Education as a cultural marker.  That’s the theme of this unit.  I want to pick up on some of what we discussed in unit 1, and think more closely about what these different educational choices or pathways tell us about the cultures in which they’re embedded.

Let’s start with just that term–“embedded.”  It’s pretty common to think of education as “training” students in the culture in which they’re set.  That “common cultural background” is something that education promotes or dictates.  It’s where students get taught what is important, what is required, how to act, how to think, what to remember, what to do and what to ask.

But it’s also more complicated than that (as most things are).  Education doesn’t just teach or train culture, it reflects it and it actually forms it.  Students in school are not passive receptors, they are active creators–whether the school knows that or not.  So while school is training the students, students are also training the school (and the culture, and the world). School is an institution with its own culture, its own traditions, values, ideas, and ideologies.  And each school, of course, is different from the others.  (It might help here to think about–and research–the various changing definitions of that term “culture.”)

Can you think of some examples of how you’ve seen this happen?  Or done it yourself?  That could be something we get to in the forum or in your reflections.

And it goes even further.  We often talk about culture as if it were something singular or easily defined.  “I come from a different culture.”  “American culture is…” “Arab culture places a high value on…”But we are all builders, consumers, and critics of multiple cultures, at the same time.  Culture just about always has to be plural.

This is sometimes very clear, especially for people who (like many of you) are in the situation of changing cultures, negotiating differences, from your parents’ cultures, to your schools’, to your friends’, and onward.

Education is not just a cultural marker–it’s embedded in culture(s), and culture(s) are embedded in it.  In some of our readings for this unit, you might see examples (and I am sure you can recall your own) of how students make their own culture, sometimes without the school even being aware of it–or sometimes specifically because the school actively tries to prevent it.

But this, too, is learning.  Maybe it’s more important to have the ability (especially as cultures multiply and diverge in our current landscape) to trade and share and switch cultures as needed, than to have any kind of (maybe imaginary) “common ground.”

Like Sharon and Jacquie, I’ve also grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family. My mother was raised Modern Orthodox, and my father with no religion at all, and both eventually turned to the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle instead. Because of that, I was raised in an environment where I was always comfortable asking any sort of questions and with a tolerance for irreverence, and I was therefore sent to schools with the same ideals.

The school where I spent third grade through twelfth grade was the one large ultra-religious, all-girls school in my neighborhood, so they had no choice but to accept all kinds of students. I don’t know how much any of you know about Orthodox Jewry, but there are many divided sects that come into conflict elsewhere, and they all came together in my school. There was no real judgment there, not when we’d all grown up together. We had a strict uniform in school, but no one really minded when we were younger, and by the time high school came around, we’d all found ways to express ourselves through accessories and makeup (which was against the rules, but that stopped no one). I never really cared much, and it actually took me a long time to adjust to being in schools where I had to have a new outfit every day.

In elementary school, we had a double curriculum, in which we learned Jewish subjects (we called them “Hebrew classes”) and normal, secular subjects. In the mornings, we studied things like the Hebrew language, Bible classes, and Jewish laws. After lunch, we covered math, science, grammar, history, and all the other standard subjects. I developed a healthy love for all of it, whether Hebrew or English.

In junior high, things changed quite a bit. While before then, we’d only had two teachers- one for Hebrew classes, one for English- now, we were departmentalized with different teachers for different subjects. While before then, the teachers were viewed as distant authorities, no matter how “nice” they were, now we were encouraged to build relationships with our teachers. We joked around with them in class as we reached our teenage years; I guess that it was because we had decided that we were old enough now to carry on mature conversation with our teachers. Classes went more in depth and questions and philosophical discussion were as common as simple text-based lectures. We also put together many presentations and activities based on what we’d learned.

High school took this a step further. Most of my teachers were respected members of the community, and many took on a “mentor” role for students. There was a potpourri of teaching styles, as is common in any school, but we were generally encouraged to ask questions and we were given satisfactory answers. One thing my school did lack, though, was many options for English classes. We took the requirements and there were few classes beyond those, not including Advanced Placement courses. We were encouraged to go to college, but they wanted us to get through it as quickly as possible, so only non-Regents courses through which we could get college credit were offered. (I understand that the new principal has changed that, though, and there are now many other courses offered, but that was after my time.) I was fortunate- the principals encouraged me to skip several English classes and take all my twelfth grade courses a year early, so by the time that I was a senior, I was able to take only Advanced Placement courses, and permitted to take several extra ones on my own.

After high school, I spent a year abroad in Israel, in a Hebrew studies program that really emphasized introspection and individuality above academics, even though we did have a six-day week with more class time than ever before. That year really was about understanding myself and where I wanted to go with my life, and I probably learned more then than I did during any other school year.

Now, I’ve been in Brooklyn College for almost two years, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I love the variety of classes in particular- I’ve been able to take classes on everything from Japanese to counseling to Harry Potter! I do miss the Hebrew subjects, though, and I’ve encouraged my family to engage in absurd Bible trivia games at the Sabbath table so I can still enjoy them.

Interestingly, I think my enjoyment of certain subjects faded once I took them in school and turned fun into work. Now that I no longer study physics, the Bible, philosophy, or even math, I love discussing them and reading books about them during my downtime. Although there are some classes that have increased my interest in subjects (for example, I didn’t like philosophy or Harry Potter until I took class on them), I’m generally happiest when I’m learning on my own, via the internet or even a debate with my brother. And when I’m happy, I learn best.

It’s difficult to say where education begins so I guess I will start off with daycare. When I was 4 or 5 (The age before kindergarten), my parents had to work long hours because they did not have an education. My parents came to America around 1988 and so they had only been in the country for two years. My brother was the first born in ’88 and became the first US citizen in our family. Because my family did not have much of an education, most of their time was spent working. My mom was a seamstress and my dad worked in a restaurant. Both of them dedicated long hours of their day into work and so I ended up going to a local daycare.

I feel that my daycare experience was different because I was the only Asian. Growing up in this African American/Hispanic community, I did not socially connect with any of the children. There initially was a language barrier but this was quickly overcome because my parents were not around to speak to me in Chinese. From TV and daycare, I grew up learning English as my dominant language but as I grew older another language barrier formed between my parents and me. Even to this day, I cannot carry on a conversation with them in either Chinese or English.

Not only was I racially different in my daycare, but I also lived in a dangerous community. When I began attending kindergarten in public school, the Bloods were an active gang in my neighborhood and it was dangerous to go outside. I remember my mom colored my DragonBallZ book bag to cover all of the red because she thought that it was safer. I was lucky enough to live only 2 blocks away from school and so I did not experience any of the gang violence firsthand.

In my first grade summer, I went to summers school with my brother. Usually summer school was for students who failed but for me, I went because my brother went. (He accidently mis-bubbled his state exam and because my parents were busy with work, I went with him.) Summer school was when I realized that there was a strong racial prejudice against Chinese. One day a friend had taught me the phrase “Ching chong ma ka hai ya.” I did not know what it meant because my parents didn’t teach me Chinese and I took my friend’s word that this phrase was some Chinese saying that meant hello. When I told my parents, they told me it was like a curse to Chinese people. (There really is no meaning to it)

In second grade, I was accepted into a Summer Program called “Summer on the Hill” held at the private school Horace Mann. This program was an enrichment program that educated students who came from disadvantaged public schools. With my acceptance into this program, my summers and weekends would be spent at Horace Mann learning new topics until 8th grade.

After graduating public school, I was accepted into a school called Maritime Academy. This school was a selective program that granted admission by only by lottery. My brother had recently been accepted 2 years earlier and he was part of the first graduating class. Maritime was an experimental school that started out small and us students were also guinea pigs like Jacquie. It modeled its classes like high school and we had to take 9 periods of classes along with afterschool activities. My favorite part about middle school was our senior trip to Disney World. I graduated Maritime as valedictorian to attend Bronx Science.

Bronx Science was a great experience for me. For the first time, I was not the only Asian in the school and I was able to connect to my own culture. Bronx Science was a school that nurtured learning and all of the teachers loved what they did. I feel that the education I got there was exceptional and it taught me how to love learning like how the teachers there loved teaching.

When it was time for me to apply to college, I like many of my friends wanted to attend an Ivy League school. Though I was denied from all of them, I decided that I would make the best of my choices and chose Macaulay Honors College. I decided that my own passion for learning would pave my future. Coming to Macaulay, however has provided many opportunities I did not expect. I am happy with my choice and feel that there are many more opportunities that Macaulay will offer for me.

My first year in Macaulay was one of my best learning experiences. After finding my way into a Bioinformatics Lab at Hunter, I learned many computer skills, and a lot about time management.  I learned that I had the opportunity to make choices on my own and felt that I could direct myself where I wanted to. I feel that learning how to push myself was my greatest lesson in my life.

Warning: This is incredibly long. It was unintentional, I just kept typing! I’m really not as interesting as the giant mass of text would suggest.

I was also raised in an Orthodox Jewish background, so for the first paragraph of Sharon’s reflection, we’re very similar.

I was raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, in a big Jewish community. I went to a local yeshivah (Jewish Orthodox school) from kindergarten to 5^th grade, when I switched to a different school in Riverdale, New York. (S/A/R, for anyone who cares.)

I feel my school did a pretty good job balancing out my Judaic studes classes (Hebrew, Prophets, Bible, Talmud, etc.) with my classic secular subjects of History, English, Science, Math, and so on. I enjoyed it so much, that when they opened up a new high school, I signed up for the first graduating class of S/A/R High School.

Being in the first class was really interesting. We started with only 68 students and all of the teachers were new. Some teachers were good, some never lasted beyond that first year. We became very tight-knit, bonding over the experience of being the “guinea pigs” of our administration. My day was from 8 to 5:10 every day, but I stayed most days for some extracurricular activity, which was a big part of my high school experience. I stayed drama, choir, newspaper, literary journal and floor hockey (ice hockey rules, played on a gym floor), which was my favorite sport ever, but doesn’t exist outside of our tiny league. I still miss it all the time. It was the first time I was really personally invested in a sport.

I actually found my administration very open about questions concerning our Judaism and identity, and the school tried very hard to balance both curriculums. I loved English especially, and was thinking about being an English major in college. While math was never my strongest subject, I had one teacher who was just so passionate about it that to this day I can never really hate math. I just feel incredibly frustrated when I don’t understand it.

Besides the double-curriculum, there was a twice-weekly class that was mandatory, but ungraded. We would divide into small groups (3-8 people) and learn some Judaic text that wasn’t in our regular curriculum. The point of this class was to learn Torah L’Shamawhich we roughly translated as “learning for the sake of learning,” not learning for a grade or a requirement. It’s an idea I’ve taken with me into my college years, and I audited a class last semester for fun, and I try to keep learning things (such as Japanese) on my own time, outside of the traditional classroom setting. I also try to take at least one class every semester for fun, as a rule.

I applied to the Honors College at Queens without really investigating what an opportunity it was, assuming that I wouldn’t get in. I actually applied to nine different colleges, and for a while Barnard College was my top choice. But I was wait-listed, and I found out that quite a few people from my grade were going to Barnard, and I wanted to go to college with a fresh slate and break out of my shell a little bit. So when the Honors College got back to me, I went to all of the events and chose to come here.

Then I decided, like many of my classmates, to take a year off and go to Israel to study in a religious school for a year. I chose a school in Jerusalem that was known for serious students and a lot of freedom, because I wanted a serious classroom environment but a fun atmosphere. That year was an amazing experience. Virtually all of the classes were “learning for the sake of learning,” in that none of these classes were really graded. We woke up and went to classes because we wanted to. The schedule was from 8:30 in the morning until 10 at night, with some breaks in the day for lunch and dinner and hanging out. I took classes in Talmud, Prophets, Bible, Halakhah (rules for things like Kosher) and other stuff like that. Being entirely self-motivated was incredibly hard, and there were days I wasn’t anywhere near 100%. We had trips to go hiking around the country with our teachers, and we went to teacher’s houses for Sabbath and other holidays. It was amazing to bond with teachers and other students on so many levels outside of the classroom.

It was my first time living away from home, which meant there was no one to tell me to get out of my bed unless I did it. I learned a lot about myself that year.

My best learning though, would have to be on the public transportation. Israel is a teeny little country, about the size of New Jersey, but it has a fantastic bus system. Unfortunately, my Hebrew wasn’t really up to par, especially at the beginning of the year. Learning how to use Hebrew to get around was a learning experience unto itself. People were incredibly helpful, and I learned all the ways to check with a bus driver to make sure he didn’t forget to remind me for my stop. (“Where is _____ stop?” “How many more minutes?” “How many more stops?” “Are we close?” “Is it next?”) My best experience was visiting my cousins in a little farming community a few miles from Sderot. The bus dropped me off by the side of the road and there was NOTHING in sight as far as the eye could see but my little bus stop. It was the perfect beginning to a horror movie. But I made it through that time, and all the other times I had to take buses to get places. I also figured out how to handle cabs when I needed them. During that year I went to a friends wedding, a cousin’s shiva house, up and down Israel for weekend visits to family and strangers, a week in Poland to learn about the Holocaust, 12 days in Europe over Spring break, you name it. I learned how to plan ahead, and how to handle myself in all sorts of crazy situations.

I found that living at school also taught me a lot about how to handle people and conflicts. My roommate was amazing from day one, but I had two suite-mates that I didn’t get along with at all. It took four months before I was able to switch rooms, but I learned a lot of skills I use with difficult people.

After that, my first year at Queens College was a big adjustment for me. I don’t know about Hunter, but at Queens, it feels like 99% of the students are in pure commuter-mode: show up to class, take class, leave campus. There was very little interaction between students before and after class, and the dorms weren’t built yet. I got an apartment with a friend and a girl I met through a posting on a mailing list. I had to handle food planning for the first time, and Macaulay was actually a lot less supportive then I was expecting. However the required Macaulay classes were one of the best things about my first semester. Not, mind you, because of the content, although seeing a bunch of plays in the city was amazing. But it was the only time I was in a class where I saw the same people multiple times a day. And we hung out in the lounge together, and spoke to each other, and now I know everyone’s name, and we hang out at seminars together. But those first few weeks were incredibly lonely.

But I got used to being in an apartment instead of a dorm, so when the dorm opened I chose to stay off-campus. I enjoy hosting meals and small movie-watching parties. I am the one who tries to arrange meals for the whole apartment on a nightly basis, and I try to keep up a cleaning schedule, although that’s my major weakness. I’ve learned that I tend to work better at the library than hanging out with my roommates at home, so I just stay on campus for some of my work.

I’ve also found at college that they are finally doing what my high school was always trying to do – most classes seem to overlap each other, the same information applying to different subjects. I’m always delighted when I sit in on a class and learn something that I’ve learned already in another field or subject. Sometimes I finally feel like college is getting me out into the world to learn what real life is really like. Sometimes I feel like I’m still in high school, though, where grades feel frustratingly useless and nothing I learn seems at all useful. I suppose only time will tell at this point.