A reflection of your own experience of culture and identity in relation to education:
When I reflect on my own education and how my own culture and identity had shaped my educational outcomes and experiences, I do believe there were many different aspects that contributed to the way in which I view the impact of culture and identity in education. I believe it is so important to not only focus on the impact of culture and identity in a person's education, but also social aspects as well as religious, emotional, and economical- because I believe, there are more than one factor that can contribute to someone's experiences of education, but in the end it is their own choices and motivation to want to learn and to want to achieve good marks, that will allow them to create a positive experience of their education in relation to their own culture and identity.
My own personal educational experiences were and are in fact influenced, both positively and negatively (in a way) by my culture and identity. I see my identity as something that has been shaped not only through my external attributes, like how I dress for example, but also the way in which I see the world through the things I like, the things I don't like, and what I'm passionate about, “The body itself carries meaning and participants in particular subcultures manipulate it in various ways to express various sorts of meaning.” (Sanders, 1988) Growing up in a Greek family, and being influenced heavily by my family's customs and religion I believe has shaped my identity throughout my life. From an early age, I was always surrounded by my family and the Greek language, and as I grew up I became more accustom and apart of it; this however became both a negative and positive factor to my education and identity as a student. On one side, I had the cultural and social interactions with other Greek students when I was at Greek school on a Tuesday afternoon for 3 hours every week, where I could freely learn and identify with my culture. On the other hand however, being a student at a public primary school, sometimes bringing food from home and being the only child out of my group of friends to attend Greek Orthodox scripture, alone, made it a lot harder for me, as a child, to appreciate my culture in that sense.
Although at the time I had not really appreciated the initiative of schools introducing multicultural scripture classes every week, I now believe it is such a vital and important aspect within schools: “Most religious groups are able to use this access privilege to enter public schools and spend an hour each week delivering content that is important to them... that children might learn about Buddhist philosophy and how to meditate or that Greek Orthodox culture and practices might be passed to the next generation with state support is a God send to many Australian communities....” As well as this, looking back now on my previous educational experiences, my culture has made a mostly positive influence on my ability to learn. This had mainly come into light when I progressed into high school, and there was a more multicultural aspect within the school which allowed me to identify with more students from different backgrounds and engage in different learning experiences. As well as this, it became easy in some subjects such as Ancient history, maths and English to identify with the Greek-influence on Education, as I was able to draw on my own previous knowledge of historical and cultural facts and information which helped a lot with my learning and understanding of these subjects.
Byrne. C, ABC- Religion and Ethics, Special Religious Education: the good, the bad and the ugly,
No comments:
Post a Comment