Culture is like a complex spider web, each of its nods containing codified information about the knowledge, experiences and beliefs of a group of people, regarding life, human interactions as well as the physical and the spiritual world. This information is most often passed down several generations and expressed symbolically within social circumstances. Given its spider web structure, all aspects of human life are interconnected and influence one another: science, religion, intellectual thought, artifacts and economic practices. Therefore, culture is the true collective expression of a people’s identity. It reflects a way of living, through which human communities express their distinct creative forces.
Implementing a Multicultural Curriculum
In implementing a multicultural curriculum it is important to assure an open communication environment, in which students are encouraged to draw parallels and provide examples from their own cultures regarding the material that is studied in school. I believe that through supervised debates students can grasp the complexity of different phenomena and concepts (for example, in history or world literature) and provide well-constructed arguments regardless of their cultural affinity with a certain problem.
Therefore, when introducing a new topic, I would start by giving examples from different cultures in order to explain key concepts and ideas. Next, I would encourage a class debate in which the students would discuss the information that I introduced and would provide their own examples. In the end, I would draw, together with the students, some generally true and impartial conclusions that would help them develop an objective perspective.
In order to introduce my own cultural background, I would play a trivia game. First, I would assign topics related to my culture for the students to research and then I would create a trivia game based on those topics. I believe it would be a fun and interactive way to discover a new culture. In the end, I would treat them with some samples of my national food and answer all extra questions.
