DEFINING CULTURE and DIVERSITY

What is CULTURE and DIVERSITY?

Response #1:

Culture-common beliefs traditions or customs held and practiced by a group of people.
Diversity-that which makes one different from another

Response #2

Culture has to do with values and norms and these are often revealed in the "stories" that are shared in literature, news, histories, legends, etc. and looking at what gets reported, where/when it's reported, what people/types of people are in the stories, etc. tells you about the values and norms. Countries, regions, businesses, schools, churches--probably all human groupings--have cultures and they are influential, sometimes even fostering behavior that is immoral or unethical. 
Diversity can be nationality, race, gender, $, etc, (any of which might be culture-based), but diversity can also be refer to differing points of view.

Response #3

Culture is a system of values with three characteristics: they're shared among a group of people, learned, and passed on from on generation to the next. 
Diversity is when different cultural, racial or other demographic systems are present within the same environment.


Reflection:

In all three examples, culture is broadly defined by values and norms established by a group of people and passed on to other generations.  I would agree with this broad definition and if asked my definition would not be all that different.  This is what is commonly addressed when we look at cultures.  When we think about sharing pieces of our culture we look at clothes, food, artifacts, languages, religion, traditions, and skills.  I have recently learned the importance of going past a person's surface culture and looking at the small things we do everyday that set us apart from others.  This shows us that even within larger cultural groups each family has their own cultural norms and they create a very specific way of doing things, communicating, and handling issues.  It is our culture that provides the lenses in which we see the world.  Janet Gonzalez-Mena discusses how the roles of women and men differ between cultures down to the way they sit (Laureate Education Inc., 2011).  This difference can be much more vital to understanding when working with diverse cultures than how they celebrate holidays.  How individuals view the roles of children (communicating with them and discipline) can deeply impact how connected a family feels to your program and your interactions with them.  In order to successfully include diverse cultures in an early childhood program for instance we must look at the deeper meaning of culture.

Looking at what comes to the minds of others when asked to define these terms I realize how important it is that we broaden our definition in order to really understand other cultures.  When we look at a group of people that all have the same skin color, wear the same clothes, and eat the same types of food we begin to overgeneralize about cultures and make assumptions about how people will react or respond to given situations.  We want to sometimes believe that culture and diversity is something that we can see with our eyes, but true culture is something much more personal and is reflected in the ways we go about our daily business, duties, and interactions.

Reference

Laureate Education (Producer). (2011). Culture and diversity [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu