Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I sent a message to several friends, family and colleagues asking them to send their definition of culture and diversity.  I was curious how quickly people would respond to me and how similar or different their definitions would be from each other and myself.

The definitions from a female colleague were as follows:

Culture:  refers to the environment in which children and families come from.  It is the different beliefs and lifestyles that families instill in their children through their modeling.  The language the family speaks primarily in the home.  Different types of foods that the family cooks.  It is important to teach diversity and culture in classrooms, to help children understand the world in which they live in.

Diversity: refers to many things, children with special needs, a-typical children, children from different origins, children from different backgrounds, children from different types of families-single parents, grandparents, and same sex parents.  Just about anything that makes you different from someone else.

The definitions from a culturally different male family member were as follows:

Culture: is what defines a group of people living in or about a place.

Diversity: is defined as the difference between people be it religion, gender, national origin, race coexisting in a particular place.

The definitions from a culturally different female college student were as follows:

Culture:  is the norms, practices, and behaviors of a particular group of people.

Diversity: is the differences in culture of different groups.

The aspects of culture that have been included in the answers here are similar to surface culture.  All too often, when early childhood educators think about culture, they think about the surface things that are easy to see, taste, and define (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).  Examples of surface culture include the different type of food cooked is a perfect example of surface culture.  The other two people’s definitions were to general to categorize them either surface or deep culture. 

The aspects of culture missing from the definitions were the deep culture items about language, values, ideas of education and roles within the group.  My colleague touched a little bit on the deep culture aspects with references to the home language and home environment.  Looking back on these definitions makes me think that they are very similar to my definition of culture and diversity from just a few short weeks ago.   

I think beginning to look at culture through the perspective of deep culture the metaphor of the iceberg seems more and more accurate.  Additionally, reading the definitions of other also adds the idea of culture and diversity are often looked from a very surface level view and not considering what really makes the person who they are and what they believe.  Culture is like an iceberg the tip shows and the beneath the surface is the unconscious part where the tensions come into play (Laureate, 2011).  The young college student and the male from another culture provided very generic definitions without any detail; therefore, not providing the deep culture definition that we have learned about this week. 

 Reference

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Culture and Diversity. [DVD]. Perspectives on Diversity and Equity. Baltimore, MD: