1. A reflection of your own experiences of culture and identity in relation to education.

As a teenager growing up, I was always in search for who I am, what I can achieve and my purpose in life. Everyone around me was in search for their identity, trying new things, going through weird and often outrageous phases in hope for finding something to make their mark with. This culture and need to create a reputation for yourself was contagious… unless you were from the group of kids who had their whole life mapped out from when they were born and were following the ‘yellow brick road’ like robots, robots with hormones, estrogen to be specific, all in hope to meet the expectation set out to achieve.

But what motivates us all to find out who we are or what we want to be? We will cease to understand this question unless we identify that culture and education play a vital role in the way in which we take part of any activity within the education system. In fact, each individual has his or her own experiences of culture and identity in relation to education. They are important issues, which should be taken seriously when attempting to understand how and why people do certain things.

In my private high school, the education system, left students competing like animals for a scrap of meat, all fighting for the same thing, first place in academic performance. Teachers taught you to be competitive; it’s the only way you would succeed. As if that wasn’t enough… Peer groups judged you based on the brands you wore, how badass you are, how freakishly lame or antisocial, whether you’re four eyed, academically capable or not… the list goes on. All these aspects contributed to the way in which you valued your identity and culture while being educated at school.

According to the AGE Victoria “parents are using private schools to segregate their children from unfamiliar cultures (Hall, 2012, ¶ 1).

A spokeswoman for Multicultural Affairs Minister Kate Lundy said: ''Parents select a school for a variety of different reasons and they are increasingly making informed decisions (Hall, 2012, ¶ 1). '' This is true on the part of most of the students at my school. Parents chose private schools due to what they offered. For my parents, it was religion and the ability to participate in my culture in a joint environment as well as building a strong identity, which mirrored theirs. This links to what Phillips states, in regards to people identifying and empathizing more easily with those whom they have more in common with is understandable as “culture comes to be seen as the major course of peoples identity, and major determinant of their actions and behaviors (Phillips, 2006, p.5)”. 

References:

·      Hall, B. (2012). Private schools used for cultural quarantine. The Age Victoria. Retrieved September 23, 2013, from http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/private-schools-used-for-cultural-quarantine-20120306-1uieg.html.

·      Phillips, A. (2006). What is culture? In Arneil, Barbara and Deveaux, Monique and Dhamoon, Rita and Eisenberg, Avigail, (eds.) Sexual justice / cultural justice . London, UK: Routledge, 2006, pp. 15-29.