People who do not know about culture ignore totally where they come from and are not able to take a valid position in front of it. As Culture is a changeable human creation composed by customs, believes, religion traditions, language, symbols, values, norms, laws and others (Edward B. Tylor, 1871), we should be aware that each person in the world is the product of their own culture. It identifies us and shows the way we perceive the world around us. This is the understanding cultural knowledge provides us. However, there are people who do not reflect upon their behavior as the result of culture and tend to think, conscious or unconsciously, that their culture or ethnic group is the correct one until the extreme of rejecting and discriminating other cultural or ethnic tendencies. Fortunately, this can be avoided by means of education, that is why I dare to state that future modern languages professionals as me should be well prepare in such as essential aspect of our lives as culture is, in order to face surely multicultural classrooms.
Cultural knowledge would be a great aid for new teachers with multicultural classrooms. Being a modern languages professional gives certain advantages as working in another country, therefore, it is easy to find multicultural classrooms, what would not be surely an easy task; nevertheless, in accordance with Charlotte M. Jones, what is important when there exists culture clash is to be open, knowledgeable, and not be afraid to talk about the cultural differences in class no matter what discipline the teacher is teaching (12). I share completely her thought since teachers work is not just give knowledge about a subject, but form integral people who respect differences and there is not better way to avoid misunderstandings than by communicating. When in the classrooms there is a space in which students can expose their ideas looking for clarifying the false stereotypes we have about culture and people, the relationship between students becomes more bearable.
Cultural understanding helps future professionals to treat their students as people that conceive their world in different ways because of their backgrounds. Knowledge about culture supports teachers because they comprehend how “culturally relevant and responsible instruction clearly shows that knowledge of students' family, community and socioethnic cultures, their languages, literacy practices, and values--can help them address interests and build on the skills of their students" (Abt-Perkins and Rosen, 254). A good example of teachers’ cultural knowledge is implemented in the schools in the United State where almost all the classrooms are multicultural. There teachers have a cultural competence that allow them to interact with their students from culturally diverse backgrounds. There, exists a great search for teachers who are able to mediate between intercultural students.
Although teachers have cultural knowledge they can not avoid ethnocentrism or prejudices they feel about certain cultures. This is a position managed by the traditional perspective which considers culture can not be corrupted because it would produce fragmentation. Thus, this position deems that culture is fixed, predetermined and essentialist and its main search is assimilation instead of integration (Taguieff, 1997,Hannoun, 1987). I am in total disagreement with this position since this missed way of seeing diversity provokes teacher and students lack of comprehension. As Orange and Horwitz who argues that a teacher's culture, language, social interests, goals, cognitions, and values, especially, if different from the students', could conceivably create a barrier to understanding what is best for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (p. 254). Cultural knowledge should produce awareness of diversity which can be used by the teacher in a way that enhances a better development in the classes since students can enrich their way thinking by hearing other perspectives of the world.
Culture is only a word which does not denote what it really frames. When we deepen in what culture represents, we find innumerable aspects to reflect as cultural differences, ethnocentrism, relativism, racism, ethnic discrimination, subcultures, cultural awareness, and many others that help to comprehend it. The reflection about cultural issues makes us recognize how short of thinking we are sometimes since we believe that our conception of the world is the same everybody should have. Our way of thinking probably would change if we have cultural knowledge which could be called a capacity to clear our minds of prejudices and look culture with open mind. And, here is where education plays an extremely important role due to teachers can learn about culture in order to know how to manage students with different views of the world.
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