Learning of Cultures Through Text

Throughout history, humans have struggled to transport people and their ideas. As a global community we have accomplished feats of transportation and communication that would have previously been dismissed as impossible. The modern world is becoming increasingly diverse as people find more and more ways to connect and share their knowledge. With both transportation and alternate forms of communication open, it would be shameful to overlook the opportunity provided to us in understanding how people of other cultures live. I believe that it should be mandatory for people to learn about other cultures in schools.

Learning about other cultures can provide people with a more complete understanding of the world around them. Prior to reading The Kite Runner I had very little knowledge of life in Afghanistan. My previous history, English, and social studies courses, as with many in the Western World, focused on the history of the West and overlooked the Middle East. A large portion of my knowledge of Afghanistan came from North American news reporting acts of terrorism and violence. This is a very singular view of the Middle East. Reading and performing research on events in The Kite Runner opened up a new perspective for me on Afghanistan. This novel helps to paint images of a happy, modernizing country prior to the Taliban’s takeover. Based on news coverage today, I never would have known about the good side of Afghanistan. Overall, I gained perspective on the situation in Afghanistan which would not have been introduced elsewhere in my life.

While learning about other cultures through text, it is also very important to keep in mind that you cannot truly know a culture without experiencing it first hand. By the theory of cultural relativism, “what is regarded as true, valued, or expected in one social system may not be so in another” (Crossman). Essentially, this means that a society’s norms and practices might not be the same as yours, but that does not make them wrong. It is very easy to observe a culture’s practices from the outside and press harsh judgements against them because they are different from your own; however, we must try to avoid that. I think that the only way that teaching about other cultures is valuable is to make sure that cultures are observed while keeping cultural relativism in mind.

In essence, learning about other cultures is valuable because it opens up new perspectives on the world that may have never been accessed, but it is very important to remain unbiased about the cultural practices.

Sources:

Crossman, Ashley. “Cultural Relativism.” About Education. About.com, n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2015. <http://sociology.about.com/od/C_Index/g/Cultural-Relativism.htm>.