Case Study 1 & 2

The Role of Culture in Learning
After reading The Activity and Art of Reading by Mortimer J. Alder and Charles Van Doren, the wheels in my mind were left turning and I had to re-read it. This is not because I did not understand what they had written, but because I wanted to understand everything perfectly. They did make a lot of valid points; one of them being, “There is the book; and here is your mind. As you go through the pages, either you understand perfectly everything that author has to say or you do not. If you do, you may have gained information, but you could not have increased your understanding.” (Adler & Van Doren, 2010) When reading that line, at first, I was puzzled because of the author’s tricky wording. After I re-read the sentence, I then understood it from their point of view. If you understand the text perfectly, there is nothing more to try to understand; thus, you cannot increase your level of knowledge. We do not further our knowledge just from understanding the text, but by retrieving new information. It is the student’s responsibility to learn what their teachers are teaching them, and different cultures provide different learning environments for both the students and teachers.
In the text, the author’s argue that a teacher can help students, but the student must do the learning. This is just like the saying, “you can take the horse to water but you cannot make it drink.” The teachers are there to teach, however the responsibility and the longing lies ultimately within the student. The teachers do their part by trying to simplify and explain the information into our heads, while the students must open their minds in order to understand and increase their knowledge. I agree with the authors on this argument; the choice is up to you and no one can force anything on you. “If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means… This does not mean, of course, that if the living teacher answers your question, you have no further work.” (Adler & Van Doren, 2010) The teacher is there to help the student on their journey of understanding but the student must be eager to understand in order to learn. My role as a student is to want to learn; the key word being “want”. The teachers’ role is to enlighten students with new information and teach what they know. Like mentors, which play a big role in the learning process, teachers pass on to students the information they have initially learned. My instructor reveals information that she, or he, has learned from somebody else and I, in turn, understand it from my instructor. To know if you are learning what the instructor is teaching, exams are given after the lessons.
Culture is another factor that determines the outcome of the student-teacher understanding. For example, I had a Hispanic teacher during college for Intermediate Algebra. The class was infrequent compared to the way I’ve been taught in previous classes. She explained the curriculum inconsistently, in English and in Spanish. Also, the algebraic steps that she taught were dissimilar to the ones that were usually taught to me. She would not mind repeating the process if misunderstood, but once she had clarified it; she would not repeat it anymore. So in a way, this class was more of an on-your-own learning experience. I had to rely on the textbook’s explanation, which is unlike an actual teacher; I was unable to ask questions or be provided with another audio-visual aid. The cultural upbringing of the teacher, I believe, is the reason why the class was taught this way. It felt like a form of “tough love.”
Also, my cousin arrived from Ecuador when she started middle school here in the U.S. every day after getting home from school; my cousin sat down with her mother and repeated everything she learned in class that day. Her mom wrote down questions based on what she learned, like a pop quiz, before relaxing. This is a different form of learning than what children raised here in the states are used to because of the fast paced environment; students do not stop to re-learn everything that was expected of them to have learned already. All students have different ways of learning and to some of them, like me, I learn by doing it on my own. That way, I learn by hands-on work rather than by listening.
In the end, the teacher will always teach and help us, but it’s the student’s responsibility to learn. However, in different cultures, teaching and learning have their contrasting attributes.

Word count: 797

References:
Adler, M., & Van Doren, C. (2010).The Activity and Art of Reading. In M. Krasny, & M. Sokolik, Sound Ideas (pp. 3-10). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

References: Adler, M., & Van Doren, C. (2010).The Activity and Art of Reading. In M. Krasny, & M. Sokolik, Sound Ideas (pp. 3-10). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.