exists even in the same ethnic group if we take the boarder definition of diversity.

Dear Friends,
thankyou for viewing my blog on this assignment.
Due to the blockage of access of blogs in China, I might be a bit late to post my works here. Sorry for the troubles,
tks
stella