The Influence of Culture on Learning and Behavior John U, Ogbu Department of Anthropology University of California Introduction This paper is about how culture influences behavior and learning. It is organized in three sections. The first section focuses on the meaning of culture; the second section reviews cultural influences on behavior; and the third section examines the influence of culture on learning. Culture Culture is a fundamental concept in anthropology. Unfortunately, at the present time the concept is problematic both within anthropology and ov'side the field, Freilich (1989, p. 1) notes that culture was the integrating construct that gave anthropology “a, Aistinctive personality among the social sciences.” Eventually many other disciplines found culture to be 2 usefull concept and incorporated it as a part of their frameworks. Note, however, that while other disci- pines have adopted the concept, my interdisciplinary experience is that nonanthropology colleagues often do not treat culture in the sense that anthropologists do, The difference is especially apparent in the con- text of learning and human development. Here cul ture is often equated wich “family environment” or family characteristics due to socioeconomic status of Parents. Occasionally, researchers include “population, environment and social norms,” but they rarely show how the latter enter into development or learning (Ogbu 1987, p. 156). A more serious threat to the concept of culture is its popularization, which has almost taken away {ts anthropological meaning. This threat is evident in current popular political and acad- emic discourses on cultural diversity (Carroll and Schensul 1990; Ogbu 1990, 1992), Within cultural ambropology, there is no agree- ‘ment as to what culture means. Different schools hold, Prepared for Museum Learning Conference, Annapolis, MD, Aiigust 1994, Revised 12/20/94 very divergent views of culture. These schools include interpretive anthropology, cognitive anthropology, symbolic anthropology, and ecological anthropology, to name a few. Furthermore, within each school anthropologists differ in their definitions of culture. Indeed, in a review more than four decades ago Kroeber and Kluckhohn {3952} found more than 150 definitions of culture, These definitions, according 10 Freilich (1989:6) focused differentially on "history, nermativeness, on values, adjustment and human psychology, learning, sharedness, sublimation, struc- tures, ideas, symbols, and human association.” That differential definitions continue can be seen from a sampling of works by educational anthropologists assigned in my course on education and culture (Cohen 1971; Gearing 1976; Kneller 1965; LaBelle 1976; Musgrove 1953; Wilson 1972). How one defines culture affects how he or she per- ceives the influence of culture on behavior and leamn- Ing. For example, a cognitive anthropologist who ‘equates culture with information will conceptualize teasing as a transaction . That is, leaning takes place when the learner's cognitive map changes as a result of receiving information from a teacher's cognitive map (Gearing 1976). For an ecological anthropologist, ‘who defines culture as an adaptation, learning is the process by which culture “shapes the mind* of chil dren to create the kind of persons who, as adults, will “be able to meet the imperatives of the culture’ (Cohen 971, p. 19}, My own view lies within the ecological school, Culture is a people's adaptive way of life. Following LeVine (1973), I suggest that analytically culture has five components: 1. customary ways of behaving (e.g., of making a living, eating, expressing affection, getting married, raising children, responding to illness and to death, getting ahead in society, dealing with the supernatur- al, going for a job interview, holding conferences, etc:) 2. codes or assumptions, expectations and emotions underlying those customary behaviors 3, artilacts—zhings that members of the population| | tnake or have made—that have meanings for them. (c4., airports, cats, family homes, freeways, muse- ums, restaurants, schools, supermarkets, television, wristwatches) 4. insttutions—economic, political, religious and social, what Cohen (1971) calls the imperatives of culture - which form a recognizable pattern requiring knowledge, beliefs, competencies or skills and cus- tomary behaviors in a fairly predictable manner 5. patterns of sodal relations, The five components constitute a kind of “cultural world” in a given population. People create, change and pass on their culture to their children, who in turn may change it. But their culture also influences them, For example, U.S. children are born into a free- enterprise competitive economic system and are brought up to function as competent adults in this “free enterprise.” competitive economic system (Ogbu 1981a; see also Cohen 1971; Edgerton and Langness 1968; LeVine 1973; Spradley 1979). When children are born, they do not yet possess the ideas, values, emotion, perceptions, skills and behavior patterns that are shared by members of theit society, all of which they will need to achieve social competence as adults. These are "cultural products" that have been constructed out of the people's past ‘experience (Hansen 1979). They are different for dif- ferent populations. Children are, of course, born with the human capacities and predispositions to learn such things. As they "develop" ar reach different phases of maturation, children learn appropriate phases and types of their society's customary behav- iors, thoughts, and emotions that accompany and support such behaviors. They gain knowledge and understand the meanings of culrural artifacts or sym- bols and of societal institutions, and they learn the practical skills that make those institutions work. ‘They recognize patterns of social relations and behav- iors, with their supporting assumptions. Children are able to acquire culturally valued attributes because of biological capacities, not merely because of parental and other social teachings. However, children learn what they have to learn about their culture through formulas developed with- in their culture for this purpose (e.g., chile-rearing practices, games and play, folktales or storybooks, proverbs, formal education, museum exhibitions, etc.), The attributes and behaviors rewarded by the culture in specific cultural tasks usually permeate other areas of life, Thus. culuzal leaming, or encul- turation, helps children to become competent ~ that 4s, to become contributing members of theit society Culture and Behavior Culture influences behavior because people learn, as they grow up, to behave, think, and feel in the “cul- {80 1 Public institutions for Personal Zearning tural world" of their population. Each human popula- tion lives in @ somewhat different cultural world and consequently members of different populations think, feel, and behave differently. Culture is the framework or “window” through which members of the popula- tion see the world around them, interpret events in that world, behave according to acceptable standard, and react to perceived reality. To understand members of different populations, itis necessary to understand their cultures (Edgerton and Langness 1968; Spradley 1979). An example of a cultural or customaty behavior in the United States is the ritual of caring for the mouth (Miner 1956. pp. 593-7}. The assumptions underlying this customary or cultural behavior are the American people's belief that the body houses two dangerous elements—namely, debility and disease—that must be prevented from breaking out. Consequently every home in the United States contains a shrine for a daily mouth ritual (brushing of teeth) and occasionally Americans consult a *holy-mouth-man" or dentist, who is a specialist in the magical care of their mouths. Another customary behavior limited to one seg- ment of U.S. society is the “stylin’ out” of the black preacher through a special “code talk.” The preacher's code talk is specialized to facilitate in-group or popu- lation feeling and to conceal the aspirations and feel- ings of black Americans from the dominant white ‘Americans. Whites have difficulty understanding the language and style of the black preacher; thus, a white American may attend a storefront church ser- vice and not comprehend the preacher's message to his congregation about white Americans (Holt 1972). Other examples of customary behaviors in the United States are baby showers, buying a home, cele- brating the Fourth of July, dining out, employment Interviews, grocery shopping, letters of recommenda- tion, retirement, Thanksgiving dinners, and waiting in line. Underlying assumptions make these customary behaviors meaningful to Americans, but not necessat~ lly to people from other cultures. Cultural Differences and Behavior Different populacions—even populations within one society ~ may differ in culture (i.e., they differ in theit adaptations) for several reasons. One is that human populations may live in different physical or social environments requiring different adaptations. Furthermore, populations may have had different his- torical experiences that shaped how they perceive, interpret, and respond to things, situations and events within their environments, and their relationship with one another and with outsiders. Thus members of different populations may behave differently with sifferent assumptions toward the same phenomenon. ‘The essential point is that populations differ in culture because of their different environments and historical