The cultures of a place, the social norms and ways of doing things have great influences on the things that individuals do and justify. This essay explores and relates Richard Feyman’s story O Americano Outra Vez and Ruth Benedict’s The Individual and the Pattern of Culture. The two stories are about norms, behaviours, tendencies, cultures and generally how people influence each other to follow certain paths.
In order to understand the correlations between the two texts, it is important to highlight some issues about the authors and the motivations each had for writing their pieces. Richard Phillips Feyman (1918-1988) was an American theoretical physicist who dwelt on quantum mechanics and quantum aerodynamics. He taught at the Brazilian Center for Physical Research during summer and it is his experience here that prompted him to write the story “O Americano Outra Vez” or “The American Again” is a story in Feyman’s bestselling book Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman published in 1985. It tells the story of Feynman’s trip to Brazil in the summer of 1950 when he spent time at the Brazilian Center for Physical Research.
Ruth Fulton Benedict (1887-1948) was an American folklorist and anthropologist. Like Feynman, she too was influenced by her daily interactions with people as she had studied under Franz Boaz and had played a crucial role in the development of cultural anthropology. She wrote her compelling story The Individual and the Pattern of Culture in 1934. It is a discussion in which Ruth correlates anthropology issues with different social norms in the world. She dwells on the individual and their immediate culture. She for instance states that music of a certain period is based or based on the instruments available to society. Benedict also states that the roles men and women play in their societies are shaped by those cultures and have become entrenched not because they are universally acceptable but because people shaped them.
Feynman’s purpose of writing the story was to urge the society to give true meaning and value to education. While at the Center for Physical Research, Feynman interacted with a number of Brazilian students who were preparing for teaching careers. He discovered the education they had acquired had only equipped them “with surface facts about physics rather than a genuine understanding of physical processes” (Feynman 1). As such, Feynman used the experience to write on the differences between learning something and learning about something.
Feyman’s assertion that student merely memorize information without really seeking to understand it is also a condemnation of the society in which the students grow up. It is a reflection of the assertions put forward by Benedict. The students have grown up in an educational culture that does not place value on understanding scientific concepts but is rather satisfied with memorizing. This aspect can be compared to the issues that Benedict notes in patterns of culture. She examines three cultures and their natures; the violent, brutal Dobu tribe of New Guinea, the gentle, austere Zuni Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and the highly structured hierarchical Kwakiutl Indians of the Pacific Northwest coast near Vancouver. She considers the values and practices of the three and notes that values are placed in cultural contexts. She asserts that “a tremendous amount of what people call “human nature” must be attributed to the influence of culture” (Benedict 2).
Benedict argues that there is no inherent conflict that exists between the needs of the individual and the needs of the society. Instead she insists that the individual and the society form an integrated whole where “individual personalities contribute to the fabric of a culture” (Benedict 2). The individual outlooks of individual students in Feynman’s story concerning education are what have contributed to Feynman’s assertions and generalities about the Brazilian society in regard to education. Feynman asserts that “the main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no Science is being taught in Brazil” (Feynman 2). He adds that Brazilian students were simply learning “what a word means in terms of other words” (Feynman 2).
Feynman states that “I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything but they didn’t know what anything meant” (Feynman 3). He illustrates this by giving an example that when the students heard that ‘light that is reflected from a medium with an index” they did not understand that the medium meant a material such as water. In addition the students did not understand that the “direction of the light” meant the “direction in which one sees something when he is looking at it” (Feynman 4).
Feynman concludes that everything that the students had learnt or thought they had learnt was purely memorized and it could not be translated into meaningful words. Since there are teachers and authorities in the Brazilian educational system, it follows that Feynman is faulting the entire education system and culture. Benedict’s assertions can come alive in helping to unravel the underlying issues that trouble the Brazilian education system. Her assertions in Patterns of Culture can offer the basis of having individuals place emphasis on understanding rather than memorizing concepts.
Works Cited
Feyman Richard story O Americano Outra Vez
Benedict Ruth The Individual and the Pattern of Culture
