Culture in Educational Systems: Assumptions and Challenges

• In Event: Cultural Expressions and Creativity in Education: Voices From Africa and the Caribbean

Abstract

To consider the persistence of dynamic tension in the location of culture in formal education and to challenge commonly held assumptions about the role of culture in educational systems.
Culture is often woven into formal curriculum as subject matter through representations of music, dance, theater and visual and tactile arts, while deeper connections between cultural forms and epistemologies of individuals as cultural participants are often overlooked. The panelists will briefly review specific examples of bringing local or regional culture into formal African educational curricula, highlighting the sometimes missed opportunities, mismatched assumptions and vague nature of basic definitions. A case is made for “culture-carrying competence,” a term coined in the early 1970s by US educator Arthur Pearl (1972), as a central purpose of formal education, one which opens possibilities for a more diverse, culturally responsive, and culturally authentic education. In the context of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, the more typical celebration of traditional culture must be an element in a wider turn to a culturally-based education.
For a little over 30 years, the two presenters have worked in Africa supporting education in formal and non-formal settings in a variety of cultures and contexts across the continent. Throughout this work, the patterns of cultural practices evident in and absent from educational efforts effected their success to varying degrees. Development of formal education systems are most often founded on models derived from post-industrial nations, where the dominant culture(s) are extant and obvious. These systemic models in turn are presented as culture neutral in efforts to build modern educational systems in emergent nation states in Africa and elsewhere. Programs that use mother-tongue instruction and infuse curriculum with local or regional cultural reference points attempt to address issues of cultural relevance, but do little to challenge the latent epistemological nature of knowledge and curriculum as locations of cultural competence.
Culture, in this perspective, is far more than the evident traditional trappings of costume, dance, song, literature and the arts, although these are essential locations of cultural expression. Culture is the process of creating knowledge and transmitting that knowledge of the world through tradition and through the more immediate response to changes presented in global and local pressures.
Infusing more culture into education is to not simply add additional content, but to change the way knowledge is treated as created by individuals and communities through communicative processes and through engaging existing knowledge of the world, applied to the most immediate and pressing societal challenges of the day.
Using personal stories, the co-presenters/ researchers will share perspectives on cultural relevance from their persistent experience working in various African nations. They have taught and researched on the continent, since 1980 in formal education and non-formal educational projects.
Building on a foundation of cultural competence, educational efforts can have greater power. Identifying patterns and scenarios can help educators create educational initiatives that have greater traction and potential for sustainability.

Authors

• Bonnie B. Mullinix, Greenville Technical College

• David Scott McCurry, Converse College