Social Dimensions of Education

Learning Tasks:

Why do we need to study comunication and culture on our chosen field?

Communication is very important to our daily lives especially when we are dealing to different people. We study communication for us to convey varied of information that we want to share. In our field as an educator, we really need to study and practice how to develop our communication skills through the four macro skills. We use to communicate for us to give knowledge and learning to our students and also we are also understand what we are teaching.

As a student teacher we have to be an effective communicators to our students because for them to understand and learn what you want to teach. And they can also give their own insights and thoughts of their learning’s.

We also need to study culture because it refers to ways of life, to what's important to each different culture, and we study it, so that we might value these differences. We need to study culture to understand what those things behind our student’s race are. We need to know what are cultures they had by having that information we know how to deal to our students.

In your own words, how would you define culture?

Culture affects every aspect of daily life - how we think and feel, how we learn and teach, or what we consider to be beautiful or ugly. However, most people are unaware of their own culture until they experience another. Culture is vital because it enables its members to function with one another without the need to negotiate meaning at every moment. Culture is learned and forgotten, so despite its importance we are generally unconscious of its influence on the manner in which we perceive the world and interact within it. Culture is significant because as we work with others it both enables us and obstructs us in our ability to understand and work effectively together.

How is language interrelated to culture?

It is generally agreed that language and culture are closely related. Language can be viewed as a verbal expression of culture. Language is related to culture in that language not only frames our thoughts but also reflects events that a particular culture experiences. Language is related to culture because it conveys the ideas in the culture and it is representational of what a particular group experiences. For many people, language is not just the medium of culture but also is a part of culture.

Explain the cultural relativism.

 Cultural relativism is the view that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within his own social context. In other words, right and wrong are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another society’s customs.

Cultural relativism is widely accepted in modern anthropology. Cultural relativists believe that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value. Diversity of cultures, even those with conflicting moral beliefs, is not to be considered in terms of right and wrong or good and bad. Today’s anthropologist considers all cultures to be equally legitimate expressions of human existence, to be studied from a purely neutral perspective.