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One of the most important features of culture is that we can only get it through learning but not inheriting. This determines that culture has an inseparable relationship with education since the day it was born.

First of all, I talked with my friend who is Chinese and studying in UCD. She said that the when I asked her the meaning of culture, first thing came up in her mind was traditional festivities, such as the spring festival (Chinese new year). For her, culture means a symbol that reminds her who she is and where she comes from. Especially when she is studying in America which is a multicultural country, she learned more different culture between the different races or countries. Then she considered that there is not a connection between culture and educational success because she thought the culture is more connected with the original family backgrounds (education) rather than the college success, or either economic success. And then she thought there is a culture in schools. She mentioned that whatever her elementary school or high school, they all had their own culture. For example, school badge, school mottos, school established commemoration and as so on. She believed all of that are the culture because they had a profound influence on her behavior. These school culture are partial of her background and they made a part of her. Lastly, she thought school culture may or may not influence whether or not students are successful in school. It depends. As she mentioned before, school culture does strongly influence students. However she thought school culture has more effect to the sprint and the mode of thinking of students. Under the different culture, Students grow up to be different kind of people. Theses nothing about the success.

Secondly, I interviewed my roommate about her perspective on education and culture. She said that culture is a group of people doing the same thing in the same way, and the other group doing this thing in a different way is called cultural difference. As far as her concerned, education itself is a special kind of cultural phenomenon. Education has dual cultural properties: on the one hand, it is the means to convey and deepen the culture, which makes it and culture constitute the relationship between the form and content of culture. On the other hand, education itself embodies the characteristics of culture, such as ideas, values and behaviors, which makes it a cultural ontology. Culture is conveyed and deepened through education activities; Meanwhile, culture has been enriched through education.

Lastly, I interviewed my friend about his perspective on education and culture. He said it is hard to describe what culture it is. It is something that manifests itself in ways of behavior and thinking. He believed that there is a connection between culture and educational success. Each school has its own culture, which influences the degree of students’ effort. In a good school, under a better condition of study, students will work harder because their classmates are studying hard. In a bad school, students may hard to achieve educational success because their classmates do not want to study, which makes them lose the incentive to compete.

The first time I heard the word culture was from my father’s conversation with his friend who also was a father when I was in kindergarden. They were talking about children’s education. Culture mean nothing but just a single word to me at that time. Then I learned the word culture when I was in elementary school. Aftering learning the word culture, it mean a kind of knowledge for me at that time. Nowadays, although culture is still a very elusive thing to me, I consider that culture is the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the process of social and historical development after years of study. As far as I am concerned, there are many kind of cultures, such as, school culture, family culture, nation culture and so on. As long as there are people, the culture will always exist no matter what kind of cultures. Therefore, I would say I have a culture and more than one. For example, I have family culture. In the process of my growth, I was educated by my parents. They were never forced me to go to any after-school programs like other parents did. However, they would support me if I want to join some extracurricular activities. Additionally, they got rules for me. For example, I was told by my father no matter what I do, I cannot do the illegal things for the sake of earning money. All of that makes up my family culture.

As for me, there is a connection between culture and educational success. In my country, some people think that higher academic qualification is the only way they can get a better job and achieve their goal. Therefore, it leads them to study hard at school and eager to get a good grades in school so as to get into a good university. On the contrary, in some other countries, some people think that high degree of education is not the only way to achieve success. They will go to work even if they just graduate from college. Different culture leads people consider how important the education it is. Besides, there is a connection between culture and economic success. Culture shapes your world outlook, and it will also affect the way you deal with the problem, which is directly influence whether you are more likely to achieve economic success or not. Moreover, growing up in the culture that high degree of education is most important, people are more likely to graduate from a great university so as to get a better job, which more possibly makes them approach to economic success.

In my opinion, education and culture are interacted with each other. On the one hand, culture can influence education. As the content of education, culture can not only influence education’s model, the method and means of education, but also influence the design and implementation of the curriculum. In particularly, under different cultural background, there are great differences in the education content, the curriculum, teaching model and the method of education. When I came to the United States to study, I found that there was a great difference between the United States’ education and China’s education. In China, teachers focus on spoon-feeding education, which makes the foundation of Chinese students is very solid. This is an advantage, but there are also disadvantages. Compared with American students, many Chinese students are always afraid of new things, and their innovative consciousness is poor. Whether it is a course study report, a design report or a final exam, Chinese universities pay more attention to whether students' answers meet the "criteria". However, American universities value creative thinking in practice.

On the other hand, education also has a great influence on culture. It can promote the development of culture through the transmission, development, communication and integration of culture. In addition, it can also cause cultural distortion, loss, and even interruption due to the improper educational activities.