Personal Commitment to Respecting Cultural Differences and Avoiding Essay

Personal Commitment to Respecting Cultural Differences and Avoiding Cultural Bias - Essay Example In their discussion of the role of culture in individual behavior, Tillman and Kirkpatrick (1972) argue that the culture explains variance in human behavior. Culture is defined by Tillman and Kirkpatrick (1972) as the set of concepts to which a common valence is attached by a large number of individuals. So a certain individual's values reflect the goals and valences of that person's culture. Therefore, since consumer trust has been noted as a concept of individual behavior above, it becomes important to understand the values of that culture. Culture is the sum total of capabilities and habits acquired by humans as members of society, encompassing their knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, and customs. Multicultural education is derived from the classical term "Intercultural Education" that began in the late 1920's with the premise of: "the acknowledgement of the diverse population of the United States, and the intent to help students understand the world and the American society in which they live" through education of the ethnic backgrounds and cultural variances of immigrant populations being educated in the United States (Volk p 3 1998). This developed towards the current definition as 'Multicultural Education" through 1970's as educators formed the belief that understanding the values and variances of culture would assist in educating children. Multicultural education should therefore support the concepts of culture as part of the educational curriculum. It seeks to support and extend on the learned behaviours of culture that define the variances between human social structures. While this can be viewed as an ambiguous and intrinsic concepts, there are also physical characteristics of culture that can be implemented into the education structure, such as symbols, heroes (stories) and rituals. Furthermore, multicultural education can not stop simple at the value of culture, it also encompasses concepts such as language, social class (poor vs. rich), disability and gender with the conviction that multicultural education is a strategy wherein the cultural heritage of each child is valued. The concept of multicultural education is to take the components of culture, incorporate the differences of people, and implement an educative curriculum that a celebration and experience of who we are, as individuals and as society. Effect of Cultures on Multicultural Education Martinez (2006) found that teachers and high school students believe that embracing diversity is important because it leads to social justice. Martinez concludes that for students, diversity was referred to the ways in which students differ from each other, including gender, age, ethnicity, race, religion,