Saturday, January 26, 2013

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture:Week 3

Blog Week 3: Perspective on Diversity and Culture

I talked to three different people for this assignment my daughter, and two co-workers; one from Morocco, and the other from South America. The first definition is from my daughter who has lived around the world through our military stations.

Culture-My definition of culture is anything surrounding our upbringing that we hold dear and close to our hearts. Our culture is anything we have come to know, expect and cherish in our daily life as well as in special events. Our culture is defined by the ways we were educated in our upbringing, to include our language and traditions.

Diversity- my definition of diversity is simply a vast majority of different cultures, classes, races and intellectuals coming together collectively to collaborate on one thing or another. It does not just have to be culturally diverse. Diversity runs across all spectrums of different types of people based on race, religion, education and culture.

This next on is from Ms.Daphne, my co-worker from South America To me culture is a different characteristics from a specific group of people that share common ideals like religion, art, music and share the same language. To me diversity is the different characteristics that make every individual unique.

Next, is Ms.Kem from Morocco; *culture: is having a story to tell. Us, the children of the world sharing our experiences through tradition, art, food, music and storylelling. It is our unique exposure to the various chapters in the book of life. When one has culture, they are able to thrive in any circumstance because our cultures are linked the same way.

(key words for culture: travel,experience,tradition,exposure,open mind,art,music,celebraton,food,storytelling, rituals...) *diversity: is the jewel of the world. Raised and cultured differently, we all have ability to adapt in our versatile universe. When you combine all the wonderful, complex and intelligent minds, it develops diversity and leads to tolerance and acceptance. Diversity is essentials to a peaceful and compassionate world. (key words for diversity: versitile, different, unique, togetherness, adaptable, talent, bonding, culture, Mixing, sharing, expanding, commonality...)

After reading the responses and our resources this week, my way of interpreting culture and diversity is ever changing because of all the views I am seeing. I can relate to what everyone is saying and do believe that culture is the way you see things as you are growing up and being taught about the differences in the world around you. As I said above-my family comes from a long line of military members and we have always moved around and interacted with many diverse people and so I do understand that we all bring uniqueness to the table of our society that needs to be embraced by everyone. I feel that the answers I received reflect the course teachings fairly well and I learned so much from really talking to my co-workers and learning more about their views on how others look at their culture and how they wish more was reflected in schools and in the community so that we could really live together and know the souls of each culture as opposed to just the icing on the top (holidays, language).

The definitions that I received from others will help me to gain an even better understanding of these two topics as I move forward in this course and beyond. I find myself looking deeper when I am planning my days with my preschoolers and even doing my assignments. I feel we can always learn something new from those around us and this assignment is helping to show me how true it is “learning is like peeling the layers of an onion to find another new insight/knowledge”.

2 comments:

  1. Susan,

    I love how your daughter mentioned that culture is those things that we hold close. I had never thought about it that way, but she is so right. I think back to the assignment from last week and how when I talked to my mom about what her thoughts were, the items she mentioned are close to my heart, but often not elements one who just looks from the outside would see. Moving from place to place being a part of a military family, have you gotten to interact with lots of people from other cultures?

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  2. You did a great job on this assignment, especially getting so many different aspects of the terms culture and diversity. I love the answer that it is defined as having a story to tell!

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