Cultural Fluidity

I read an article in a recent Government Executive issue about how the federal government needs to do a better job of training its managers in having a more international perspective.  Amen to that – being a hyphenated Asian-American, I am particularly sensitive to the fact that most Americans have trouble appreciating other cultures and languages.  When your country is by the far the most powerful in the world, and when your language is by far the most useful in the world, it is easy to think everything revolves around you and every other culture and language is foreign in the sense of different from the norm.  But the thing in your room that lights up when you flick the switch is not by definition a lamp, and a word that sounds different in other languages; it is an object that has different names in different languages.  And the underlying cultural assumptions that are as hard for us to detect as water for a fish are different than the underlying cultural assumptions of people in other countries – different, not necessarily inferior or superior.

 

My freshman year at Wharton almost fifteen years ago was the first that a language requirement was imposed.  The international component of the school's curriculum and student body has only increased since then.  One hopes that some of these young business leaders and their counterparts in other academic disciplines will end up in government positions, and that their multilingualism and cultural fluidity will help us manage our government affairs in a way that is more effective on the global level.