Many scholars (e.g., Bruner, 1996; Lee Walsh, 2005; Tobin, Wu, Davidson, 1989; Tobin, Huseh, Karasawa, 2009; Walsh, 2002, 2004 ) have reminded educators that schooling is embedded in culture and that teaching is an inherently and intensely cultural act. Nevertheless, the cultural nature of teaching remains a most important overlooked idea. Educators, and the educated, too often view themselves as above and unaffected by culture in their professional lives. Nods may be made to multiculturalism and to the importance of understanding other cultures. But when it comes to teaching, the conviction is that I teach the
International Journal of Early Childhood Education 2013, Vol 19, No 2, 57-71 ⓒ 2013 The Korean Society for Early Childhood Education Teaching in Culture Daniel J Walsh1) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Abstract Schooling is embedded in culture, and teaching is an inherently and intensely cultural act This article explores the inherently cultural nature of teaching and suggests ways to make an understanding of culture central to teaching Keywords: culture, teaching, values, beliefs, shaping, compression There is no such thing as human nature independent of culture (Geertz, 1973, p 49) So, in the end, while mind creates culture, culture also creates mind (Bruner, 1996, p 166) Many scholars (e.g., Bruner, 1996; Lee & Walsh, 2005; Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989; Tobin, Huseh, & Karasawa, 2009; Walsh, 2002, 2004 ) have reminded educators that schooling is embedded in culture and that teaching is an inherently and intensely cultural act Nevertheless, the cultural nature of teaching remains a most important overlooked idea Educators, and the educated, too often view themselves as above and unaffected by culture in their professional lives Nods may be made to multi-culturalism and to the importance of understanding other cultures But when it comes to teaching, the conviction is that I teach the 1) Correspondence should be addressed to Daniel James Walsh, 390 Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA 57 Daniel J Walsh way I do, not because I am American or Midwestern or Californian or Japanese or Kiwi, I teach the way I teach because we (professional educators) know that this is the best way to teach (Tobin et al., 2009) The reality is that no one is above or unaffected by culture The contemporary world holds a wide range of beliefs about the best ways to teach, all of which have many and strong proponents For example, Japanese educators’ views of young children and who they are and who they should be differ dramatically from the views of their American counterparts (e.g., Lewis, 1995; Tobin et al., 1989, 2009; Walsh, 2002, 2004) My goal in article is to explore the inherently cultural nature of teaching and to suggest ways to make an understanding of culture central to teaching To so, I draw heavily on Bruner (1996), on my own research in Japan, and on the work of Markus and Kitayama (e.g., 1991) The Cultural Context of Teaching Teachers, like all people, are, in their daily lives, immersed in culture In their everyday interactions people continually recreate and develop their cultures and their cultural selves People continually signal to those around them whether they share, or not share, a group identity The way people talk, the way they act, what they wear, what they expect, and so on—all these things signal who they are and to what groups they belong, that is, who they are culturally Bruner (1996) argued that understanding schooling “requires that one consider education and school learning in their situated, cultural contexts” (p x) For you cannot understand mental activity unless you take into account the cultural setting and its resources, the very things that give mind its shape and scope Learning, remembering, talking, imagining: all of them are made possible by participating in a culture (p xi) Culture is necessary for learning and development—it completes the developing individual (Shweder et al., 1998) Culture provides the scripts for “how to be” and for how to participate as a member in good standing in a cultural community as well as in specific situations, like school Development itself is best understood as the process of growing into culture Good teaching requires a deep cultural understanding of one’s selves, and one’s students and their selves Everyone has many selves This idea will be expanded below 58 Teaching in Culture Culture as a “We” So what is culture? Culture has been defined in many ways, and these definitions have changed and developed over the years I will define culture simply At its most basic, a culture is a “we”: a group of people who share a sense of how daily life should go, of how it is “s’pozed to be”—a group who shares values, beliefs, and expectations (e.g., Bruner, 1996) A useful distinction can be made between large, upper-case, Big-C CULTUREs— Japanese culture, Maori culture, American culture—and small, local, lower-case, little-c cultures—the many groups people belong to in everyday life—bicyclists, runners, clubs, teams, churches, fraternities, neighborhoods, professional organizations and on and on Typically one belongs to one or a very few Big-C CULTURES I am, for example, a Midwestern American People also belong to many little-c cultures For example, I am an academic, an early childhood educator, an ice hockey player, an avid bicyclist, a musician, a researcher, a writer, and on and on For the rest of this article I refer to culture as CULTURE/cultures to remind the reader, and me, that we belong to many “we’s.” Both Big-C and little-c cultures, “we’s,” have four core features They are shared They exist not within heads but between heads They are shared by a significant group, a “we”—one person or a very few people cannot be a culture, Big-C or little-c They contain wide variation Not everyone in a “we” thinks or acts exactly alike They do, however, share an unspoken agreement about what values, beliefs, and expectations, and how they are enacted, are within the range of normal—“she may be a little off the wall, but she’s still one of us”—or not, “he used to be one of us, but he’s gone over the edge.” Shweder and colleagues (1998) put it this way: “Although any two American selves will obviously differ in countless ways as will any two Japanese selves, cultural participation in American or Japanese practices and institutions will produce some important resemblances” (pp 900-901) Big-C CULTUREs contain many little-c cultures, groups that are nested within the larger Big-C group In the contemporary complex world, people are likely to belong to many little-c cultures, across and between which they move every day An example: My friend John McKinn is Associate Director of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois He has tribal affiliation with the Pima Tribe of Arizona He is a doctoral student in the English department and the father of two young boys He is also a “rink rat” par excellence, who can be found at any pick-up ice hockey game (he’s good) 59 Daniel J Walsh within 50 miles Many different worlds, sometimes every day In these various little-c cultures he interacts with people with similar interests, with whom he shares values, beliefs, and expectations, and with whom he may, at times, disagree Values, Beliefs, and Expectations Cultural values, beliefs, and expectations are deeply embedded in who we are We take them for granted, and because we do, they are most often invisible to us The challenge is to make them visible—to see, to understand, to feel these values, beliefs, and expectations Who we are culturally deeply influences how we teach, what we teach, how we see students, what we expect from them, what we expect from ourselves, what we believe, what we value—just about everything Certainly CULTUREs and cultures share things other than values, beliefs, and expectations, for example, artifacts of all kinds, symbols, ways of communicating, kinship systems, and so on I focus on values, beliefs, and expectation because of their centrality to teaching These three notions overlap in many ways, but they each have a usefully different meaning I describe each one briefly Values Values are at the core of any CULTURE/culture Shweder (1996) described CULTURE/ culture as a community that shares a set of values (p 20) Based on its values, a group makes judgments about what is right, wrong, acceptable, offensive, beautiful, important, and so on CULTURE/culture is in many ways less what people or think than what they know they should or should think When one encounters people who make one uncomfortable, often it is because they are doing something that one does not value or that one believes is wrong or unacceptable The objection may be general, or specific to a particular situation, for example, behavior acceptable in a bar on Friday night is probably unacceptable in church on Sunday morning The point is that different groups may have different values Beliefs Beliefs grow out of values Groups share deeply embedded beliefs about what people should and should not They also share beliefs about how the world works, about what makes people tick—how they think, why they what they do, how they learn, and so on CULTURE/cultures share well developed beliefs about children and what they are like and 60 Teaching in Culture how they learn, and so on For example, contemporary American CULTURE, after many decades of the influence of behaviorism, holds strong beliefs about the efficacy and importance of reinforcement, like praising desired behaviors The influence of stage-based theories of development, from Gesell to Freud to Piaget, has resulted in strong beliefs about the stage-like nature of children’s development Whether these beliefs are accurate or not, they strongly influence how children are seen and treated Expectations Expectations refer to the predictability of daily life When I walk into the local library, I know what to expect I know how people will be acting and what they will be doing I know how I should act Everyday life in familiar places requires little attention, and little effort One knows, without thinking, what to (and not to do), how to it, when to it, with whom to it, and so on A few years ago I spent a month in Taiwan I had been there before, a number of times Even so, while in Taiwan I had to think much more about what to and not to than I have to at home One night I went to dinner with a large group of professors and their spouses The custom in Taiwan is to toast someone at the table before drinking one’s wine or beer My tendency, of course, was simply to sip from my beer as I ate I had to concentrate to remember first to toast someone My host, who occasionally kicked me under the table when I forgot, explained later that the purpose of the custom is to get people interacting I found it awkward Different expectations The Invisibility of CULTURE/culture The challenge is this: Because CULTURE/culture is so close, so taken-for-granted, so normal, people tend not to see it An old saying puts it this way, “Whoever first discovered water, it wasn’t a fish” (I have heard this so often, I am not sure who to attribute it to) As long as one’s view of the world is not challenged, one tends to assume that everyone else sees the world the same way, and those who not would, if only they knew better Patently, not everyone sees the world the way one does, and many of them “know better.” Ayers (1993) eloquently described the challenge of seeing oneself and others culturally: We experience our own culture from the deepest levels toward the surface, and so our own culture can be largely invisible to us When we look at another culture, 61 Daniel J Walsh however, we tend to see the surface first, and we may fail to probe toward the deeper well-springs of meaning This, too, can cut us off, and make culture and other people invisible (p 79) Learning to see below the surface, particularly one’s own surface, is challenging The difficult trick is first to learn to see below one’s own surface, to continually try to get in touch with one’s own deeply embedded values, beliefs, and expectations Once one begins doing this, beginning to see below others’ surfaces becomes possible A major fallacy, folly even, of the contemporary discourse on multiculturalism is its focus on other, most often, big-C CULTURES This focus, however well intended, feeds into the myth that CULTURE is something that others have In order to begin to see others culturally, one must begin with oneself The process is never ending Because CULTURE/culture is shared, knowing oneself culturally is not about who I am but about who we are, remembering that we belong to a big-C CULTURE and many smaller little-c cultures Myths Myths about culture and cultural identity abound I explore a few Common Myth CULTURE is something that others have, particularly others who have a different skin tone, or a strong ethnic identity, or who are from another country European-American students often come into my classes quite certain that they are cultureless: “Sylvia has a culture; she’s black Olivia has a culture; she’s Mexican Mary Claire grew up in an Irish neighborhood, and she does Irish dance She has culture I’m just a white suburban guy I don’t have a culture.” Everyone has a CULTURE and many cultures Consider accents Everyone speaks with an accent, maybe more than one depending on the context People tend to think of and hear the way they speak as the norm People who speak differently have an accent Going to another part of the English-speaking world, for example, from Illinois to Maine, and being told that one has an accent can come as a shock—“I don’t have an accent You have an accent.” Common Myth CULTURE/culture is basically visible—the clothes people wear, skin color, language, celebrations, food, and so on These may be markers or indicators, but they are not CULTURE/culture An astute observer may be able to conclude something about you based on how you dress, the way you speak, what you eat, and so on But CULTURE/culture, where it is 62 Teaching in Culture most meaningful, is deeply embedded, far below the surface, invisible—in the realm of shared values, beliefs, and expectations What differentiates any one group from another is less what they wear and what they eat than how they see the world, how they interact, what they value, what they believe, what they expect Japanese early schooling, for example, places much more emphasis on physical development than does American early schooling Underlying this emphasis is a cultural belief that intellectual development requires a balanced body and that physical play aligns and balances the body One influential Japanese educator, Harada Shinobu, argues that each preschool day should begin with 100 minutes of outdoor physical activity that requires running and changing direction, for example, tag or soccer (see Walsh, 2002, 2004) in order to balance the body, and, ultimately, the mind A very different view of children’s development from the one dominant in the West Common Myth Underneath CULTURAL/cultural differences people are all the same— CULTURE/culture is simply a surface veneer—if people can get below the surface, the differences disappear Actually, no, they not In many ways, the further one gets under the surface to the deeply embedded values, beliefs, and expectations that define CULTURES/ cultures, the greater the differences can become I have visited Japan many times My family and I lived in Japan for most of a year while I was doing fieldwork in preschools My children, Buck and Scooter, were the only gaijin (foreigners) in their Japanese schools They were the only gaijin on the Kobe Junior Jets ice hockey team But, if I lived in Japan for 50 years, at this point in my life highly unlikely, I would never begin to understand some things, for example, about how Japanese communicate People are not all the same People can learn to communicate across cultures, if they can find some common shared dimension, but people are not the same Common Myth The final myth, noted in the introduction, is that educators, and those who are educated, are above and unaffected by culture, that we what we because we know, based on research, that it is the best way As I noted above, the contemporary world holds a wide range of beliefs about the best ways to teach, all of which have many and strong proponents Culture Shapes CULTURE/cultures shape who we are, what we do, what we with whom, why we what we do, how we what we do, how we see the world, and so on 63 Daniel J Walsh CULTURE/culture does not determine what people or who they are, but it does shape what they and who they are Shape should be understood as neutral When culture shapes, it restricts and facilitates and everything in between It does so by showing what is valued and what is not, what is accessible and what is not, what is supported and what is not, what is acceptable and what is not, what is possible and probable, and what is not, and so on For example, culture makes some learning much easier, but other learning more difficult, or even impossible Culture often “shows” us how to solve problems we encounter in daily life, so that we can reduce “failures” and the necessity of resorting to trial-and-error procedures Culture also “teaches” us a set of procedures needed for production, communication, and other areas of life (Hatano & Miyake, 1991, pp 275-279) This double-sided effect supports, and hinders, some developmental trajectories but not others To give some simple examples: Growing up in a small Midwestern American town shapes language development, supporting the development of English and restricting the development of other languages that are not readily available Growing up in the mountains of the northeastern United States shapes (supports) the development of skiing skills; growing up in the flat lands of middle Illinois, where I live, shapes (restricts) the development of skiing skills These examples should make clearer the distinction between shape and determine Some who grow up in small Midwestern towns become fluent in languages other than English, or fly off to Colorado every year and become excellent skiers Not everyone in Vermont becomes a skier, or even wants to This CULTURAL/cultural shaping occurs in people’s day-to-day life For example, growing up in a musical family, with musical instruments available and music part of daily life and conversation, in a community where music is valued and supported will likely enhance a child’s musical development, perhaps making it seem “natural.” Such a context shapes Clearly certain kinds of music and instruments are more likely to occur in a one CULTURE and cultures than in others Still, children from non-musical families and communities become musicians, and children from musical families and communities not Coming from a musical context simply makes it more likely that one will become musical than does coming from a non-musical one But, within any CULTURE or cultures, the possibilities are finite, and the probabilities are reasonably predictable Everyone operates within invisible, to them, cultural “shapers” in daily life For example, the counting systems in most Asian languages are quite regular, so one counts (translated 64 Teaching in Culture literally): 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, 8, 9, 10, 10-1, 10-2 10-9, 2-10-1 and so on As Buck, then five, told me when he returned one afternoon from kindergarten in Japan, “As soon as you learn to count to 10, you can count to 100 It’s ‘cinchy’.” Compare this regular counting system with the extraordinarily irregular English system Ten is followed by the quite weird eleven and twelve Thirteen hints three and ten Fourteen seems regular, but thirteen through nineteen are actually backwards—the ten (teen) should be first Twenty and thirty hint at two and three, and assuming ty refers to ten, in the right order Forty appears regular—four-ten But, curiously, the u in four has disappeared The English number system is instructive in thinking about the invisibility of culture in that, until the curiosities are pointed out, one tends not to see them—that is just the way it is (Full disclosure: Buck did not mention that Japanese has two different counting systems, depending on what one is counting I have no idea why.) Compare learning to read in a highly phonetic language like Spanish to the less phonetic English George Bernard Shaw once noted that in English ghotiugh could be pronounced fish—gh as in rough, o as in women, ti as in nation, and ugh as in thorough Or consider growing up in a culture that uses the internally coherent metric system as compared to the mysteries of the English system, for example, 5,280 feet in a mile My point is not that CULTURE X is better or more sensible than CULTURE Y (with the possible exception of the metric system) The purpose of these examples is to show that CULTURE/cultures shape in different ways, making some things easier and others harder, and that people are seldom aware of how they are shaped in daily life Because the effects are taken for granted, they are most difficult to identify from within Schools A major CULTURAL/cultural influence operating in schools is beliefs about and expectations for children and how they develop and learn These beliefs and their inherent values not only reflect the realities of childhood, they also help create the realities of childhood by becoming themselves part of the context in which, and into which, children develop A given CULTURE/culture will organize childhood and the situations, like schools, within which children develop, so that children match the CULTURAL/cultural views of children For example, if young children are viewed as being incapable of thinking abstractly, preschools will be organized in ways that children have few opportunities for abstract thinking And if they think abstractly, it will be ignored If young children are seen as being incapable of riding unicycles, unicycles will not be made available to them, as they are not in this country In Japan, by contrast, kindergarten children, particularly girls, riding unicycles is a common sight The key question then is this: How, then, schools shape teachers and children, who live 65 Daniel J Walsh much of their lives within them? Identifying and understanding how CULTURE/cultures operate in schools requires that one begin to get under the surface and begin to understand both oneself (one’s selves) culturally and how CULTURE and culture are shaping who one is Culture Compresses CULTURE/cultures compress (more about this verb below also) people as they develop within and into culture This cultural compression is necessary for development into culture All CULTURES/cultures compress their members, that is, they shape their members from birth to gradually conform to the expectations for cultural membership to ensure that they will become good and competent members, in that CULTURE/culture Different CULTURES/ cultures compress in different ways Compress may initially sound abhorrent It elicits images of children being squeezed in a vise, being shoved, round children, into square holes (which, unfortunately, sometimes happens in schools) Compression, however, is necessary, both for the survival of a CULTURE/culture and for the development of the individuals within The challenge is to understand how people are compressed and to think deeply about it Seeing enculturation as a compression process can be a useful tool for understanding one’s own CULTURE/cultures I first encountered the cultural compression model from the eminent educational anthropologists George and Louise Spindler, who introduced me to the ethnography of schooling I intend it to be illustrative and urge the reader to vary it as you see fit Please note that the model is not timeless Types of and intensity of compression differ not only between CULTURE/cultures but also within CULTURE/cultures across time, for example, now from 20 years ago or 20 years from now That said, consider one version of the contemporary life span A newborn enters a most uncompressed stage in life Babies sleep, eat, drool, cry, pee, and poop at will As they go through life, more will be expected of them—they will be compressed If they are placed in day-care as infants, where a caretaker must care for a group of babies and is unable to attend immediately to an individual baby’s needs, their compression begins early CULTURAL/ cultural practices for rearing babies change—babies will be fed on demand or on schedule, breast-fed or bottle-fed, placed on their backs or on their fronts, and so on, according to the wisdom of the time and place These practices become part of the context within which babies develop As babies get older, they encounter further compression They are expected to sleep through the night The child no longer has the freedom to pee or poop whenever or wherever but must sit on the potty, enduring the drama (and trauma) that accompanies toilet training From the beginning, in the U.S., infants are expected to sleep in their own beds and bedrooms (in many CULTURES/cultures kids sleep with their mothers well into elementary school) 66 Teaching in Culture Continue across the life span Go to preschool, more compression First grade, more Middle school, maybe less High school, less Go to college, even less Graduation and a job, more compression Marriage and kids, more Kids finish college, less compression Retirement, even less Senility, back to where one began as a baby Like all models, this one simplifies a most complex reality The purpose of a model is to show something quite complex in an understandable way Whether one accepts the details, the reality remains CULTURE/cultures must compress their members in order to form them into good members As Americans, obsessed as we are with ideas of freedom and independence, compression may sound very negative, which is itself a good example of how culture shapes how we think But becoming American or Japanese or Mozambican means taking some paths and not others It means becoming part of the group, and becoming part of the group means becoming, with some variation, like others in the group Americans, Westerners in general, like to think they march to different drummers Even if we did, which we really not, the range of drummers we march to is finite Being a jock, a Greek, a geek, a prep, a techie, a whoever— means being identifiable as that whoever, which means that one is identifiably different from some other whoevers For example, my daughter, Scooter sang in an acappella group (Bella) in college She also played for the women’s ice hockey team The rest of the acappella group thought it cute to have a hockey player in the group—never had one of them before For Scooter life became conflicting when Bella sang the national anthems (in Maine, both the American and Canadian anthems) before hockey games The teams, helmets in hand, line up across the ice on the blue lines facing the flags, and Bella stands on the center line to sing And Scooter wonders which line to stand on, with her team, with her group? She cannot at that moment be with both (she stayed with her team) But in daily life, she moved easily, as we all do, back and forth As noted above, compression is necessary for both individual and CULTURAL/cultural survival In the compression process the individual develops cultural selves, and the culture maintains its identity For a culture to survive, however, the compression process must allow for (a) variation from the norm, and (b) safety valves Variation from the Norm The acceptable range around norms varies across and within CULTURES/cultures according to time and situation For example, my sense is that the range of acceptable dress is much wider in American colleges than in high schools I live half-way between the University of Illinois and Urbana High School I have never seen high school kids walking to school in pajama bottoms For a while pajamas were common on the university campus At historical moments within a CULTURE/culture, the range of normal may be narrowed due to larger 67 Daniel J Walsh societal changes For example, when women began to enter the work force in large numbers, realities for young children changed dramatically Being in daycare went from being the exception to the norm A healthy CULTURE/culture, however, maintains a reasonably wide range around the norms and does not expect people to be all the same Teachers need to be aware that schooling compresses kids considerably Children today are undergoing cultural compression earlier than previous generations and in ways that previous generations did not As children enter school (or school-like institutions like daycares) at earlier and earlier ages, they are being expected to exhibit skills and knowledge in contexts that not adequately support the development of those skills and knowledge, and that not support the exploration and experimentation that is necessary for full and rich development (e.g., Jung, 2013) They are being given fewer opportunities to move freely within a reasonable range around cultural norms In early schooling particularly, children are provided with templates for acting and speaking that bear little relationship to how they would speak or act if left to their own devices Certainly one way children learn is by imitation, but when the rules of school turn them into imitators rather than constructors, their learning and development is stunted For example, children who are being told to “use their words,” an ubiquitous instruction in American early schooling, are, in fact, not being told to use or develop their own words They are being given scripts to use, scripts with adults’ words The insightful Joe Tobin (1995) explained this “simulation and inauthenticity of emotion” thus, “[S]tatements about feeling (‘I feel angry’) replace expressions of feeling (‘Give me the truck, you doo-doo head!’), which replace feelings (anger? competition? desire?)” (p 231) A template for emotional expression is to emotional development what painting-by-numbers is to painting It is not the real thing, and it does not support the development of the real thing When I entered school in the early 50’s, the local Catholic school did not have kindergarten My first major institutional compression, my first experience of being away from home and in the care of non-family members, occurred when I was 5-years and 8-months, entering first grade Today many children begin school (in some form) at age or younger The increasingly early move from family-care to institutional care is a most profound change, one with many and many unknown ramifications for children and for society Be aware of these changes and the need for a reasonably wide range around the norm Safety Valves A critical feature of a functional CULTURAL/cultural compression process is that those being compressed have access to safety valves to relieve the pressure without having to wait to go away to college or to retire (see Figure 1)—things as simple as recess or coffee breaks or 68 Teaching in Culture casual Fridays Work places have lunch hours Work weeks have weekends Soldiers have leaves; workers, vacations Kids may have grandparents or other adults to go to when parents become unmanageable, although less often than earlier generations when extended family was more likely to be close by People can handle even the most intense compression if, first, it occurs at a time when they are capable of handling it, and, second, if they have safety valves, times to decompress, to get a break from being compressed Do schools provide adequate safety valves? Consider early schooling: Children in day cares often not get vacations—typically day cares close only for major holidays In day cares and schools, kids not have the freedom to wander from room to room to visit their friends When Scooter was in day care at the generally wonderful Child Development Lab at the University of Illinois, she became most frustrated that she could not play with her best friend, who was in a different classroom that opened onto a different playground They were in the same building for eight or more hours every day, and they never saw each other Children, at least through elementary and middle school, cannot seek out other teachers when the ones in their rooms get on their nerves They cannot, like their uncles and aunts in college “change majors” when the major they chose does not turn out the way they anticipated Kids have fewer options When kids get the opportunity to decompress? Certainly children can and resist adult intrusion into their lives But is this where they should be putting their energies, finding small moments to break free of the constant organization and surveillance that has become the norm in schooling in general and early schooling in particular? Students need safety valves Daily Often In little ways Privacy A critical safety valve is privacy After my son, Buck, returned to Illinois from months in a most unrestrictive Japanese kindergarten and resumed his kindergarten career in Urbana, he came home each day visibly agitated I initially attributed his agitation to being jet-lagged and entering a new school in January He soon made it clear that his unhappiness went deeper He described how much he disliked having to stay in his classroom except for recess and lunch—in Japan, for much of the morning he had been free to move inside and outside whenever he wanted He complained about how boring the playground was—no poles to shinny up, no challenging structures to climb on Why, he wanted to know, did he have to stay inside so much of the day? Why could he not visit his friends in the classrooms down the hall? One afternoon, after we had been back about a week, he came home extremely upset “Everyone is always looking at me!” he protested I replied, “You’re a new kid in the school in the middle of the year People are curious about you.” But, as we talked, I realized that he was not talking about that kind of “looking at me.” He was referring to the constant adult 69 Daniel J Walsh surveillance After months of being able to play with his friends without adults constantly watching and of having nooks and crannies of the playground where adults seldom came, he was upset that his privacy was being violated Someone was always watching him A major constraint in American schooling is that children must be supervised at all times Children, like all people, need some privacy Summary Cultural compression is necessary for growing into CULTURE/cultures Kids grow into specific CULTURE/cultures, and becoming Korean or Portuguese or American requires adjusting to a set of norms that identify one as Korean or Portuguese or American The issue is not compression Compression is necessary and important Cultures should and adjust how they compress The important issue is when and how it occurs Conclusion In many ways, CULTURE/culture is the greatest human invention (Bruner, 1996) It makes it possible for people to interact and to transact, to live together on a daily basis Bruner and Postman compared culture to a shared narrative Bruner (1990) described how this shared narrative “enables people to interpret their experiences and one another Without narrative, we would be lost in a murk of chaotic experience and probably would not have survived as a species in any case” (p 128) Postman (1989) concurred, A story gives us direction by providing a kind of theory about how the world works and how it needs to work if we are to survive Without such a theory, such a tale, people have no idea what to with information They cannot even tell what is information and what is not (p 123) Teachers should learn about the story they share, learn about the stories children share Then they should begin to learn the stories that others share References Ayers, W (1993) To teach: the journey of a teacher New York, NY: Teachers College Press Bruner, J (1990) Acts of meaning Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 70 Teaching in Culture Bruner, J (1996) The culture of education Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Geertz, C (1973) The interpretation of cultures New York, NY: Basic Books Hatano, G., & Miyake, N (1991) Commentaries: What does a cultural approach offer to research on learning? 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