Study Abroad and multi-cultural learning – PLSC 359: Global Governance

Like the other 60% of my fellow students at the University of Richmond, I chose to go study abroad to compliment my language learning. This seemingly high statistic only reflects the overall increased participation and enrollment in study abroad programs. According to OECD, students enrolling to study abroad has increased from 0.8 million in 1975 to 4.3 million in 2011. This is just compounded by a predicted 12% increase each year by Unesco’s Institute for Statistics.

Now what does that mean?

This means that many students will find themselves facing a culture unknown to theirs with the hope of achieving assimilation or comprehension, believing that ‘educated peoples’ have some kind of international education (Bennet). However, the catch22 about studying different cultures is that it ultimately highlights and magnifies the background of the student as it becomes contrasted with their new experiences. The problem is that awareness of your own biases in your interactions is not easy to accept, especially to students who have taken courses after courses in their universities about cultural awareness. Nobody wants to be that culturally ignorant person that stumbles through, there is stigma against them, but this leads us to fall into the trap of othering. I realized that like many others, I have fallen into the trap of feeling a superiority, a competition as if to see who is more ‘culturally adept’. This same idea shows how Bennett’s observation regarding the study of culture has highlighted the competiveness and superiority-complex associated with ours. I have spent all semester thinking that I had finally begun to blend in, understood social cues, and avoided faux-pas until my student Daniel told me, “Yeah but no one asks you what’s the one thing you like the most about the United States.”

It is true.

But why?

Why should I praise my students for being more westernized? It is perhaps because like many other students participating in a cross-cultural interaction, or intercultural education, I was expecting my students to bend towards me, coming from the dominant culture: the west. Instead of a healthy exchange of ideals and values between the two parties, I acted so that my students were expected to conform to my ways of teaching, understand my communication style, and if they did, I rewarded them by remarking on how western they were. I had completely disregarded the context of the information that was coming towards me, like the socio-economic background of their families, the city of Amman, and the caliber of the school as an accredited international school. Instead of understanding that I was living in a bubble carefully crafted to suit the American study abroad experience, I applied what I had experienced as a foundation for further introspection about Jordan, leading me to make false-conclusions. As a result, it was not until a few weeks before I ended my program that I understood I have gotten a skewed perception of reality.

Now what?

My story is not to be one seen with empathy but I hope that it inspires fellow students studying abroad to question the feeling of being culturally aware. Because it is often confused with cultural ignorance. Students entering foreign countries must realize that being culturally aware does not necessarily come from being correctly up-to-date with the latest social fashions. We must also remember that sometimes, the moment of all coming together does not come as poetic and as prophetic as we first expected. We will not wake up one morning and feel finally a part of the larger whole because we simply cannot. Instead, we should understand that bias will always paint the largest strokes, and that the goal for studying abroad is not to acquire understanding of another culture, but to understand the role you play as a reflection of your society.

Ethan Phillips says:

May 1, 2016 at 12:25 am

I thought your point about how the goal for studying abroad is not to acquire understanding of another culture, but to understand the role you play as a reflection of your society to be very intriguing. I had never thought about studying abroad in that sense. Although I find that point thought provoking, I respectfully disagree with you. But, I also slightly disagree with the other image of study abroad too. I grew up in London most of my life, but I am originally from the U.S. What I found to be the most significant lesson from living abroad was not just understanding different cultures, but comparing and contrasting them. I think that this is the most useful lesson in terms of understanding new cultures as it opens our eyes to the flaws in our domestic system, whether it be the government, or our social structures. This comparing and contrasting of cultures can lead to ultimately different outlooks on life for the better.