Socio-Culturalism and Sara's Self-Contract

This week’s portfolio focus is quite complimentary actually to my self-contract.

As my goal is to eventually become a high school level World Literature teacher, much of my concern now and will be then, on the differences brought forth by different cultures and civilizations. In studying world literature, our aim is to expound the differences in understanding and meaning of different things according to varying groups of people. This area of study is itself, very much steeped in the notions and consideration of socio-cultural perspectives and is conscious and interested in working to reveal the effects and many facets it places on understanding and interaction between cultures.

My self-contract is one which details the way in which I seek to implement the teaching of world literature into the traditional school system. As of now, there is very minimal amounts of schools adopting the teaching of world literature, and my self-contract involves not only attempting to be able to teach world literature myself in a school I work in, but spread this innovative class through the school system.

Looking at this in a socio-cultural perspective then, it is easy to praise the implementation of world literature classrooms and prove my self-contract worthy of working towards. A world literature classroom is one which is interdisciplinary my nature. In encompassing so many different facets of the world, it is only natural for these different traditions and themes to be explored in different ways. Socio-cultural studies today, especially in a society like Vancouver, seem to praise and value the multi-cultural setting we find ourselves in. By allowing world literature to be taught in high schools, the opportunity will be further underlined to understand the multiplicity of society and the differences we find not only culturally but personally as well.

While it is arguable that personality types are influenced by cultural traditions and the like, it is also important to recognize that one’s personality is not completely derivative and reliant on one’s background. While world literature focuses on the cultural differences of societies all over the world, the important component to recognize here is the acceptance of multiplicities. A world literature classroom values the differences brought forth by not only a text and its translation, but the understandings different students bring to the text. This is much like the differing personality types we find in our classrooms today. Drawing from notions I discussed in my wild card project, it seems clear that a classroom that is properly managed is one that values the differences of students and does not seem them as boundaries, but rather as something which enriches a classroom.

This attitude I exactly what world literature teaches. Acceptance and recognition of specific and interesting cultural differences are embraced and developed in different ways within the classroom. A classroom that does this, most surely will adapt this same attitude to the acceptance and involvement of different personality types. A socio-cultural perspective is inherent in both these facets of understanding, and is something that is crucial in today’s multicultural society.