SAN JOSE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Malilipot, Albay

LEARNING ACTIVITY SHEET

ON
Building and Enhancing New Literacies Across the Curriculum

Objectives:
1. Globalization and its implications on both the national and individual level;
2. Cultural and multicultural literacy in the Philippines; and
3. One’s personal level of cultural and multicultural literacy.

I. Explore

Globalization
 Is the process of interaction and integration between people, business entities, governments,
and cultures from other nations, driven by international trade and investment and supported by
information technology (Levin Institute, 2017)
 Globalization as a phenomena is not new. Nations and cultures have been interacting and
integrating with one another for millennia.
 Consider how ancient Greek culture was so widespread across the Mediterranean that even the
Egyptians could speak their language, and how Roman was so inspired by Greek culture that
they adopted it wholesale.
 The difference of globalization today, however is the speed at which globalization is happening,
its overall scope, and its effects on the lives of ordinary people.

Effects of Globalization ( Meyer 2000)

 Economic, political, and military dependence and interdependence between nations;
 Expanded flow of individual people among societies
 Expanded flow of instrumental culture around the world.

This does not mean, however, that there have been no negative effects of globalization. Kentor
( 2001) notes that foreign capital dependence increases income inequality in four ways:
 It creates a small, highly paid class of elites to manage these investments, who create many but
usually low-pay jobs;
 Profits from these investment are repatriated, rather than invested in the host country,
therefore inhibiting domestic capital formation;
 Foreign capital penetration tends to concentrate land ownership among the very rich; and
 Host countries tend to create political and economic climates favorable to foreign capital that in
turn limit domestic labor’s ability to obtain better wages.

Political and Military Dependence/Interdependence

 United States would intervene on behalf of the country in case of war ( Viray, 2018)
 Despite the current very conservative stance of the US on its foreign policies, this can be taken
as evidence of the Philippines’ dependence on both the political and military power of the US in
order to maintain its sovereign as a nation-state in the Southeast Asia region.
Expanded Flow of Expressive and Instrumental Culture
 Expressive culture, as the term suggests, deals with how a particular culture expresses itself in
its language, music, arts, and the like.
 Globalization encourages the monetization of these cultural artifacts and their import/export
among participating cultures; the increased consumption of which changes the consuming
culture.
 Instrumental culture, refers to
 “common models of social order” ( Meyer, 2000)- that is, models or ways of thinking about and
enacting national identity, nation-state policies both domestic and foreign, socio-economic
development, human rights, education, and social progress.

Expanded Flow of People among Societies

 Meyer (2000) observes three reasons for this:
a. Socio-economic migration
b. Political expulsion
c. Travel/tourism

Cultural Literacy
 Term coined by Hirsch (1983), referring to the ability to understand signs and symbols of a given
culture and being able to participate in its activities and customs as opposed to simply being a
passive observer.
 The signs and symbols of culture include both its formal and informal languages, its idioms and
forms of expression, entertainment, values, customs, roles, traditions, and the like.
 To illustrate this, consider the following statement: “the classroom was in absolute bedlam.
“Without any sort of background, the reader is forced to guess the meaning of the word
“bedlam” from its context within the sentence.
 “bedlam” refers to a scene of uproar, confusion, and chaos. The term is British in origin,
referring to a psychiatric hospital in London by the name of St. Mary Bethlehem that was once
representative of the worst excesses of insane asylums during the 14 th century, and “bedlam” I a
corruption of the word “Bethlehem” in the name.
 Cultural Literacy is culture-specific, but it is not limited to national cultures, contrary to what
many people assume.
Cultural Literacy in the Philippines
 The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) is the government body tasked with
the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of Philippine Culture, both locally and
abroad.
 Establish the Philippine Cultural Education Program (PCEP), which “envisions a nation of
culturally literate and empowered Filipinos” (NCCA, 2015)\
 R.A 10066 ( 2010), PCEP has been designated as the body, together with the Department of
Education (DepEd), tasked to “ formulate the cultural heritage education programs both for local
and overseas Filipinos” that are to be an integral part of Philippine education in all its aspects.
 The average reader will be hard-pressed to pin down a definite answer. De Leon (2011) argues
that this is in part due to a colonial mindset among Filipino artists that inhibits the full
development and realization of Filipino artistic creativity- a kind of artistic and cultural creativity
that is fully Filipino.
 De Leon (2011) coins this propensity for Filipino to look at their culture and themselves through
Western lenses as the Doña Victorina Syndrome, a kind of inferiority complex wherein anything
 and everything natively Filipino ins considered by the Filipinos themselves as being inferior,
backward, and worthless in comparison to their Western counterparts, and therefore a source
of embarrassment and unease.

Multicultural Literacy
 Comes more in the form of intercultural communication competence (ICC)
 ICC defines as a composite of skills, abilities, attitudes, personality patterns, etc. necessary for
clear and productive communication with cultures other than our own by ( Messetti, and
Steinbach ( 2014). Similarly, Fantini ( 2006) defines it as “ a complex of abilities needed to
perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and
culturally different from oneset.”
 We define multicultural literacy here as the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure that any
communication with a culture different from our own is clear, productive, and respectful such
that their differences are celebrated and neither culture is demeaned or treated as inferior.
 The skills and knowledge required for one to be multi-culturally literate are not mere language
skills, since it is assumed that some medium of communication already exists between two
cultures. Rather, true multicultural literacy consist of perspectives, attitudes, and beliefs about
other cultures that affect the manner in which we communicate and the motives behind our
communication.

The skills and knowledge required to be multi-culturally literate are:

1. Selflessness
2. Knowledge that good and useful things can come from those different from us
3. Willingness to compromise
4. Acceptance that there are limits; and
5. Idea that we cannot be friends with everyone.

II. Enhance

A majority of research on multicultural literacy stems from the West, specifically the
United States, and focuses on teaching teachers to be more multicultural in their
pedagogies.
 Learn about other cultures
 Familiarize yourself with how discrimination and prejudice appear in your own
culture
 As you are, so will you behave
 Model more, tell more

III. Evaluate
1. Have you interacted with people who have a different culture form yours? How was
your interaction with them? Was it clear? Was it productive? Was it respectful? What
could you have done for a better interaction?
2. What is your attitude toward people who have a different culture from yours? Do you
celebrate how they are different from you? Do you look down on them?
3. What skills and knowledge do you need to improve in to become multiculturally
literate?
4. Why should you as an individual respect and value people who are different from you?
5. Explain what multi-cultural literacy is?