How culture helps us to understand

I've always struggled with the idea that people can be "objective." We learn and understand new things by connecting them to things we already know (see here). So it seems difficult, if not impossible, for people to be "objective," if that word is taken to mean "with no influence from one's prior thoughts or feelings." On the other hand, I rather like the idea of "disciplined subjectivity" where people are taught to embrace and interrogate how their prior experiences, thoughts, and feelings might be influencing their understanding. Such skills and reflections nicely complement whatever methods one uses to "rigorously" investigate and understand the world (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, mixed, or natural science research methods). Given my views, I really like what List et al. (2024) have written about "culturalized comprehension."

They argue that students should be taught how to recognize the ways their background and experiences influence their understanding of texts. Students should also be taught to think about how an author's culture affects what they write. Then, students can be taught to examine how culture, as a way of thinking, can differ between themselves as a reader and the author(s) they read. This "culturalized comprehension" helps students be reflective and even critical of their own and others' worldviews. And when they generate counternarratives to what they read, List et al. call this "critical culturalized comprehension." List et al.'s conceptualization would seem to outright reject "objectivity" and replace it with the kind of disciplined subjectivity I think serves students better as they learn about the world.

The List et al. (2024) article goes into much more detail and is certainly worth a read. Their conceptualization changes the way we think about, teach, and research text comprehension. Given I don't think we can be truly objective, I like the idea of teaching students how to embrace and discipline their subjectivity.