American Culture: Life in a Petri Dish

As I was anticipating writing this paper on American culture, I kept thinking of the culture that biologists grow in a petri dish. More specifically, the bacteria strep, which must be grown in a special medium called, blood agar. If someone has a "positive" culture, the bacteria strep has metabolized the blood in the agar and the petri dish will be clear. If someone has a "negative" culture, the petri dish will remain red.

I can't help but make some analogies between science and American culture. The United States has clearly created a so called "positive" culture by deculturalizing and assimilating those who don't fit in with the prescribed American standards, norms, values and systems of belief. The attempt of the dominant society to create cultural homogeneity through assimilation and acculturation have been undertaken through our educational system.

I grew up and went to school in and around the Bay Area in California. I attended public schools that were wearisomely mono-cultural, middle-class, and where the culture of the schools paralleled the culture of my family. I am a product of the belief in hard work, and that my educational endeavors would better my future, however, no one in my family had higher than a high school diploma. It is impossible to describe my educational experience without simultaneously discussing the time period. I attended the primary grades in the mid 60's, we had recently sent the first man to the moon, John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, there was political unrest in the South over desegregation and it seemed that riot wars and marches were everywhere. I attended the intermediate grades in the early 70's. We were still practicing desegregation. Schools were trying out this idea of bussing students from inner city schools into the suburbs and visa versa, to try to integrate. I think this program only served to humiliate and further divide groups of different social, economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds. During the 70's, "old fashioned" values, such as a strong moral government, a nuclear family, and traditional forms of education were changing as quickly as our advances in technologies.

As I grew more aware of the world beyond my street, the transmission of culture became discontinuous for many.