Teaching and Culture

What is the nature of the liaison held between TEACHING and CULTURE? For most Pedagogues and practitioners, when you are teaching a language, you are, willy-nilly, teaching a culture. But this is not my utmost concern behind writing this essay. In fact, the question that often exhausts me is the following:  which one has the impact on the other: TEACHING or CULTURE? In other words, is it teaching which determines and/or shapes culture or the other way around? 

In an attempt to answer this exhausting question, I will start by defining separately teaching and culture before putting them together. In fact, both terms (teaching and culture) are elusive and contested. Both terms' definitions defied consensus amongst both pedagogues and sociologists in terms of their specific meaning and broad content. 

One highly acclaimed definition of culture was given in 1889 by the famous British anthropologist Edward B. Taylor. Though offering a broad definition, yet still his definition is considered to be the guiding framework of any cultural study or research. Culture, for Taylor, is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”  Personally speaking, this is my favourite definition, even if there is approximately around 150 definitions, according to one study.

Teaching, on the other hand, has been defined in many diverse and divergent ways. One arid  and colourless  definition is the one which is found in all dictionaries and which sounds like this: "the job or profession of a teacher".  Not far from dictionaries, books, and libraries, a French poet, journalist and novelist who spent most of his life around books in his father's bookstore, called the Librairie France; the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1921) Anatole France, though not a teacher, came up with a breathtaking definition: "The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."  

So, teaching is an art according to Anatole France. And I strongly think he is right. It is so because any teacher, if not passionate and ambitious towards his/her teaching profession, will certainly fail in serving his/her students. Teaching must be compared to other forms of arts so that it can meet its utmost objectives. Just like music, it is not enough to study music ( its history, notes, rules... etc); talent ( love, passion, interest... etc) is badly needed.  Likewise, teaching is about not only knowing about approaches and methodologies, but also about the attachment you have for teaching. And it is in here exactly where the art lies (attachment). Nevertheless, some teaching approaches are worth-knowing about, The Humanistic Approach is a  striking case in a point.

 For the sake of brevity, I will designedly not go deeper into the inns and outs of The Humanistic Approach, not mentioning its leading figures: Maslow and Rodgers. To cut this teaching approach short, a student is a human being  whose subjective experiences are the major determinants of his/her perception of the world. Put simply, the student is both whole and unique

And who  is a teacher after all?! Is not a teacher, himself or herself, but an accumulation of  knowledge, belief, customs, traditions, habits... and what have you. How can a teacher detach him/herself from his/her culture and teach the language aridly without the interference of culture? The very same questions are to be posed about the student. But here another question which "elbows itself through forcefully ". Are teachers really aware of the fact that they are teaching a language AND a culture? There has recently been a controversy in Morocco over contextualising the language or what has been referred to as "the Moroccan context". How can you empty a language from all its cultural accumulations and mould it in the so-called "Moroccan context"? Some teachers would say that the language should be used as a "tool" or a "means" , not an "end". Yes, to  a very slight extent, this is true, but to a greater extent it is not. For the language has been determined and "built up" many centuries ago by the culture where it was born.  

Let us take some examples and see to what extent can the Moroccan culture "contain" or "embody" the English language with all its cultural accumulations. Suppose you are to teach "food" to your student; are you going to reduce all your vocabulary items to Moroccan food, or are you going to present "food" in its target language? Which voc items will you consider worth-teaching: i) couscous, tagine, pastilla, harira / ii) hamburgers, milkshake, steak, barbecue?

For me, I would opt for ii) as they present a spacey room for not only having students acquainted with the target language food, but also practicing the pronunciation of such. What would a teacher add to his/her students when presenting (i)?! Some would argue that this is but an aid ( a means) towards motivating students. My counter-argument is why not motivating the student with the language as such. Would not it work  efficiently?! 

The very same example could be dropped when dealing with the syllabus as a whole. I have really been sick of the point of  "the Moroccan context" being drummed so frequently in most pedagogical meetings. We should insert Moroccan names and culture within the syllabus, some inspectors and practitioners keep saying. And even when they decide to do it, it is done at the cost of other cultures (some would call them: sub-cultures, which I don't appreciate), knowing that Morocco is multi-cultured. I still remember well one class time, a student told me, " Why there is no Amazigh names in this dialogue?"  That is another big and thorny point textbooks designer MUST pay attention to. 

To conclude, culture, I believe, is predetermined to language. Language is a bundle of not only sounds and words, but culture(s) (and sub-cultures) as well. Language's structural system has been influenced by its culture. Thus, when you are teaching a language, you'd better present it with its original culture(s). Either take it or leave it.