Culture is critical to almost everything we do in the world. Culture constitutes a collection of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors customarily agreed upon by a group of individuals. These may include but are not limited to language, marriage practices, government configurations, greetings, and behavior. Culture refers to society and its way of life. The central role of culture is to give a consistent environment and foundation to ensure the best chance of survival for the individuals in a group. At its more comprehensive level, it shows the mainstream tendencies. Thus, cultural understanding is becoming even more critical because of the call to interact with many individuals from other countries and cultures. According to (Bodley, 2019, pp. 1–3), there are three essential components of culture, namely: what they do, what people say, and the material products they produce. Different forms of culture illustrate unique values systems that affect people’s perception of various life circumstances. My goal in this paper is to explore society’s culture and its transmission to upcoming generations.
Culture is basically shared norms, values, and symbols in a social organization. It is a system for creating, storing, and processing information. For example, a national culture defines a set of values shared by a nation. There is no wrong or right culture; they are just different, with the key differences culturally rooted. Cultural transmission refers to how cultural components, in the form of values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior tendencies, are conveyed and trained to individuals or groups. It is sharing information and can include verbal and non-verbal communication, behaviors, actions, beliefs, and knowledge. The learning styles are primarily determined by how a particular culture socializes with their children or the younger generation. One of the critical aspects of culture is that it cannot be transferred biologically from mother to child. It must be mastered through experience or participation. “Encultration” is defined as the process in which children learn their own culture. Cultural transmission enables individuals to get skills that they wouldn’t obtain independently throughout their lifetimes.
Cultural learning is particularly important for human beings. Children spend a long time under the care of their parents. This dependence duration is critical to social growth and development (LaRossa et al., 1997, p. 233). It is during this time that cultural transmission occurs. These lessons taught from childhood to adulthood allows the children a smooth passage into adulthood. Cultures can be analogized to sets of control mechanisms, guidelines, or rules. Social transmission relies on developing new responses to the environment and the preparedness to communicate or imitate behaviors. An idea, style, or behavior that spread from one individual to another within a culture is described as a meme. A meme is a unit of transferring cultural beliefs, practices, and symbols. It can be conveyed from one mind to another, either through speech, gestures, rituals, writing, or other imitable phenomena.
Culture transmission is an essential aspect of maintaining norms and ensuring the survival of tribes, communities, or society at large. It can lead to improved learning and valuable skills for the future, better health and well-being to create vibrant communities.
