Culture as a Teacher
By now, you know that culture is a tireless teacher that starts your learning process at
birth and never pauses. You will also have discerned that every culture adheres to a
very selective curriculum. This selectivity is embodied in the ancient Chinese proverb
“By nature all men are alike, but by education widely different.”The Chinese sage
was pointing out that cultural variations are the result of people being taught different
beliefs, values, customs, and perspectives. What is taught in a culture is critical to the
maintenance and perpetuation of that culture, and much of the responsibility for that
instruction comes from the formal educational systems within the culture.
Formal education, regardless of the culture, includes a variety of common
subjects—mathematics, science, history, language, literature, and in some nations,
religion. Although the subjects are similar, the content often varies. For instance, his-
tory is taught in almost every culture, but the focus is usually different because each
culture emphasizes its own past. As we discussed in Chapter 5, history teaches you the
values of your culture, assists you in making sense of the present, and helps you iden-
tify with a larger group. With only infrequent variation, each culture highlights those
events that serve to promote positive ideals and tends to deemphasize actions that
carry a negative connotation. As the late Israeli scholar and diplomat Abba Eban
pointed out,“A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.”To illustrate,
U.S. history classes devote considerable time to the Founding Fathers, the Declaration
of Independence, the American Revolution, and the westward growth of the young
nation. Until the latter half of the twentieth century, much less attention was
devoted to the topic of slavery and the plight of American Indians. History classes
in China are accustomed to examining the achievements of 5,000 years of continuous
civilization and the Chinese Communist Party’s rescue of the nation from the tyranny
of Western and Japanese colonial powers. Often left unsaid is the devastation brought
about by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Mexico’s history
would likely focus on the cultural heritage of the pre-Columbian era and the Mexican
Revolution, while little attention would be paid to the long record of political corrup-
tion and drug cartels.
Formal education can easily become an outlet for cultural ethnocentrism because
every culture tends to glorify its own achievements and focuses less on the accom-
plishments and contributions of other cultures. This is particularly true of history but
also occurs in other subjects. In the United States, the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet
Carl Sandburg receives more attention than the Chilean Pablo Neruda, who was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Studying only one religious text—Bible,
Koran, Torah, Vedas, etc.—while disregarding others is a quiet form of ethnocen-
trism. The pitfalls of ethnocentrism and the constraints of prejudicial nationalism
that can creep into educational curricula can be avoided. Through exposure to a
range of different perspectives, philosophies, and histories, complemented by critical
thinking skills, you can develop a greater awareness and understanding of cultural
diversity and enhance your intercultural competency.Learning from Culture
After reading that what is taught in schools varies among cultures, it should be no
surprise to discover that there are also differences in how students and teachers358 CHAPTER 10• Intercultural Communication in Contexts
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