Julian Mucha

UWRT 1102-017
Professor Thomas
29 September 2015
The inquiry proposal required a great deal of thought in order to compose. I found it to
be initially difficult to think of an inquiry topic that would be relevant to my audience and would
have enough research done on the topic to provide me with valid arguments and
counterarguments to drive my point across to the reader. I initially settled on the topic of
education in the United States. I found this topic to be especially relevant to my audience seeing
as how I am now part of the academic community in the university and how my peers have all
been a part of early education and have recently graduated from high school most likely. I have
since found a great deal of information regarding my topic, many of them are credible. After
much thought I have decided that my focus would be on how the education system in the United
States can be improved by taking a more profound look at how different countries around the
world approach education and literacy.
Literacy Around the World
How did you learn to read? How were you able to decipher the cryptic code of symbols
laid out in front of you? How could you make sense of the different anagrams of the same 26
letters? Chances are your experiences with the development of literacy started at a very young
age, either through interaction with your parents or through the teachings of preschool and
Kindergarten. Most of us have fairly similar experiences learning how to read here in America,
but the question I put forth is in regard to the rest of the world. How do children in different
cultures develop this ability to make sense of all these words, how do they develop their literacy?

Literacy is an important part of the human experience and the way it is taught in various cultures
differs widely throughout the world.
This question came to me as a result of the reading we have done in class with The Book
Thief as well as my experience so far in my Introduction to Sociology class. In The Book Thief
we are introduced to Liesel, a young girl who is separated from her family in Nazi Germany. She
manages to steal books, but she is illiterate and needs someone elses assistance in order to
properly understand the story held within the book. It is up to Hans, her new caregiver to teach
her how to make sense of these stories within the pages of the books she gets her hands on. In
sociology I learned that the culture that a person is raised in is vital to the development of that
person. Their beliefs, values, as well as language are all tightly knit within the community in
which they are raised. The effects of where you grow up on your development as a child is vital.
I sought to find out how different cultures went about educating their children on how to read
and how to develop themselves as students.
Through some preliminary research I found that different cultures have various ways of
educating their children. What is an acceptable form of teaching and learning in one culture
could be inappropriate in another. For example, as study in 2003 found that Asian students are
very quiet in class and avoid eye contact with teachers out of respect while European American
students attempt to be actively engaged in the classroom and try to hold eye contact with the
teacher which they see as a form of respect. The teachers of the European students see the
students engagements as signs of competence and interest. I also found that the country in which
you grow up in has an effect on the type of education you will receive. Here in the United States,
education seems to be more focused on numerical grades as well scores received on standardized
tests. In Finland however, effort is not set towards standardized tests but through teacher

education. Take a guess where Finlands education system is ranked. Its at the very top
compared to the United States.
As it deals with history, the question of how to educate children has been a hot topic of
debate seeing as how it has been proven that countries with high literacy rates and education
levels have influxes of economic growth as a result. This is one of the main reasons why so much
time and money is spent in order to boost education and in turn the economy. It is within the
interest of the government and the people of a nation to educate their youth in order to spur
economic growth.
You may ask how why this inquiry question is of any relevance in todays society and
within the classroom. The answer is quite clear, the values learned by an individual can affect the
learning and the perception of others on the perceived learning of a student. Going back to the
statement made about classroom engagement between an Asian-American student and a
European-American student serves as a clear cut point on how education differs especially within
our classroom. A teacher may favor a European-American student who engages deeply in a
conversation as opposed to an Asian-American who may come across as quiet, not understanding
that cultural learnings play an important part in the classroom and can lead to uneducated
assumptions on the learning of different students based on heritage.
Most of my prior knowledge on the subject stems from the psychology class I took in
high school as well as my sociology class that I am currently enrolled in. I had learned that
different countries have different ways of teaching their students as well as varying educational
systems by which to facilitate the learning of the students. I hope to learn more about my topic
through research that really analyzes the points at which the education systems diverge from one
another.

My plan is to seek out the answer to my inquiry through the use of the Internet as well as
some potential books that really examine the effects of culture on the learning process. I also
plan to possibly reach my goal of showing how one should not judge the learning capability of
another student in a classroom who hails from a different culture without first understanding how
that student learns in his or her own culture.