Venezuela Surface Culture

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Culture is anywhere and everywhere even if society does not realize it. The human race is constantly coming into contact with different cultures from all around the world. You could be in a movie theater and would be nearly guaranteed to be within a short proximity of someone who has a different culture than you. Most people, however, are not aware of these different cultures within their surroundings.
Culture
While there are multiple different ways to define what culture is, our textbook written by Myron W. Lustig and Jolene Koester (YEAR) use a broad definition and define it as, “a learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, norms, and social practices, which affect the behaviors of a relatively large group of people” (p.26). …show more content…

Some examples of surface culture are food, language, festivals/holidays, the types of clothes people wear, music that they listen to, etc. If you see it, hear it, or touch it, that is what defines something as being an external part of culture. In the Venezuelan culture, there are many different aspects of surface culture. Two aspects of Venezuela’s surface culture are language and holidays/festivals. Let’s first take a look at the language of Venezuela. Spanish is the official language of Venezuela. However, a report written by Andrés Cañizález (2002) stated, “Spanish is no longer the official language of Venezuela, as it now shares the role with 31 indigenous tongues, the result of a government decision that seeks to empower the countries Indian cultures.” While language is a very broad area, it is something that people are proud of. The government in Venezuela recognized that people take pride in their respective languages and wanted them to be able to have that. The Venezuelan natives were lobbying for it because “the indigenous community refuses to let its languages die” (Cañizález 2002), resulting in a new decree passed by the government. New Language is what a lot of people pride their culture …show more content…

High school or secondary school is only for 2 years, it is also free but is voluntary. The public school classes are setup in shifts. A child will either go to school in the morning to the early afternoon like in the U.S. or will take the second shift and start school from the early afternoon to 6 p.m. Venezuela is amongst the top of their region in literacy where over 93% of 15 year olds are able to write and read. Not everyone goes to secondary school. If a child lives in poverty, the chances of attending secondary school are low. Most children living in poverty, stop after secondary school and go to find jobs to help support their families or stay at home with their younger siblings so that their parents can go to work. Venezuela’s middle- and upper-class parents usually send their children to private schools. Their children are the ones who will usually complete secondary school in a private setting and go on to the

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