Culture is Innate or Constructed: An Argument

Introduction

Culture refers to the total way of life of a group of people — their beliefs, values, norms, customs, language, dress, food habits, rituals, and patterns of behaviour. The question of whether culture is innate (inborn, biologically inherited) or constructed (learned and created through social interaction) has been a central debate in sociology and anthropology. This answer argues that culture is primarily constructed, not innate, though human biological capacity makes cultural learning possible.

Meaning of the Two Positions

Culture as innate means culture is inborn — passed through genes, instinct, or biological inheritance. Supporters of this view (biological determinists, early racial theorists) hold that people behave the way they do because of their nature, race, or heredity.

Culture as constructed means culture is learned, created, and transmitted through social interaction, socialization, and shared meaning. This is the view held by most sociologists and anthropologists.

Arguments That Culture Is Constructed

1. Culture is learned, not inherited. No child is born with language, religion, or table manners. A child born in Nepal and raised in America will speak English and follow American customs. This proves culture is acquired, not inborn. Ralph Linton said, "Culture is not born with man; it is learned."

2. Culture is shared and transmitted. Culture passes from one generation to the next through socialization — family, school, peers, and media. It is carried by language, symbols, and traditions, not by genes.

3. Culture varies from society to society. If culture were innate, all human beings would behave alike. But eating habits, marriage rules, greetings, and dress differ across Nepal, Japan, and Africa. This variation shows culture is socially created.

4. Culture changes over time. Sati, child marriage, and untouchability were once accepted but are now rejected. New cultures like online behaviour, hip-hop, and fusion food have emerged. Innate traits cannot change so fast; constructed ones can.

5. Culture is symbolic and meaningful. A red flag means danger in one place and celebration in another. Meaning is assigned by society, not by biology. Clifford Geertz defined culture as a "system of symbols" created by people.

6. Culture is adaptive and integrated. People modify culture to suit their environment — Sherpas build stone houses, Tharus build thatched ones. This adaptation is a social process, not an instinct.

Arguments That Culture Has an Innate Base

1. Biological capacity for culture. Humans have a large brain, opposable thumbs, and a vocal tract that allow language and tool use. Without this biology, culture could not exist.

2. Instincts and drives. Basic drives like hunger, sex, and fear are innate and shape some cultural practices (e.g., food taboos, marriage rules).

3. Emotional universals. Love, anger, grief, and attachment appear in all cultures, suggesting a biological foundation.

However, these points only show that biology enables culture — they do not prove that specific cultural content is inborn. The capacity is innate; the content is constructed.

Critical Evaluation

The innate view is weak because it confuses capacity with content. Biology gives us the ability to learn culture, but what we learn depends on society. If culture were purely innate, it would be uniform, unchanging, and independent of environment — which it is not. The constructed view is stronger because it explains cultural diversity, cultural change, and the role of socialization. Extreme biological determinism has also been misused to justify racism, casteism, and gender inequality.

Conclusion

Culture is essentially constructed — it is learned, shared, transmitted, and changed through social interaction. Human biology provides only the foundation or capacity for culture. Therefore, the correct position is that culture is a social construction built on a biological base, not an innate trait. As Kluckhohn said, "Culture is the design for living" — and that design is made by society, not by genes.

Biodiversity and Human Existence [7 marks]

Biodiversity means the variety of all living things — plants, animals and micro-organisms — and the ecosystems they form. Human existence is directly and indirectly tied to this variety in the following ways:

1. Food and nutrition. All food comes from living organisms. Crops, livestock, fish and edible plants are products of biodiversity. A wide genetic variety in crops helps us breed disease-resistant and high-yielding varieties.

2. Oxygen and clean air. Green plants and trees release oxygen during photosynthesis. Without plant biodiversity, human beings could not breathe.

3. Water cycle and rainfall. Forests and vegetation help in transpiration, cloud formation and rainfall. They also recharge groundwater and keep rivers flowing.

4. Medicine. Many life-saving drugs come from plants and micro-organisms — for example, quinine from the cinchona tree and penicillin from fungi. Loss of species means loss of possible future cures.

5. Soil fertility and agriculture. Earthworms, bacteria and other soil organisms decompose dead matter and fix nitrogen, keeping the soil fertile for farming.

6. Climate balance and disaster control. Forests absorb carbon dioxide and reduce global warming. Mangroves and forests check floods, landslides and soil erosion.

7. Economic and cultural value. Timber, honey, silk, tourism and recreation depend on biodiversity. Many communities also attach religious and cultural importance to plants and animals.

8. Ecological balance. Every species has a role in the food chain. If one species disappears, the whole chain is disturbed, which ultimately harms human beings.

Conclusion. Biodiversity is the foundation of human survival — it provides food, air, water, medicine and a stable climate. Therefore, its conservation is not merely an environmental duty but a condition for human existence itself.

OR — The author as a girl wanted to wear jeans. Explain her views on doing so. (Levi's)

In the essay Levi's, the author (a woman) recalls how, as a young girl, she desperately wanted to wear jeans — and explains why that simple wish carried so much meaning for her.

1. Jeans as a symbol of freedom and equality. To her, jeans were not just a piece of clothing but a symbol of the free, modern, Western way of life. They stood for independence, mobility and equality between boys and girls. Wearing them would mean she was no longer bound by the strict, traditional rules that told girls how to dress and behave.

2. A revolt against tradition and convention. In her society, girls were expected to wear skirts, frocks or other "feminine" clothes. Jeans were considered improper for girls — a boy's garment. Her wish to wear them was therefore a quiet act of rebellion against the double standards and gender restrictions imposed on women.

3. Jeans as a mark of modernity and aspiration. She associated jeans with the glamour of American films, pop culture and the wider world. For her, putting on a pair of Levi's meant joining that modern, progressive world and escaping the narrow limits of her own community.

4. The personal struggle to get them. Her parents, especially her mother, disapproved. She had to argue, persuade and sometimes fight for permission. The jeans thus became a personal victory — proof that she could decide for herself what to wear and who to be.

5. A symbol of identity and self-expression. Ultimately, her desire for jeans was a desire to express her own identity. Clothing became a way of saying "this is who I am" — free, equal and modern — rather than what tradition demanded of her.

Conclusion. The author's girlhood wish to wear jeans was far more than a fashion choice. It represented her longing for freedom, equality, modernity and the right to choose for herself — making jeans a powerful symbol of a young woman's independence.

Knowledge can be increased through two broad routes: formal (organised, institutional, certificated) and informal (incidental, lifelong, experience-based). Both are complementary and together build a person's competence.

Formal ways of increasing knowledge

1. School, college and university education — structured courses, fixed syllabus, prescribed textbooks, examinations and certificates (e.g. BEd itself).
2. Training and workshops — short-term skill courses run by institutions (teacher training, computer courses, first-aid training).
3. Distance and online courses — MOOCs, e-learning platforms, radio/television education, which give certified learning without regular classroom attendance.
4. Libraries and laboratories — reading reference books, journals and doing practical work under teacher guidance.
5. Guided research and project work — carrying out assignments, surveys and mini-research under supervision.

Informal ways of increasing knowledge

1. Observation and experience — learning from daily life, work, travel and mistakes; "experience is the best teacher".
2. Conversation and interaction — discussing with parents, elders, friends, colleagues and experts.
3. Reading for pleasure — newspapers, magazines, storybooks, online articles.
4. Media and technology — radio, television, internet, YouTube, social media, mobile apps.
5. Participation in social and cultural activities — festivals, fairs, community meetings, religious discourses, folk songs and dances.
6. Self-study and reflection — keeping a diary, asking questions, thinking over what one has seen and heard.
7. Visits and excursions — educational tours, museum and zoo visits, field trips.

Conclusion Formal learning gives systematic, verified and certificated knowledge, while informal learning gives practical, up-to-date and life-oriented knowledge. A wise learner uses both — formal education for depth and informal means for breadth — so that knowledge keeps growing throughout life.

Short Notes (Any TWO)

a. Imperialism

Imperialism is the policy or practice by which a powerful nation extends its control over other territories and peoples — politically, economically, and culturally — without necessarily settling them. It is broader than colonialism: colonialism means occupying and ruling a colony, while imperialism refers to the whole system of domination, including indirect control.

Key features:

• Economic motive: Capturing markets, raw materials and cheap labour; Lenin called it the highest stage of capitalism.
• Political motive: Extending national power, prestige and strategic bases.
• Cultural motive: Imposing the ruler's language, religion and values on the subject people (the "civilising mission" idea).
• Forms: Direct rule, protectorates, spheres of influence, and today's economic and military domination.

Effects: It drained wealth from colonies, created artificial boundaries and ethnic divisions, and produced underdevelopment; at the same time it spread modern education, technology and administrative systems. In education, imperialism left a legacy of foreign-language medium, exam-centred curricula and cultural alienation that Nepal and other formerly colonised societies still struggle to remove.

b. Indigenous People

Indigenous people (also called adivasi, janajati or first peoples) are those communities who have lived in a territory since before the arrival of later settlers or colonisers, who maintain a distinct culture, language, religion and way of life, and who identify themselves as a separate people with a special attachment to their land and natural resources.

Key features:

• Historical continuity with pre-colonial or pre-settlement societies.
• Distinct identity: own language, dress, festivals, oral tradition and customary law.
• Collective rights over land, forest and water, usually held communally rather than individually.
• Self-identification as indigenous, and often experience of marginalisation.

In Nepal, the Adivasi Janajati (e.g. Magar, Tharu, Tamang, Newar, Rai, Limbu, Gurung) form a large share of the population. The Constitution of Nepal 2072 recognises their rights, and the National Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities (NFDIN) classifies 59 groups. Their main problems are loss of ancestral land, language shift, poverty and under-representation in decision-making. Indigenous knowledge of forest, medicine and farming is also valuable for sustainable development and should be preserved through mother-tongue education and legal protection.

c. Colonialism

Colonialism is the system in which one country conquers another territory, settles its own people there and rules the local population directly, treating the colony as an extension of the mother country. It is thus a form of imperialism in which political sovereignty is taken away and administration is run by the coloniser.

Key features:

• Conquest and settlement of the colony by the ruling power.
• Direct political control through a governor or colonial administration.
• Economic exploitation: one-way trade, taxes, forced labour and plantation agriculture.
• Cultural domination: the coloniser's language, education and religion were made superior, and local cultures were devalued.

Stages: mercantile colonialism (16th–18th century), industrial colonialism (19th century) and neo-colonialism after independence, where control continues through loans, trade and international agencies.

Effects: colonies lost independence and wealth, and their economies were made dependent; but anti-colonial movements also grew and gave birth to nationalism. In education, colonial schooling produced clerks and a small elite rather than critical citizens — a pattern that post-colonial education systems, including Nepal's, are still trying to correct.

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OR

Meanings are Plural: The Post-modern Claim

Post-modernism is a late twentieth-century intellectual movement that rejects the grand claims of modernism — the belief that reason, science and universal truths can give one correct account of reality. Its central claim is that meanings are plural: a text, event or social practice does not carry one fixed meaning but many, and these meanings change with the reader, time and context.

How post-modernism argues this:

1. Rejection of the grand narrative. Lyotard defined post-modernism as "incredulity towards metanarratives." No single story — religion, science, Marxism or progress — can explain everything; each is only one story among many.
2. Death of the author. Barthes argued that the author's intention does not fix the meaning of a text; the reader produces meaning. Hence the same text means different things to different readers.
3. Deconstruction. Derrida showed that meaning is never fully present; words refer to other words, so meaning is endlessly deferred (différance). Every text contains contradictions that open it to several readings.
4. Language as social and unstable. Meaning is not a natural link between word and thing but a social convention; since conventions differ across cultures and change over time, meaning is plural and shifting.
5. Plurality of identities and truths. Foucault showed that knowledge is tied to power, so what counts as truth varies between discourses. Post-modern feminism and post-colonial theory add that gender, race and class produce different standpoints and hence different meanings.
6. Intertextuality. Every text echoes earlier texts, so its meaning is a web of references rather than a single original sense.

Implications for education: the curriculum cannot claim to teach the one true meaning of a poem, a historical event or a social norm. Teachers should encourage multiple interpretations, dialogue and questioning rather than memorisation of a single authorised answer. At the same time, critics warn that total plurality can lead to relativism — if all meanings are equally valid, moral and scientific judgement becomes impossible. A balanced view accepts plurality of meaning while still insisting on evidence and reasoned argument.

What sort of power holds the universe together?

Stephen Hawking, in the first chapter of A Brief History of Time ("Our Picture of the Universe"), traces how human beings have tried to answer this very question. The power that holds the universe together is understood today as the four fundamental forces of nature, described by the laws of physics — not by a personal or supernatural agency.

1. The four fundamental forces

• Gravity — the weakest of the four, yet the most far-reaching. It holds planets in orbit around the sun, keeps the stars within galaxies, and shapes the large-scale structure of the universe. It is the force that literally "holds the universe together" on the largest scale.
• Electromagnetism — binds electrons to nuclei to form atoms, and atoms to one another to form molecules. It is responsible for all chemical and biological processes, including life itself.
• The strong nuclear force — binds protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus and holds quarks together. Without it, nuclei would fly apart.
• The weak nuclear force — governs radioactive decay and the nuclear reactions that fuel the sun.

2. The unifying aim of physics

Hawking points out that the great goal of science has been to find a single unified theory that would combine these apparently different forces into one consistent framework. Electromagnetism and the weak force have already been unified (the electroweak theory), and attempts continue to bring in the strong force and gravity (grand unified theories and quantum gravity). So the "power" holding the universe together is ultimately one set of laws, expressed through these forces.

3. The regularity of the universe

What makes this power truly remarkable is that the universe obeys consistent, mathematical laws. The same law of gravitation that explains a falling apple explains the motion of the moon and the planets. This regularity — the fact that nature is governed by discoverable, universal rules — is what allows the universe to exist as a stable, ordered whole rather than as chaos.

4. The role of initial conditions and God

Hawking also discusses the question of a creator. Even if we know the laws, we still have to explain the initial conditions of the universe — why it began in the state it did. Some, like Newton, believed these laws were laid down by God; Hawking himself leans toward the view that a complete theory of physics might explain the universe without needing a separate creator. In the closing chapter he adds that finding a complete theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God", a metaphorical way of saying we would understand why the universe is as it is.

Conclusion

Thus, according to Hawking, the universe is held together by the four fundamental forces acting according to uniform mathematical laws, with gravity dominant on the cosmic scale. The deeper question of why these laws and initial conditions exist remains open — which is precisely what makes the search for a unified theory so important.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience — this statement by Leonardo da Vinci means that true wisdom is not born of books, theory, or mere intelligence; it is born of experience. Just as a daughter is born of her mother, wisdom is born of experience. Experience is the source, and wisdom is the result.

Explanation of the statement:

1. Experience is the source of wisdom. Wisdom is not something we are born with, nor can it be gained purely by reading or listening. It grows out of what we actually do, see, suffer, and live through. A person who has faced many situations in life learns lessons that no textbook can teach.

2. Knowledge versus wisdom. Knowledge can be acquired from books, but wisdom comes only from applying knowledge in real life. Two people may read the same book, but the one who has lived through the experiences described understands it more deeply. Da Vinci himself gained his genius not only from study but from observation, experiment, and practice.

3. Errors and failures teach wisdom. Experience includes mistakes. When we fail, we learn what does not work, and this learning becomes wisdom. A person who has never made a mistake has rarely learned how to judge correctly. Thus, painful experience often produces the deepest wisdom.

4. Time and maturity. Wisdom comes with age and maturity because experience accumulates over time. The old are often wiser than the young, not because they are cleverer, but because they have seen more of life.

5. Practical judgment. Wisdom is the ability to judge rightly in real situations. This ability is sharpened only by repeated exposure to real situations — in work, in relationships, in hardship. A farmer knows when to sow not merely from books but from years of watching the weather and the soil.

6. Examples. A doctor becomes wise in diagnosis after years of treating patients. A teacher becomes wise in classroom management after years of teaching. A leader becomes wise in decision-making after facing many crises. In each case, experience is the mother, and wisdom the daughter.

Conclusion: The statement is true and profound. Wisdom cannot be borrowed or bought; it must be earned through living. However, experience alone is not enough — one must also reflect on it. Experience plus reflection gives birth to wisdom. Hence, Da Vinci rightly says that wisdom is the daughter of experience.

Why we should not destroy unwanted plants, and the harm if they were all cleared off

1. Meaning of "unwanted plants" Plants that grow on their own where we do not want them — weeds, wild grasses, shrubs, creepers, water plants — are usually called unwanted plants. But "unwanted" is only a human judgement. In nature, no plant is useless; every plant has a role in the ecosystem.

2. Why we should not destroy them

• They maintain the food chain and food web. Wild plants are the producers on which insects, birds, rodents, and grazing animals depend. If these plants are removed, the animals that feed on them starve, and the animals that feed on those animals also suffer.
• They protect the soil. The roots of grasses, herbs, and shrubs bind the soil particles together. They check soil erosion by wind and water, and help rainwater soak into the ground instead of running off.
• They conserve water and moisture. Ground cover reduces evaporation from the soil, keeps the ground cool, and helps recharge groundwater.
• They keep the soil fertile. Leguminous wild plants fix nitrogen; others add organic matter when they die and decompose. They also support earthworms and soil microbes.
• They are food, medicine, and raw material. Many so-called weeds (e.g., sisnu, bhatte, kurkure) are edible, many are medicinal, and many yield fodder, fuel, fibre, and thatch.
• They are habitat for wildlife. Birds nest in bushes, insects live on leaves and flowers, and small animals take shelter in thickets. They also provide nectar and pollen to bees and butterflies, which pollinate our crops.
• They maintain ecological balance and biodiversity. Each species has its own niche. Removing one species disturbs the whole web of life.
• They prevent desertification and erosion of riverbanks and hillsides. On steep slopes and riverbanks, natural vegetation is the cheapest and best soil binder.
• They have aesthetic, cultural, and recreational value. Green surroundings give beauty, fresh air, and peace of mind.

3. Harm if all unwanted plants were cleared off

• Soil erosion and landslides. Bare soil is easily washed away by rain and blown away by wind; steep hillsides may slip, causing landslides and floods.
• Loss of biodiversity. Many insects, birds, and small animals would lose food and shelter; some species could become extinct.
• Breakdown of the food chain. Herbivores would die of starvation, and carnivores would then die too — the whole ecosystem would collapse.
• Desertification. Without plant cover, fertile land slowly turns into dry, barren land.
• Disturbance of the water cycle. Less transpiration and less infiltration mean less rainfall, falling water tables, and drying up of springs and streams.
• Loss of soil fertility. No leaf litter, no humus, no nitrogen fixation — the soil becomes poor and unproductive.
• Increase in pollution. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen and trap dust; without them, air pollution and the greenhouse effect would increase.
• Loss of food, fodder, medicine, and fuel for local people, especially in rural areas.
• Increase in pests. With natural vegetation gone, insects and pests would shift to crop plants and cause heavier damage.
• Ecological imbalance and natural disasters. Floods, droughts, and landslides would become more frequent, affecting agriculture and human life.

Conclusion No plant is truly "unwanted" in nature. Plants we call weeds are actually the protectors of soil, water, wildlife, and ecological balance. Therefore, we should not destroy them blindly; we should remove them only where they seriously harm crops, and otherwise let nature keep its green mantle intact.