LANGUAGE, LITERACY, SIGNS AND SYMBOLS: COMMON THEMES IN

ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION

Theodore S. Ransaw Ph.D.

Abstract
This paper is a social science cross disciplinary literature review of anthropology education.
Anthropology education will be defined as the anthropological approach to examining education,
that is the study of teaching and learning in both childhood and adulthood that transmits what a
society describes as culturally relevant and meaningful knowledge. Three recurring themes have
been found in both disciplines, they both make use of language, literacy, signs and symbols in
their examinations.

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LANGUAGE, LITERACY, SIGNS AND SYMBOLS: COMMON THEMES IN

ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION
In a sociology class during my freshman year in college, an instructor told the class that,
college teaches you how to stand in line and fill out forms, and if youre a minority, how to fit in.
I was angry at first. Here I was thinking that college was about furthering the human spirit or
igniting a passion for learning and being inspired to take myself to a higher level. College had to
be about something more than just standing in line and filling out forms. It just had to be.
Nevertheless, at the end of my undergrad years, what was it that I learned and what was it that I
was good at? I was good at filling out forms and standing in line (that was before on-line
registration). And yes, as a minority, I learned to fit in. I learned to replace what I thought was
culturally relevant with what is socially accepted. I also remember having difficulty answering a
question on an astronomy test that asked, Who first discovered the planets in our solar system
rotate around the sun. The answer choice was, A. Newton, B. Copernicus, C. da Vinci, or D.
Columbus. Didnt every culture know the planets rotate around the sun before the Italians?
When I say Italians, I dont just mean Italians as in Europeans. What I mean is that the Celtics
built Stonehenge, and the Vikings sailed around the world using the stars, so even other
Europeans knew that the planets rotated around the sun.
Today, I still think about that question in astronomy class. I wonder how was that
information that the Vikings and other cultures used to travel across the globe passed their
knowledge from one person to another. Was it written down in a language, was it told in a story
form or was it learned from watching someone elses gestures and behaviors and being

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observant? Language, literacy, signs and symbols, these have been the recurring themes that I
have come across in my brief study of anthropology education.
Purpose
Anthropology education will be defined for this literature review as the anthropological
approach to examining education, that is the study of teaching and learning in both childhood
and adulthood that transmits what a society describes as culturally relevant and meaningful
knowledge. In regards to this exchange of knowledge, all knowledge is transmitted culturally
(Nicholson, 1968, p. 33). The exchange of knowledge has power. Not just in the form of whom
teaches it and how but in the presentation of who has the right to learn such behavior
(Nicholson, 1968, p. 33), as well as the power of resistance to those who reject the truth of that
knowledge. Class segregation and racial isolation is so cemented into the fabric of U.S. society
that outsiders cannot access the daily lives of the poor (Borgois, 1996, p. 249).
Cultural studies often focus on this dichotomy of power. This entails both the power of
representation and the power to impose policies or programs (Pelissier, 1991). Using language,
literacy and signs and symbol this literature review will look at the good and bad of cultural
power and how power, produces reality, objects and truth (Focault, 1979), and how education
and culture are related.
Definitions
In my research on anthropology education, I thought it might be best to become familiar
with some anthropology terms, theories or approaches that may be related to education. I found
so many definitions that I decided to keep most of the citations in direct quotes in case I needed
to use them in the future. The first term I came across was cultural diffusion. Conceptualized by
Alfred Krober (1940), cultural diffusion describes the spread of cultural items between

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individuals from one culture to another. It seems to me that education would fit into that
category as well, since what we believe to be true and relevant is culturally biased. In fact,
culture is made by us and we are made by the cultures we create (Marx, 1977). That would
suggest the cultural frameworks of our construction of reality, how we live nature, (including
our own biology); is the shared meanings we make and encounter in our everyday lives (Story
p. 2-3). As society tries to separate humanity from the unpredictability of nature, we pass on
information to others and our children to carry out that goal both directly and indirectly. We
learn from everything and everyone around us. Education is defined as all the experiences of a
child, because in all contacts with the external world the child may learn something (Et al,
1971, p. 274). This makes education, the transmission of both implicit and explicit cultural
behavior to members of a society (Nicholson p. 73). Thus, education may be considered to be
the means by which animal-man-becomes the human being through both intentional and formal
methods and unintentional and informal methods.
Humans are animals suspended in webs, and the analysis of it is not an experiment in
search of law but an interprative one in search of meaning (Geetz, 1973, p.83).
It is this social process of searching for meaning that is involved in constructing, acquiring, and
transforming knowledge, that lie at the heart of anthropology (Pelissier, 1991).Whether
intentional or not, each culture structures its educational system to teach behavior which the
group finds desirable (Focault, 1980, p. 22). Education passes on desired cultural traditions,
enculturation, and adapts other undesirable cultures suitably, as it comes into more or less contact
with others (Nicholson 1968).
Since mankind has exchanged information from one person to the next and one culture to
the next since our beginning, this definition of education sounds similar to anthropology, or

Common Themes

cultural anthropology. However, anthropology is a Greek term for, anthropos meaning man,
and logos usually translated as study, thus, man-study (Nicholson, 1968, p. 1). Additionally,
cultural anthropologists typically specialize in just one of three areas, prehistoric archeology,
linguistics or social anthropology. Prehistoric archeology investigates the evidence from cultures
of peoples long since vanished. Comparative anthropological linguistics examines development
structure of all languages including ancient and modern, literate and non-literate. Social
anthropology is the study of human behavior in social groups including culturally, linguistically,
economically, religiously, as well as kinship and gender (Nicholoson, 1968). These concepts are
important as the world becomes more global, based on Western concepts of capitalist
socialization. Capitalist industrial societies are societies unequally divided in terms of, for
example, gender, generation, sexuality and social class (Story, 2003, p. 3). Combined these
commercialized and divisive ideologies are so ingrained in Western culture that is reflected in
our culture in terms of what we value as freedom and choice. Values are affectively emotionally
charged tendencies to action which involve preferences and often conscious choices among
alternatives (Nicholson, 1968, p. 27). Western society sees these value choices as freedom from
oppression, but in reality, these values are choices of Western culture. The desire for stability,
structure and sameness comforts the oppressor by imposing their worldview simultaneously
convincing the oppressed that they are inferior (Freire, 1970). In the U.S., we learn to express
our values through the English language
Language
In Westernized educational institutions, the first lessons typically center on learning the
English language. Since language forms our reality, an English language school, presents a
high percentage of the prescriptive that are sanctioned by dominant group members,

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institutionalized and transmitted as part of the cultural tradition (Nicholson, 1968, p. 31). This
leaves a teacher as a broker of cultural capital. Whether in a classroom of an inner city, a nonnative country or even a socially desirable affluent neighborhood, successful teachers are the
ones that bridge the gap between what is socially understood and relevant to what is culturally
meaningful to the immediate students. This result is not the typical one-way education where the
teacher is a depositor and the students are depositories, often using memorization and repetition.
Paulo Freire calls this the banking concept of education and argues against it (2007). Freire
felt that this method of instruction produces an irrelevant ordeal of rout memorization that bears
no cultural relevance to colonized populations.
If forms of cultural expression are the basis for the symbolic capital structuring power in
any given society, then one can understand from the perspective of a new immigrant
mother and her second-generation child the trauma of first contact with the public school
system (Bourgois 1996, p. 252).
This fits in with Malinowski's view that culture contact produces a third cultural reality for
immigrants, which is neither the original nor the new host culture. (Malinowski, 1945, 20-26)
and leaves minorities with an even further detached and useless form of education.
To Kabuga, this mode of pedagogy is as silencing as it is oppressive to all indigenous
people. It leaves students with volumes full of rout memorization but with little cognitive
abilities to place thought into action (Kabuga, 1977). What good is teaching route memorization
without teaching students how to apply that knowledge? This postcolonial and ethnocentric
form of education, Kabuga adds, ignores the indigenous intellectual and cultural achievements of
the people whom the West tries to educate. It breaks a basic educational principle that directs
learning from the known to the unknown, (Kabuga, 1977). European education, by highlighting

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Western culture above all others leaves the student without any form of self-motivation to learn
because that student sees no benefit of offering counterintuitive ideas. With no framework of
reference, memorizations of foreign concepts have no relevance to the learner. To put simply,
European education and the language it teaches leaves indigenous students without a lexicon of
its own knowledge and culture. In turn, this makes indigenous students who are taught though
Western educational lenses lose motivation to learn about their own culture and find a desire to
abandon their own culture and assimilate into the mainstream.
This leaves learning a Western education and language an economic advantages leaving
the ability to think and communicate in indigenous languages undervalued. This creates
resistance to studying ones own culture and causes conflict over self-identity, ethnicity and
class. Class, created by those who have status oppressing those who do not is most often
mirrored in the indigenous population of the colonized. More than just racial, class distinctions
are often reflected in the voices of those who fight against their occupiers control of access to
higher education. This train of thought is supported by Giroux who mentions that struggle is not
in the context of labor but in the struggle of ideology and culture (Giroux, 1983). The Western
concept of education being a passport to a better life by the access of getting a better job is not
reflected in all indigenous realities. An education does not automatically mean that one can rise
to a higher class. A better job for a few does not mean that it advances the people that produced
the individual. For Kabuga, education is nothing unless it benefits the entire community around
it. We have tamed them [our children] with either the stick or the carrot of a desired career
(Kabuga, 1977, p. 523). This does not mean that education educates all members of society
equally. A society does not spend more money for education to empower the lower class and
effectively compete with the dominant (Johnson, et al. 1976). This creates a cycle of oppression

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where an indigenous students formal education does not benefit the society around it while
simultaneously producing more formally educated members.
However, rout memorization and repetition is not all bad. In fact, Stone and Gramsci
both agree that it is necessary to learn the dominant cultures knowledge to challenge and change
it (Stone 1981, Gramsci 1971). Taking that thought one-step further; many indigenous cultures
make use of rout memorization. For example, complex cultural knowledge is often taught in
traditionally oral traditions such as cultures and myths. Performance of complex understanding
such as ocean navigation across continents without modern day technology is only possible by
understanding stories and tales that rout memorization entails. Just as learning an indigenous
cultures stories and myths is interesting and not culturally relevant to the dominant population,
route memorization ABCs that do not translate into their language is also not culturally relevant.
So how do educators perform their duties in cultures do not even recognize a word for
teacher because it does not exist in their language? Clearly cultural competency; a thorough
understanding of both the dominant and indigenous cultures is the key. It is not just being able to
speak two languages or to understand two cultures. You have to be able to translate new
information in a way that is culturally understandable. That is the value of cultural competency,
the magic of adaptability. For example, Paul Freire was able to teach students to read and write
in 45 days when he taught them ABCs and primer words that were culturally meaningful (Freire,
2007). Freire also made use of using indigenous terms and meaning of words to inspire local
myths and imagination that might be different from the dominant culture to optimize the cultural
currency of local ideology and worldview. Every culture has myths, stories and uses words that
give meaning to their own cultural heroes in different ways. By engaging local cultural
imagination and combining that with modern curriculum, educators can make real and salient

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connections. Affor would agree saying that, an unbiased teacher working with biased materials
within an ethnocentric curriculum may well be preferable to a biased teacher working with
multiethnic learning materials and teaching ethnic history (1983, p. 10). Successful teachers are
culturally fluent and aware of ones own biases to achieve desired results. Education
deprivation, not educational deprivation is the concerns for locals. Minority children in
particular do not have low self-esteem because of lack of cultural identity. Minority children
have difficulty seeing themselves and their culture valued and successfully employed in a
dominant population that excludes them (Stone, 1981; Musgrove, 1982). This so called
primitive thinking, is not separate from the emotions they evoke and are thereby mystical (LeviBruhl 1966). Every culture around the world and in the inner city has its own form of
meaningful myths that educators can draw upon. By appealing to rich cultural myths and
cultural archetypes and making them applicable to the dominant culture through language,
educators move one-step forward to cultural relevance. But make no mistake, using the mystical
power of cultural myths does not mean that learning a new culture makes you forget your own.
Malonowski tells us that magic functions in both the social world and the mind in a synchrionic
interpretation of both the mystical and practical, never confusing the two (1945). Learning a
new culture can enhance the understanding of your own.
This section briefly peered into the explicate teaching of the English language and how it
is used both intentionally and intentionally in education. It suggested the idea that Western
educations eventual goal is to produce culturally acceptable members/wokers of society. This
next section will discuss how a thorough knowledge of language allows a person to be literate.
Literacy

Common Themes

It is not merely speaking and understanding a language that makes one literate. Literacy
requires the fluency to communicate and learn effectively with cultural nuance. As the last
section demonstrated, learning a language is only the first step in literacy. The next step is to be
able to articulate the acculturation of what one has learned. Pelissier informs us that, social and
mental evolution are parallel (1991, p. 76). As we grow in the mind through understanding the
basics of language, we grow as a society as we write our ideas down and understand them as a
literate community. Whether in a major inner city, or in small village, literacy is the highest form
of human achievement. The parallel of the urban city to rural villages is not just ideological it is
also factual. Poverty and access to education is not limited to inner cities 189 of the 200
poorest counties in the United States are in metropolitan areas (Schultz, 2004, p. 120).
Unquestionably related to poverty, literacy has many different definitions. For example,
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) defines literacy as,
the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use
printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a
continuum of learning to enable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his
or her knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in the wider society" (UNESCO,
2004, p. 13).
Literacy has also been described as, ideological in tandem with the context of values (Street,
1984), with those values a reproduction of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1971, Bourdieu et al. 1977),
and includes the cultural, political, and historical contexts of the community (Knobel, 1999).
Recently, literacy has been expanded to include computer, media and even ecological literacy
(Kress, 2003). Now not only do educators need to be fluent in language and culture, they need to
be fluent in the use of technology as well. Explaining the ability to adapt this way is not only

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good for education, but it helps students to be able to demonstrate skill at adaptation as well.
Being able to read, speak and understand in one cultural language and still preserving ones own
requires the cultural literacy described above. Only those who know how to switch between
cultures effectively cross the fluid boundary between cultures in an educational environment.
The ability to use language to accomplish this is called code switching.
Similar to double consciousness and social accommodation theory, code switching is
separate and distinct. Code switching is a process that individuals use to communicate when
they are fluent in at least two languages. Be it a language that one speaks at a Harvard cocktail
party, or when a person switches languages or words and phrases from ethnically different
languages, both are forms of being bi-linguistic. Double consciousness allows a person to see
the world through multicultural eyes, (Du Bois, 1994) and social accommodation is adapting
behavior to the context (Giles and Coupland, 1991). Code switching is the ability to
communicate and influence conversations.
Code switching would require that both an educator and a student to go through identity
developments five stages: pre-encounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, internalization and
internalization commitment (Cross, 1972). These steps enable the ability to understand ones self
and ones identity in society. For minority students, knowing how to voice cultural relevancy in
the proper situations and when to obscure them is important for success. For those of the
dominant culture, it would help appease self-defensive resentment as they struggle with the
implications of a diverse society (Breault, 2004). Many Whites feel culturally impaired in the
classroom when they become aware that European civilization and its emphasis on the written
word and not the spoken have helped to erase cultural oral traditions. In fact, it has been
suggested that writing started out as a secret code thorough which a literate elite exercised

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bureaucratic control over the illiterate masses (Leach, 1977). Written communication has also
been called a form of slavery (Spindler, 1977). Because, writing shows how societies motivate
individuals to strive to attain statuses for which they are ordained by the functional prerequisites
of the social system (Spindler, p. 159). The written word or book culture, nourished
inwardness, privacy and individualism, undermined tradition, communal wisdom, communal,
myth and communal authority (Bantock, 1980). Thus, childhood and savagery have become
linked to childhood and adolescence. In fact, cultures that practice literacy as opposed to oral
cultures are often the first form of analysis for social systems (Musgrove, 1985). The
importance of oral tradition does have its merits however.
Literacy is not all bad because it allows participation in society, and may be one reason
that UNESCO feels that literacy is freedom (UNESCO, 2004). Many minorities value and
appreciate the enhancement that Western language literacy provides. Musgrove would agree
asserting that, literacy protects the lower classes from exploitation and oppression (Musgrove,
1985, p. 23). An illiterate who cannot read, refer to their rights or cannot use a computer is
vulnerable (Musgrove, 1985). This is especially relevant to educators who are in urban areas as
well as in the village. The educator in a socially desirable area must continue to pass on the
culturally accepted knowledge to uphold their students status. The educator of the lower class
has a duty to try to get their students in the higher class. This can only be achieved if the teacher
in the classroom knows how to explain and communicate in relevant terms and understand the
cultural values of their students who may not be literate. Even nonliterate culture have
conceptual values all their own.
For example, nonliterate societies are superior at judging the number of cups in a bowl of
rice, whereas literate societies are better at multiplication and division. A city can be thought of

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by reversibility, reconstructed and deconstructed, nature cannot be thought of in those terms

(Musgrove, 54). In nonliterate societies, goats may be numbered differently than sheep
(Musgrove 27) [one sheep may be worth more than a goat or vice versa]. In that culture, you
may not be able to add goats or sheep, and you would not be able to divide one. However,
nonliterate goat herding societies add and subtract goats and sheep by substituting material
objects such as seeds, beads or stones just as effectively as a European purchase different
commodities. Different societies and cultures write or not write and think differently depending
on the logical needs of their environment and their objectives. Logic is not absolute but socially
situated and cannot be treated by the learner as if it was context free (Musgrove, 57). Opinions
like these frame the basis of the false idea that nonlierate people are unable to think in abstract
terms. And although societies are described as, literate/preliterate, abstract/concrete terms
(Pelissier, 1991), in fact literacy is tied to concrete situations and cultural context. One has to be
able to think in abstract terms in relate to their students.
Teaching by example is only possible if everyone in the class is starting from the same
place as the instructor. Hammer this, nail that. Literacy also entails knowing what a hammer is
and how to get one. For educators this entails using students cultural myths and local
experiences to inspire change. Not only are cultural alternatives not taught in Western history
classes, Western history has an emphasis on the ability of conflict to reinforce the differences
between people. This reproduces the idea that force can resolve oppression (Bresault, 2004).
The resulting violence in the world is created from the barriers between those who are like us
and those who are not (Leach, 2003). We are all hyper-ly aware of the other.
Signs and Symbols

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Common Themes

Now we look at yet another anthropological approach to understanding education. We

have seen how anthropologists examine how education teaches the culture of both a tribe and a
nation through language and literacy. This section will explore how education implicitly
reinforces culture through signs and symbols. For this approach, signs and symbols can include
actions, gestures and objects. Both learning a job skill and a change in social status is an action.
Specific actions in that new role are described as gestures, and tangible items used to perform
those same goals are identified as objects.
It was Rousswau who first suggested the idea that, as different languages change
symbols, the ideas of which the symbols express are also adapted (1983). The Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis states language has a double effect on cognition, influencing not only the way we
think, but also the reality that is presented to us to think about (1983). It is not difficult to
believe that both symbolic movements and gestures can also change meaning. Closely related to
language, gestures of work contain real content beyond their intentionality (Wolf, 2002, p. 41).
Take for example the meaning behind the phrase, gesture of work. Work is a gesture of social
status, so much so work has become the deciding reason for the meaning of life (Wulf, 2002, p.
40). This is true in both the inner city and rural communities all across the globe.
Individuals are recruited to be members of a culture and by which culture is
maintained (Pelissier, 1991, p. 82). These culturally maintaining gestures include movements
such as being gainfully employed community minded and productive. In every culture, students
are encouraged to use their abilities and talents for the good of society (Dewey, 1916). The
praxis of education is the actions the action the students present. Holding and keeping a job
requires a socially accepted symbolic presentation of self. A new job description that often
includes a new social environment requires not only learning a new job skill but impression

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management as well. Often learning the new job skill is not as difficult as navigating a new
social territory. One of the ways in which formal education teaches social status is through the
implicit actions of ones occupation. These actions are taught from birth.
A childs first interaction with others and the world is through imitation (Wulf, 2002). It
is not too much of a stretch to believe that learning, a basic ingredient of education, is often a
repeated behavior of copying others. Our ability to copy others by imitating language and
actions is continually perfected into adulthood. This idea that education takes place largely via
mimesis was around since Platos Politeia (1903). The concept of memisis is that when we are
young, we learn by copying older siblings, adults and parents. When we are older, we learn by
mimicking other professionals and supervisors in hopes of repeating their success. In other
words, merely learning the language and knowing how to read and write are not the only ways in
which we learn. We must be able to act in a way that is suitable. Having the basic skills is
necessary; knowing how to manipulate the dominant language that creates the proper signs and
symbols as the social context changes is a key lesson in literacy as well. So too is the ability to
detect the correct actions in the proper situation. When we learn work behavior from others, we
are mimicking the social movement of others. Dominant cultures mimic the symbolic actions of
others; minorities often mimic the symbolic actions of others when they change social status.
This social status is earned typically through a change in occupation. In both instances,
occupation, or work is a symbolic action. Not only is the work one performs is symbolic, but
how one performs the job is symbolic as well.
In most social contexts, a job denotes status, and status is a symbolically recognized
characteristic assigned by others. The role that one performs in the job is the expected actions of
that persons status. These expectations are on-the-job and off the job. A police officer is

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expected to be law abiding even when off work, and a teacher is expected to have a continually
functioning moral compass to make the right choices even when not in the classroom. These
behaviors are socially erected and learned. They are often taught both intentionally and
unintentionally by a donor, someone who presents a pattern of behavior to another (Nicholson,
1968, p. 37-39). This imitation of a lived experience is called mimesis.
Although it requires a form of performance and artistry, memesis is not pastiche.
Mimesis does not mean simply imitation, but making oneself similar (Wulf, 2002, p. 77).
Memesis in not an amalgamation of what ever is at hand, but requires forethought and is
therefore not bricolage (Levi-Strauss, 1966). Similar to gestures of work, mimesis entails doing,
showing, expressing and showing (Wulf, 2002, p. 77). Whereas mimic body expression are
separate from the body and cannot be distinguished from one another, gestures of work are
gender and class specific and can be used intentionally (Wulf, 2002). The symbolic language
used to address a co-worker, a customer and to a boss changes often throughout the day. So too
does ones body language. Gestures also account for the movements necessary to travel between
social classes. In other words, mere education alone does not help a minority gain a higher
social status. It is the minoritys ability to use gestures and memesis, as well as other symbolic
objects correctly. These items combined are cultural talismans that enable passage from one
realm to another.
Using the same mannerisms of a shaman, a practitioner can perform cultural magic,
appearing in one culture and then another as mysterious and enchanting as smoke. It is not
gestures alone that make a successful conjurer, but the objects employed in the ritual of
achieving social status as well. A suit and tie and a briefcase can allow a minority passage to an
inner circus of high society that a member of the dominant class does not need. That same suit

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and brief case may be seen as taboo to the culture the wearer has just left. Both the social and
symbolic concepts of objects of work enable those of the dominant class accept a minority more
readily. It makes the minority no longer the other.
The, other is never outside or beyond us; it emerged forcefully, within cultural
discourse, when we think we speak most intimately and indigenously between ourselves.
(Bhabha, 1990, p. 4). The other may be the person that appears when we speak about what we
find frightening. The other represents what is not exactly made into self, but becomes a figure in
which self and foreign are mixed: the in-between (Wulf, 2002). Whether created
unintentionally by what we fear, or intentionally by those who use the cultural magic of
assimilation, most minorities dance between different cultures. This dance of change in social
status requires exclusion from one group and acceptance of another. It is sometimes necessary to
obviscate sub-cultural traits for dominant class ones. In this case, personal traits that are
desirable are exalted, then temporarily abandoned around the indigenous culture. This physical
code switching can be seen by some as selling out. In fact, the initiate may be motivated by the
envy of the former social class one belonged to. It increases status, but it requires a temporary
sacrifice of ones identity. What magical ritual doesnt?
Recommendations for Future Research
Further research in anthropology education would benefit from identifying the
relationships between language, literacy and the signs and symbols of family and religion.
Family
Since the inner and extended family plays a large role in how children experience the
world, an examination of how family elders pass on language from one generation to another
would be insightful. Both implicitly and explicitly the family transmits class and culture

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ideologies. As these values are expressed generationally, with the advent of transportation and
the modern world kinship is often blurred. In the African American community for example,
uncles and aunts are terms of status and not biological relations. These and other non-traditional
family relationships still help others make meaning of the world. Looking at the family cultural
tools that are repeated in the modern world would also be illuminating. Especially since tradition
is a negotiation between the elders of the past and the keepers of the future, a study in how the
family helps others decide what cultural symbols to keep and discard would also be fruitful.
Family helps us all make adaptations to what is culturally symbolic and relevant. These symbols
are not only work related but also reinterpret how gender roles are reinterpreted and reinforced.
Religion
In the US we all share the cultural myth of a separation in church and state. In reality,
that is hardly the truth. Extremely protestant, the US education system was highly influenced on
the idea that mankind must know how to read and write in order to interpret the Bible. This
made not only language but also literacy key to the formation of our country. An examination of
the role religion plays in the mental construction of the words used in learning languages in other
cultures would therefore be extremely important. The symbolic symbol of gender that is so
largely based on religion would also be fruitful. Religion not only helps in the formation of
gender roles, but also helps provide structure and the comfort of familiar and sacred rituals that
comfort us when we are far away from home or when we find ourselves far away from our
culture.

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Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Press.
Giles, H. C., N. (1991). Language: Contexts and Consequences. Pacific Grove:
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Common Themes

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International.
Knobel, M. (1999). Everyday literacies: Students, discourse, and social practice. New York: ?
Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: : Routledge.
Kroeber, A. (1940). Stimulus diffusion. American Anthropologist, 42, 1-20.
Labov, W. (1793). The logic of nonstandard English. Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin.
Leach, E. (1977 20 February). Literacy be Damned. Observer.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1976). Tristes tropiques. Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago press.
Levi-Bruhl. L. (1923/1966). Primitive mentality. Boston: Beacon.
Malinowski, B. (1945). The Dynamics of Culture Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Marx, K. (1977). The Eighteenth Brumaire of of Louis Bonaparte Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Murry L. Wax, S. D. F. O. G. (1971). Anthoropological Perspectives on Education. New York:
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Musgrove, F. (1982). Education and anthropology: Other cultures and the teacher. Toronto:
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Plato. (1903). The republic of Plato. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pelissier, C. (1991). The anthropology of teaching and learning. Annual review of anthropology
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Rousseau, J. (1876/1993). Emile ou de l'Education (a. t. c. t. s. Roussau "different languages,
also modify the ideas which the symbols express", Trans.). London: Everyman.

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Common Themes

Saphir, E. (1983). Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality:
University of California Press.
Spindler, G. (1963). The role of the school administrator. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston,
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Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
Wulf, P. (2002). Anthropology of education. History and theory of anthropology, 2

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