Cross-Cultural Issues in
Alaskan Education
Vol. II
PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE CHANGE AND EDUCATION
FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Andy Tamas
St. Paul, Alberta
(Ed. note: This
is a revision of a paper presented in 1979 to the Alberta government’s
ministerial committee on Native peoples’ education.)
Introduction
The current level of education in Canada’s northern
Native population is generally below national norms and far below
the level required
to ensure adequate benefit from the many employment opportunities
likely to become available through northern development in the next
few decades.
Not only will there be jobs directly related to energy resource
development projects, there also will be a general increase in population
and new
economic activity in a host of affiliated areas. Unless a concerted
effort is made to prepare northern people to take advantage
of these opportunities, most new activity is likely to benefit the
few
who are
already educated, or will be taken up by outsiders drawn north
by the promise of employment. Native residents will probably remain
at the
lower levels of the socio-economic ladder.
Although the focus
of this paper is related specifically to education for employment
arising from impending industrial
development in
the north, it is not limited to this relatively narrow area.
It is not enough to speak only of the training of Native peoples
for jobs
in industry. If education in its broadest sense means the
general uplifting of the quality of life in the community, we must
address
ourselves
to more than the strictly economic, employment-related aspects
of man. Education that is to benefit the community as a whole must
provide
skills to help each of us enrich our lives on many levels,
and must address a range of human characteristics and needs that
reach deeper
and broader than those usually found in employment-focused
training programs.
Consequently, although there is a definite need
for education that will improve Native peoples’ economic circumstances
and enable them to participate in jobs arising from development-related
projects, this broader perspective must be the context
within which
such education is considered.
Efforts are underway in many
countries to assist people from traditional cultures to make a
satisfactory transition
to
contemporary social and technological realities. However,
in northern Canada, part of one
of the world’s most affluent nations, the government
seems to have great difficulty in establishing programs
which make wide-spread
and significant improvements in Native peoples’ well-being.
Years of expenditure of massive sums of public dollars
in education and social
adjustment programs have not produced the expected results.
There
doesn’t appear to be a simple method for resolving
the many problems in this general area. Over the years,
many attempts
have been made to address this issue in Canada and, in
a broader perspective, in the international development
arena. The purpose of this paper is
to present my tentative and partially-formulated views
as a contribution to what will hopefully be a continuing
deliberation of this important
issue.
Education and Cultural Change
Education has been described as a goal-oriented
activity in a particular cultural context (Spindler, 1963).
It is clear
that
the issue of
education for economic development involves cultural
transmission and cultural
change. If society hopes to provide meaningful education
so that Native northerners can benefit from the massive
economic activity
foreseen
for the north and contribute to the well-being and
diversity of
the community at large, an educational bridge must
be built between two cultures -- the Native traditional
patterns
on the one hand, and
the dominant, pragmatic, efficiency-oriented, marked-economy
culture that pervades contemporary western society
on the other.
Bridges are usually built from both sides of the
gulf they are intended to span. Education is required
for both groups.
Unless
the dominant
sector is willing to undergo changes in outlook
comparable in scale to those so clearly cal led for by the educational
programs proposed
for the Native sector, the result is likely to
remain
an inadequate accommodation of the weaker party
to the inflexible
attitudes and expectations
of the other.
A course of action must be taken to
cause potential employers to look beyond customary patterns of
operation and to
adjust hiring practices to benefit all sectors
of the northern
population. Unless
legislative imperatives compel employers to shift
in this direction, industrial development is
likely to
focus clearly
on the maximum utilization
of available resources (including manpower) as
measured by efficiency and, profit criteria.
The social costs
of this
economic activity are
likely to be ignored. These will presumably be
picked up by government through its various health,
social
service, and justice or corrections
agencies. Industry must begin to examine and
re-evaluate the practices and habits of thought to which they
have become accustomed, and, in
so doing, begin to become aware of their own
culture and
the cultures of others.
Most of us are largely
unaware of our own culture (Hall, 1977). We have habits and thought
patterns
that are
distinctive products
of
our own upbringing, and we deal with the world
in the manner to which we
have become accustomed over the years. We assess
and understand our experience through complex “structures
of meaning” that
form the basis of our “psychological
framework” (Marris,
1975 and Schumacher, 1974). These concepts
are essential ingredients to be considered
in planning
education programs for societies undergoing
cultural change.
We seem to live by a complex
set of largely invisible “rules” which
we acquire as we mature. We become aware of
these rules most frequently when they are “broken,” i.e.,
when things don’t fit
our accepted or accustomed patterns of behavior.
Examples of this sort of invisible psychological
framework can be illustrated in the
customs of etiquette related to eating and
other appropriate mealtime behavior. When a
guest belches loudly following a hearty meal
he is,
to most people in the dominant North American
culture, committing a gross breach of etiquette.
Some Canadians would consider the guest
who belched to be socially inferior or generally “ill-bred,” and
would establish a whole set of patterns of
behavior for future interaction with him on
that basis. He’s breaking the rules we’ve
been taught in our society. It has been noted,
however, that in certain
eastern cultures the lack of such a loud belch
would be a comparable breach of etiquette,
and would cause as much consternation in the
hosts
as a Canadian’s belch would cause in
a dining roan in Ottowa.
One example of the
process of attaching value or meaning to others’ behavior
from our expectations, or psychological framework,
is illustrated by circumstances seen in the
pre-revolution relationship between North
American and Iranian businessmen and officials
(Hall, 1977). The Iranian education system
apparently placed great importance on being
able to
memorize and recite word-for-word at length
from relevant textbooks, manuals, product descriptions,
and ordinances, as the occasion demands.
The ability to memorize and retain vast amounts
of information is the mark of a competent,
well-educated person. When American businessmen
don’t manifest these traits, they are
often initially considered inferior by the
Iranians. By Iranian standards they probably
are, but
are Iranian standards necessarily valid in
all circumstances? In order to work together
in harmony it is necessary for participants
in
a transaction to recognize that their own sets
of rules, their ways of assessing and attributing
value to behavior or events, aren’t
the only valid ways to view the world. The
Iranians (and their North American counterparts)
must see that their culturally-determined,
complex
psychological system must be tempered to accommodate
varying cultural patterns if they’re
to have compatible relationships with their
foreign colleagues.
All societies have similar
culture-specific psychological processes which
play significant
roles in relationships
among people
from different cultural groups. Educational
programs for both parties
involved in
northern development must, if they are to succeed
in efforts to bridge the cultural gap across
the north,
be soundly
based on a
clear appreciation
of this fundamentally psychological nature
of culture, and must bear this aspect in mind
when
dealing
with education which involves
changes in culture.
Factors in Education for
Culture Change and Development
The educational needs of northern residents
cover the whole spectrum of courses and topics
offered
by most
institutions
in the country.
An affirmative-action oriented education
program for economic development implies training for
all levels
in industry,
from basic trades
to middle and senior management positions,
as well as the full range of specializations
required
in
other developed
societies. This paper won’t
specify courses to be offered, for this will
emerge from the manpower needs of various
sectors of the economy. Rather, it will focus
on some aspects which are necessary to bear
in mind as programs are
planned and implemented, regard less of the
subject being taught.
Culture, Learner Characteristics,
and Instructional Design
All educational activity
embodies, whether explicitly stated or not, an instructional
design process.
Instructional design is a
planning
process comprised of at least three major
components which,
simply put, can be termed a beginning,
a middle, and an end. An instructor
has a notion of where he’d like to
take his students (the end, the learning
goal or instructional objective); he makes
an assessment
of where students already are (the beginning,
or assessment of learner characteristics);
and then he devises some sort of structured
experience to have students interact with
the subject matter in order
to acquire the desired degree of exposure
or competence (the middle, the learning
process or means of instruction).
As stated
at the outset, education can
be perceived as a goal-oriented activity
within
a particular
cultural context. Each of these
three components of instructional design
is influenced by
culture, especially
that of the instructor. An instructor defines
educational outcomes in terms of his own
culture’s perspective. He makes assumptions
about students’ learning characteristics
based upon his accustomed thought processes,
and he structures educational experiences
from notions rooted in his particular way
of viewing the world.
The education of Native
people has (sometimes by design, but, I
suspect, largely by default)
subjected
Indian
students to
an educational
system
rooted in the Western European, Judeao-Christian
tradition. The implicit goals of this system
have been and continue
to be to
indoctrinate students into an industrialized
middle-class lifestyle, including wage
employment in the market
economy (Freire, 1970; Ogbu, 1979; Wilding
and George, 1976). The social and economic
reality of Native communities, however,
make students’ achievement of these
implicit and pervasive goals unattainable
at home.
Native values, which have been
developed over centuries of a subsistence
lifestyle
with a
rich spiritual
and social tradition, are very
different from contemporary industralized
society’s norms. It has been
shown that education or social change activities
based on values and beliefs which are at
variance with community norms are destructive
to community well-being and will tend to
make people want to leave
their communities (Goodenough, 1963). Because
most northern education systems embody
values vastly different from those of the
communities
in which they operate, they tend to exacerbate
problems arising from cultural discontinuity.
Several factors arise from the fundamental
incompatibility of the values (or culture)
embodied in the education
system with those in the students’ home
life. There have been suggestions that
the so-called “cross-over effect,” where
Native students’ age/grade relationships
fall below those for non-Native students,
is related to this incompatibility of values
(Bryde,
1970). Native students become intuitively
aware of this fundamental contradiction
of cultures at various ages, but usually
at the time
they are developing a self-concept and
identity. This awareness may contribute
to a progressive withdrawal of emotional
investment and
a lessening of desire to learn from the
school.
Native youth develop their personal
psychological structure of meaning from
the same source
we all do, i.e., from
the world seen about them
every day and from their family and community.
The “foreign world” they
can dimly perceive through the behavior
and exhortations of their teachers and
the books used in school is not adequate
to completely sustain
their desire for an explanation of reality
and a code to live by. But their home environment
is also insufficient to completely
provide for their desire to achieve a sense
of identity, for it, too, is in a state
of flux, with its fundamental patterns
becoming progressively
more removed from their traditional source
and heavily influenced by contemporary
economic and technological factors. Even
Indian religion
has diminished as a source of guidance
and community stability as various other
faiths have become established in Native
communities. Thus, Native
students are exposed to two often-conflicting
value systems. Although these students
attempt to base their personality and identity
upon
a blending of both, they are unable to
rely on this combination of systems to
form a coherent personal structure of meaning.
In the process
they also find it difficult to acquire
a basic education sufficient to provide
them with avenues to attain the economic
resources needed
to succeed in the world at large, so their
range of options from which to select (or
evolve) a lifestyle is severely limited.
Some
improvements have been attempted, however,
and have taken various forms.
Recent developments
which
involve
communities in controlling
their own education are progressing, but
are facing massive problems on several
fronts. Few Native-controlled
schools
operate
on values
significantly different from those found
in
the dominant public school system. Even
those schools
controlled
by Native communities
and employing
Native teachers have to contend with the
methods and values acquired by their staff
during their
training in the mainstream
cultural
milieu of urban university-based teacher
education programs. Regardless of public
statements to
the contrary,
the
implicit goal of most
universities’ Native
teacher education programs is to help Native
students acquire those values and competencies
considered the norm on campus. Even Native
instructors, then, are likely to conduct
their classes in a manner
conducive to having students acquire mainstream
cultural values, those values which also
underline the contemporary economic system.
The content
of instruction, which is often confined
strictly to a curriculum determined by
the state authority, rarely relates to
helping students make the
psychological adjustments faced in coping
with the contradictory value systems they
deal with in everyday life.
Ambivalence,
Accommodation and Values In Education
Native
cultures in North America (and traditional cultures throughout the
world) are undergoing
a major cultural
transition, and most
Native students and adults have personality
characteristics which embody
a profoundly ambivalent values base.
Many are in the process of slowly establishing
a distinctly
Native identity which
is consistent
with
the fundamental life-purposes of their
forefathers, but which, at the
same time, foster harmonious interaction
with the
contemporary
western social system. In this process
of progressive accommodation to new
forms of articulation of these formerly
prevalent and clearly articulated values
and principles,
individuals often experience
a sense of
loss, a psychological disorientation
that only slowly gains stability and
definition as the ambivalence diminishes.
Many
Native adults currently active in Indian organizations have told
this author
that
at one time they tried
to live in an urban,
middle-class
lifestyle, adopting those values as
their own. After a time they had lost their
sense of authenticity.
Although they
didn’t have a
clear idea of how to go about clarifying
their confusion and feelings of disorientation,
they knew they couldn’t accomplish
it in the city. Only by returning to
a more familiar environment could they
begin
to re-establish the tentative roots
of a solid identity by reasserting
their
connection with the culture of their
forefathers. Initially,
although many weren’t fully accepted
by the rest of the community, and didn’t
feel quite at home there themselves,
over the years they progressively worked
through the dualities and contradictions
in their own value systems. They slowly
developed a sense of belonging,
and in the process defined a contemporary
Native identity which is consistent
with the spiritual and social ideals
of their
ancestors.
A culturally insensitive
or ethnocentric educational process
will, however,
assume by default that
students are firmly
established in, and ready to function
within, an exclusively mainstream cultural
context. This often isn’t so,
and systems which don’t have
structural means to assist students
to work through and attain some sense
of continuity with traditional value
systems will not be
able to attract the whole-hearted participation
of these students.
The Native students
I’ve worked with have occupied
value stances at various stages on
a cultural continuum. Some have been
very “traditional,” some
have completely accommodated themselves
to the dominant value system, and others
have apparently worked things through
and succeeded
in achieving a harmonious blending
of both cultures. There also are varying
degrees of equanimity, security and
self-confidence with the
current stage of definition of personal
ethnicity. Returning to school is sometimes
an opportunity (often unanticipated)
for the clarification
and adjustment of such personal value
systems. There has been a marked lack
of consensus on this issue with Native
groups I’ve encountered,
and a great deal of emotional involvement
and heated discussion as these issues
are worked through to individually
acceptable degrees
of resolution. The “Who am I,
what kind of an Indian am I?” type
of question seems to need some sort
of adequate response before students
can focus their energies on further
studies or community projects. Any
group of adult Native students is likely
to manifest this sort
of diversity, and it is the challenging
task of an educator to design a learning
environment which meets the needs of
this broad range of
cultural perspectives.
Some work has
been done in developing curriculum
materials which are based
on Native values
and which reinforce
the validity of
traditional culture. Most of this work
has been at the elementary school level;
exceptions
are
the University
of Alaska’s X-CED Program at
Fairbanks (Barnhardt, 1977) and the
Saskatchewan Indian Federated College
in
Saskatoon. The variety and complexity
of post-secondary education has made
efforts in that area relatively insignificant.
The work involved
in producing a full range of post-secondary
education materials with a Native rather
than a mainstream cultural base is
overwhelming, especially
when one considers the question of
which Native culture we wish to address.
There are dozens in Canada alone. It
is possible to provide
relevant and useful instruction in
specific course areas, even from a
solid ethnocentric mainstream value
base, if, at the same time, opportunities
are provided for students to work through
the cultural ambivalences
in themselves and in the group. This
process can’t be directed
by a non-Native instructor or administrator,
but it is possible to incorporate skilled
Native staff in the program, and to
develop organizational
and administrative structures which
create conditions to foster this process,
It isn’t enough to have a “Native
counselor” on
staff in a mainstream school run by
non-Natives. It is equally insufficient
to have Native-control led schools
ignore this level of need among students
and, as a result, fail to help with
the resolution of this
issue.
The conditions necessary to reduce
students’ cultural ambiguity
require the establishment of institution-wide
interpersonal norms which stress trust,
honesty, and acceptance of diversity.
These must be coupled
with early instruction for all students
and staff in interpersonal communication
and self-awareness skills, as well
as exposure to structured
group experiences designed to overcome
shyness and mistrust. The fields of
organization development and cross-cultural
group dynamics
have theoretical perspectives and competent
professionals available for planning
and implementing relevant educational
systems with these
characteristics.
Thus far in this section
I have commented on the cultural factors
implicit in
instructional design
and demonstrated
that the
characteristics of
Native students require that the learning
process
be structured to provide opportunities
for culture change
factors to
be worked through.
While a bicultural approach to all
factors in an instructional design
process is
preferable, success
is possible with
ethnocentric instruction
if the context of education provides
opportunities for students to clarify
their personal
structures of meaning
and to work
out their
own cultural ambiguities in an atmosphere
of trust, mutual support, and cooperation.
Many
other factors
relate to
this complex issue
-- two of these follow.
The Legacy of
Colonialism and Poverty
Some related factors influencing Native
education arise from students’ families
having spent generations in a colonized
society and in a poverty-ridden environment.
The attributes of a colonized people
are well described
in the literature and need not be
elaborated here (Freire, 1970; Goode,
1963, 1970). It is important for
success in educational programming
for this population that planners
are aware of the stages a people
go through in the transition from
colonialism to self-determination,
and that programs be devised which
meet the needs of students at the
position they currently occupy on
that continuum. This will vary from
one student group to another and
in various Native communities.
The
atmosphere of chronic economic depression
prevalent in many Native
communities
complicates matters
still further. Attitudes toward
work and financial affairs have been
shaped over the years by a hopeless
inadequacy of financial
resources and generations
of reliance
on an external economic system. Critics
of adult education
have long claimed that the profession
seems
congenitally incapable of providing
services to this sector of the population,
the people who probably are most
in need of such
education. Experiments with guaranteed
family income projects seem to show
that education
must be coupled with concrete financial
improvements if
these
chronic
economic
conditions are
to change.
Education, Ethnocentrism,
and Social Policy
Native people aren’t the only group in Canadian
society experiencing difficulty in gaining access to education
and other services. The rising
chorus of dissent from other
so-called disadvantaged groups, the disabled, the blind, single parents,
and
others, indicates that the social policy
in this country tends to serve
some sectors of the population better than others. Our legislators
and senior civil servants typically come
from the affluent middle-class
sector of the population. They, like their cultural counterparts,
businessmen, see the world through the
perceptual frameworks provided
by their culture. They inevitably draft policy to conform with
these norms, and as a result often fail to accommodate
the needs (or perceptions) of
those with different needs or points of view. However, the calling
of
various commissions of inquiry into
Native well-being indicates that
those in power are interested in the needs of this disadvantaged
sector. This is laudable, but is in itself
not enough to ensure that the
peoples’ needs
are adequately met by new policies.
Representatives of groups not
usually represented
should have mandated positions
at the policy-making and decision-making
levels of government or public
service for that sector. Regardless
of the good intentions of traditional
policymakers, unless meaningful
involvement of these representatives
from other groups is secured
at all levels, the ethnocentrism inherent
in current practices is not likely
to diminish.
Enriching the Community
It seems inevitable that the
massive influx of economic
activity foreseen
for the north
will
irrevocably alter the value
systems and lifestyles
of its inhabitants. Industrial
jobs will become available,
and those who have long been
unemployed will seek them.
If they are
to succeed
in obtaining and retaining
jobs, they’ll have to acquire “attitudes
conducive to employment,” or,
in other words, undergo cultural
change. Education systems should
prepare people to live and
work in this environment. They
also should attempt to provide
a broad
basis for lifestyle and personality
development which is based
on the strengths and the richness
of students’ traditions
and heritage. This will subsequently
broaden the range of options
from which to choose
a way of life.
Even a trades-oriented
education system can embody
a world-
view more extensive
than
the specific
job that
lies ahead.
We must
build into
our planning a perspective
wide enough to avoid the mindlessness
and soul-deadening
job-focus
seen in
so many northern
factory towns and
mining camps. If we assist
the
student in
a reconciliation of both new
and old perspectives in a new
structure
of meaning, and address
a range of human need beyond
purely utilitarian and practical
job-related
aspects, we
stand a chance of having northern
communities with color
and diversity. But if these
aspects aren’t addressed,
the lowest common denominators
of society will surface as
prevalent community
norms, and the quality of life
in the north will suffer irrevocable
damage as a result of economic
development projects.
References
Barnhardt, Ray, ed. Cross-Cultural
Issues in Alaskan Education. Fairbanks: University of Alaska, Center for Northern
Educational
Research, 1977.
Bryde, John F. The Indian
Student -- A Study of Scholastic
Failure
and Personality
Conflict.
Vermillion;
South
Dakota Dakota Press,
1970.
Freire, Paulo. Cultural Action
for Freedom. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Educational
Review, 1970.
Goode, William
J. World
Revolution and
Family Patterns.
New York: Free Press, 1963,
1970.
Goodenough, Ward H.
Cooperation in Change.
New York: Russell
Sage Foundation,
1963.
Hall, Edward T. Beyond Culture.
Garden City, New York: Anchor
Books, 1977.
Ogbu, John U. “Social Stratification and the Socialization of
Competence,” in Anthropology
and Education Quarterly, Vol XH
I pp. 3-20, 1979.
Marris, Peter. Loss and Change.
Garden City, New York: Anchor
Books, 1975.
Schumacher, E. F. Small is
Beautiful. London: Abacus,
1974.
Spindler, George D. Education
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Approaches.
New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
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Journal of Social Policy, 4, 4. 373-390.
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