Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/the-effects-of-culture-on-thinking/5017542/
Thinking is a high priority in the United States today. As brain, rather than brawn, power increases in importance, one of our most pressing economic priorities is to raise the educational achievement of our children. Yet, our goal of educating all children is made more difficult by our history of educationally excluding and marginalizing people who are not white, English speaking, and Christian. Until quite recently, schools (and the nation) shunned poor and minority children, contending they are inherently unable to master the academic curriculum. Genetic research over the past quarter century has challenged this assumption and concluded that the human capacity to learn exists across all racial and social groupings. With a growing population of people of color, speaking a variety of different languages, belonging to many religious groups and ethnic and national communities, the question is not can all children learn, but how to teach them. One of the barriers to teaching and learning is caused by differences in how people think.We now know that there is a great deal of similarity in human thinking. Piaget’s (1967) work is based on the genetic disposition of children to develop in certain ways. He contends that there are universal patterns ...