The movie “The Education of Little Tree” tells the story of a half-cherokee young boy of eight years. After he has lost his parents, Little Tree is taken in by his grandparents who live in the mountains of Tennessee. The question that arises is how are cultural influences portrayed in regard to one’s self and identity in the movie, when it comes to the education of Little Tree? Specifically, what cultural effects on his development are explored in the movie? To answer these questions, we will try to highlight some relevant differences between the American and the Cherokee culture and we will have a look at the strategies used by the main character in response to the change that happened in his life. Furthermore, we will look at the cultural effects that are present in the movie using some examples taken both from the movie and from personal life experiences.
Looking all around the world, considering all countries, civilizations and education patterns, we can see that there are many differences in the way children learn. Though we may consider school as a pillar for education in France, it is a current and well-known fact that not all children have access to school elsewhere in every country of the world. Thus, we may wonder how do they access learning, experience socialisation, find out of cultural norms and therefore build their personality. Forsooth, there are several factors along with school which help building Identity.
Among these are parents or relatives and more generally the environment. Indeed, we were not born with a culture, but we acquired it through many ways. One of these ways is called “transmission learning” which can be defined as cultural ideas that are learned via social transmission or modelling (Heine, 2011). In the film “The Education of Little Tree”, we can see that the grandparents of Little Tree passed on ideas and information about nature, animals or even beliefs to their grandson – such as how to consider the death of a loved one – which are relevant matters considered as important in their culture. Transmission learning is an implicit way of acquiring knowledge. In fact, as one grows with it, he or she is likely to internalize these cultural ideas that will end up being part of him or her as mind and culture are entangled with each other (Heine, 2011). This phenomenom becomes clearly visible at the end of the movie, when Little Tree talks to his dead grandparents and wishes to get closer to the understanding of life.
Besides, as shown in the film, the American culture totally differs from the Indian culture. One aspect that can explain this difference is the concept of “evoked culture”. Indeed, we can observe that some aspects of the Cherokee culture have emerged directly from the conditions of their environment. As they had been compelled to leave their land, they learned how to live in and with nature. Such an aspect of culture is known as “evoked culture” which states that “certain environmental conditions evoke certain responses from people” (Heine, 2011). “These environmental differences include climate, migration patterns, war, agricultural suitability, and endemic pathogens.” (Cultural Learning, s.d.) These different yet interesting ways of learning can be compared to our western countries where schools are most of the time the central means of education and sometimes the only one. Children acquire knowledge from textbooks and teachers. While in other areas of the world, transmission of know-how is more prevalent. In this perspective, my mother who lived in Burundi for more than thirty years taught me what she had learned herself from her grandmother – as she was raised by her.
Another cultural aspect predominating in the film is the concept of “acculturation”, which is “the process by which people migrate to and learn a culture that is different from their heritage culture” (Heine, 2011). Indeed, researches in multicultural psychology have demonstrated that people, when moving to an environment that is different from their home, display different strategies to adjust themselves. Unfortunately, in the movie, we cannot see which strategy Little Tree is using because he is relatively young. In fact, the younger we are, the more flexible we become when it comes to adapt to a foreign culture. One explanation may be that children have experienced less socialization than adults. Nonetheless, one advantage is that they adapt better to new environments. Thus, though it is not clear to see which strategy he applies according to the different contexts he encounters we can observe that on his journey to discover who he is, he ends up embracing the Cherokee culture and rejects the American one. What leads him to make that choice and which factors acted in favour of it ?
On the one hand, cultural distance, physical differences as well as discrimination and prejudice are all factors that prevent people from using the strategy of integration . During the movie, we observe that Little Tree stumbles on the path of discovering his identify because he is half Cherokee and half American. Like Little Tree, I have two heritage cultures that are really close to each other. However, I was born and raised in France and at a period I struggled to find my identity and personality. Just like him, my culture differs from the French culture in its overall way of life. Moreover, my skin colour is what distinguished me at first sight from others and automatically propels me into what I used to call ‘the foreigners box”. Neither do I look like a Caucasian girl nor did I used to act like one. However, though I encountered discrimination in my childhood, French society encouraged integration and valued multiculturalism which was not the case of America in the late 1920’s. In fact, in the movie, we can see that American people completely rejected Indian people and everything that was related to the Indian culture which could be one of the reasons why Little Tree chose to separate himself from the American way of living.
On the other hand, models play a decisive role in the behaviour and construction of one’s personality. In fact, throughout the last twelve years of my life, I identified myself to various individuals that were important to me. Indeed, researches have shown that “humans are attuned to cues that signal prestige on part of the model” and “a general learning mechanism engages everything the prestigious model does” (Heine, 2011). In this perspective, my mother has always been one of my examples and I remember that I used to copy the way she laughed and treated people. Just like Little Tree who repeated his grandfather swear words, I used to talk like her. Unfortunately, humans do not always have good role models and this tendency to look, act and be like someone that we admire can lead us to adopt a bad language or even worse: dangerous behaviours for a period of time. Moreover, it can have a more powerful and lasting impact than this on individuals. In fact, the prestige cues that were Little Tree’s grand-mother, grand-father and Willow John, had a crucial role in the construction of his identity. Indeed, his grand-mother and Willow John became suddenly his whole family, and both were Indians, while his grandfather had totally rejected his American culture to embrace the Indian one. Therefore, Little Tree made the same choice as his whole family. However, we can wonder, what would have happened if the grandfather of Little Tree had chosen to keep his cultural identity? Perhaps, Little Tree would have been able to integrate both cultures.
At this point of our reflection, we can ask ourselves; what are the challenges immigrants face when coming to a new country, what type of pressures do they endure and what strategies of adjustment are they most likely to choose.
Though many scenarios exist, it has been proven that there are sensitive periods for cultural acquisition. In fact, studies have demonstrated that if an individual immigrates before the age of fifteen, there is a greater chance that he will identify himself more with the host culture than a person who would move after this age (Cheung, Chudek, & Heine, 2011). As the first child of my family who was born in France, it took me a long time to realize that I was more French than Rwandan or Burundian. In fact, I would feel sometimes like a stranger because of my skin colour or the type of my hair in my primary school and I would feel better in the company of children who would physically looked alike – but we would be a minority. At the same time, I would not be able to speak Kinyarwanda which is my parent’s first language and I would only picture in my mind the country of my ancestors. Finally, there was pressure for conformity that arose around me as black people were few at that time and I became tired of feeling different from my peers. What happened to me is exactly what Tafarodi, Kang, & Milne (2002) have construed in their study, that “the learned association of visible minority status with exclusion leads many children of immigrants to assert their mainstream cultural legitimacy by adopting a persona that projects the majority culture.” (p.3)
How does one decide what his or her identity and personality is? How does one answer the question: “Who am I?” As a child, I used to think that I had the choice to be either French or Rwandan or both and that people could choose who they wanted to be. I now can see that the answer to that issue is not as simple. It is not just a matter of choice, but rather a matter of context and a set of factors that automatically impact the construction of the self. Those factors could be the way you have been taught what you should consider as important in life but also the people you might take as examples. It can also be the environment and society in the way they value cultural diversity or make distinctions between people’s roots, colour, disabilities, exceptionalities, language as well as habits, culture or appearance.
References:
• Amin, A. (2013). Stratégies identitaires et stratégies d’acculturation: deux modèles
complémentaires. Alterstice-Revue Internationale de la Recherche Interculturelle, 2(2), 103-116.
• Cheung, B. Y., Chudek, M., & Heine, S. J. (2011). Evidence for a sensitive period for acculturation: Younger immigrants report acculturating at a faster rate. Psychological Science, 22(2), 147-152.
• Cultural learning. (s. d.). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Spotted on the 11/28/17. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_learning
• Eberts, J., Fridenberg, R, et Friedenberg R., Hamner,E., Jr., Sipes, D., (1997)“The Education of Little Tree”, [Film] Etats-Unis : Paramount Pictures .
• Tafarodi, R. W., Kang, S. J., & Milne, A. B. (2002). When different becomes similar: Compensatory conformity in bicultural visible minorities. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(8), 1131-1142.
• Heine, S. J., (2011) Cultural Psychology (2nd éd.). New York : W.W. Norton & Company
