My students all tried their hand at describing and defining culture so I decided to take a look at what some experts say about the meaning of culture. I came across an article titled "The Meaning of Culture" by Anna Katrina Davey on the Across Cultures website. The article states, "Culture is a framework of behavioral patterns, values, assumptions and experiences shared by a social group." It goes on to say that culture is something learned, "mental programming," and cultural conditioning. The important thing is to gain a perspective about our own cultural conditioning and to build our knowledge about other cultural systems so we can truly appreciate the diversity of our world.

Have you ever thought about the concept of public art? That is, art in public spaces? We all expect to go to a museum and see works of art. However, have you ever thought about the art exhibited in other spaces? For instance, at our school we have a sculpture of children playing just outside of our Elementary Building. This would be an example of art in a public space, funded by donors. In an article titled,"As Governments Across Europe Slash Costs, the Future of Public Art is Far from Assured" the issue of funding for art publicly displayed and the future of that when other programs are being cut is discussed. Art has been used in every culture and generation as a form of expression to societal issues. There are those who believe art should continue to be displayed in a very public fashion and then those that say people can visit a museum. Do you think art should be displayed publicly so that anyone passing by can enjoy it? Do you think art in public spaces is important enough to fund even in this down economy?

Welcome to our class blog. Our class is a class that explores different languages and cultures and the connections between those and our world today. We invite visitors from countries other than the US, and even those in the US, to comment on our posts. Our blog is titled "Connections" because of the connections we will be identifying through the course of our learning.