Reflections on Erickson's "Culture in Society and Educational Practices"

Key Issues:

1) Culture is habitual and our habits become for the most part invisible to us. Thus, culture shifts in and outside our reflective awareness.

2) Culture shapes and is ashaped by eduaction.

3) Everybody, not just the dominant, is cultural.

My understanding here is that culture embraces everyone, regardless of their linguistic or ethnic background. Without such embracement or integration, there will be no culture???

4) Culture is a tool for the human activity.
This concept made me think of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, also known as activity
theory (??), in which an individual's cognitive development is dependent upon his communicative interaction in social contexts and utilization of tools. In this view, individuals' use of artifacts or tools, such as language, charts, art, numbers, and music facilitates their cognitive development.

5) Everybody is multicultural. Every person and every human group possesses both culture and cultural diversity.

One of the things I found interesting in this article is the distinction made between visible and invisible culture in educational settings. The former one refers to "explicit aspects of culture, such as language, dress, food habits, religion, and aesthetic conventions," whereas the former one refers to implicit or hidden aspects of culture, such as "being impolite and experiencing emotional pain."

Surrounded by a linguistically and ethnically diverse student population in our classroom, we should teach multiculturally and emrace both visible and invisible culture. Instead of adopting a skill-based teching methodoology, we should create a safe classroom environment that enables students to construct knowledge.