Culture and Education

Culture plays a critical part in education systems, especially as they are the gateway in which all children learn the world around them. However, the education system teaches students a particular type of culture: in our case Down Under, the so-called typical Australian culture and identity.

Crikey.

Apple (1996:14) calls hegemonic culture. It is the cultural identity that is dominant within a society and pervades and overrides all other cultural identities. It isn’t coercive. But it’s on top of the school popularity ladder.

Students in Australia are taught an Anglo-American, highly Western, form of education that inclines them to behave and understand the world through certain Western ideologies and agendas. This is particularly evident in the ways in which Indigenous history and circumstances are sidelined, if not marginalised, insofar that it is not taught parallel to the rest of the curriculum.

In fact, I remember at school Indigenous history was not really priority, even when having to endure the cumbersome White Anglo centric approach to British colonisation.

Colonisation.

Not invasion.

I was educated in a curriculum that romanticised the British arrival.

Don’t blame me.

Students are taught to realign themselves with typical white Australian beliefs and ideology. Other cultures don’t necessary become secondary. They become homogenised and a general understanding of their cultural identity prevails.

This is evident in “What type of Asian Are You?” – a YouTube video that highlights how cultural identities can be homogenised through basic superficial understandings such as stereotypes.

For those that didn't watch.... The video simply outlines how Asian culture and identity has been homogenised by the American, but what I think it does also, is effectively highlight how White Anglo culture (in this case American) reflects upon itself as being the normative standard; the American looks upon his identity as one that is not crafted, but the principle identity in which others are differentiated from.

The Australian curriculum does the same through its Eurocentric values and beliefs. It has little regard to Indigenous culture and identity (Andersen and Walter, 2010:71). I argue that the Indigenous identity is always under scrutiny as the lens in which we identify them through is clouded with White Eurocentric prejudice.

Marginalisation of Indigenous history not only reinforces White dominance as their voice is further suppressed under Australian hegemonic culture; but also reinforces their secondary cultural status within popular national Australian identity.

Lastly, continual ineffective policy changes do not support the necessary role and importance that is required of Indigenous history in our educational context, and only continues to limit Indigenous identity and culture.

Andersen C. and Walter, M. (2010), “Indigenous Perspectives and Cultural Identity” in Hyde, M., Carpenter, L. and Conway, R. (eds.), Diversity and Inclusion in Australian Schools, Oxford: Australia and New Zealand

Apple, M.W. (1996), Cultural Politics and Education, Teachers College Press: New York

helpmefindparents, (May 23, 2013), What Kind of Asian are you? Accessed Monday 23/09/2013 at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWynJkN5HbQ>