Cultural Competency in a Typical

Cultural Competency in a Typical Elementary School

Cultural competency has become a new buzzword in many fields that deal with institutional and personal interactions. The basic concepts of multiculturalism and diversity have grown from concepts based largely in theory and with an attitude of political prudence to practical and effective means of dealing with a world in which people have increasingly different and often disparate beliefs, backgrounds, and values. Cultural competency is a term that describes an institution's -- be it a medical office or hospital, social work organization, or education facility -- ability to promote the most effective and culturally affirming experience for all of individuals served by the institution regardless of their cultural identification or background. There is a high degree of ethical importance in promoting and maintaining cultural competency in institutions that serve adults within a community, and this imperative can only be seen as more extreme in institutions that serve children.

Though there are significant differences in elementary schools' cultural competency levels at different institutions and perhaps generally in different regions of the country, overall it appears that most schools operate at the level of cultural blindness. There is a trend in trying to treat and think of everyone as exactly equal and essentially the same which denies the possibility of any real awareness of culture as a diverse mechanisms that leads to diverse and highly dissimilar worldviews (SPS 2009). Cultural competency is not achieved through the arrival at a precise and objective standard of practices, but rather is an ongoing process that is built on continual learning and adjustment that takes each individual's needs into account, and this is not occurring at a practical level at many elementary schools (Olsen et al. 2006).

One specific institution that the author had the opportunity to observe first hand for an extended period of time contained a highly diverse student body in terms of skin color and cultural and ethnic identification, and "diversity" was a common feature of many lessons. These lessons, however, focused primarily on the importance of specific individuals from various cultures that had made contributions to the dominant, white and Western culture of which the school was essentially a part. The central tenet of such lessons, though not explicitly stated as such (and perhaps made the more harmful through the subtlety of its implications) was that all cultures are equally important and valuable from the perspective of the dominant culture. While the aim of eradicating any notion of a qualitative ranking of cultures in terms of importance is certainly a laudable goal from the perspective of cultural competence, it comes at the price of masking specific cultural contributions and strengths (Olsen et al. 2006).

A lack of cultural competence among the support staff at elementary schools, including both teachers and other authority figures, has also been linked quite clearly to student performance in certain programs (Kennedy et al. 2007). At the same institution referenced above, the high degree of "sameness" with which all students were treated precluded the concept that a student might be struggling for cultural reasons -- i.e. preconceived notions regarding the subject matter that differed from what was being taught, etc. This in essence led to blaming the victims of cultural incompetence -- or at least cultural blindness -- for problems that were largely inherent to the system and beyond the students' grasp to even perceive, let alone understand and articulate to authority figures.

There are many suggestions that could be made in order to help this institution -- and the many others that are presumably like it around the country -- move in the right direction, towards increased cultural competence and away from the ill-conceived notions of complete equality and essential similarity that amounts to cultural blindness. The most effective solution, however, is simple training and practice with the concepts of cultural competence and the specific behaviors that demonstrate and evidence its presence in an institution (Kennedy et al. 2007). Starting out by acknowledging and listing differences that exist in the student population and in the administrative and educational staff resources that exist at the institution is an excellent first step in beginning to acknowledge and affirm the cultural potential of the school, rather than actively trying to ignore it (Kennedy et al. 2007).