Cultures in Education a challenge.

As a High School teacher I find teaching different cultures a challenge.
As a white Afrikaans South African I was taught to look my parents in the eye when they spoke to me, by looking into their eyes I showed a form of respect. In some cultures respect is shown by looking down when they are amongst adults. As a teacher I expected the child to look at me when I tried to discipline or talk to them. I did not even think of the way the child was taught at home so this was a huge challenge at first because I thought the child was disrespectful.

I was taught to give my all and my best when I do something because God gave me the talent to do so. It was the end of my world to disappoint any adults or to disrespect them. I try to teach these same principles to the learners I teach because a lot of them are not taught at home. Majority of the learners I teach laugh at failing tests or exam, this is due to the fact that different cultures are disciplined in different ways. Some cultures deem other principles in life to be more important than education and therefore don’t discipline the child when it comes to performance in education.

In my culture if we failed, it was the most embarrassing experience that we would never laugh at. Our parents would tell us how disappointed they are in our performance and that we are wasting our time, talents and their money. There would always be consequences to our actions.

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As a teacher it is hard for me to know that some children do get disciplined but in a very violent way. This causes some students to be petrified of you as a teacher sending messages home, about the child’s performance at school. Some parents do not know about positive reinforcement, like motivating the child and think a good beating will do the trick. This is not a very effective way to make the child want to perform better.

There is no proper positive discipline system in place, in our government. The children have no consequences to their lack of discipline in education. The learners are progressed even if they did not achieve the minimum marks required of them. This makes respect and discipline in education very challenging.