Spirit and Place

After reading chapters 8 & 9 in Learning in Adulthood, which examined the role of spirituality and multi-cultural perspectives in adult education, it struck me that spirituality (as defined by the authors) and multi-culturalism have some similarities. They have a strong emphasis on community, meaning making and connection that are often lacking in Western cultures. It is almost as if the authors are saying that Western cultures are not spiritual ones. In my opinion, tt may be more that spiritualism is often considered a deeply private and individual practice and that due to the ever growing heterogeneous nature of these cultures, spiritual tolerance is often executed as spiritual silence. The more homogenous a culture is, it may make the societal expression of spiritual beliefs more acceptable.

I found it interesting, though, that there was little, if any, discussion around formal education settings when examinging multi-culturalism. While there may be more narrative learning, in for example, African cultures or more apprenticeship type learning in Hindu or Asian cultures, it left me wondering how different or similar educational philosophies are across cultures. How does each culture’s pedagogical styles influence their adult education approaches? I would have liked to see these aspects discussed more in depth by the authors. And other than the example of the teacher witnessing a Turkish brother beating his sister because it was acceptable behavior in their culture, much of the culture discussions seemed sanitized and idealized. The chapter focused mainly on the role of the educators and the overall purposes of some form of education. The authors made very little distinctions between formal and informal learning.

Things that left me thinking more about, in a broader since of oppression and culture were: How does India’s caste system impact learning? In Muslim countries, what about the lack of educational opportunities for women (and in other countries as well)? What about the Confucian approach to education, with the belief that it is how much a student is willing to work to learn, rather than innate ability? It seemed like these chapters were focused mainly on respecting fairly surface level differences, such as Asian cultures’ deference to the teacher. Much more could have been learned from examining in depth learning practices or approaches, from childhood through adult learning, not only to gain a deeper understanding of educating adults from different cultures, but also to gather best practices for designing programs based on strategies used by these cultures.