The value of cultural literacy

Cultural knowledge alone allows one to succeed as it promotes personal growth and go beyond image and words. Cultural understanding leads to greater broadmindedness for cultural differences because when people gain more knowledge about other cultures to establish friendships with other people, they may enable them to continue to learn about the culture the friend’s country and become sensitive to other cultures (Han, 2003).

In addition, if people lack of cultural understanding, they may frequently result in many unintended mistakes, such as being culturally offensive, making cultural blunders, ruining personal relationships, failing in negotiation and consequently losing profits (Feinstein et al, 2008). Therefore, People working together are concerned about cultural differences in terms of attitudes, values, religions, customs, education and language since they are interested in understanding and valuing themselves, engaging and challenging other people, and their attitudes vary because of cultural, as well as religious, influence (Feinstein et al, 2008).

Similarly, individuals from cultures and societies around the globe interact with each other more a frequently everyday in their routine business. In order to work cooperatively with individuals from vastly different backgrounds, people must appreciate and understand the beliefs and values that drive them from their counterparts. According to Freebody (2005), these qualities must reflect a notion of cultural literacy that is broader than it has been in the past: first, it must be sensitive to the many sub-cultures that exist within the larger global society; second, it must include newly developing technological cultures such as virtual workspaces, and chat-room environments; and third, it must recognize the evolutionary nature of culture and the impact that technology had had and will continue to have on cultures worldwide.

Likewise, Hofstede (1980) and Stigler et al (2000) claim that understanding other cultures has several notable benefits. First, it multiplies people’s access to practices, ideas, and people that can make positive contributions to their own society. Second it helps people understand themselves more deeply. Finally, it supports understanding a range of alternatives, people become aware of their own implicit beliefs – beliefs so deeply imbedded that people routinely take them for granted because cultural literacy is the basic information people need to know to carry on a reasonable conversation with most people they associate with.

The question is whether it’s worth the time to become more culturally literate. That’s not an easy question to answer, because it depends largely on individual person such as their situation, their values, their working environment, and so on, for instance, if someone spends most of their day working in isolated situations and most of their free time is not spent in a social environment, cultural literacy may not mean a whole lot. On the other hand, if one’s job and career are largely based on interacting with people, social situations, and conversation, cultural literacy can be highly valuable. The general philosophy is that anyone working in the information and service economy is well served by being as culturally literate as possible. Being culturally literate simply opens up doors and opportunities for people and it improves their understanding of everything going on around them, both of which are key components of the information and service economies (Picciano, 2007; Maclellan, 2008).

Consequently, cultural literacy is seen as a crucial part for people’s survival in the global and multicultural world because a part from foreign language knowledge (English language) and communication skills, one’s own and other cultural awareness, most people do need to respect, trust and learn from each other based on the culture in which they live, work, and conduct business (Street, 2003; Gross, 2011).

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