Education and Acculturation in Our Lives

Do you believe that there is more than one way to “see” things? If you were given a piece of art to look at, what would you “see”? Would you see the same thing as a three year old, as your friend in Korea, or as your art teacher? Why is it that each person would see the picture differently? Is the picture not the same in each case? Why would each person not see the same thing or interpret it the same way? According to Cole, the way we perceive things in our day-to-day lives is highly due to our education and acculturation. Each person sees things differently because of the way they have been raised, and the culture and education they have been given.

The senses play a vital part in the lives of individuals and the way they interpret the things around them. “[The sense of] touch has been described as the most primitive and the most personal of the five senses” (Colombo, Gary pg.27). Touch, though often unnoticed, is the physiological sense by which external objects or forces are perceived through contact with the body. Lopez writes, “Eventually I visited many places, staying with different sorts of people. Most worked some substantial part of the day with their hands” (pg.32). Many times touch is overlooked as an educational tool. Touch is one of the things that are very significant in developing people both physically and emotionally and in linking us to other human beings.

The sense of sight plays an important role as an educational device. We use our sense of sight to visually interact with our surroundings. With this sense we can recognize objects around us and make new discoveries. The mind plays a direct role in the way we respond to and interpret the things we see. The human eye provides the brain with vast amounts of visual information, in which the brain then registers or disregards in memory. The brain oftentimes transmits signals back to the person which cause a physical or emotional reaction. For example, when one touches a pointy object or hits one’s knee on a hard surface, one feels pain not from the pointy object or the hard surface but by the interpretation in one’s mind from electrical signals inside the brain. This is what causes one to yell out in agony when these particular situations occur.

The more educated one becomes, whether it is by learning through experience as one gets older and/or being educated in school, the greater ones capability to sense their surroundings is. The perception is a very involved one. A person learns by going out and retrieving information, analyzing it, formulating their own opinions, and perhaps even creating new information. Because of this, our perceptions are often times limited to things that we personally experience or learn. “Certain people in certain lines of work seem to train their perceptual systems to perform specific visual tasks that other people would find impossible” (Kleege). This is why a physicist has the ability to “see” things which the ordinary person can only dream of perceiving, or why a professional artist can interpret profound ideas such as an abstract picture or piece of art, whereas the average person has tremendous difficulty doing so.

Culture also plays a significant role in shaping how people perceive the world around them. Different cultures and religions believe in raising their children in different ways. What may seem