third grade lesson: what is culture?

INTRODUCTION
The California Department of Education’s content standards ask third grade teachers to focus, among other things, on “the physical and cultural landscape of California, including the study of American Indians, the subsequent arrival of immigrants, and the impact they have had in forming the character of our contemporary society.”  Some of their tasks include preparing students to “describe national identities, religious beliefs, customs, and various folklore traditions” (sec. 3.2, it.1) and “research the explorers who visited here, the newcomers who settled here, and the people who continue to come to the region, including their cultural and religious traditions and contributions” (sec. 3.3, it.1).

Word choice here is informative; where the state has used the words “immigrants” and “newcomers,” a historian would probably have said “colonists.”  “Immigrants” in particular refers connotatively to the people who came to this country after it was established as an independent nation; those who came to convert or subvert its natives are more properly seen as conquerors. Use of the word “explorer” romanticizes what was largely an imperialist economic enterprise.  The State’s attempt at verbal neutrality commits the sin of omission by withholding the truth. Educators, despite this, must be truth-tellers.

Telling the truth about our history requires us to look at it from multiple perspectives.  The American experience of nation building is a story whose plot turns on the Native American experience of colonization; the two are inextricably intertwined.  Since it is difficult to communicate this complexity to our students, we sometimes employ a “human diorama” tactic that reduces native peoples down to the essentials of what they wear, what they eat, and what they build.  The “newcomers,” by contrast, are accorded a position as complex actors who are planners, explorers, and innovators with a greater mission to achieve.  Reductionist and Eurocentric, this approach denies our students their right to a realistic cultural history that gives them the critical thinking skills and compassion necessary to successfully navigate their futures.   

While we cannot change the content guidelines, we can adjust our approach to meeting them. If we re-frame our questions from an anthropological point of view, we can provide our students with tools not just for understanding, but for respecting every perspective in the overall narrative. 

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONTEXT IN BRIEF
Anthropology as a science is comparative, cross-cultural, and holistic.  This means that every question we seek to answer must be placed in historical, geographical, environmental, and economic context.  We must try to de-center ourselves as the standard by which all others are judged and strive to understand people and issues for what they are in their own time and place.  This is what is meant by the phrase, “cultural relativism.”

We must study those who differ from us while also studying ourselves, granting neither party primacy nor intellectual advantage.  We recognize only that people in different places are presented with diverse challenges and varying resources with which to overcome them, so they come to invent different solutions.  We respect and admire all human beings for their incredible capacity to adapt to nearly any circumstance.

STEP ONE: INTRODUCING THE CULTURE CONCEPT
Before we begin to “describe national identities, religious beliefs, customs, and various folklore traditions” of Native American peoples, we must lay the groundwork for understanding all of that by teaching our students about cultural relativism.  Some mischaracterize the concept as implying that anything that people do is supposed to be acceptable; this is absolutely not the case.  Cultural relativism only compels us to refrain from judging in ignorance.  We seek, rather, to understand the causes and meanings of behaviors.  When students greet new cultural information with a “Yuck!” response, we must encourage them to de-center themselves, reflect, and respond more productively as engaged learners by saying “Isn’t that interesting?” instead.  Then the really good questions will start coming.

We must also do all that we can to avoid the “point-and-look” approach of focusing on all that is different about unfamiliar people and look instead for points of identification.  After all, as human beings we all have the same interests at heart: Finding something good to eat, and staying warm and safe.  Native American peoples and European colonists started off in the same place, seeking to assure themselves of these necessities.  Their cultures, emerging in different environments with vastly different resources, led them to adapt different strategies for success.

Early encounters between Native Americans and Europeans must have induced culture shock on both sides – a sense of anxiety and confusion in the midst of something radically different from all of your previous experience.  The Europeans were sometimes shocked by the relative nakedness of the inhabitants or the fact that they were wearing animal skins.  The Native Americans, for their part, were hard pressed to imagine why people would confine their bodies so completely.  While the Europeans could never abide the latitude of freedom often accorded to Native American women and children, the Native Americans themselves generally had no taste for the corporal punishment they saw among the colonists.  Folks were doing point-and-look on both sides.

You can avoid repeating this pattern with your students by first explaining to them what culture is.  Use the “What is Culture” PowerPoint slideshow and script as a starting point for discussion; it concludes with the word “respect,” which is an adequate one-word summary for the concept of cultural relativism. The script is available to you in .pdf format and debriefing questions are listed on the “Lesson Objectives Sheet;” please contact the author for more information.

If you wish to provide your students with a first-hand experience of culture shock, an effective classroom simulation is available from Simulation Training Systems at www.simulationtrainingsystems.com.  Called “Rafá Rafá,” the game can be used to organically explore the “tendency to disparage anything another person or group does which we don’t understand.  This realization gives the teacher an opportunity to help students examine their own biases.”  This is a necessary first step for preparing students for an academic encounter with cultural diversity.

Additional Materials (available from the author by request):
1.  PowerPoint slideshow: “What is Culture?”
2.  “What is Culture?” slideshow script
3.  “What is Culture?” Lesson Objectives sheet
4.  “Step Two - Talking about Native Americans: an Anthropological Perspective"
5.  “Step Three - Talking about European Colonists: an Anthropological Perspective"

Recommended Materials:
1.  “Rafá Rafá” game set. Available from Simulation Training Systems at www.simulationtrainingsystems.com.