Hey everyone and welcome to my first blog post! I am a first year at UBC and enrolled in the Coordinated Arts Program (CAP), specifically in the Global Citizens stream. As a relatively shy individual, I am a bit nervous to share my thoughts and ideas with the whole world, but I am ready to take on the challenge by starting this blog!
In my ASTU class, we have recently started analyzing the article “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” written by Farhat Shahzad. This article, which is found in the Canadian Journal of Education, focuses on how Canadian students remember the War on Terror. The article begins by talking about Wertsch’s idea of collective remembering, a process between humans and technologies of memory. However, Shahzad adds to this theory that remembering and learning also depends on the role of interpretative communities. Although this article is extremely repetitive, the influence that interpretative communities have on how we remember and learn is not something I typically think about everyday. Even though Shahzad’s concept may be fairly simple, it has made me think about how the communities I am a part of shape my memory.
The most influential interpretative community in my life that I want to touch on is family. In our class discussion on Tuesday, one of my classmates made a comment that has stuck with me. He said that he wouldn’t usually think of his family as an interpretative community, which I thought was a good way to put it. Family is such an important part of my life and I too have never thought to describe it as an “interpretative community”. According to Shahzad, family plays an important role in the process of remembering and learning by influencing our interpretations and shaping our thoughts. In my family, there is a strong set of values that have been presented to me ever since I’ve been able to walk. The presence of these values definitely influences the process of learning and remembering. A very simple example of this is how my mom has always taught my sister, brother and I to send thank you messages after receiving birthday or Christmas gifts. This may seem like a very simple idea, but surprisingly not everyone does this. I find that because I’ve been doing this for a while now, writing a thank you note is something that I will always remember to do and I have my mom to thank for that. When I think of this example some questions pop into my head. Without the influence of my mom, would I have learned this concept on my own? What other interpretative communities can teach us fundamental values? Do most individuals find family to be one of the most influential interpretative communities?
With these questions in mind, I hope that you can reflect on what an interpretative community means to you and if like me, family is an important community who plays a role in the process of learning and remembering. Below I have attached the link to the full article if you are interested in exploring these concepts more!
http://www.cje-rce.ca/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/343/1074