{"id":2047,"date":"2021-08-15T01:43:38","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T06:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/?p=2047"},"modified":"2021-08-11T11:01:10","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T16:01:10","slug":"how-does-our-culture-shape-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/blog\/2021\/08\/15\/how-does-our-culture-shape-us\/","title":{"rendered":"How Does Our Culture Shape Us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Culture is one of those things that we recognize in other people groups but have a hard time identifying in ourselves.\u00a0 But almost nothing is more powerful in shaping how we view and interact with the world around us than the culture in which we grew up in or in which we currently live. \u00a0One of the recent episodes of the \u00a0Freakonomics podcast<\/a> looks at how the U.S. is different from the rest of the world, beginning with how we differ culturally from other nations. \u00a0This is the first in a series of episodes looking at these various points of divergence and why they\u2019re important to consider when we look at practices and policies that seem to work well in other parts of the world but fail miserably in the U.S. (and why some of our ideas and institutions have failed outside of the U.S.). There\u2019s an obvious connection to education: it\u2019s the job of schools to educate everyone, regardless of country of origin, first language, economic status, gender, race or ethnicity. Awareness of our own culture is an important starting point for improving our ability to do that.<\/p>\n

One of the first things mentioned on the podcast is cross-cultural psychology<\/a> \u2013 the practice of studying psychological principles across cultures rather than in a Western, industrialized, mostly wealthy context. This type of study is critically important because there are a great many psychological \u201ctruths\u201d posited in recent decades that turn out not <\/em>to be true for all cultures across the board. In other words, these aren\u2019t true for all<\/em> humans, only for some<\/em> humans under certain cultural conditions.\u00a0 The other major reason this field is so important?\u00a0 Psychological studies are currently dominated by Western subjects and particularly by American subjects.\u00a0 And I really mean dominated: 97% of all studies in the world are Western and 70% are American. This means their findings can really only be applied to Western, industrialized, wealthy countries, and some research findings can really only apply to Americans.<\/p>\n

This, of course, has implications for how we relate to other cultures, both in the wider world and within the culturally diverse U.S..<\/p>\n

Some things to note from the episode:<\/p>\n