Spanish Culture & Customs & Language Education

Education, says JosT Luis Castillejo Brull (Diccionario de las Ciencias de la Educaci=n 475) is, in practice and principle, a cultural, moral, and behavioral process of inculcation and assimilation. "Basically, it is the process through which the young generations incorporate or assimilate the cultural patrimony of the adults" (475). Phonetically and morphologically, to educate comes from the Latin educare which means to "lead", "guide", and/or "orient". At the same time, semantically the word has meant from early times educere which means to "bring out", "extract", "bring to light". Hence, the two basic conceptual models: the "directive" one which subsumes that of educare, and the "extractive" one which subsumes that of educere. In this etymological perspective, Spanish education is the incorporation or assimilation of the cultural, moral, and behavioral patrimony of native speakers of the Spanish language; it is the extraction or bringing to light of the "soul" as well as of the "verb" of a culture. It is therefore obvious that language cannot be learned in a cultural vacuum, dissociated from the culture it expresses, simply as a different linguistic code.

Yet, language is a linguistically coded communication system. Without form there is no substance. Wegmann deplores the current emphasis given skill proficiency, communicative techniques, and passi

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(although the faithfuls still may kiss the Pope's feet). Customs are the safeguards of traditions and in this function contribute to the continuity of the linguistic forms which gave them birth. Without understanding, respecting, and, where appropriate, practicing customs, one fails to communicate full and correct meanings. Language, social identity, and education David Crystal (1987) drew our attention to the fact that "One of the chief forms of sociolinguistic identity derives from the way in which people are organized into hierarchically ordered social groups, or classes" (38). In terms of Spanish language education, this is a very important consideration. The English language makes life easy on its speakers: You, for example, is used to address adults as well as children, women as well as men, old people as well as young people, social elite as well as the vulgus, people as well as dogs, formal as well as informal situations. This is not true of such languages as Japanese, which has a very complicated system of address, and Spanish which still has a discriminatory system of address. It is not easy for a novice speaker of Spanish to know when to use the personal pronoun of the second person singular, tu, rather than the mor
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Approximate Word count = 2184
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)