.7 School as Acculturator

In "School as Bureaucracy" I mentioned briefly how schools should operate as training ground for fitting in. What I mean by that is that schools acculturate their students to one common culture. That is the nature of heterogeneous cultural interaction in an institution where there are standardized procedures and expectations. It is simply important that teachers are aware of the "culture" they are automatically promoting in their classroom, and they should be clear to their students and the parents of their students about what is being transmitted.

Because classrooms are full of diverse students, each with different cultures, the teacher has a second job: to ensure that there is no toe stepping between the different cultures. This basically means that the teacher minimizes cultural differences.

Simon has experienced a good example of this. When he walked into a Zimbabwean classroom for the first time when he was in grade five, he was very aware of the different way the culture of this classroom operated. Wanting to conform to the common culture, he watched carefully and imitated his classmates. One of the things he noticed off the bat was that when students approached the teacher as he sat at his desk, they got down on their knees. Simon figured he had better do that next time he approached the teacher, so he did.

What he hadn't noticed was that the knee posture was only assumed by girls, not boys. The girls showed deference to the teacher by kneeling, while the boys showed deference by standing respectfully beside the teacher and avoiding eye contact. So when Simon got down on his knees in front of the teacher, the whole class (including the teacher) burst into laughter and confused the heck out of
Simon, who was doing what he thought he saw everyone doing.

The teacher, after things calmed down, politely told Simon he need not kneel, but could stand quietly instead. Basically, the teacher minimized cultural difference by telling Simon what was expected.

	What is part of a teachers job when it come to cultural differences?	Answer Here
	Mrs. Adams teaches mathematics in an inner-city private school where discipline is very strict. A new student comes into her homeroom class halfway through the school year from a public school where there was virtually little discipline. The new student, Kristy, is not familiar with any of the rules at the new school, but acts respectfully towards everyone. She does not know that she must stand facing a certain object in the room when saying the school pledge, and does not understand why everyone laughs when she goes around in circles trying to find what they are all looking at. How can Mrs. Adams help Kristy to understand the new culture that she has walked into?	Answer Here