Why has education become acultural?

[BurnedOut]

I am getting more and more interested in exploring my own culture not for the sake of forming an identity based on it but due to the fact that I have largely been ignorant about any specific culture. I just recently found out that my mother tongue - Marathi was never written in Devanagri script (the one Hindi uses) until independence when the government enforced my state to use Marathi officially but only in Devanagri script. What is more surprising is that Marathi and Hindi sound similar but are very different if you track their origins. Marathi-speaking populace generally excel at picking up Hindi but not the opposite.

I realized this morning while conversing with mom and granny that my education has been thoroughly acultural. If you see, most of the education systems in the world have a universal standard guiding their curriculum and operation with extremely heavy Westernization in it. To be fair, I have been deconstructing the occidental influences on my behavior and it is slowly but surely pissing me off and making me feel stupid about calling myself a rational person and not grasping the importance of cultural knowledge. This is actually disrupting education to a good extent as students tend to learn everything much more quickly in their own language - a roiling debate in my countries since decades.

This leads me to the main question - is the acultural trend beneficial? With the West having an evergrowing influence on education systems across the world, millenials, I hypothesize, are slowly turning homogeneous in their overall behaviours. This seems to be bad in the long run because culture plays a huge role in how you react and how you think. But the steady rise of 'universal text' is replacing native cultures with a common set of behaviours that are enforced. Corporates are the best example of this. Corporate employees and employers have a distinct western mode of life than other entrepreneurs and indie workers. One of the simplest example will be the enforcement of shirt, tie and pants being the office uniform. These clothes are not suitable to the type of tropical climate India generally experiences. Jeans are clearly a nuisance for most in all climates and yet Jeans and shirts are widely adopted. Fashion plays a big role in Indian culture. The historical garments worn reflect the common sense that populace showed to adapt to a certain type of terrain and climate. However, if you carefully observe, apart from women, who have shown keen acumen in mixing traditional with western fashion, nobody really seems distinct. The only straw remaining for cultural preservation is the preservation of various languages but also seems like a difficult task as people are less and less interested in pushing cultural studies into academics and instead going gung-ho in CS and STEM fields. Humanities is already seeing a great downfall in the academic world over time.

I think that the word 'modern' does not reflect a 'progressive and more efficient version of the past' but only a set of cherrypicked behaviors that are easy to be universalized. I am unsure if 'modern' means 'better'. I think it means 'brief' and 'easy to grasp than previous behaviours'. Of course, none of this applies to the hard sciences but it does play an influential role in every other field that is not science.

 

[scorpiomover]

I am getting more and more interested in exploring my own culture not for the sake of forming an identity based on it but due to the fact that I have largely been ignorant about any specific culture. I just recently found out that my mother tongue - Marathi was never written in Devanagri script (the one Hindi uses) until independence when the government enforced my state to use Marathi officially but only in Devanagri script. What is more surprising is that Marathi and Hindi sound similar but are very different if you track their origins. Marathi-speaking populace generally excel at picking up Hindi but not the opposite.

I realized this morning while conversing with mom and granny that my education has been thoroughly acultural.

That's why people who hardly went to church, would still make their children go to Sunday school, so their kids knew at least one culture. It's easier to learn a 2nd language than the first, and the same goes for other things.

The only straw remaining for cultural preservation is the preservation of various languages but also seems like a difficult task as people are less and less interested in pushing cultural studies into academics and instead going gung-ho in CS and STEM fields. Humanities is already seeing a great downfall in the academic world over time.

On quora, I found a few threads where a lot of Chinese and Indians said that they were going into computers and STEM, because it was supposed to pay well, even though they hated their jobs and would much rather do something else.

Today, people in the West, China and India aspire to be rich. They look at rich billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and aspire to be like them.

You don't hear of many people in the humanities who are billionaires.

I think that the word 'modern' does not reflect a 'progressive and more efficient version of the past' but only a set of cherrypicked behaviors that are easy to be universalized. I am unsure if 'modern' means 'better'. I think it means 'brief' and 'easy to grasp than previous behaviours'. Of course, none of this applies to the hard sciences but it does play an influential role in every other field that is not science.

'Modern' represents the latest new developments. If you encounter a new animal, he could be a fluffy puppy or a Komodo dragon. So 'modern' doesn't mean better.

But 'modern' could mean 'better' because the new is unknown. So this drive for modernity means that people are generally dissatisfied with their lot, and so they are looking for greener pastures, hoping they'll be better than where they are now.

To be fair, I have been deconstructing the occidental influences on my behavior and it is slowly but surely pissing me off and making me feel stupid about calling myself a rational person and not grasping the importance of cultural knowledge.

Good for you. Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." By examining your life, you are making your life worth living now.

If you see, most of the education systems in the world have a universal standard guiding their curriculum and operation with extremely heavy Westernization in it.

This leads me to the main question - is the acultural trend beneficial? With the West having an evergrowing influence on education systems across the world, millenials, I hypothesize, are slowly turning homogeneous in their overall behaviours. This seems to be bad in the long run because culture plays a huge role in how you react and how you think. But the steady rise of 'universal text' is replacing native cultures with a common set of behaviours that are enforced.

Yes, but when most people chase the one same thing (money), then demand & supply becomes 1-dimensional and monolithic, and thus goods and services become 1-dimensional and monolithic, and thus culturally homogeneous.

Corporates are the best example of this. Corporate employees and employers have a distinct western mode of life than other entrepreneurs and indie workers. One of the simplest example will be the enforcement of shirt, tie and pants being the office uniform. These clothes are not suitable to the type of tropical climate India generally experiences.

Corporate culture of wearing a suit & tie, only applies to those doing middle-class jobs that don't require getting your hands dirty. The majority worked in the trades, and so wore overalls. So the corporate culture was that most people would NOT wear a suit and tie.

A suit and tie was smart, and withdrew attention from one's clothes, which gave service-users the impression that here was a man who cared to not appear slovenly to clients, and therefore would make the effort to provide a good service to clients, while still giving the impression that his job was the main thing he cared about, not about which colour clothes he was going to wear today to impress the honeys. Suits are about expressing an air of courteous professionalism, which is why doctors would wear suits under their lab coats.

If you're a consummate professional who earns 6 figures because your work is worth 6 figures, then when you're visiting an accountant in England, you wear a suit, and when you're visiting a construction site, you wear a hard hat.

But today, many people wear suits for the same reasons as many people use the latest buzzwords, to seem like they are competent expert professionals, so they get the wealthiest jobs.

Jeans are clearly a nuisance for most in all climates and yet Jeans and shirts are widely adopted.

Denim is a very strong material that is great for overalls for people who work in jobs like car mechanics and other trades, as it doesn't rip easily. So lots of working-class men wore denim at work, and even when they left work and socialised in the pub.

In the 1950s, young working-class men became considered more attractive than rich bankers. A clothes designer did a campaign to make the denim look popular. Young men changed to appear to more attractive, by wearing lots of denim.

Fashion plays a big role in Indian culture. The historical garments worn reflect the common sense that populace showed to adapt to a certain type of terrain and climate.

If you study the history of Western culture over the past 1,000 years, the French and the British upper classes were heavily into wearing the fashionable clothing of their time.

However, if you carefully observe, apart from women, who have shown keen acumen in mixing traditional with western fashion, nobody really seems distinct.

If everyone in a country wants to be as rich as Elon Musk, and everyone in that country believes that people only get the high-paying jobs because of corruption such as nepotism, then they believe that doing quality work doesn't make you wealthier, but rather being part of an oligarchy, and then everyone wants to dress like the oligarchy.

They even want to talk like the oligarchy, and seem like the oligarchy. So if the elites come from English-speaking countries, everyone then wants to speak English and call themselves "Dave".

 

[ZenRaiden]

That's why people who hardly went to church, would still make their children go to Sunday school, so their kids knew at least one culture. It's easier to learn a 2nd language than the first, and the same goes for other things.

But do you really know culture if you sit in Sunday school?

On quora, I found a few threads where a lot of Chinese and Indians said that they were going into computers and STEM, because it was supposed to pay well, even though they hated their jobs and would much rather do something else.

Today, people in the West, China and India aspire to be rich. They look at rich billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and aspire to be like them.

You don't hear of many people in the humanities who are billionaires.

Education is massive time and energy investment.
For every minute you are learning something you could possibly do something better.
So if you are smart you are going to look for things where your investment is worth the time you put in.
Since most teachers say math is important and computers are the future its not that surprising students end up studying these subjects if they are smart.
The billionaires on TV just confirm the bias schools give them.
So if you have young people who don't know much about anything and the whole school system is about being told things to do and if you are told things to do you are a good student and get good grades, means you learn to associate things that you are told to do with good things.
So you are told something and you do it in hopes that you can end up using the knowledge that you have to make money feed a family and perhaps be rich enough to be happier than impoverished people.
As far as I know the rich guys are not rich due to doing things they were told to do, but rather doing things that most people did not.
So it means they produced something that did not exist before and put it on market.

However many people think that BIll Gates is the guy who made new things and Steve Jobs made new things and Zuckerberg made new things.

But we know they did not make new things.
They took old ideas that were pretty good, but improved on them so much that when they put them on market it made the world buy it so much it made them billionaires.

But many people with really new ideas rarely become billionaires.
Ergo tesla scraped by, because he did lots of science, but not much else.
Edison was taking other peoples stuff and improving it and spend time commercialize it.

So Tesla was smart, but poor.
Edison was smart but rich.

The difference here is that being rich is about putting highly valuable things on market, but being smart.
So when people tell you that being smart equals being successful and rich, but they do not teach you how to improve ideas and how to finance works or how the market works you are kind of on the road to be doing lots of useful stuff, but not much money.

So if teacher tells you that knowing math is equal to success they should also add that everyone else smart already knows math.
This means people with decades of experience will be your competition on the market.
Or people who have such talent that you might as well sell icecream instead of putting huge lump of time into something that makes you get payed only very little in return for your time.
Or you end up teaching math to people and telling them how math is important and that if they don't know how to add and subtract they will not have a good life.

 

[Hadoblado]

I don't really understand the OP.

I fail to see how you conclude anything about this is acultural. It's just incongruence between your micro and macro culture. I was also raised differently from my macroculture, but I share the culture I was raised in with the people who raised me (hippy) while also taking in the macroculture over time (normie) and adopting cultural beliefs, preferences, and practices that appeal to me in my processes of individuation (e.g. wanky music, science, edgy humour).

Maybe I'm going a bit hard there. I previously thought of myself as acultural but that was based on not understanding.

Modern does not mean better. The sociological nomenclature for periods is cancer. I think the most useful definition is the post-industrial narrative that there is a singular best way to do things (hence homogeny => everyone gravitating towards that shared "best" answer"). This understanding helps when you're falling down the post-modernism rabbit hole (a rejection of modern narratives).

Can you elaborate on what you mean by downfall of humanities?

 

[Geauvoir]

The acultural trend is a side effect of globalization and fast communications. I don't think it would exist if it wasn't necessary for people across the world to work effectively with each other. Overall, I think the benefits of a globalized education outweigh the cons of the culture loss.

That's not to say we can't mitigate the effects of culture loss. It's not very difficult to incorporate cultural aspects into a mostly acultural-based education system. For instance, in my country, we all learn our mother tongues. Note that we are a multiracial country. So the Chinese will learn Mandarin, the Malays will learn Bahasa Melayu, and the Indians learn Tamil. The tradeoff is that dialects are being lost, of course, but then there is no particular need for them in my society anyway. We also celebrate national food, religions, races, and identities. The acultural bit is that, for example, no one studies the Quran in my school system. The cultural bit is that on Hari Raya, the school creates events for us to learn about Islam. Or Chinese/Indian students support Malay students during Ramadan if they can.

Another aspect is cultural intelligence. This is actually a course taught in my old secondary school. It's relevant as the world changes with globalization too. Cultural intelligence refers to the skill to relate and work effectively in culturally diverse situations. It's the capability to cross boundaries and prosper in multiple cultures.

So we seek to find a compromise that educates students about their (and other people's) culture without enforcing it and preparing students for a globalized world. The fact of the matter is, whether you like it or not, an acultural system is here to stay with the one-world culture of globalization. We don't need to discuss if it's beneficial, only how to prepare ourselves to our greatest advantage.

With the West having an evergrowing influence on education systems across the world, millenials, I hypothesize, are slowly turning homogeneous in their overall behaviours. This seems to be bad in the long run because culture plays a huge role in how you react and how you think. But the steady rise of 'universal text' is replacing native cultures with a common set of behaviours that are enforced.

How are millennials turning homogenous? I bet if you find a millennial in Kuwait and a millennial in China, they would be vastly different. Sure, they might have some similarities in that they are of the same age group and that they have been exposed to the one-world culture like nearly everyone in this world has. But interestingly, the Western influence that has leaked into Kuwait is probably different from the Western influence that has leaked into China. We borrow from each other's cultures all the time. That's how all culture evolves. The 'universal text' of corporations is necessary to create a conflict-free working system across very different cultures.

One of the simplest example will be the enforcement of shirt, tie and pants being the office uniform. These clothes are not suitable to the type of tropical climate India generally experiences.

Yes, this is an interesting topic. Have you heard of the Maori MP in New Zealand who refused to wear a tie? My theory is that this is a matter of history. The first international corporations probably came from the West; god knows they've been colonizing us for how many centuries. The subsequent corporations, wherever they are based, probably took after the first ones - including the code of dress for employees.

As for jeans and shirt being the preferred fashion in your country, no one's stopping you from wearing cultural clothes. I know that in Japan, a relatively large percentage of people still consider kimono for daily wear. You'll also notice that while Korean and Japanese streetwear is very different from their traditional garments, it is also very different from, say, streetwear in Europe. Fashion changes. In India, it's probably not the same case though. Hey, perhaps that's a niche business idea - Indian streetwear taking after elements of traditional clothing!