My Cultural Story, Essay Example

Introduction

The purpose of this essay is highlighting a personal view of the world, through self-examination of cultural values as represented by how they differ from other people’s cultural values, as well as how they influence working relationships, adhere to personal beliefs, influence personal experiences, and reflect cultural backgrounds.

Becoming aware of one’s cultural background is important on any occasion, but becomes crucial when one is an educator, because when an educator interacts with his or her students, it is actually a culture which interacts with another culture. Culture is defined by Ginsberg & Vlodkowski (2009) as “the deeply learned confluence of languages, values, beliefs and behaviors that pervade every aspect of a person’s life and it is continually undergoing changes” (p. 9). In order for the interaction to be meaningful, the educator must be aware of his or her own system of beliefs and values. Adult students, unlike children, come with baggage loaded with life experiences, each of them affecting the way they view the world. Children form in the collectivity, and are shaped to a large extent by their educators, and by the experiences they have in school. On contrary, adult learners are already formed when they enter the collectivity and they must interact with each other, and with their educators, which does not always lead to successful learning experiences, due to the conflicting worldviews that might characterize the teacher and the students.

Experience, as a learning method, is not treasured in the contemporary Western Educational system. Rather, education is based on theoretical knowledge and abstract thinking and experience is ignored, or neglected in the learning process. However, as Merriam & Grace (2011) explain, “much of our learning is embedded in the experiences we have in our everyday lives” (p. 311). Experience, therefore, not only shapes us as individuals, but also defines their learning experience throughout their lives. Formal education stops at a given moment, but we continue to learn throughout our experiences, and, to a great extent, our learning experiences are cultural experiences. For this reason, culture is a very influential part of any person’s life and our behavior reflects, to a great extent, our cultural background and our beliefs, which were shaped by experiences. People are unique and their experiences are very different and so, their beliefs and values differ to a great extent depending on what they have learnt to respect, to treasure and to practice.

Therefore, the educator’s task is to learn about himself or herself, before being able to interact successfully with adult learners. This is because, as Ginsberg & Vlodkowski (2009) argue, “educators exert a powerful influence over classroom norms [and so] it is important to make explicit those values that are most implicit and profoundly affects students in our classrooms”. The educator must understand which of his beliefs and values are shared with the representatives of the dominant culture, and which reflect his own unique background. He must understand how his background influences the way he sees the world and how much of these beliefs are transmitted through teaching and interacting with students.

A Precarious Equilibrium: Between Two Worlds

How My Past Influences My Present

My past is not past. My past is present in everything I do and has a significant share in every decision I make. What I came to be today, where I situate myself in society, the life path I chose is to a great extent the result of my past. As an American citizen of Spanish and Puerto Rican ancestry, who was born and reared in Spain, I have certain values and beliefs that are different from dominant American culture. However, having been educated in the United States, and having seen my parents working extremely hard to achieve the American Dream, I also adopted the American society’s values and ideals and therefore, I consider myself both the product of the values of the dominant culture and of my own cultural heritage. I am the sum of my varied experiences: some were painful, some were extraordinary, and some were hard to learn. All these experiences have taught me something about the world I come from, and the world I live in today and have made me the kind of person I am.

Since I was a child, I saw my parents working very hard to make a better life for themselves and especially for me and my brothers. I looked up to them, but especially to my father, who was a strong and very firm man. My family lived in Spain when I was very young but we relocated to the United States, eager to live the American dream. In Spain, we were not poor but as immigrants, our lives in America were as difficult as those of almost all immigrants: difficulty in understanding the language, in finding and keeping a job, in adapting to the new culture and to the problems that are inherent to the American society, such as racism and stereotyping. My parents filled our minds with stories of success and told us how we were going to succeed because we had the advantage of growing up American. All my childhood and teenage life, I worked towards accomplishing this goal. I truly believe that hard work will lead one to success and my own success on both personal and professional plans are to a great success due to my commitment and hard work.

Even though I am a disciplined and hardworking individual, being productive and disciplined is not a goal in itself for me. In this respect, I am influenced by the values of my Spanish culture, in which the family is the most important treasure of an individual and comes before career. Therefore, there is a conflict within me between my desire to achieve success in my career, and my deep commitment to my family. I am married, and I have a daughter, even though I am an officer in the U.S. Army, and I am also working very hard to obtain my Masters degree. Despite so many challenges, I always find time for my daughter, and we also visit my parents twice each year. Being productive, disciplined and active are very important values to me, but my cultural heritage helps me to balance these values with a very strong sense of the family, of my environment and of my culture.

Where my commitment to helping others is concerned, I strongly believe in the equality of chances and social justice. However, my life experiences have taught me to respect people that help themselves, rather than being committed to the dominant culture’s traditional dedication to helping the needy, I believe that people must first do their best to succeed and help should be earned rather than received unconditionally. This belief was shaped since childhood. As I came to the United States, I did not speak English and I was very scared of school. I had a hard time adjusting and my teachers did not make things easier for me simply because of my background. I had to work very much in order to earn their sympathy and their respect, and their sympathy regarded my hard work, and not my persona, or my poor situation. It was only when I began to demonstrate that I am willing to work hard and I am very ambitious that they also began to help me in this direction. Also, my parents refuse to rely on social assistance and worked very hard on low-paying jobs, under their educational level, in order to demonstrate their value.

The concepts of right and wrong are very important for me and I largely believe that the world is split between these two notions. As an officer, I learned that what is right for my country is right in general is good for me, and I was taught never to question orders regardless of my own judgment of a situation. Trying to be non-judgmental does not work for me because, in order to respect orders and be able to believe in what I am doing, I have to truly believe that there is right and wrong in the world and that, by choosing to serve in the U.S. army, I chose to be on the side of the good.

Also, by choosing to serve in the army, I not only followed my father’s example, but also demonstrated my devotion for my adoptive country. I am as much American as I am Spanish, and I believe that patriotism is one of the most important values a person can learn and teach to his children. For me, there is a very particular American identity that all of us share, regardless of our race, religion, or class. This is apparent to me every time I return to Spain. Even though Spanish is my native language, and I have a strong sense of belonging to the Spanish culture, I feel very ‘American’ when I am there. I am able to connect much better with my African- American husband than with my Spanish relatives, because of the sense of the American identity we share.

My Public Image vs. My Private Life

While I was at the academy, I learnt the value of being efficient and practical. For my teachers, I did not matter how I got there, what matters is to be there in an exact time frame. Efficiency and ‘getting things done’ are very important for me and I try my best to work efficiently and make the most practical choices. In one’s career and in the professional and public life in general, what matters is the product and not the process, because efficiency is a value of the dominant culture. However, in the private sphere, I value the process more than the product, and this demonstrate that I am a complex individual and that I was shaped professionally by the dominant culture in which I work, and personally, by the cultural heritage carry. My public image is a practical and efficient one, but at home, I value the things we do together, rather than the result. For example, even though it would be much more efficient to bake a cake, or do chores alone, and the result would be much better, I always involve my daughter and allow her to be an active part in the process, because the quality time spent together is more important than being time efficient and having the best result.

Progress is also part of my public image, and is an important concept in the dominant culture. Progress drives society forward and it is assumed that both the individual within the society, and the society, and indeed, the world, must constantly aim towards progress. As an educator also, progress is an important concept and one of the goals of education. Thus, according to Grace (2011), “liberal adult education is focused on the progress of the individual who uses different perspectives to analyze social and personal location as the first step in building new knowledges and understandings” (p. 42). Even though progress is not always beneficial for the environment, and for the culture, human beings have the capacity and should balance progress with the preservation of our environment and our culture. We should, therefore, take what is best from both concepts: from Native Americans and other culture, we should learn to maintain traditions and to preserve our heritage, but in the same time, we should strive towards personal progress. Once, I asked my father why he wanted to move from Spain to the United States, and he answered that people constantly try to improve their lives and to ‘make things better’ for themselves and for their families. My parents’ desire to progress therefore is what allowed me to be in America today, and from them, I learnt what progress meant.

How I See the World

Material comfort is also one of the goals that drove my parents to leave their country and move to the United States. Material comfort is a major value in most western societies and living a comfortable life is what makes people feel ‘rewarded’ for being productive in the society. Once, my father gathered all children, and asked us, “Do you want to be able to afford everything you see in the show window, or you want to spend your life worrying about money?” We all answered that we want to have a good life, and this question haunted me and pushed me forward. Material comfort is therefore one value of the dominant culture that I value.

Freedom is another fundamental value that is inherently American. Americans believe in freedom more than anything else, but, as an officer, as an educator and as a parent, I know that freedom is sometimes dangerous. In Horton & Frieire (1990), the idea of freedom is linked to that of authority, because, “we need limits, and in experiencing the need for limits, we are also experiencing the respect for freedom and the need for exercising authority” (p. 142). Therefore, freedom is not to be assumed, but has to be respected as a valuable and important notion. It implies so much danger that, even though it is one of the principles of the American society, no one is ever entirely free and, as you assume more responsibilities in the society and at home, you are less free, and more responsible with limiting the freedom of others.

Along with freedom, individualism is yet another important value of the American society. Unlike societies in which the ‘group’ is more important, in the U.S.A, each person has to fight for himself, and has to make it on his own. This is contradictory to the Spanish culture, which emphasizes more on the relationships between individuals, and in which helping each other as a group is very important. Instead, the American society is a very competitive environment, in which the individual is always alone. This was easy for me to adapt to in the education system, and later in the work environment, but for my parents, it was much harder. I believe that this environment promotes economic progress and that it encourages individuals to overcome their disabilities and their weakness.

However, there are spaces in which I see the world as Spanish rather than as an American. As compared to the average American, I am much more religious and this is all due to my Catholic education. I believe that science does not have all the answers, and that there are limits as to what we are allowed to do with science. For me, the Earth is sacred and we should strive to maintain it in a good shape, instead of modifying nature to fit our needs. Science is not always the best option, and in my commitment to nature, I try to buy natural food products for myself and my family.

Both as a Spanish person, and as an American, I deeply trust in the power of democracy to give equal chances to everybody, and promote social justice. I travelled all over the world as an U.S. army officer, and I had the occasion to see what dictatorial regimes actually mean. Those experiences taught me to value democracy as a system that sets people free and gives them the right to develop as individuals and to be part of the decision making process in the society. In a democratic system, everyone has the right to try to reach success, and oppression of certain classes in not allowed, although it does occur. Racism exists in our society and it cannot be ignored, but we must struggle to overcome it. Being married to an African-American person, and being of Spanish and Puerto Rican heritage myself, I did confront racism and it represented a challenge for our family, both on a personal and on a professional level. However, racism is not a reason to fail, but merely a new challenge to overcome.

Conclusion

My unique background and my experiences created me as a person with a dual character, who assumed the values of the dominant culture in what professional life is concerned, but maintained the characteristics of my own cultural background in my personal life. As the child of my father, I undertook a military career which further shaped my view of the world. As a parent, I try to transmit to my daughter the values I was taught, and to teach her to be proud of her multiracial heritage. Finally, as an educator, I will try to perceive my students as the sum of their own experiences, and to allow them to teach me, as I teach them.

References

Grace, A. (2011). Building a knowledge-base in academic adult education (1945-1970). In Merriam, S. and Grace, A., (eds.). The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education. (pp. 33-57). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Ginsberg, M. & Wldodkowski, R. (2009). Diversity and motivation: culturally responsive teaching in college (2^nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Willey & Sons.

Horton, M. & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Merriam, S. & Grace, A., eds. (2011). The Jossey-Bass reader on contemporary issues in adult education. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.