Culture 1

Running head: CULTURE

Culture and the Culture Learning Process

Márcio Padilha

Lewis-Clark State College

Dr. Chavez /EDUC 435

Fall 2006
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Culture and the Culture Learning Process

Having spent the first two-thirds of my life in Brazil and the remaining one third

in the United States, I have experienced, during my twelve years of residence in this

country, some moments of intense self introspection as a consciously involuntary attempt

to understand the cause and effect of the transactional relations which exist between me

and the micro and macro culture which surrounds me.

First, as I now realize, being “Brazilian” is a complex issue, comparable to that of

being “American,” as, in both cases, regionalism plays a foremost role in the cultural

identity formation process. With that in mind, I will start my culture specific self

classification by socio-geographically asserting that I was born and raised in Porto

Alegre, a city of prestigious sociopolitical status, which, being the Capital of the State of

Rio Grande do Sul, has always had, throughout my lifetime, a population of no less than

1.5 million inhabitants. The State, on its turn, is one of the three most powerful,

economically and politically, within the nation.

Hence, such was the prism through which I mechanically acquired what I

eventually realized to be a culturally predetermined set of perceptions which guided my

inner self in all of its transactional relationships with and towards both the macro and

microculture which surrounded me during my primary and early secondary stages of

socialization.

At a first stage, in light of regional differences, I, obliviously contemptuous of

what was perceived to be foreign, developed a perception of superiority, which I now

perceive to be commonly shared by majority of southerners, towards Brazilians from

other regions. In rationalizing such mind-set, however, it is imperative to realize the

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pivotal role, inert as to the principles of social constructivism, played by socializing

agents such as school and media, both electronic and in print, as well as family,

generationally victimized by years of passive uncontested exposure to subliminal

discriminatory imagery that primarily stressed, as a whole, the values of one regional

culture in detriment to the other.

With that said, and in order to further understand the process of cultural

acquisition that surrounded me, it is important to visualize that Brazil is geographically

subdivided in five regions: south, southeast, northeast, north and west-central. Secondly,

for a better understanding of the problem, it is fundamental to acknowledge that each of

the aforesaid geo-cultural regions has its implicit set of subjective preconceived

perceptions in relation to the other.

With that in mind, it is now essential to get acquainted with such general

preconceived perceptions. Hence, as to sum them up briefly, I will report that although

northerners have the self-perception of being the proud “owners” of the Amazon,

northeasterners, southeasterners and southerners tend to view them as a primitive

subculture which, somewhat analogue to that of the west-central region, does not have

much to contribute to the rest of the nation and, in light of that, are better left alone in the

confines of the Amazon Jungle. Northeasterners, on the other hand, take great pride in

being the “birthplace” of the country and subsequently for having the highest density of

national historical sites. As such, they primarily live off a very well-structured and

developed tourism industry whose heavy media promotion with imagery of beaches,

relaxation and fun, thence distorting the sense of reality, ultimately causes them to be

resented by the “primitive” northerners and west centralists who view them as people
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who did not quite make it like southeasterners and southerners, but who were lucky

enough, due to a series of situational issues, to have crossed the line out of primitivism

whereas southerners and southerners perceive northeasterners as unproductive and lazy

people whose only concern is having fun. Southeasterners, in turn, pride themselves in

having been the seat of Imperial Period as well as “owning” majority of Brazil’s current

industrial park. Nonetheless, northerners, west-centralists and northeasterners negatively

perceive southeasterners as ruthless business-oriented people whereas southerners,

viewing them in the exact same manner, are on the other end of the spectrum, i.e.

appreciate the fact they are fierce competitors in the common race for social, economic

and political status within the nation, a point of view which is, by the way, reciprocal.

Finally, northerners, west centralists and northeasterners, as well as southeasterners to a

degree, do not tend to view southerners as an integral part of Brazil, a stand which is

likely to stem out of the south’s very peculiar socio-geographical reality that not only

hosts the highest density of Caucasians but also a subtropical climate, which, unlike the

tropical remainder of the country, allows for the four seasons to change well enough that

they can be perceived.

With that regional contention in mind, as I started getting to know my country by

traveling within its territory, I instinctively initiated a spontaneous critical analysis of

“macro cultures” which, at that moment and place, surrounded me. In doing so, I could

not help but notice that all the pseudo culture specific information which had been fed to

me through a variety of socializing agents did not necessarily pan out. As I engaged in

culture-general bidirectional transactions with the surrounding micro macroculture, more

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often than not, I came to find out it had much more to offer, and exchange, than what had

been previously “advertised” to me.

Additionally, this impromptu experiment further challenged the utopia of the

Brazilian racial status quo which preaches that racism is nonexistent. Although the

Brazilian social fabric is composed of several ethnicities, while in Brazil, one will rarely

hear of terms such as ethnic or minority groups. This utopian mentality, which evolved

into a legislative body which actively prosecutes and severely punishes both racial

profiling as well as racism, both of which are classified as heinous crimes, is likely to

stem out of our historical process as the Portuguese, being the Colonial Supremacist race,

were determined to exterminate all non-Caucasian ethnic groups present in the Brazilian

Colony not by genocide, but by miscegenation; hence disseminating all racial differences

by merging them and idealistically emerging as one single multiethnic race, one definite

bold ideology for the mid-16th Century.

Nevertheless, in critically observing what one Brazilian had to say about the

“other,” I came to the personal conclusion that, at a much more fundamental level, we,

the Brazilian people, still struggle with bias issues and that, as stated by anthropologist

Roberto DaMatta, there are many Brazils within Brazil.

As this observational process carried on, I came to an even more pungent

realization as in my very own micro macroculture, the natives of the State of Rio Grande

do Sul were historically self-denominated “gaúchos,” a term which is a commonly-used

descriptor for residents of the South American pampas, found principally in parts of

Argentina, Uruguay, and the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil (Wikipidia,

Gaucho).
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In light of that, I have realized, as well as enthralled about, the fact that there are,

indeed, cultural elements which bind us, Brazilian Gaúchos more closely to a “foreign”

culture, namely Argentinean and Uruguayan, than to “our own.” Then again, in

addressing this complex issue, one must further realize that “Brazilianess” fundamentally

stems out of the oppositionally dichotomized perception that throughout our Colonial and

Imperial Periods, Brazilians essentially perceived themselves as being a “lost piece of

Portugal” in the Americas, thence never acquiring a sense of belonging to the American

continent (DaMatta, 11, 1984), whereas the Portuguese, perceiving Brazilians to be “a

sick and condemned set of intermixed races likely to degenerate biologically,

psychologically and socially” (DaMatta, 11, 1984), never accepted us as a part of their

own. In addition to this love-hate binomial relationship, Brazilians, being heirs of the

Portuguese resentment of Spain’s 87-year-long annexation of Portugal during the 16th

Century (Entroportugal), grew a strong national identity which, while being the

centerpiece of Brazilian cultural cohesion, concomitantly establishes an ethnocentric,

quasi xenophobic, position which dictates that Brazil, as its very own entity, has

absolutely nothing to do with the Spanish-speaking neighboring nations. Thus, perception

of a cultural commonality with two of the neighboring Spanish-speaking countries

creates an interesting paradoxal conundrum.

With that in mind and all other issues considered, I couldn’t help but notice that

whereas language, being one of the most central elements of culture binding, differs,

other sources of cultural identity, permeating the man-made political international

borders, are transactionally harmonious as the cultures of Southern Brazil, Argentina and

Uruguay, both individually and collectively, share a great esteem, and transactional
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symmetry regarding gender, health, ethnicity, nationality, religion, geography age and

social status. This communal cohesiveness is, thence, sufficiently strong as to create a

supranational microculture yet satisfactorily weak as to not detach or deflect the involved

parties from their own macrocultures.

Then, at a second stage in life, I was again exposed to concomitantly “culturally

perceiving” and “being culturally perceived” by the macroculture of the United States, if

such thing essentially exists, when I immigrated to the United States.

Upon my arrival in 1995, I did puzzle several people in the United States who

stereotypically expected me to be, as stated in our textbook, a “person of color” who

should further know how to folk-dance and have a communicational deficit in English

language. Yet, as I stepped “off the boat,” I was absolutely everything but the

stereotypical non-English speaking minority South American immigrant. Tall and slender,

then at a 5’11” and 190 lbs, Caucasian, black hair and eyes, I did not, and still do not,

know how to do the samba while I could speak English with an impressive vocabulary

and a nearly imperceptible accent. Consequently, the combination of all these

characteristics, in juxtaposition with the human intrinsic need to categorize, caused

sporadic mutual social discomfort as people in my inner community, needing to assign

me a category, were simply unable to define me by the set of socio-cultural parameters

that existed in their comfort zone.

At this stage, the reigning events of my new immigrant life prompted me to

concomitantly start reasserting my cultural identity as to find an equitable middle ground

which would both suffice the “needs” of the macroculture that engulfed me without

necessarily sacrificing my sense of self. On a personal level, that meant that if while in
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Brazil, I thought of myself as a Gaúcho, in the United States I redefined myself as an

Italo-Brazilian, which brings forth a whole new set of bias and perceptions.

As stated in our textbook (Cushner 2006), culture is both learned and shared with

the family being one of the socializing agents. Therefore, in order for a family to exist,

physical presence, affection and caring must coexist between the involved parties in order

for it to be treasured. Thus, given that my paternal grandfather had died sixteen years

before I was born, this alleged Hispanic heritage I have through him, as the family was

originally Uruguayan, is de facto neither meaningful nor existent to me. On the other

hand, in light of my extremely close relationship with my paternal grandmother who,

being of Italian descent, instilled in me the Italian values passed down to her by her Italo-

Brazilian father and Italian grandparents well enough that I see myself as a member of

the group. Yet, in light of my many years in the United States, another facet of cultural

identity, as a learned factor, has surfaced in me as my sister jokingly accused of being

“too American” the last time I visited Brazil three years ago. Furthermore, in direct

agreement to such position, my in-laws have said “oh, he’s Brazilian again” when they

perceive me acting in a non-American way after I arrive from a visit to South America.

Another peculiarity I experienced, regarding perceptual issues, took place soon

after my marriage. I had entered the United States legally and, under the conditions of my

tourist visa, I was granted, by the Immigration officer at the port of entry in Los Angeles,

six-month permanence with the stipulation of no remunerated-work permission. During

the validity of the six-month permission, I got married to a US citizen, which altered my

immigration status and, precisely at this point, preconceived perceptions started clouding

reality. Initially, most people imagine that a foreign citizen who marries a US Citizen is
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automatically granted a Green Card and the subsequent permission to engage in gainful

employment. Hence, that not being the case, I started becoming the target of all sorts of

derogatory remarks and grief in light of my marriage and incapability, then perceived as

undesired, to work. If that were not enough, as part of the Green Card acquisition

procedure, I had to surrender my INS Form I-94, which is the immigration official

document that proves a foreign person’s legal immigration status in the United States in

exchange of which they, i.e. the immigration authorities, put a big red stamp on one of

my passport pages which read “INS – PAROLED.” Totally oblivious to the popular

connotation given to the term by pop culture phenomena like “America’s Most Wanted”,

I could not understand people’s expressions when they, for whatever reason, need to see

my passport. It was only much later that I was able to grasp the negative connotation to

that term as, whereas I inferred it solely for what it was, i.e. “allowed to stay in the

United States,” other people perceived that I must have had committed this horribly

heinous crime and was only allowed to roam the streets again do the piety of the

American Judicial System.

Once more, at a later occasion, immigration law played a pivotal role in making

me question the perceptual status quo of this society. As part of the US naturalization

process I had applied for, I had to take a civics exam. Hence, wanting to do well, I

studied all the 100 questions, out of which 10 are pulled, in full detail. However, no

sooner than I had finished the test, I ran into an ideological dispute with the tester/grader.

One of the test questions was “Where does Freedom of Speech come from?” to which I

answered “The First Amendment of the US Constitution.” Surprisingly enough, I got that

question wrong as his grading key said the correct answer was the “Bill of Rights.” As if
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having to argue that the First Amendment of the US Constitution is part of the Bill of

Rights were not aggravating enough, the native-US-born-and-raised-proud-of-his-country

immigration officer informed me that he did not know whether that was the case himself

and, hence, in light of that, there would be no other alternative than deferring to what the

grading key said, in turn, making lose a point for my answer which was ultimately

correct.

Although that one point deduction did not hinder me from moving forward with

my naturalization process, I could not help but mentally question, as that surrealistic

secret conversation was taking place in the confines of a small windowless governmental

office, the validity of all the process as it has always been my personal assertion that the

ones who know less must yield to those who know more. Furthermore, after the

naturalization ceremony had taken place, I felt as if, in the eyes of some people, I had

been, using an illustrative Roman Catholic analogy, chosen by the Vatican for sainthood

when, in reality, my perception of the matter was that, if at an intellectual level I realized

the grandiosity of the sociopolitical rights I had acquired, I had failed to comprehend why

that small paper named “Certificate of Naturalization” had the power of making some

people see me as worthier. If others perceived that ceremonial as honor, I did not due to

the fact that, rather than having been chosen out of thousands in recognition of some

meritoriously pious act I had committed, I sought it out of my own volition, having only

been granted the “right” after having rigorously complied with three fundamental rules:

paying heavy fees, passing a test whose content I knew better than the examiner did and

staying out of criminal trouble, which, as I had always perceived, was no favor to anyone,

but rather a self-imposed ethical obligation.

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Although some may perceive it in such a way, I am not resentful of what I have

experienced in this adopted country of mine. I do, however, question its status quo on a

constant basis, respectfully voicing my dissent and pointing the out what I perceive to be

idiosyncratic to those who care to listen having; consequently doing the same when I

return to my home country.

Hence, having realized, from previous personal experiences, that perceptions, as

an integral component of the transactional communication model, can and do influence

individual attitudes and further believing that, in light of the aforementioned personal

experiences, there is no cultural absolutism in regards to “rights” and “wrongs,” I, while

serving as a long-term guest teacher at a junior high school during the 2005-2006 school

year, worked my hardest to promote cultural accommodation over academic modification

as to entice plenipotentiary inclusion of all parties with the ultimate goal of broadening

the horizons of both the US and foreign-born students I had in class.

Having been assigned to guest-teach, on a long-term basis, in ninth grade

Language Arts Writing at a Junior High School, I first clearly noticed that my presence

caused furor within the masses, i.e. some of the staff, some of the student body and some

of the families, during the parent-teacher-student conferences which took place shortly

after I took the position.

The “how-can-you-a-foreign-born-non-English-speaker-possibly-be-doing-this?”

type of conversation always started off with my name. Then, as I further introduced

myself and confirmed that I was from South America, I sometimes noticed eyes gawking.

Some individuals were so startled by this tangent that my English mastery, denoted by

my high syntax conversation and quasi unnoticeable accent, most commonly went
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unnoticed. Paradoxically, I judgmentally resented being judged by persons who disputed

my performance capability while using expression such as “it ain’t,” “she don’t,” “we

was” and “I says,” which, in and by themselves, both sets of judging, infer another

cultural spectrum into the socio-cultural dynamics at play.

Thus being, and in order to carry out the teaching I was expect to, I instinctively

felt the need to better know my target audience, probably one remaining trait from when I

pursued a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism back in Brazil.

Hence, I initiated my teaching assignment by first, thoroughly and voluntarily,

evaluating my target audience with the tools available through school’s classroom

management software and, once I became aware that I would be facing 167 ninth graders

who were 50.37% male and 49.63% female, with 51.35% at 14 years of age, 42.57% at

15 years of age and 6.08% at 16 years of age, out of which 81.76% were Caucasian,

13.53% Hispanic/Latino, 2.94% Asian, 1.18% African-American and 0.59%American

Indian/Native Alaskan; being that of those 86.45% were native English language speakers

and 15.55% ESL at different levels of proficiency with 6.45% of them speaking Spanish,

3.23% Bosnian, 1.94% Russian, 1.29% Vietnamese and 0.69% Chinese, out of whom

92.26% had been born in the United States, 2.58% in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2.58% in

Mexico, 1.93% in Uzbekistan and 0.65% in Saudi Arabia, further being that 5.93%

received Special Education services whereas 4.44% were under the Section 504 umbrella

and 0.74% being serviced by the FAST Program, which caters to emotionally disturbed

students who are prone to oppositional defiance, I felt I was prepared to rationalize,

reflect and deflect the scenarios which were likely to develop before me during the

coming months into culturally meaningful academic experiences.

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Out of the seven classes I preside over, one in particular sticks out as it

congregated age, hence maturity, gender, language and race issued.

As I had predicted, I did encounter friction between students. Nonetheless, on the

issue of diversity, I, as their foreign-born teacher, was also another “ingredient” of this

diversity pie, a reality which was not part of their conscious realm of possibilities. Hence,

right up front, one female student arrogantly said “Hey, Mr… watch out for the

Russians… they’re stupid!” As I am the let’s-all-get-along-because-we-all-live-on-the-

same-planet type of guy, I just asked what the reasons that prompted her to such

statement were and, as she replied that it was because they did not speak English, I

automatically started addressing the class in Portuguese, continuing to do so for

approximately the next ten to fifteen minutes. Then, reverting back to English, I asked if

anyone had understood what I had just said. Once nobody had, I proceed to ask if any of

them thought of themselves as “stupid.” As, once again, nobody did, I proceeded to

explain that “language is a code, primarily of sounds and how those sounds relate to

things in order to make sense and consequently facilitate a communicational exchange

between people.” Therefore, “being that it is merely a code, which is similar to the

combination of the lock on your school locker, not knowing the code, like not knowing

the lock combination, does not make anyone stupid.”

As a follow-up to this, and with communication, both verbal and written, being

the key issue for successful academic development, I, drawing from my own previous

experience as a former exchange student, believed, both philosophically and ethically,

that empathy I felt for the plight of my ESL students, most of whom being LEP1, would

better serve them if, instead of allowing for curricular modifications, I would provide
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them ample accommodations as to bridge their communicational deficit, ultimately

shooting for a performance comparable to that of the native English-speaking student.

In light of such premise as well as of the fact we were to work with consecrated

literary pieces such as the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Harvey Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I searched and successfully found, online, the

necessary materials translated into the target languages I needed. Thus, as I started

furnishing the ESL students with both the text originally written in English as well as the

translation in their native language, not only did I feel that these at-risk students were

quite pleasantly surprised, evidenced in their big smiles and their telling and teaching me

“thank-you” in their native languages, but also I noticed, with official assessments that

back up such view, that attitudes changed, allowing for personal and cultural growth,

hence deflecting them from a sense of marginality within the group, which, blurring the

lines of preconceptions, permeated through social biases and resulted into a much greater

overall academic achievement.

As one teacher who visited my classroom during this class period in question

commented, it was like “The Land of Oz on acid!” as there were native-English speakers

helping ESL-speakers to read in English whereas at other occasions ESL-Speakers read

to English-speakers in their native languages, just for the culturally exploratory fun of it.

Nothing was ever right nor was it ever wrong for the matter being in what one student

once referred to as “The Kingdom of Mr. P” so long as I could present evidence, if

requested, that the School-District-mandated curriculum was being followed and that

academic progress was being achieved.

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Ultimately, I believe that my personal crusade to use existing in-class

multicultural element in order to educate and expand the US-born-monolingual-English-

speaking students’ horizons as well as to use them to mainstream, inasmuch as possible,

the foreign-born students in a non-threatening way to both paid off. To get such goal

accomplished, I told them stories about my life and my native country while asking the

same of them. As I worked my hardest to promote this cultural exchange, I always

instigated them to realize that, in cultural terms, there is no right or wrong, just

“different,” instead.

Furthermore, in purposefully premeditated modeling, with a major personal

underlying linguistic curiosity, I made the point of learning some phrases and key words

in those kids’ native languages and, in using them off and on, I demonstrate my interest in

reaching out to them as much as possible, ultimately in hopes that they will reach out

back. And I felt they did!

Although the work involved in keeping this atmosphere active, i.e. a multicultural

plurilinguistic classroom which kept up with the curriculum prescribed for a native-born-

English-speaking student audience, was borderline exhausting, it was just as rewarding

and, as this guest-teaching assignment came to an end, I left, not only with the certainty

that I had done everything I could and knew how in order to promote accommodations as

to facilitate inclusion and a subsequent cultural mediation, but I also did leave with the

documented evidence that the students under my teaching, specially the at-risk

population, had improved their grades and were able to achieve the school’s highest level

of proficiency in the Direct Writing Assessment, mandated by the Idaho State Department

of Education, for that grade.

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In closing, I believe that cultural identity is a flexible and pliable concept which

will osmotically metamorphose in light of an individual’s transactional relationships.

Specifically in relation to a classroom setting, I further believe that it can be fully used as

a powerful tool to validate individual different senses of self and the derivative legacy it

has to offer, thus promoting a greater human understanding in the sense of diminishing

generalizations, stereotypes and other biases while endorsing acceptability of a person’s

individuality and humanity.

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References

Cushener, K., McClelland, A., & Safford, P. (2006). Human diversity in education: an

integrative approach; 5th edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

DaMatta, R. (1984). O que faz o Brasil, Brasil? Porto Alegre: Mercado Alberto

Gaucho, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1 December 2006) Retrieved December

1st, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaucho

History of Portugal (2006). Retrieved December 1st, 2006, from

http://www.enterportugal.com/history.html

Portugal: history and events (07 July 2006). Retrieved December 1st, 2006, from

http://www.portugal-info.net/history/third-dynasty.htm