My friends' perspectives on Culture and Diversity

For this week's blog I enlisted the use of facebook to ask my Friends how they would define culture and diversity.  The following are the responses that I received

• Diversity-celebrating differences and culture maybe the way we live/things we believe that make us unique
• Culture our beliefs and how we live. Diversity different cultures, different races ......etc....
• Diversity deals with variety and culture is more the ideas/beliefs of a group of people
• Culture- our environment, family, beliefs- how/where we are raised has the impact of who people become. Diversity is the difference of all people in their differences of race, beliefs, language, culture... And all other differences that people have. 
• Culture ~ our religious beliefs, food, fashion, music, family function. Diversity ~ the things that are different about us such as culture, and ethnicity. it seems that when we use the word diversity it is used in a positive way. Our differences that allow us to function together. Just a thought.
• I define culture as the traditions, beliefs and religions of specific groups of people. Food, home styles, clothing, parenting styles, education and government define the culture we live in. I define diversity as an inclusion and acceptance of people with differing abilities, beliefs, religions and ethnicity.

Reviewing these answers based on what I have learned this semester about culture and diversity I noticed that many of the answers actually contain more that what would normally be associated with culture-dress, holidays, artifacts and food- the surface things that people usually associate with culture.  Instead the answers contained many references to deeper culture, including beliefs, family function, language, traditions, the way we live which could be reference to things like gender roles, relationships, work, ideas about education, etc. I also saw reference to diversity including more than just ethnic diversity.  Diversity actually includes many aspects like abilities, beliefs, class, etc.  One aspect of culture that I did not see included was showing emotions.  I think that this is a part of culture that is easy to overlook because we may not associate emotions to culture as much as we would attribute it to individual tendencies.  However, I believe our culture has a great deal to do with how we express emotion.  As one of my friends pointed out diversity actually seems to have positive meaning referencing how differences can actually be viewed as a positive thing.  Another friend pointed out that how people are raised has an impact on the people they become.  SO TRUE!  As I have learned throughout this course, culture is the lens that we view the world through.  This is so important for the young children who we care for and educate.  They are so impressionable and even at the preschool age they are figuring out their own identity and how they "fit" into the world.  They often form their own identity by seeing how their parents fit into the larger culture of our society.  This has a great message for Early Care and Education Professionals.  We need to make our programs reflective and of the cultures of the children and families with whom we work.  We also need to build relationships and partnerships with the families of the children.  Last but most importantly, we need to be respectful of the children, their families and their cultures despite how that may differ from our own culture.  All children deserve to feel safe and valued.  One way that we can do that is to show them that we value them and their families.