FOCUS ON EDUCATION Culture and reality

By Anthony Pellegrino

As a resident of the CNMI for about fifteen years and as a citizen of the United States, I am trying daily to learn the culture of my adopted islands. I struggle with trying to understand who the people are and what the culture is so that I may be able to adapt my ItalianAmerican culture for a more harmonious life. However I often run into a problem that needs discussion. And that problem is called ethnocentrism which is practiced by many people in the CNMI.

Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture is the only true and good way as well as the tendency to judge other cultures hy those standards. While this may be essential for social solidarity, or to put it another way, the glue that holds the group together, it can result in a dysfunctional society.

Ethnocentrism becomes dysfunctional when the belief in one’s superiority leads to hostility and refusal to find values in other ways of life. In other words, the adaptability of a social system is weakened. Tensions among groups and nations are often heightened by ethnocentrism. We forget that what seems “odd” to us are the “natural” way to do things in other societies.

Everyone should speak of “my culture” with pride. And happy is he who understands what that culture represents. But how many of us if asked to define the core values underlying the belief and behaviors of his own culture whether it be Chamorro, Carolinian, American, Philippino, Japanese and all the other cultures that we rub elbows with daily could reply intelligently?

Culture is the blueprint for living of a group whose members share a given territory and language, feel responsible for one another, and call themselves by the same name. Culture is an integral part of all societies. Each society creates its own ways for blending members into a community and obtain a secure sense of identity. No human group is without culture and no two cultures are exactly the same. Humans are born without any preprogrammed or built in responses as animals are. Therefore humans group together to maintain a viable culture for survival.

Humans rely upon totally learned responses. In fact the story of evolution and culture is essentially one of progressive weakening of instinctual behavior in favor of action that is guided by thought. This can be readily seen in our social structures and in the myriad of laws that we create.

The CNMI is now home to many different cultures. It is more imperative than ever before that we become aware of each other’s cultures and learn to blend with them. While it is true that we will lose some of what we consider basic to our way of life, we also will gain much by infusing the best of what is presented to us.

Culture is not a static activity. It is ever changing with the needs and values of its people. Culture variability reflects the variety of customs, belief, and artifacts devised by humans to meet universal needs. Every progressive nation is constantly borrowing and exchanging its culture with each other. Let us recall that the present culture of the CNMI is made up of many borrowings from the countries that have dominated it, notably the Spaniards, the Japanese, the Americans. And the beauty of it all is that the CNMI has become stronger because of this acculturation.

I strongly recommend that our educational system develop a curriculum to promote a better understanding not only of the local culture but also other cultures. To not do so will increase our ethnocentric attitudes in our youth. Let us teach our youth an ideal culture which reflects the highest virtues and standards of a society.