•Source of the text: Beyond Experience: An Experiential Approach to Cross-cultural Education
•Editor: Donald Bechelder and Elizabeth G. Warner (1974)
•Bechelder’s view on cross-cultural education
•The goals of education:
a to open up possibilities for discovery”
b. “ to expand learning and the chance for mutual acceptance and recognition”
c to offer students a cross-cultural perspective: from one’s own immediate center of the world to the center of someone else’s world
1. What is ethnocentrism?
–"Ethnic" refers to cultural heritage, and
–"centrism" refers to the central starting point or the tendency of people to put their own group at the center.
–"ethnocentrism" basically refers to judging other groups from one’s own cultural point of view, or misinterpreting other cultures because one uses the concepts of his own culture.
2. What may happen?
–Ethnocentrism can lead to making false assumptions about others' ways based on one’s own limited experience.
–The key word is assumptions, because we are not even aware that we are being ethnocentric (People don't understand that they don't understand).
–Everybody can be ethnocentric, as all of us around the world assume things about other people's ways.
3. Why are people ethnocentric?
Ø Limited life experience:
People will never be able to experience every life situation of everyone around the world, so assumptions about life have to be based on existing limited experience. It is normal to assume things and interpret new experience and others’ behavior on the basis of one’s own experience.
Lack of cross-cultural awareness
4. What consequences?
ØAttitudes of:
– Superiority
– Stereotype
– Hostility
– Discrimination
– Violence
– Xenophobia
– Verbal aggressiveness
5. What can we do about it?
Ø Addressing ethnocentrism is NOT a matter of just trying not to be ethnocentric.
Ø A more effective way is to catch yourself when you are being ethnocentric and seek to develop better understandings.
Ø Once we realize that we may not be understanding properly, we will be in a better position to seek more valid and balanced understandings.
