The Cultural Content of the Curriculum [Archives:2000/48/Culture]

archive
November 27 2000

Dr. Bushra Sadoon M. Al-Noori
Head of the English Department
College of Education
Taiz University
Al-Turba
Culture in its broad sense refers to the way of life of a community; its speech and customs; its modes of eating and dressing; its attitudes towards strangers, parents, children, friends, its social gradings, the status of its occupations, its sexual behavior, its educational institutions, its beliefs, amusement, legends, proverbs, songs, festivals and religion observations.
Having defined culture as the whole patterns of living of a nation, youve to focus on how a language is both a component of culture and a central network through which the other components are expressed. So, there is an interrelationship between language and culture. Language does not develop in a vacuum. A language is a part of the culture of people and the chief means by which the members of a society communicate.
Culture is one of the most difficult words in English language, partly because it has a history of shifting meaning, and partly because the word is now used to discover important concepts in several disciplines and in several incompatible systems of thought.
Any society has the problem of transmitting its way of life, or culture to the next generation. In simple societies, culture is transmitted directly by the family or through other face to face interaction. In complex societies, the diversion of labor and social mobility take this impossible task for culture to be passed on by traditional, informed means and the task is partly entrusted to form education.
Education is concerned with making available to the next generation what we regard as the most important aspects of culture. Because schools have limited time and resources, the curriculum should be planned carefully in order to ensure that an appropriate selection from culture is made.
The selection should be neither arbitrary nor idiosyncratic. It should be open to rational inquiry and justification.
In order to plan a curriculum based on a reasonable selection from culture, it is necessary to have a set of principles and processes through which the selection from culture is made. The process refers to Cultural Analysis.
There are two approaches of cultural analysis; the classificatory and the interpretive. The classificatory method involves check lists, tables, and elaborate systems of classification whereas the interpretive method is concerned with looking at the culture as a whole.
In an attempt to see how the curriculum in a society is derived from the unique culture of that society, it is necessary to ask detailed questions about knowledge, skills and values. Thus, cultural analysis when applied to curriculum planning would ask:
– What kind of society already exists?
– In what ways is it developing?
– How do its members appear to want it to develop?
– What kind of values and principles will be involved in decision making?
– And on the educational mean of achieving the same?
The essence of the cultural analysis approach is that of developing a method of matching the needs of individual children living in a specific society by means of a carefully planned curriculum. This selection from culture is made by analyzing the kind of society and the kind of experience that are most appropriate to it.
This process requires three kinds of classification:
First: Deciding on major parameters.
Second: Outlining a method for analyzing which can be used to describe any given society, and making use of those parameters.
Third: Means of classifying the educationally desirable knowledge and experience.

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