House on Mango Street

Before I began this paper, I opened our text book and turned towards the back to the index and looked up the word “culture”. Topics and page numbers could be seen under the word for half a page, and then onto the next page. My point is, culture affects children an enormous amount; socially, cognitively and in all developmental areas. It is an issue I feel is sometimes overlooked inside the classroom, however which should be considered a great deal.

The book I chose to read is a piece of fiction literature written by Sandra Cisneros. The book is entitled “The House on Mango Street.” It was the first book I thought of when I read the assignment. I remember reading it in high school and I remember the impact it left on me then. It’s extremely powerful to read about the struggles and joys of a person from another culture, some of which you may never experience yourself, making it hard to even comprehend those feelings.

The book is written as a series of vignettes about a twelve year old Latino girl named Esperenza. She lives on Mango Street which is located in a harsh Latino neighborhood. The house is small and not very nice, however it is much nicer than the house they had lived in before they moved there. Her family is rather poor and racially segregated, as are the other families living on Mango Street. Esperenza writes to help herself escape from the realities of her world, a world she is determined to escape one day.

The experiences Esperenza writes about reminds me of how conscious we as teachers must be of the different cultures within our classrooms. Also, when our students leave school there is no sure way of knowing what they are going home to, or what they are prone to experience outside the four walls you are able to protect them inside. And sometimes, those walls aren’t even enough. School aged children are extremely impressionable, and the things they see, feel and experience effect their development in so many ways.

I cant say that reading “The House on Mango Street” made me question any developmental theories, however it did support them, and many of my developmental beliefs greatly and forced me to think more about the cultural differences within my classroom, rather than only the learning differences among my students.

Vygotsky believed that society and culture played a huge role in cognitive development. “Vygotsky acknowledged the fact that biological factors play a role in development. Children bring certain characteristics and dispositions to the situations they encounter and their responses to those situations vary accordingly.” (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2007, p. 209) It’s amazing to think that not only does culture effect our students social and emotional development, but their cognitive development as well. “Vygotsky’s primary focus was on the role of nurture and especially on the ways in which a child’s social and cultural environments foster cognitive growth.” (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2007, p. 210)

Esperenza is indeed an extremely bright girl. She loves to read and write and she has dreams for a brighter future. She dreams to have what her parents never had because of who they were and where they lived. I feel that all the things she was ashamed of, from her culture to her poverty, helped her to become the smart, conscientious girl she was. The school she attended wasn’t a good school. Even her father would tell her that. But she overcame everything holding her back. Her mother once told her, “Shame is a bad thing you know. It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn’t have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains.” (Cisneros, 1984, p. 91)

We must also consider the language barriers which have an enormous impact on the cognitive development of our students. Today, public schools are made up of a huge ESL population. Even students who left their countries years earlier are still experiencing culture shock and attempting to assimilate and learn the language. Language barriers do indeed lead to cognitive and emotional developmental