“Human beings are all alike in nature, but their habits and customs keep them apart.”
Confucius
It became obvious to me through this week's blog assignment that culture means different things to different people. Though there are areas of agreement in the definitions given by the three people I spoke with, each of them gave three different definitions. I spoke to two of my colleagues and my husband. While my first colleague who is from Pakistan defines culture as the shared views and way of life as found in a society my other colleague who sees culture from the perspective of an individual defines culture as the aspects of a person's life that define his or her identity. My husband on the other hand defines culture as shared knowledge and learned behaviour as transmitted by members of a particular society.
The three persons that I discussed with see diversity as differences found in people. To my husband, diversity is not just in our race or ethnic group but in the way people are different politically, socially, in sexual orientation, and religion. A colleague of mine admitted that diversity includes the way students learn and it means recognising individual differences as found in our students and treating students based on their differences.
In my discussion with all the three, the issue of deep culture was omitted. It seems when culture is mentioned people tend to see culture from the surface, referring to culture from what they can see like food, dress, language, and the arts. Culture is more than these, culture includes also behaviour, ethics, how children are trained, concept of time and such things.
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