Culture And The Culture Learning Process

Culture Running head: CULTURE

Culture and the Culture Learning Process Márcio Padilha Lewis-Clark State College Dr. Chavez /EDUC 435 Fall 2006

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Culture and the Culture Learning Process Having spent the first two-thirds of my life in Brazil and the remaining one third in the United States, I have experienced, during my twelve years of residence in this country, some moments of intense self introspection as a consciously involuntary attempt to understand the cause and effect of the transactional relations which exist between me and the micro and macro culture which surrounds me. First, as I now realize, being “Brazilian” is a complex issue, comparable to that of being “American,” as, in both cases, regionalism plays a foremost role in the cultural identity formation process. With that in mind, I will start my culture specific self classification by socio-geographically asserting that I was born and raised in Porto Alegre, a city of prestigious sociopolitical status, which, being the Capital of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, has always had, throughout my lifetime, a population of no less than 1.5 million inhabitants. The State, on its turn, is one of the three most powerful, economically and politically, within the nation. Hence, such was the prism through which I mechanically acquired what I eventually realized to be a culturally predetermined set of perceptions which guided my inner self in all of its transactional relationships with and towards both the macro and microculture which surrounded me during my primary and early secondary stages of socialization. At a first stage, in light of regional differences, I, obliviously contemptuous of what was perceived to be foreign, developed a perception of superiority, which I now perceive to be commonly shared by majority of southerners, towards Brazilians from other regions. In rationalizing such mind-set, however, it is imperative to realize the

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pivotal role, inert as to the principles of social constructivism, played by socializing agents such as school and media, both electronic and in print, as well as family, generationally victimized by years of passive uncontested exposure to subliminal discriminatory imagery that primarily stressed, as a whole, the values of one regional culture in detriment to the other. With that said, and in order to further understand the process of cultural acquisition that surrounded me, it is important to visualize that Brazil is geographically subdivided in five regions: south, southeast, northeast, north and west-central. Secondly, for a better understanding of the problem, it is fundamental to acknowledge that each of the aforesaid geo-cultural regions has its implicit set of subjective preconceived perceptions in relation to the other. With that in mind, it is now essential to get acquainted with such general preconceived perceptions. Hence, as to sum them up briefly, I will report that although northerners have the self-perception of being the proud “owners” of the Amazon, northeasterners, southeasterners and southerners tend to view them as a primitive subculture which, somewhat analogue to that of the west-central region, does not have much to contribute to the rest of the nation and, in light of that, are better left alone in the confines of the Amazon Jungle. Northeasterners, on the other hand, take great pride in being the “birthplace” of the country and subsequently for having the highest density of national historical sites. As such, they primarily live off a very well-structured and developed tourism industry whose heavy media promotion with imagery of beaches, relaxation and fun, thence distorting the sense of reality, ultimately causes them to be resented by the “primitive” northerners and west centralists who view them as people

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who did not quite make it like southeasterners and southerners, but who were lucky enough, due to a series of situational issues, to have crossed the line out of primitivism whereas southerners and southerners perceive northeasterners as unproductive and lazy people whose only concern is having fun. Southeasterners, in turn, pride themselves in having been the seat of Imperial Period as well as “owning” majority of Brazil’s current industrial park. Nonetheless, northerners, west-centralists and northeasterners negatively perceive southeasterners as ruthless business-oriented people whereas southerners, viewing them in the exact same manner, are on the other end of the spectrum, i.e. appreciate the fact they are fierce competitors in the common race for social, economic and political status within the nation, a point of view which is, by the way, reciprocal. Finally, northerners, west centralists and northeasterners, as well as southeasterners to a degree, do not tend to view southerners as an integral part of Brazil, a stand which is likely to stem out of the south’s very peculiar socio-geographical reality that not only hosts the highest density of Caucasians but also a subtropical climate, which, unlike the tropical remainder of the country, allows for the four seasons to change well enough that they can be perceived. With that regional contention in mind, as I started getting to know my country by traveling within its territory, I instinctively initiated a spontaneous critical analysis of “macro cultures” which, at that moment and place, surrounded me. In doing so, I could not help but notice that all the pseudo culture specific information which had been fed to me through a variety of socializing agents did not necessarily pan out. As I engaged in culture-general bidirectional transactions with the surrounding micro macroculture, more

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often than not, I came to find out it had much more to offer, and exchange, than what had been previously “advertised” to me. Additionally, this impromptu experiment further challenged the utopia of the Brazilian racial status quo which preaches that racism is nonexistent. Although the Brazilian social fabric is composed of several ethnicities, while in Brazil, one will rarely hear of terms such as ethnic or minority groups. This utopian mentality, which evolved into a legislative body which actively prosecutes and severely punishes both racial profiling as well as racism, both of which are classified as heinous crimes, is likely to stem out of our historical process as the Portuguese, being the Colonial Supremacist race, were determined to exterminate all non-Caucasian ethnic groups present in the Brazilian Colony not by genocide, but by miscegenation; hence disseminating all racial differences by merging them and idealistically emerging as one single multiethnic race, one definite bold ideology for the mid-16th Century. Nevertheless, in critically observing what one Brazilian had to say about the “other,” I came to the personal conclusion that, at a much more fundamental level, we, the Brazilian people, still struggle with bias issues and that, as stated by anthropologist Roberto DaMatta, there are many Brazils within Brazil. As this observational process carried on, I came to an even more pungent realization as in my very own micro macroculture, the natives of the State of Rio Grande do Sul were historically self-denominated “gaúchos,” a term which is a commonly-used descriptor for residents of the South American pampas, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, and the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil (Wikipidia, Gaucho).

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In light of that, I have realized, as well as enthralled about, the fact that there are, indeed, cultural elements which bind us, Brazilian Gaúchos more closely to a “foreign” culture, namely Argentinean and Uruguayan, than to “our own.” Then again, in addressing this complex issue, one must further realize that “Brazilianess” fundamentally stems out of the oppositionally dichotomized perception that throughout our Colonial and Imperial Periods, Brazilians essentially perceived themselves as being a “lost piece of Portugal” in the Americas, thence never acquiring a sense of belonging to the American continent (DaMatta, 11, 1984), whereas the Portuguese, perceiving Brazilians to be “a sick and condemned set of intermixed races likely to degenerate biologically, psychologically and socially” (DaMatta, 11, 1984), never accepted us as a part of their own. In addition to this love-hate binomial relationship, Brazilians, being heirs of the Portuguese resentment of Spain’s 87-year-long annexation of Portugal during the 16th Century (Entroportugal), grew a strong national identity which, while being the centerpiece of Brazilian cultural cohesion, concomitantly establishes an ethnocentric, quasi xenophobic, position which dictates that Brazil, as its very own entity, has absolutely nothing to do with the Spanish-speaking neighboring nations. Thus, perception of a cultural commonality with two of the neighboring Spanish-speaking countries creates an interesting paradoxal conundrum. With that in mind and all other issues considered, I couldn’t help but notice that whereas language, being one of the most central elements of culture binding, differs, other sources of cultural identity, permeating the man-made political international borders, are transactionally harmonious as the cultures of Southern Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, both individually and collectively, share a great esteem, and transactional

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symmetry regarding gender, health, ethnicity, nationality, religion, geography age and social status. This communal cohesiveness is, thence, sufficiently strong as to create a supranational microculture yet satisfactorily weak as to not detach or deflect the involved parties from their own macrocultures. Then, at a second stage in life, I was again exposed to concomitantly “culturally perceiving” and “being culturally perceived” by the macroculture of the United States, if such thing essentially exists, when I immigrated to the United States. Upon my arrival in 1995, I did puzzle several people in the United States who stereotypically expected me to be, as stated in our textbook, a “person of color” who should further know how to folk-dance and have a communicational deficit in English language. Yet, as I stepped “off the boat,” I was absolutely everything but the stereotypical non-English speaking minority South American immigrant. Tall and slender, then at a 5’11” and 190 lbs, Caucasian, black hair and eyes, I did not, and still do not, know how to do the samba while I could speak English with an impressive vocabulary and a nearly imperceptible accent. Consequently, the combination of all these characteristics, in juxtaposition with the human intrinsic need to categorize, caused sporadic mutual social discomfort as people in my inner community, needing to assign me a category, were simply unable to define me by the set of socio-cultural parameters that existed in their comfort zone. At this stage, the reigning events of my new immigrant life prompted me to concomitantly start reasserting my cultural identity as to find an equitable middle ground which would both suffice the “needs” of the macroculture that engulfed me without necessarily sacrificing my sense of self. On a personal level, that meant that if while in

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Brazil, I thought of myself as a Gaúcho, in the United States I redefined myself as an Italo-Brazilian, which brings forth a whole new set of bias and perceptions. As stated in our textbook (Cushner 2006), culture is both learned and shared with the family being one of the socializing agents. Therefore, in order for a family to exist, physical presence, affection and caring must coexist between the involved parties in order for it to be treasured. Thus, given that my paternal grandfather had died sixteen years before I was born, this alleged Hispanic heritage I have through him, as the family was originally Uruguayan, is de facto neither meaningful nor existent to me. On the other hand, in light of my extremely close relationship with my paternal grandmother who, being of Italian descent, instilled in me the Italian values passed down to her by her ItaloBrazilian father and Italian grandparents well enough that I see myself as a member of the group. Yet, in light of my many years in the United States, another facet of cultural identity, as a learned factor, has surfaced in me as my sister jokingly accused of being “too American” the last time I visited Brazil three years ago. Furthermore, in direct agreement to such position, my in-laws have said “oh, he’s Brazilian again” when they perceive me acting in a non-American way after I arrive from a visit to South America. Another peculiarity I experienced, regarding perceptual issues, took place soon after my marriage. I had entered the United States legally and, under the conditions of my tourist visa, I was granted, by the Immigration officer at the port of entry in Los Angeles, six-month permanence with the stipulation of no remunerated-work permission. During the validity of the six-month permission, I got married to a US citizen, which altered my immigration status and, precisely at this point, preconceived perceptions started clouding reality. Initially, most people imagine that a foreign citizen who marries a US Citizen is

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automatically granted a Green Card and the subsequent permission to engage in gainful employment. Hence, that not being the case, I started becoming the target of all sorts of derogatory remarks and grief in light of my marriage and incapability, then perceived as undesired, to work. If that were not enough, as part of the Green Card acquisition procedure, I had to surrender my INS Form I-94, which is the immigration official document that proves a foreign person’s legal immigration status in the United States in exchange of which they, i.e. the immigration authorities, put a big red stamp on one of my passport pages which read “INS – PAROLED.” Totally oblivious to the popular connotation given to the term by pop culture phenomena like “America’s Most Wanted”, I could not understand people’s expressions when they, for whatever reason, need to see my passport. It was only much later that I was able to grasp the negative connotation to that term as, whereas I inferred it solely for what it was, i.e. “allowed to stay in the United States,” other people perceived that I must have had committed this horribly heinous crime and was only allowed to roam the streets again do the piety of the American Judicial System. Once more, at a later occasion, immigration law played a pivotal role in making me question the perceptual status quo of this society. As part of the US naturalization process I had applied for, I had to take a civics exam. Hence, wanting to do well, I studied all the 100 questions, out of which 10 are pulled, in full detail. However, no sooner than I had finished the test, I ran into an ideological dispute with the tester/grader. One of the test questions was “Where does Freedom of Speech come from?” to which I answered “The First Amendment of the US Constitution.” Surprisingly enough, I got that question wrong as his grading key said the correct answer was the “Bill of Rights.” As if

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having to argue that the First Amendment of the US Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights were not aggravating enough, the native-US-born-and-raised-proud-of-his-country immigration officer informed me that he did not know whether that was the case himself and, hence, in light of that, there would be no other alternative than deferring to what the grading key said, in turn, making lose a point for my answer which was ultimately correct. Although that one point deduction did not hinder me from moving forward with my naturalization process, I could not help but mentally question, as that surrealistic secret conversation was taking place in the confines of a small windowless governmental office, the validity of all the process as it has always been my personal assertion that the ones who know less must yield to those who know more. Furthermore, after the naturalization ceremony had taken place, I felt as if, in the eyes of some people, I had been, using an illustrative Roman Catholic analogy, chosen by the Vatican for sainthood when, in reality, my perception of the matter was that, if at an intellectual level I realized the grandiosity of the sociopolitical rights I had acquired, I had failed to comprehend why that small paper named “Certificate of Naturalization” had the power of making some people see me as worthier. If others perceived that ceremonial as honor, I did not due to the fact that, rather than having been chosen out of thousands in recognition of some meritoriously pious act I had committed, I sought it out of my own volition, having only been granted the “right” after having rigorously complied with three fundamental rules: paying heavy fees, passing a test whose content I knew better than the examiner did and staying out of criminal trouble, which, as I had always perceived, was no favor to anyone, but rather a self-imposed ethical obligation.

Culture 11 Although some may perceive it in such a way, I am not resentful of what I have experienced in this adopted country of mine. I do, however, question its status quo on a constant basis, respectfully voicing my dissent and pointing the out what I perceive to be idiosyncratic to those who care to listen having; consequently doing the same when I return to my home country. Hence, having realized, from previous personal experiences, that perceptions, as an integral component of the transactional communication model, can and do influence individual attitudes and further believing that, in light of the aforementioned personal experiences, there is no cultural absolutism in regards to “rights” and “wrongs,” I, while serving as a long-term guest teacher at a junior high school during the 2005-2006 school year, worked my hardest to promote cultural accommodation over academic modification as to entice plenipotentiary inclusion of all parties with the ultimate goal of broadening the horizons of both the US and foreign-born students I had in class. Having been assigned to guest-teach, on a long-term basis, in ninth grade Language Arts Writing at a Junior High School, I first clearly noticed that my presence caused furor within the masses, i.e. some of the staff, some of the student body and some of the families, during the parent-teacher-student conferences which took place shortly after I took the position. The “how-can-you-a-foreign-born-non-English-speaker-possibly-be-doing-this?” type of conversation always started off with my name. Then, as I further introduced myself and confirmed that I was from South America, I sometimes noticed eyes gawking. Some individuals were so startled by this tangent that my English mastery, denoted by my high syntax conversation and quasi unnoticeable accent, most commonly went

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unnoticed. Paradoxically, I judgmentally resented being judged by persons who disputed my performance capability while using expression such as “it ain’t,” “she don’t,” “we was” and “I says,” which, in and by themselves, both sets of judging, infer another cultural spectrum into the socio-cultural dynamics at play. Thus being, and in order to carry out the teaching I was expect to, I instinctively felt the need to better know my target audience, probably one remaining trait from when I pursued a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism back in Brazil. Hence, I initiated my teaching assignment by first, thoroughly and voluntarily, evaluating my target audience with the tools available through school’s classroom management software and, once I became aware that I would be facing 167 ninth graders who were 50.37% male and 49.63% female, with 51.35% at 14 years of age, 42.57% at 15 years of age and 6.08% at 16 years of age, out of which 81.76% were Caucasian, 13.53% Hispanic/Latino, 2.94% Asian, 1.18% African-American and 0.59%American Indian/Native Alaskan; being that of those 86.45% were native English language speakers and 15.55% ESL at different levels of proficiency with 6.45% of them speaking Spanish, 3.23% Bosnian, 1.94% Russian, 1.29% Vietnamese and 0.69% Chinese, out of whom 92.26% had been born in the United States, 2.58% in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2.58% in Mexico, 1.93% in Uzbekistan and 0.65% in Saudi Arabia, further being that 5.93% received Special Education services whereas 4.44% were under the Section 504 umbrella and 0.74% being serviced by the FAST Program, which caters to emotionally disturbed students who are prone to oppositional defiance, I felt I was prepared to rationalize, reflect and deflect the scenarios which were likely to develop before me during the coming months into culturally meaningful academic experiences.

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Out of the seven classes I preside over, one in particular sticks out as it congregated age, hence maturity, gender, language and race issued. As I had predicted, I did encounter friction between students. Nonetheless, on the issue of diversity, I, as their foreign-born teacher, was also another “ingredient” of this diversity pie, a reality which was not part of their conscious realm of possibilities. Hence, right up front, one female student arrogantly said “Hey, Mr… watch out for the Russians… they’re stupid!” As I am the let’s-all-get-along-because-we-all-live-on-thesame-planet type of guy, I just asked what the reasons that prompted her to such statement were and, as she replied that it was because they did not speak English, I automatically started addressing the class in Portuguese, continuing to do so for approximately the next ten to fifteen minutes. Then, reverting back to English, I asked if anyone had understood what I had just said. Once nobody had, I proceed to ask if any of them thought of themselves as “stupid.” As, once again, nobody did, I proceeded to explain that “language is a code, primarily of sounds and how those sounds relate to things in order to make sense and consequently facilitate a communicational exchange between people.” Therefore, “being that it is merely a code, which is similar to the combination of the lock on your school locker, not knowing the code, like not knowing the lock combination, does not make anyone stupid.” As a follow-up to this, and with communication, both verbal and written, being the key issue for successful academic development, I, drawing from my own previous experience as a former exchange student, believed, both philosophically and ethically, that empathy I felt for the plight of my ESL students, most of whom being LEP1, would better serve them if, instead of allowing for curricular modifications, I would provide

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them ample accommodations as to bridge their communicational deficit, ultimately shooting for a performance comparable to that of the native English-speaking student. In light of such premise as well as of the fact we were to work with consecrated literary pieces such as the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Harvey Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I searched and successfully found, online, the necessary materials translated into the target languages I needed. Thus, as I started furnishing the ESL students with both the text originally written in English as well as the translation in their native language, not only did I feel that these at-risk students were quite pleasantly surprised, evidenced in their big smiles and their telling and teaching me “thank-you” in their native languages, but also I noticed, with official assessments that back up such view, that attitudes changed, allowing for personal and cultural growth, hence deflecting them from a sense of marginality within the group, which, blurring the lines of preconceptions, permeated through social biases and resulted into a much greater overall academic achievement. As one teacher who visited my classroom during this class period in question commented, it was like “The Land of Oz on acid!” as there were native-English speakers helping ESL-speakers to read in English whereas at other occasions ESL-Speakers read to English-speakers in their native languages, just for the culturally exploratory fun of it. Nothing was ever right nor was it ever wrong for the matter being in what one student once referred to as “The Kingdom of Mr. P” so long as I could present evidence, if requested, that the School-District-mandated curriculum was being followed and that academic progress was being achieved.

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Ultimately, I believe that my personal crusade to use existing in-class multicultural element in order to educate and expand the US-born-monolingual-Englishspeaking students’ horizons as well as to use them to mainstream, inasmuch as possible, the foreign-born students in a non-threatening way to both paid off. To get such goal accomplished, I told them stories about my life and my native country while asking the same of them. As I worked my hardest to promote this cultural exchange, I always instigated them to realize that, in cultural terms, there is no right or wrong, just “different,” instead. Furthermore, in purposefully premeditated modeling, with a major personal underlying linguistic curiosity, I made the point of learning some phrases and key words in those kids’ native languages and, in using them off and on, I demonstrate my interest in reaching out to them as much as possible, ultimately in hopes that they will reach out back. And I felt they did! Although the work involved in keeping this atmosphere active, i.e. a multicultural plurilinguistic classroom which kept up with the curriculum prescribed for a native-bornEnglish-speaking student audience, was borderline exhausting, it was just as rewarding and, as this guest-teaching assignment came to an end, I left, not only with the certainty that I had done everything I could and knew how in order to promote accommodations as to facilitate inclusion and a subsequent cultural mediation, but I also did leave with the documented evidence that the students under my teaching, specially the at-risk population, had improved their grades and were able to achieve the school’s highest level of proficiency in the Direct Writing Assessment, mandated by the Idaho State Department of Education, for that grade.

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In closing, I believe that cultural identity is a flexible and pliable concept which will osmotically metamorphose in light of an individual’s transactional relationships. Specifically in relation to a classroom setting, I further believe that it can be fully used as a powerful tool to validate individual different senses of self and the derivative legacy it has to offer, thus promoting a greater human understanding in the sense of diminishing generalizations, stereotypes and other biases while endorsing acceptability of a person’s individuality and humanity.

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References Cushener, K., McClelland, A., & Safford, P. (2006). Human diversity in education: an integrative approach; 5th edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill. DaMatta, R. (1984). O que faz o Brasil, Brasil? Porto Alegre: Mercado Alberto Gaucho, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1 December 2006) Retrieved December 1st, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaucho History of Portugal (2006). Retrieved December 1st, 2006, from http://www.enterportugal.com/history.html Portugal: history and events (07 July 2006). Retrieved December 1st, 2006, from http://www.portugal-info.net/history/third-dynasty.htm