Additional Perspectives of Culture and Diversity

Perspective from a friend working with Peace Corp in Mali

Culture is basically any learned behaviors passed between people. In Mali it is very obvious to see the learned behaviors in small villages and the family setting. Women get married at a young age, have children, cook, clean and raise their family because that is what women here do. When told that women work outside of the home, or that some women have no desire to get married and have children, they do not understand why.

Mali is a very diverse country, more than half of the country is in the Sahara Desert, while the most Southern region is lush and green with much farmland. The people of Mali are quite diverse as well. While the national language is French, the majority of Mali is made up of Bamana people making the most common language Bambara (which is what I've learned). There are many different ethnic groups in Mali, most speak either Bamabara and/or French in addition to their own group's language. I recently visited Segou and visited a fishing village the Niger made up three minority groups who communicate in Bambara with each other but still speak their own language to family. Also in Segou there are some Teurag people who are from Timbucktu in the desert and they speak Tomacheck and not Bamabara they spoke English to us, and they also know French. The Falani people are mostly found in the north but the men are nomadic, because through hot season they leave the villages in the north and travel with their cows to the southern, more lush land, and then in Rainy season head back up North.Diversity affects the learning styles of the children in that they learn only French in school from 3rd grade on but that is a language rarely spoken in the home.

I hope this is somewhat helpful! I also found this link giving an interesting definition of diversity.

http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~asuomca/diversityinit/definition.html

Perspective from a secondary school English teacher

Culture is a set of shared customs, traditions, history or even language that a group identifies as "theirs". I guess diversity would be when several of those groups come together.