Has the American education system set us up to be ethnocentric?

submitted by Diane Boehm

April 28, 2008 —

One of the students in my Writing in the Professions course recently raised this question in a discussion forum in our class. I've been thinking about it a lot.

Most of the students in the class are juniors and seniors; a majority are in business and management, with a few education, nursing, and other majors. Their observations are telling:

"There are many ways in which one's own culture can be 'invisible.' The word 'invisible' I think refers to the events, common occurrences, languages and other things that a culture does without really realizing they do and/or realizing that it is out of the ordinary compared to another culture."

"Almost every foreign exchange student that I know is fluent in at least two languages; many of these people are fluent in three or four languages on top of their own. I think that it is ignorant of Americans (me being one of them) to feel that they only need to know English and that everyone else should know English."

"Sometimes Americans don't respect the [other] culture and they think since their country is very powerful that they don't have to respect other cultures."

"Siemens and ... Westinghouse wanted to team up to sell automotive parts worldwide. After about a year of efforts in trying to collaborate, the project was thrown out. The stated cause was lack of common ground between partners. In my research I found many cases like this one and was surprised at how frequently communication barriers were the reason for failure in business transactions."

Some of the students reflected on experiences from their own lives or families:

One student's parents emigrated from Hungary 20 years ago; her mother taught herself English while receiving her degree in music education from U of M; she still struggles with the language at times. The student recognizes that "for a person from another culture, the [English] language may simply be inappropriate or hard to follow" and concluded that "I believe it is awfully arrogant and rude when I hear people say, 'Why don't you go back to your own country!'"

Another student, an ethnic Korean who was sworn in as an American citizen this month, observes that "many foreigners actually have excellent English vocabularies, maybe better than most Americans ... they spend many years studying English. Americans are not the only people speaking English, right? My brother works in the financial markets in Seoul. He has clients from Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and other places. He almost always uses English to speak to non-Korean clients."

The observations of my students suggest that in America, ethnocentrism is certainly easy - and often reinforced by our culture. Sometimes it may even be admired. Changing this perspective begins with awareness.

Last year I visited the village from which my great-great-grandfather, with his wife and 10 children, emigrated in 1863. It was then Prussia, a part of Germany. After the massive border realignments resulting from WWII, it became part of Poland, its German history obliterated. Who might I have become had he made a different decision? Who might you have become had your ancestors made different decisions?

When I hear the term "campus community," I'm reminded that, like our nation, e pluribus unum is a goal to which each of us contributes - or fails to contribute. Do I think our American education system makes it easy for us to be ethnocentric? In many cases, unfortunately yes. But where we go from here is up to us.

Diane Boehm
University Writing Program director