Thursday, April 30, 2015

A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education

Vaughan M. Blaney
Director
BSc(UNB,Canada), BEd(UNB,Canada), TEFLA(University of Cambridge), MEd(HKU, Hong Kong)

Book: "A to Z: Cultural Perspectives in Education"


The Letter 'L'...




Left to right or back and forth
These kinds of nodding can both mean yes
The wave of a hand can say come, go, hi, or bye
Keep it straight to avoid a mess


Love or dislike our differences, you'll see all can agree that we: 
  • laugh with smiling faces
  • know how to speak our language
  • want to win and never lose
  • wonder why a giraffe has a very long neck
  • enjoy learning
  • read literature
  • know its important to be law-abiding
  • believe 'late is better than never'
  • try not to be lazy in class
  • know how to print the letter L

Nothing divides anthropologists (and others seeking to generalize about humanity) more than issues of cultural variability. There is no serious dispute among professional anthropologists about the wide variations, documented by increasingly detailed ethnography, in the economic, organizational, and communicative patterns by which humans live. There is also a consensus regarding documented variations in cultural standards of intellectuals, moral, and aesthetic judgment. Furthermore, few anthropologists consider the world a melting pot in which, as popular belief would have it, variation is disappearing so fast that ethnography has no future. On the contrary, it has become abundantly clear that, although hunter-gatherer populations are threatened and many customs have indeed disappeared , world cultures as a whole are resisting homogenization, even as they eagerly embrace Western consumer goods and bureaucratic forms. Anthropologists disagree not about these facts of cultural variation but about what to make of them in generalizing about cultural variability.

LeVine, Robert Alan and Richard A. Shweder

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