Cross-Cultural Instruction, Consciousness Raising, and Inviting Heightened Self-Esteem

Abstract

It is beyond debate that one’s culture plays a significant role in the self-evaluative process.However, each particular culture uses different measurements to determine who will becrowned with respectability and who will not. The wider the gulf between the actual self andthe culturally influenced ought self, the greater the chances are that one will experience a selfconceptdominated by the negative. Deep cultural instruction in both the classroom and incounseling has the potential to assist one in recognizing that his or her self-esteem may be culture-bound. This realization has the potential to assist one in recognizing cultural irrationalityand ameliorating culturally created personal assumptions that do not contribute to a happy andpositive life.

Is the Great American Teacher Dead? Principles to Resurrect Meaningful, Effective, and Consciousness Raising Instruction

“…Experts have often said that to comprehend new knowledge, one must somehow first link it to mental models already understood (Belth, 1977). These new neural connections and the mental models they constitute will then be at the student's permanent disposal to assist in future acts of cognition (Ivers et al, 2008). In-class exploration of the deep recesses of our cultural worlds could serve students in a multitude of ways.…”