Culture and education

Apparently I like to start my posts with questions, so here's another one:

Have you ever considered the effect of culture on our lives -- actions and thoughts? For that matter, have you ever thought about the relationship between language and culture? This is a recurring subject in my mind, and most recently I was reminded of it by a visiting missionary. (Specifically, I started wondering if our tendency to pick up sayings and habits of people around us is an innate ability to adjust to the culture in which we find ourselves...but that's not my main subject today.) Since becoming a teacher my mind has also often been occupied with the idea of education. The combination of the two produces the question, "How does culture influence education, and vice versa?"

I personally have been trained in a more "classical" methodology that most contemporary teachers, and have come to believe in its effectiveness, and to understand some of the reasons behind why it works. These ideas, developed through the ages, but mostly in "western" cultures, are very effective in teaching and training the American children of today. And ideally, these educational ideals should transfer with few modifications to other cultures...but do they? Could you use the classical method to teach in rural Africa, China, or the jungles of Papua New Guinea? Perhaps, though you would certainly have to do a lot of ground work first (learning the language, translating texts, etc.) And then you would have to take into account that they have absolutely no idea of all the history we take for granted. They've never heard of the Greeks, or Zeus, or Babylon. How do you even begin preaching the gospel to people who have no idea who the Hebrews were or why there was a promise Messiah? These are just subjects, however, and don't really deal with the methodology.

As I understand it, classical methodology requires a constant questioning, attempting to lead pupils to truth without telling them they can find out for themselves. What if there were a culture where asking questions of this form was considered offensive? I don't know if such a culture exists, but I would not be at all surprised to find something similar. What then? Can the methodology be adjusted? And how, without losing its distinctive features?

America is a culture where individualism is exalted and thinking is linear. How would our education system transfer to a culture where the group is more important than the individual and the thinking is circular? What if you were trying to teach to a culture that knew nothing of abstract ideas? I know so little of cultures outside my own, I can't even begin to think how education would need to be adjusted. Would the "classical method" as we know it still work with some modifications, or would it need to be fundamentally changed?

Maybe someday I'll have answers. For now, these are just questions I ask myself when I am avoiding writing a physics test. :)