Cultural Norms Today

Our cultural influences shape how we live our lives on a daily basis, and how we look at education is no different. America has always been known as a cultural melting pot, and this has had both positive and negative impacts on our culture. Bell Hooks describes a culture that demonstrates the importance of education and how education was a freedom that Americans did not take for granted. Hooks also eloquently described a culture where caring for and serving your fellowman was given a much greater value that the self-centered values that have become the cultural norm of today.

America has undergone a huge cultural shift over the past 50 years and it continues. The traditional values of America's past are dying off and values considered more "progressive" are quickly replacing the traditional values. The America that Hooks remembers, one with the values of placing a high importance on education as the practice of freedom is falling to the wayside. Wynton Marsalis, jazz musician and composer sees that education as a practice of freedom is losing its importance and will be detrimental to future generations. Marsalis explains that for the youth in today's culture, education and growing into adulthood is no longer the primary goal of society.

The fact that adulthood is no longer a goal is a dumb direction because you’re always on your way to becoming an adult.  An adult is never on his or her way to becoming a child.  So, it has put our nation in a bad position in terms of how we deal with our younger people, why we have trouble schooling our kids, and why we have trouble with respect – and it doesn’t come from the kids.  It comes from those adults in the 1960’s and the 1970’s – the attitude of permissiveness, the attitude of youth culture that permeated that time and the type of kids that were produced in that atmosphere.  It becomes very difficult to teach people who have been raised with a feeling of entitlement, and that’s not good for younger people...