Passage 1

When you think of a culture, you usually think of things such as art, language, music, literature, and architecture. But a culture is much more. It is a way of life, simple or complex.

Every society or group of people has a culture. The culture includes a mixture of art, language, music, literature, and architecture. But it also includes customs, traditions, and beliefs that are important to the groups within families, neighborhoods, communities, and governments.

Cultures result from basic needs shared by all people. Early culture was a way to extend the ability to obtain food, seek protection, and raise and nurture children. Today's culture has modern methods of getting food and developing shelter. It has a means of distributing the food and other goods to its people. The culture includes family relationships, community relationships, education opportunities, religious practices, and forms of artistic expression.

All large cities and many small cities have history, science, and art centers, and museums. People attend dance performances, plays, musicals, and classical and popular music concerts. They can view outdoor art projects and important architecture. This development of artistic expression forms is the result of both contributions by private giving and other funding.

A country's culture has systems for giving power and responsibility, including social positions, education, economics, and governments. Giving power and responsibility is a way to keep order and settle disputes.

In more complex cultures, this includes police, court, and prison systems. The country's structure, its laws, and the way people relate to each other have great influence on people's actions and attitudes.

People learn their culture by growing up in a particular society or group. They are not born with a culture. They learn it mainly through the use of language and by watching and imitating other group members. By seeing what goes on around then, they learn what their society considers right and wrong.

By listening to group members' shared memories, beliefs, values, and expectations, they develop ways of thinking. Most cultural learning comes from verbal communication. Children share their culture's traditions of citizenship, holiday celebration, craftsmanship, production, competition, leadership, know-how, and positive attitude.

To learn about a group's culture, ask questions as “What languages do the group's members speak? How do group members decide what is right or wrong? What customs do group members share?”

Customs are an important feature of a culture — they're a way of doing things that has been handed down from one generation to the next. Customs include greeting traditions, eating traditions, and holiday traditions. Every culture has a customary way of greeting, of eating, and of celebrating holidays and special days. The adventure of fireworks displays on the Fourth of July has become an American custom.

Through travel, television, films, and other means, people become familiar with cultures from around the world. And cultural traits spread around the world. Clothing, music, sports, and industrial processes are the same in many places of the world.

Blue jeans are a good example of a spreading cultural trait. Clothing from one culture, American, is worn around the world. Blue jeans became popular as work clothes in the 1850s after Levi Strauss, a German immigrant merchant in San Francisco, created them. Now they are widely worn on every continent by people of all ages and fashion tastes.

A culture is much more than art, language, music, literature, and architecture. It is a way to enhance the lives of people.

Most cultural learning comes from ________communication.

________are a way of doing things that has been handed down through generations.

Culture includes all of the following except ________.

Culture results from basic ________shared by all people.

Blue jeans were invented by Levi Strauss, a German immigrant who lived in ________.