Culture
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| (Raszak, 2011) |
I chose this chapter because I believe that culture and diversity are a couple of the most critical factors that influence our society today. There are so many distinct cultures around the world and I think it is amazing how different they are. Additionally, as I future classroom teacher, I believe it is extremely important for instructors to be aware of the diversity in their classrooms to be able to effectively teach to each student. Understanding and accepting diversity is an issue in our country and will be inevitably.
This links to the United Nations web page, and contains an interesting article written by Diana Ayton-Shenker in 1995 on the challenges of human rights and cultural diversity. It discusses concepts such as universal human rights, relativism and cultural context.
These lines by Phyllis McGinley (1954), express the many positive aspects of cultural diversity:
In Praise of Diversity
Since the ingenious earth began
To shape itself from fire and rubble; Since God invented man, and man
At once fell to, inventing trouble,
One virtue, one subversive grace
Has chiefly vexed the human race.
One whimsical beatitude,
Concocted for his gain and glory,
Has man most stoutly misconstrued
Of all the primal category --
Counting no blessing, but a flaw,
That Difference is the mortal law.
Adam, perhaps, while toiling late,
With life a book still strange to read in,
Saw his new world, how variegate,
And mourned, “It was not so in Eden,”
Confusing thus from the beginning
Unlikeness with original sinning.
And still the sons of Adam’s clay
Labor in person or by proxy
At altering to a common way
The planet’s holy heterodoxy.
Till now, so dogged is the breed,
Almost it seems that they succeed.
One shrill, monotonous, level note
The human orchestra’s reduced to.
Man casts his ballot, turns his coat,
Gets born, gets buried as he used to,
Makes war, makes love -- but with a kind
Of masked and universal mind.
His good has no nuances. He
Doubts or believes with total passion.
Heretics choose for heresy
Whatever’s the prevailing fashion.
Those wearing Tolerance for a label
Call other views intolerable.
“For or Against” ’s the only rule.
Damned are the unconvinced, the floaters.
Now all must go to public school,
March with the League of Women Voters,
Or else for safety get allied
With a unanimous Other Side.
There’s white, there’s black; no tint between.
Truth is a plane that was a prism.
All’s Blanshard that’s not Bishop Sheen.
All’s treason that’s not patriotism.
Faith, charity, hope -- now all must fit
One pattern or its opposite.
Or so it seems. Yet who would dare
Deny that nature planned it other,
When every freckled thrush can wear
A dapple various from his brother,
When each pale snowflake in the storm
Is false to some imagined norm?
Recalling then what surely was
The earliest bounty of Creation:
That not a blade among the grass
But flaunts its difference with elation,
Let us devoutly take no blame
If similar does not mean the same.
And grateful for the wit to see
Prospects through doors we cannot enter,
Ah! Let us praise Diversity
Which holds the world upon its center.
Praise con amor’ or furioso
The large, the little, and the soso.
Rejoice that under cloud and star
The planet’s more than Maine or Texas.
Bless the delighful fact there are
Twelve months, nine muses, and two sexes;
And infinite in earth’s dominions
Arts, climates, and opinions.
Praise ice and ember, sand and rock,
Tiger and dove and ends and sources;
Space travelers, and who only walk
Like mailmen round familiar courses;
Praise vintage grapes and tavern Grappas,
And bankers and Phi Beta Kappas;
Each in its moment justified,
Praise knowledge, theory, second guesses;
That which must wither or abide;
Prim men, and men like wildernesses;
And men of peace and men of mayhem
And pipers and the ones who pay ’em.
Praise the disheveled, praise the sleek;
Austerity and hearts-and-flowers;
People who turn the other cheek
And extroverts who take cold showers;
Saints we can name a holy day for
And infidels the saints can pray for.
Praise youth for pulling things apart,
Toppling the idols, breaking leases;
Then from the upset apple-cart
Praise oldsters picking up the pieces.
Praise wisdom, hard to be a friend to,
And folly one can condescend to.
Praise what conforms and what is odd,
Remembering, if the weather worsens
Along the way, that even God
Is said to be three separate Persons.
Then upright or upon the knee
Praise Him that by His courtesy,
For all our prejudice and pains,
Diverse His Creature still remains.
Media
Media is also has a strong influence in the United States, as well in other parts of the world. Though we like it or not, the media impacts us in some way each and every day because we are surrounded by and immersed in it. It is so interesting to me how the media has changed and shaped our culture.
This website links the Global Issues website that was referenced in the chapter on racism. This website contains global issues and is linked specifically to issues pertaining to the media. The article is by Anup Shah, written in 2009 on the media and its effects in United States society. This article delves into many issues concerning the mass media and cultural biases that exist.
This link takes you to the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and specifically to an article by Brad Bushman written in 2002. This website contains scholarly journals on original scientific research and global news. This article has to do with the correlation between prolonged exposure to violence on television in childhood and later aggressive behaviors.
This video "Media and the Culture of Violence was created by a group called the Killing Screens in 2006. It discusses how the media is the new form of storytelling in today's societies. It discusses the prevalence of violence in the media and the effects it has on youth and our culture in general.
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