A Reflection of my Own Experiences of Culture and Identity in Relation to Education

“Culture is the study of one’s own society or group” (Phillips, 2006). It is associated with an individual’s religious beliefs, group/community they belong to or feel connected with, cultural attributes and belonging to a community of common interest, e.g.  Taekwondo culture. However, religious beliefs and attributes are usually passed down from earlier generations. Unlike belonging to a group of common interest, e.g. pop culture, religion is a thing that everyone is born into, and little people convert to other religions but rather practice the religion that their family practices.

My family have always lived in South Sydney, an area where there is not many people who share the same cultural beliefs as we did. In our neighbourhood, there was little people of Middle Eastern Background and no one who shared the same religious beliefs. However, living in the area since birth, I learnt to accept that everyone is different in various ways and not only through religion or cultural beliefs that one connects with another, rather there are many different cultural practices that one can be a part of. 

From the age of 5 until I graduated at 18, I attended the same school. As there was no one in our neighbourhood that had the same religious beliefs, my parents felt the need to send me and my siblings to a Muslim school in Western Sydney, Malek Fahd Islamic School. The reason behind their decision was because they wanted to us to interact with people of the same religious culture and be in a Muslim environment that wasn’t present in our area. It wasn’t until I attended school that I started to connect with people of different cultural backgrounds. Although the school I attended was a Muslim based school, it consisted of students from diverse countries such as; Pakistan, Lebanon, Indonesia etc. This made me realise that although you may connect to one person through religion there are other factors such as country of origin that distinguishes a student’s culture from another such as the way we dress, types of food we eat and the language we speak.

The change of living in an area where we knew no people of the same religion then going to a school that consisted of 1500 Muslim students, allowed me to understand culture and the impact it has on the way each individual lives every day. After attending a multicultural school for 13 years, I believe I still didn’t have a thorough understanding of what the term ‘culture’ really meant. It wasn’t until I attended university that I understood what culture really was, and I must say I was shocked. Although I had experience with cultural differences at my school, university was far more diverse by religion, race, and language, cultural practices etc. It as this point in time where I began to compare my culture with other students’ cultures. It was then that I had a fair understanding what he term culture really meant and thus allowed me to develop cultural competence which is a "combination of skills, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge and behaviours that allows one to successfully interact with, and respect people from, different cultural backgrounds" (Guzman, 2007, p. 2).

References

-          Phillips, A. (2006). What is 'Culture'?. London, UK: Routledge 
-      Guzman, M. (2007). Promoting Cultural Understanding and Developing Cultural Competence.  University of Nebraska, Lincoln.