Upon reading this prompt, I’m immediately drawn to my own culture as a British, English speaking individual and how this affects both what I can learn as well as the way I learn.

While English is just the language I happened to be born into using, it is almost globally used to the point where many find no need in learning extra languages. Already, this impacts hugely the information ( such as word translations ) we can know, but more than that, is the problem of having such a small perception of the world rooted just in our obstinance to learn another language? Following Whorf’s Linguistic determinism, our language limits the knowledge we can comprehend. For example, many expressions and idioms are unique to the languages they come from, and hold contextual meaning or cultural significance, as well as having weight on location. For example, for it to be raining “cats and dogs”, most of us assume it to be chucking it down, heavily raining. But thanks to the rainfall in the UK being so high, those from more arid locations or sunnier areas like in the Med, may misinterpret the meaning of this expression. This is due to their having a different perspective of the meanings and ideas of words, built up over time by differences in habitation, and culture (through language and ideas of what things are). This calls into question if there is a difference between learning a language and “knowing it” For example, does it matter if I learn French, since I will always only think of French in terms of English, rather than in terms of French, and therefore not gain any new perspective on the meaning of words? The follow up to this being : what requires us to experience new points of view?

What we may begin to understand is that different cultures and languages very much have weight on what we can know. Of course, many would claim that language and word meanings can be subjective to begin with, but even when casting this aside we see that the issue of the way we learn is rooted in how we grow up. This creates potential for those who have greater terms/ words for similar things to develop a greater understanding/knowledge over that subject (like bilinguals), as defined by the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. In summary, it is very possible our social customs and definitions make us biased in the interaction with new information, and block us, even after taking in new forms of communication, from different perspectives gained through the complete knowledge of a language.

Ivan Sproats.

Knowledge and culture are tightly interlinked. You gain knowledge from cultural experiences for example me being in a French school for most of my education and then moving to jersey has shown me different cultures first hand and up close.

As we can see from my object, French and English schooling methods are poles apart and we learn different things in different ways due to the cultures being significantly different. I am referencing school in this exhibition because it is the main way that that children and young adults acquire knowledge and is also infused with the culture it is in. I believe that culture, even outside of schools, heavily influences our way of learning. It influences our views on learning as well as our will to learn. For example if everyone around you is very laid back and not very bothered about acquiring new knowledge or learning, it is very difficult to not follow suit. In the video we see everyone grouped at the back of the class not paying attention to the teacher in any way shape or form which is how I got this argument.

This first hand experience of two cultures clearly shows me how culture can influence and change ways of acquiring knowledge in a good or bad way.

Our knowledge is accumulated through personal experience and interpretation which improves our awareness, and challenges our understanding of a given matter thus, improving our confidence as not only repetition of practice, but also applying oneself to a matter. Given this, experiential knowledge is acquired through experience and priori knowledge which is necessary to the individual before they apply it to a given culture. Thus, culture is the involvement of beliefs, language, geography and practices that are shared between a group of persons through history and their experiences of life collectively. Based on the aforementioned, I will be discussing the correlation between knowledge of an attractive Italian dish that has developed through time and the Italian culture that surrounds it.

For example, Pizza is one of the most delicious recipes in Italy which originated during the 1800s in Naples. Being a busy city where locals would find quick and easy ways to feed their families. This food was considered for the working class, due to its limited appeal and ingredients and was unsuitable for the upper class. However, Raffaele Esposito baked the first pizza with toppings emblazoned in the colours of the Italian flag, for the Italian King Umberto and Queen Margherita, during their stay at Naples in 1889. Raffaele utilised flavourings of bazil, mozzarella and tomato, thus creating a margherita pizza. Soon enough, as Italians were immigrating to the United States, America became aware of this culinary art and commenced experimenting with the unique flavours, especially after World War II. The first pizza parlour was established in New York City in 1905. Thus, pizza became a global classic for all classes and members of society to this day.

Ultimately, the culinary knowledge that all Italian chefs possess is intertwined with one another, especially given that Italian cuisine is often influenced by surrounding countries e.g Italian dishes that contain butter, cream, cheese, garlic etc. But, this is going to clash with Japanese cuisine because their dishes instead incorporate more fresh vegetables for they’re flavourings, perhaps due to differing foundations of knowledge from Japanese history.

Knowledge and culture are inextricably intertwined, both affecting each other in their own ways. Differing cultural backgrounds can also influence the way knowledge is obtained, for example curricular differences in different countries influence the knowledge obtained from education. Even though standardisation can be implemented, the way the knowledge is conveyed by the sharers of the knowledge can influence the knowers. Specific opinions will be passed on, which may be held predominantly by certain cultures due to historical events and localised attitudes, such as mental fortitude to bias, propaganda and corruption, depending on the historical culture associated with the area. For example, old people, especially in Poland, are very susceptible to government propaganda through the state-owned TV channels, as the culture during their youth was so that the only means of mass media communications were state-owned, so they only had one side of the story to hear. However, having the amount of channels and mass media now compared to then, when everything said on state media was true, can prove problems, as questions are not asked even when questionable knowledge is being provided through questionable sources, which can cause misinformation to spread through the elderly population (not limited to just them though). In contrast, a culture that has been well established as free, democratic, not immune to corruption or secrecy but with public opinion being the most important, i.e. the UK, private media is always picking fights with state affairs and giving alternate views to articles and news, and whilst this is not always true, it can teach the population to form a critical thought process to deduce the strengths and weaknesses in both arguments, not limiting but purifying knowledge flow to knowers.

Knowledge as a term can mean many things however no all knowledge can be expressed so places like madeira which is vary traditional and cultural place meaning that culture of there ancestors is really the main part of there lives which compared to the modern society can seem very different as modern society is so varied compared to madeira as no many tourist are attracted to living in madeira. In such cases it is hard for some knowledge to be available to all cultures as in madeira the only real way to be one with the culture is to be or have a long history in madeira and this is what makes the Madeiran tradition so special and heavily protected.

My personal experiences have been interesting as I have many friends from Madeira and my mother is from madeira but I still haven’t got to grip with the culture as all my life and even now I have learnt the Portuguese culture which is different to the Madeiran culture and quite substantially. Through my life the story’s I have been told have been really informative as I though I had learnt a lot until more recently where I have found such substantial differences to what I believed. This year however I want to offset the stuff I don’t now when I travel to madeira at Christmas which I think is the perfect time to go as its where culture is expressed most and also religion which is different to jersey and Portugal but plays a massive pat in there culture.

Culture is the ideas, customs and the social behavior of particular people or a society. So how does knowledge relate to this? Knowledge’s relationship with culture is that you will have or earn specific knowledge when you enter a different culture. Different cultures contain different languages, religions, famous arts and monuments. Through culture, you gain a deeper understanding and further knowledge about a place by exploring what the people and different landscapes are like.

For example, the difference in knowledge gained in Jersey compared to Japan is greatly different. In Jersey, tradition does not seem to have such a big importance, considering how Jèrriais died out and is no longer spoken as a main language. In Japan, on the other hand, traditions are strongly long living. Jersey’s culture is now mixed Franco-British as a lot of Brits moved over here, there are also many Portuguese, and this means Jersey has a wide variety of mixed cultures living on the island. Despite Japan being slightly westernized over the years, they still like to preserve their rich cultural heritage. This means knowledge of culture can change over time, think about travelling back to Jersey 1000 years ago, it would be completely different, it wouldn’t even be its own island!

Japan has aimed to keep this heritage by practicing tea ceremony, wearing kimono, and teaching the young about traditional arts and crafts from an early age. Peace, harmony, and politeness is very important to Japan. Although in Jersey you may have been taught your pleases and thank yous growing up, Japan takes a whole different toll on manners. Japanese people tend to praise others for showing modesty and humility, so bowing to show respect is highly praised; the longer the bow the more respect given.

This shows that the relationship between knowledge and culture is that you depend on cultures for knowledge about a certain place. If you went to Japan for example, it would be useful to know that Japanese people are respectful and quiet when it comes to public places and public transport. This way you can use the knowledge you’ve researched and be able to respect the place you are visiting due to the prior knowledge you’ve already learned, and learn more about their culture when you get there.

Knowledge is acquired via an unfathomable number of ways and methods. One of these many ways is personal experience. So what is the relationship between the two?

For a mathematician, their first lesson in correlation and scatter graphs could literally describe the relationship between personal experience and knowledge. They experienced the lesson, and gained the knowledge, and could describe it as having a ‘strong positive correlation.’

We have all learnt things and gained knowledge through experiences or mistakes. Like learning to ride your bicycle without stabilizers as a kid. Your dad would push you and tell you to keep pedaling and look straight forward, deceiving you into believing he would keep a hold of you – but by the time you keep pedaling, you’ve cycled away from him. Thus, you learned how to ride your bike. You experienced it, and gained the knowledge: to keep pushing and looking forward (with the hope of not falling off).

So what about mistakes? It has always been said you learn from your mistakes, whether that be breaking up with your ex, or 12 different publishers rejecting an author who went on to write the most successful series of books ever.

I feel as though we’ve all made mistakes, some no one else could ever make, some miniscule, and some massive ones. Not submitting your homework is a mistake we all make, thinking we’ll be fine, until our report comes in the post, a question on the homework you didn’t do pops up in your exam, or the teacher scolds you and gives you a detention.

Having to sit through that detention, opening poor results on results day, or your parents grounding you for effort out of class requiring “significant improvement” will give you the knowledge that, ‘this isn’t fun, I’ll hand my homework in next time.’ And you will know to, and have the incentive to hand your homework in.