Growing up in a regional town in New South Wales, I attended
one of three local high schools. Looking back now I can see how the school
cultures and dominant ideologies influenced both my behaviour and the behaviour
of others’.
Looking at the school on a macro level, there was very much a
culture of ‘not caring’ about school. Whilst students who performed well at
school weren’t necessarily outcasts, the rebellious students were often seen as
the ‘cool’ kids, while those who were more academic were labelled ‘squares’.
I found this interesting as I grew up and mixed with friends
from different schooling backgrounds, particularly those who attended private
schools. In their cases, it seemed to have been much more acceptable to do well
at school.
From my studies in education thus far, I have learned that
SES background can have a tremendous influence on a student’s academic
outcomes. Perhaps because my school had a large proportion of low SES students,
the dominant culture was to not care about education.
For me, coming from a higher SES background compared to many
students at my school, as well as coming from a family that encouraged
education, I managed to see past this culture and focus on achieving – for the
most part.
On a more micro level, it is interesting to look back at the
significant influence the local Italian culture played in shaping my identity.
Our local community had a large population of Southern
Italian immigrants and a majority of my close friends shared this heritage.
In many circumstances, I actually felt that my Anglo Saxon
Australian culture was lacking, while my Italian friends seemed much more
‘cultural’ with their interesting cuisine and family traditions. Like Anne
Phillips (2006) writes, culture has a tendency to be associated with
non-Western or minority cultural groups. (p. 5) In other words, these students
and friends and their families all seemed so much more ‘cultural’ than me and
my ‘Aussie’ family – ‘skips’ as my Italian friends used to say.
This influence of Italian culture was only heightened further
once I started a relationship with an Italian boy, which lasted for the greater
part of my high school years. Strangely, Italian culture became the dominant
culture in my world, and I wanted to do as much as I could to fit in. As
Wadham, Pudsey and Boyd (2007) write, being raised in a particular culture
encourages us to believe certain things about the world. I began to think like
my Italian friends. Most notably, in my Southern Italian friends’ and
boyfriend’s worlds, girls obeyed males, and I allowed myself to be seriously
influenced and controlled by my high school boyfriend.
I relate strongly to Anne Phillip’s (2006) concerns about the
dangers of exaggerating the significance of culture and its hold over people’s
actions. I allowed my boyfriend at the time to control me and behave in a way I
now see as very unfair, because I excused it as part of his culture, as the way
he had grown up and the way his father, uncles and grandfather had all
demonstrated to him throughout his childhood and adolescence. Even though he
would apologise for this, he would blame his culture, and say it couldn’t be
helped.
Thankfully, at the end of high school, the ideas and beliefs
that my family had raised me with outshone those of my boyfriend, and I went
off to university as a young, independent girl, who could achieve anything, as
my parents had always told me – not the good little housewife my boyfriend
briefly had me wanting to be.
References:
Phillips, A. (2006). What is Culture? In Arneil, Barbara and
Deveaux, Monique and Dhamoon, Rita and Eisenberg, Avigail (eds) Sexual justice/ cultural justice.
London, UK: Routledge, 2006, pp. 15-29.
Wadham, B. Pudsey, J. & Boyd, R. (2007). Culture and education.
Sydney, Pearson Education
No comments:
Post a Comment