"Difference makes the Difference"
Can cultural differences in Europe become a valuable resource?
The role of NGOsBy
Maria Bakari Olga Wisniewska If we have a look at the very recent European history we realize that intercultural encounters take place more frequently and faster than ever before. Free mobility among the EU member-countries, common decision-making mechanisms in the EU itself, the fall of the iron curtain, new borders, conflicts, immigrants and refugees: Europe becomes more and more a dynamic, constantly changing patchwork of multicultural societies even if this is paradoxically a result of the dissolution of previous multicultural societies.
Compared to the past, the daily challenges of intercultural living are now vastly more diverse and can no longer be tackled with the simple model of "intercultural understanding". "Otherness" is now a part of our everyday contacts and is reflected in the following tendencies across Europe:
Better sense of similarities and differences between cultures
Strengthening of identity, awareness of cultural minorities and assertiveness for rights
Decreasing willingness by the part of minorities to accept the parameters set by the minorities
Continuous attempts by international organizations to bring people together on a basis of dialogue
Emphasis on people's ethnic or national cultures
Stressing on the significance of deconstructing prejudices
Furthermore, it seems that dealing with "otherness" is something that formal European educational systems are not prepared to work on. Yet even if formal education could include methods and programs dealing with "otherness" and "cultural difference", perhaps we should question the effectiveness of such attempts. (Can schools really teach students how other people in the continent live and behave and how can this be managed ?)
The core of the intercultural learning methods so far has been the concept of "intercultural understanding". According to this idea people stress on cultural similarities and the development of unprejudiced minds. This often leaded to an ignorance or even avoidance of seeing the differences in order to follow an ultimate morally based desire to "improve the world". With this respect although cultural differences are accepted de facto, they cannot be defined in concrete terms and remain vague and difficult to grasp.
The experiences of today's intercultural environment, though, suggest that we should adopt an educational process that can "teach" people to recognize differences through all the possible means that this can be achieved: Through cognitive processing but also through feeling and through senses/experience. Thus culture can only be conceived in such ways. Even if perceived and described in stereotypical forms, cultural differences cannot be negative in themselves. What really matters is learning to deal with them constructively in an ethically responsible manner.
Intercultural learning is therefore understood rather as a developmental process which is centered on the individual's cultural background and whose aim is to bring about a change in individual, understanding and acceptance of foreign cultural practices. In other words subjective experience has the key-role in this whole process. Cultural differences are regarded as aspects of the perception and interpretation, feeling thinking and behavior. The learning process is a progress towards a new cultural perspective felt in multiple levels. Consequently, while people begin this learning process on the basis of ethnocentrism they finally manage to acquire an overall - we could call it "stereophonic" - cultural perspective. In other words they actually incorporate cultural differences into there own behavior patterns, they posses knowledge and skills of their own as well as other cultures in a constructive and critical way. In terms of methodology, intercultural learning may include learning activities such as: Simulating methods, experiential learning exercises (based on the "learning by doing" philosophy), lectures and participation in discussions as well as training on empathy. These methods make students work out individual and - more importantly - cultural differences through senses in the context of group dynamics.
NGOs, Institutions, Associations and generally small or large socially active groups of people can play a major role in this perspective. In fact they are the ones that have the required flexibility of realizing activities that can primarily make people be involved in intercultural learning procedures and then apply methods of awareness of oneself and of the "other(s)". Organizations consist of people who can be trainers, not having the role of giving knowledge, but showing sources of knowledge, sharing knowledge. The same persons can be "students" because contact with other cultures is always a procedure of getting and developing new elements. Space for active participation is also an other positive element concerning NGOs. Of course the decisive point here is the ability and the experience of the trainers, that's why their own training should be very systematic and flexible. However, in all cases intercultural learning methods as described above correspond to the structure and function of such organizations.
Intercultural learning as a form of learning can therefore be understood as a developmental process centered on the individual but not carried out independently of social reality. That's why NGOs are the ideal carriers of the promotion of goals as ambitious as: Awareness, empathy, better understanding, goodwill, trust, cooperation... a better world.
