Introduction: Cultural Perspectives

Introduction

        The Professional Learning Community (PLC) Division of Savage Glover High School created a Culturally Responsive Plan. This plan focuses on the aspects of cultural diversity within the classroom. The culture that this plan mainly addresses are those students of Asian Culture. Having these students and others from different ethnicities within the classroom causes educators to reach out to family members and the community. Wardle (2013) discuss the importance of how students, families and school can access and use at least two kinds of community resources: resources to enrich the lives of families and that can be used to extend the learning process used by the school; and resources that provides direct assistance, support, guidance, intervention, and services mainly for families but also for schools and teachers. Many of the community resources in both categories also develop in children a sense of cultural identity and can be used by schools to make learning culturally and individually relevant to their students and families.

     This plan includes subjects that focuses on the culture in terms of behavior, social values, genders roles, academics and traditions. The plan includes the history of the culture and how Americans accept cultural behaviors and the impact of language, culture, and education. Additionally, the plan depicts the historical and current inclusionary and exclusionary educational practices that relates to the current culture. The plan provides a list of inclusionary practices through the means of curricular, instructional, or campus-wide changes for the staff to employ that ensures cultural acceptance and integration for this group. Lastly the plan provides ideal teaching strategies, other practices that could assist this group from an educational standpoint, and the value of employing these considerations.

Selected Culture in Terms of Behavior, Social Values, Gender Roles, Academics, and Traditions

     This Culturally Responsive Plan includes knowledge of the Chinese cultures in the terms of their behaviors, social values, gender roles, academics, and traditions. These variables include information that supports the Chinese culture and their efforts toward education in different circumstances. There is a difference between members of different provinces within Chinese cultures, which causes differences within their academics. Hongcheng and Minhui (2010) discussed how China’s school education has assumed a core role in the process of state building. Irrespective of disparities in economic level and cultural forms, “schools must be present wherever there is the smoke of cooking fires.” Serving as strong points and fortresses, schools have become states in hamlets and villages. They constantly transmit ideology, mainstream culture, and modern knowledge systems to the local people, even in ethnic minority districts in 
the most remote and distant border regions. Modern school education is effectively shaping the community of the state and making communication possible among different regions and cultures. 
      In making communication possible among different regions and cultures,  the Chinese people work towards modernization of school and state power in becoming universally established in rural areas and ethnic minority regions as a symbol and manifestations of the state will. Hongcheng and Minhui (2010) depicts how modern education promises that students who “study assiduously” may achieve upward mobility through education and that the previous class society is coming to an end. However, we cannot evade the fact that the schools’ culture and the students’ everyday life circumstances pertain to two different cultural systems. Attending school means shifting from one cultural system to another cultural system. Moreover, these cultural systems may conflict with one another. Such conflicts occur among ethnic minority students, especially among ethnic minority students residing in remote rural areas.

History of the Culture

The history of the Chinese culture is important to the Culturally Responsive Plan. This plan enables teachers to learn more information about Chinese culture, the impact of how Americans regard their culture with an impact on language, culture, and education. Hongcheng and Minhui (2010) discuss how the Chinese state’s education transmits mainstream culture, school education provides little space for passing on ethnic minority cultures, and the preservation of local languages, culture, customs and habits, and beliefs and of cultural diversity has become a thorny problem. Second, ethnic minority students who grow up in modern school are disadvantaged in the unified nation evaluation system and school advancement system; they face the problems of poor cultural adaptation and scholastic performance, and it is no easy matter to “pull” them out of these local circumstances.

The cultural disparities within the culture begin with school and the family, which touches upon many different aspects that mainly involves language. Within the culture the main difference is that the language spoken in many homes are different from the language spoken in school. This action results into low scholastic achievements of ethnic minority students that lead to the outcome of teaching activities. According to Hongcheng and Minhui (2010), Shirley Heath (1983) has also remarked that each stratum has its own special language and symbol capital from which are shaped language categories of different styles, and both the value concepts and ways of communicating in families of lower social strata are disadvantageous for students attending white middle-class schools.

The disparities continue in the field of education. Individuals within the majority and minority ethnic cultures use their cultural value concepts to understand the all the aspects of the educational activities. Because of differences in cultural patterns, the study activities of students from different ethnic groups turn out to be either positive or negative and their educational achievements are either good or poor. This results in major difference between school education and local culture. Hongcheng and Minhui (2010), discuss how the rationale of modern school education has been established in the course of nearly a century of development. Within the walls that surround the schools, one sees such slogans as “Knowledge changes destinies, studies fulfill the future,” and “Today’s education is tomorrow’s economy.” These transmit the message to the local populace that education constitutes the ladder for the individual’s upward mobility and helps to develop local societies and economies. Although school education comes from outside the local cultures, there is an acknowledgement by families. The children that excel within school are able to get out of their local communities are children whose parents work in government or who live in households of modern way of life and communicate in the Han language. The use of this means of communication is quite similar to that of the school environment.    

Additionally, Liu, J. (2012) depicts how education is at the center of Chinese people’s lives. It is not only the path of self-improvement that leads to becoming a noble person, an ethical pursuit and the highest goal for humanity in Chinese eyes  but it also has been the most important avenue of social mobility. At a societal level, education was a mechanism to select elite for governance in imperial times, and this function has been further extended to training administrative and technical elites to promote national development in modern China.

Historical and Current Inclusionary and Exclusionary Educational Practices within the Chinese Culture

          The historical and current inclusionary and exclusionary educational practices as it relates to the Chinese culture are that of ensuring educators have the knowledge needed to assist these learners in their efforts of learning. The history of Chinese education depicts a major division among people of different regions. Hongcheng and Minhui (2010) discuss how the Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture is situated on China’s southwestern border. Due to its remoteness from the center of imperial power during the feudal dynasties, Confucian studies were never instituted, no imperial civil examinations were held, and neither official nor private schools developed. During the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, Han culture was transmitted through  small private tutoring schools set up by the Tusi (ethnic minority hereditary  overseers), but these were restricted to the scions of officials, and ordinary people were kept out of the educational system of Han culture. The most popular language taught was that of Dai people who created their own education system that related to Buddhism.

       Over the course of the twentieth century, the education system changed instead of excluding people of different ethnic groups the system focused more on inclusion of all people. According to Hongcheng and Minhui (2010), modern school education gradually advanced into ethnic minority border regions, and schools went up in all districts where state power was established. This was accompanied by the decline of Zangfang education. Starting in 1935, provincial elementary schools were set up in this region for the sake of developing educational culture and awakening the awareness of the fraternal ethnic people in this border region. As the organizational form and curricula of these schools imitated those of schools in the interior regions, space for modern education was formally established. Subsequently, when enlightened Tusi managed to get the provincial Luxi elementary school to set up branches in Fapa and Namu, schools began to enter the ordinary Dai villages.