week 4 project 4c

1. Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been called the way of life for an entire society.As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture) This fits into our topic because we are learning about the ways of life of a differnt people than our own. We are researching art and artifacts that are specific to a different people in a different time.

2. Denise Thach 3a (http://denise-thach.blogspot.com/)
I learned from Denise that the Mayans were known for their well developed written language in the pre-Columbian Americas. It relates to Freire because he advocated for literacy. This relates to the regions we are studying because the Mayans established themselves in Latin America.

3. Erik Pheiffer 4a (http://srjcintdis4summer08blogspotcom200.blogspot.com/)
I learned from Erik that Dona Marina (La Malinche) was a very significant individual in Mexico history. She was the interpreter for Cortes' during the conquest. He says that without her help they wouldn't have understood the language and probably would have not prospered as well. This is another example tied to Freire, where the use of language to break down a barrier, aided a civilization to prosper. This relates to our topic of study because we are studying the conquest/colonial era of Latin America this week and Cortes was a large part of that era.