Teaching “Culture”

The field of teaching “culture” represents another conceptual battleground where competing understandings of inclusion among staff and students reconstruct teaching as well as classroom interactions. Questions such as, What culture do we teach? How? and Why? permeate these discussions and in their resolution, the nuances of integrationist vs. critical participationist approaches are revealed. In asking how one teaches culture, one must also explain what one means by “culture.” Is this understanding rooted in essentialist or anti-essentialist discourses? This is crucial, as both learner and educator roles and agency are interpreted radically differently within these positions. The practical operationalizations of integration program aims are perhaps nowhere more clearly delineated than in conceptions of how culture is envisioned and taught, as the following quote by an SFI tutor recognizes:

Nu kommer vi egentligen in i den diskussion av vad är sen ”finländskt.” Vad är det du ska lära ut? Kulturdiskussionen med att kulturen förändras hela tiden just i kontakt med andra och att komma ihåg det också i våra klass- och handledningssituationer. Det är i dialog med den andre som vi skapar en gemensam finländsk kultur. (Arbis SFI tutor)⁴⁴

44 “Now we truly get into the discussion of what then is "Finnish." What is it you are supposed to teach? Discussions of culture in which culture is changing all the time specifically in contact with others and to remember this also in our classroom and tutoring

In describing culture as fluid and co-created, as this tutor does, there is a recognition that “it” only becomes visible in dialogue with the “Other”

which, in turn, emphasizes the shared responsibilities of all integration program participants in bringing “it” into view. In such a vision, cultural knowledge is not transmitted unilaterally from insiders to outsiders.

Correspondingly, this perspective complicates the question of what you are supposed to teach. From interviews and participant observations it became clear that the “what” in teaching culture was a cause of some concern among teachers. The topic awakened insecurities from participants in all three programs, although for slightly different reasons. At NorQuest LINC, educators often struggled with how to reconcile the ideal of Canada’s cultural mosaic – allowing for a myriad of cultural “belongings”

to be subsumed under a definition of “Canadian,” – with the aims of teaching a coherent culture. The seeming elusiveness of Canadian identity muddled more “straightforward” cultural narratives. At Arbis SFI, this same ambivalence could be traced back to the program’s singular position as representing integration into a Swedish linguistic national minority embedded within the predominantly Finnish social and cultural environment of Helsingfors. Most of Arbis SFI’s teaching staff were members of the Finland-Swedish ethnic minority with their own experiences of discrimination which nuanced perspectives and practices of teaching “Finnish culture.” For some teachers, fixed, essentialist cultural narratives were therefore regarded with both fear and suspicion, as communicated in this quote:

Det här med tvärsäkra kulturer, vet du alla har pratat ett språk och levt i en kultur hela livet, det känns jobbigt, skrämmande. Jag har väldigt svårt att se det. Hur kan man leva så? I de här eleverna känner jag igen mig. (Arbis SFI teacher)⁴⁵

It was notable that the corresponding cultural affinity this educator expresses with migrant students’ minority status and cultural plurality also translated itself into a much more multilingual, reciprocal teaching style.

45 “This with clear cut cultures, you know where everyone speaks one language and lives in one culture throughout their lives, it feels arduous, problematic, scary. I can't see it.

How can you live that way? In these students, I recognize myself.” (author’s translation)

Another aspect which confounded teaching a monoculture at Medis and Arbis SFI was the fact that curricular texts stemmed from Sweden and discussed Swedish culture instead of Finland-Swedish or Finnish culture.

Where such texts comprised the majority of learning resources, Swedish culture was consistently juxtaposed with local Finland-Swedish or Ålandic variations. As a result, approaches to cultural transmission also differed and depended upon if one assessed this cultural elusiveness and diversity as a resource and a strength, or as something to be bemoaned.

At NorQuest LINC, one commonly adopted strategy in seeking to reconcile the contradictions of teaching an easily definable culture with the realities of the latter’s multifariousness is explained in the following way by a teaching staff member:

I think most teachers in teaching Canada and culture and so on would draw the distinction of this is how we do it in Canada, but also recognizing; I’m not saying that this is the best way.

While this acknowledgement demonstrates an awareness of the multiplicity of contested values, beliefs and ways of life, it implicitly acknowledges the existence of something that can be defined as “Canadian culture.” One question this approach raises is if the cultural diversity of migrant students is included within such a definition? Other teachers, being wary of overgeneralizations, would refer to manifestations of local culture. One LINC administrator explained that she talked about what was “usual in Alberta, and I say Alberta because it is different in different parts of Canada.”

Within the SFI programs, specifically at Arbis, their minority position problematized homogenous nationalist dialogues and their cultural, and in the case of Medis, geographical periphery generated other competing perspectives. Sometimes these perspectives, as in the quote of the NorQuest administrator above, emphasized the “local”, the “Swedish Spaces” (svenska rum) within Helsingfors or the singularity of life on the Åland Islands. In addition, the presence of learning materials from Sweden and a conscious effort of some educators to present an anti-essentialist, striated portrait of “Finland” unbalanced linear cultural transmissions. One illustrative example was a lecture by a Finnish researcher entitled, “The

myth of Finnish homogeneity” organized as part of the “culture” class at Arbis SFI:

By highlighting the migration streams in Finland’s national formation as well discussing the presence of the many national minorities from the 1500’s-present day Finland, [the lecture] shines a pluralist spotlight on Fennomanian nationalism which has characterized Finnish identity construction. By using historical facts as a way of problematizing current discussions advocating narrow nationalist conceptions of “Finnishness” [he presents] a country that is also a collection of different ethnic and cultural groups. (Arbis SFI Observation log 15.3.2016)

This willingness to question taken-for-granted assumptions and cultural stereotypes proved a germane point of departure for subjective cultural analyses as one LINC administrator mentioned when recalling a discussion with other staff about the custom of some migrant students preferring not to shake hands, a practice that some posited as alien to Canadian cultural norms:

But then we had a woman teacher there in her late 50’s and she said that it is so cultural. She grew up here in Canada but would never shake hands with another woman. Even when meeting someone she has to remind herself that it is okay because that is just not part of her upbringing. So, we got into this discussion of well, what is Canadian? And it is very hard because things are always changing, and I think we have to be open to that. (NorQuest LINC administrator)

However, while there was a recognition among many staff members of the slipperiness in teaching “culture” as well as a readiness to subject their teaching and curricular contents to scrutiny, the reciprocal nature of cultural learning remained largely unexplored. Discussions revolved more around how to convey an inclusive, multi-faceted narrative of “our” culture rather than what one can learn from “them” about co-constructing the way we live together. Expressions of reciprocity followed a celebration multiculturalist script, as this NorQuest LINC student observes,

We learn only about Canadian culture but sometimes they have some cultural days where we can show our culture and bring some foods and dress up in cultural dress. (NorQuest LINC CLB5 student)

This “script” also included topics of cross-cultural learning that were sanctioned and those that were deemed taboo by teachers. Taboo topics varied and seemed subject to the same arbitrariness as policies of cultural negotiation. Their designation as “taboo” was at the discretion of individual teachers. Some avoided very controversial topics altogether while others exercised tight control over how these would be defined and discussed, as explained by this LINC educator: “we encourage people to talk about their culture, not religion too much, I allow a little bit, but I control it.” For this teacher, as well as others, religion was designated as a controversial topic necessitating control von oben. Conversely, homosexuality – also often subsumed under the “taboo” label – was brought up frequently by the same lecturer with the justification that “they need to be aware of it” because

“some African students particularly are very closed-minded about it.” It is characteristic of this discussion that the power of defining taboo topics and engaging with them resides solely with staff. Migrant student comfort or discomfort are more peripheral to considerations.

Thus, while the insecurities generated by teaching “culture” sometimes gave rise to critical narratives contesting homogenous perspectives, they could also result in a normative protectionism where professed mantras of openness and tolerance reached their limit. As such, positionings in cultural learning in this study oscillate between civic integrationism and inclusion, depending to a great extent on the decisions of individual teachers about where on this continuum they would land. Teaching “culture” in LINC and SFI proved contentious, supporting Thomson and Derwing’s (2014) conclusion that where a cultural essence is difficult to articulate, as in the case of Canadian culture’s multiculturalist mantra, educators feel conflicted and require support. Some authors therefore question if teaching culture as a disassociated classroom topic is even possible or if direct observation through cultural immersion in society are better ways to achieve this (Fleming 2003). It is also a matter of speculation if SFI’s minority status allowed its staff to inhabit a “borderland perspective” (Brown and Strega 2005) more easily in teaching a transgressive view of culture. The findings do substantiate that Arbis staff, who themselves belonged to the Finland-Swedish ethnic minority and who taught in a more politically contested and thus vulnerable SFI program, presented a more conflictual and multi-faceted cultural portrait of Finland.

Critical theories of social inclusion maintain that if students own cultural backgrounds are portrayed as distinct from, instead of a part of present society, then they inevitably become cultural add-ons (Goldberg 1994). In this regard, LINC programs reflecting the Canadian multicultural mosaic narrative of national identity seem to offer hypothetical advantages for including migrant student diversity in teaching culture. Interestingly enough, though, in practice few major differences in the approach to, or challenges faced in cultural instruction existed between NorQuest LINC and Arbis SFI. Given the freedom of individual teachers and their own personal backgrounds and motivations in shaping cultural learning, similarly critical or uncritical approaches could be discerned. At Medis SFI, however, teaching “culture” seemed less contentious or conflicted. Though constituting a minority education program nationally, locally, on the monolingually Swedish, semi-autonomous Ålandic islands, it was a part of majority society. The tangible linguistic and ethnic borderland in which Arbis SFI operated was not as discernable at Medis, where teaching

“culture” represented more of a taken-for-grantedness, interrupted only briefly by juxtapositionings with portrayals of Swedish culture in textbooks.

Additionally, differences in teaching approaches to “culture” were also affected by a myriad of other factors such as institutional cultures and staff composition, to name but a few, thereby reflecting the intricate interplay between personal, cultural and structural factors (Thompson 2006).

Modes of teaching “culture” in all three case studies when compared with principles of anti-oppressive education, underemphasize the disruptive potential of reciprocal learning where common sense views of culture are disarticulated and reassembled in new ways that result from unlearning (Kumashiro 2001). Transformation Inclusion envisions the creation of more forums for dialogue where students and staff could interrogate concepts of “Canadian” or “Finnish” as well as the curricular materials in which these concepts are given substance through words and images. Such institutionally embedded forums would also be invaluable in fostering resistance to conformity and ethnocentric biases and make room for ad hoc cultural exchanges where learning about ourselves and others is unplanned and intangible (Fook & Gardner 2007).

Despite the anti-essentialist endeavours of select SFI and LINC staff to interrogate myopic portrayals of nation, teaching “culture” to a large extent still encapsulated implicit aims of cultivating secular liberal citizens, as the example of taboo topics demonstrates (Tebble 2006). These aims are rooted in very real power asymmetries and justified within a pervasive integrationist rhetoric (Riitaoja & Dervin 2014). The simple omission of inclusive teaching of migrant student cultures communicates this rather effectively, as this LINC CLB5 student intimates: “They do not ask us [about] our culture. It is not important for them and not important for us to use it here because it is not of benefit here.” What is of benefit, however, materializes by this omission. Power asymmetries are also manifested in how taboo topics are addressed. The parameters in which their discussion takes place is entirely subject to the degree of teacher tolerance. Tolerance is performed within the specific limits or boundaries set by educators and is thus unilateral. Given that tolerance is frequently held up as the cornerstone for social interaction among program participants at LINC and SFI it also extends the “right” to members of staff to act intolerantly when these boundaries were transgressed, such as when students profess divergent, illiberal views (Hage 2000).