Cultural awareness as part of adult education

Kari Kinnunen (Kauniainen, Finnland)

About twenty million of the E.U. population are non-nationals, a figure which is continuously increasing. There are several reasons for this increase. Firstly, the European population is ageing and the future needs of labour can no longer be satisfied by demographic growth. Therefore Europe needs to gather labour from abroad. Also, the world’s internationalisation process continues. This process brings with it an increased movement of labour between different countries. In addition, demographic pressure from both Africa and Asia is directed towards Europe, attracting immigrants with its higher standard of living. The number of refugees moving from other continents to Europe shows no signs of decreasing. Various political problems are the causing the increase in the number of refugees. In the future it may be expected that environmental problems will also make people leave their homes. Finally, the European Union’s expansion will increase migration within the union. This will further increase the proportion of immigrants in several member states.

As a consequence of the above developments many European countries have already become, or are rapidly becoming multicultural nations. This increase in multiculturalism signifies that the national state is losing its political, social, and cultural hegemony. There exists, in the majority of European countries, a national majority culture into which different minorities and immigrants are expected, either consciously or unconsciously, to integrate. In many cases isolation of immigrants and other minorities into their own closed communities, outside the rest of the population, has been an alternative to integration. Having multiculturalism as an aim, means that all minority languages, traditions, social norms and behavioural models gain an equal right to exist and develop in coexistence with the majority culture. Through this means the immigrants’ identity will not dissappear and the roots to their homeland and its culture are maintained.

On the other hand multiculturalism also means that immigrants accept the legal system of their new homeland, integrate into its social system and assume its behavioural models. At the last stage of integration immigrants assume an active citizen’s role. Maintaining the original culture and adapting to a new one is a strenous experience. Immigrants have to complete this process in a culturally strange and new environment. In an environment where they are surrounded by a population which is legally, economically, socially and culturally stronger. The task is not an easy one to complete.

The most common reasons for the failure of flexible integration are the following: inadequate language skills, high unemployment, mutual prejudice and a lack of intercultural communication.

Adult education may be seen as an effective means to attenuate the above mentioned factors. Sufficient language skills improve the immigrants’ chances for employment, decrease cultural prejudice and increase the possibilities for communication. In addition, professional adult education improves the immigrants’ employment possibilities. The importance of language and adequate vocational training in the integration process cannot be deniedd. Both of these means are actively used. Using adult education to diminish prejudice between different population groups is a less studied topic. In many countries the use of adult education as a meeting place for people with different cultural backgrounds does not yet have a firm position.

The possibilities offered by adult education to eliminate several social problems and create change are clearly visible in the Nordic countries. The effects that Finnish folk high schools had on the development of national identity and independence over eighty years ago can be used as an illustration. The role of Swedish adult education, folk high schools and study centres alike, as a promoter of democracy and civil society is a politicalachievement, of which to be proud. In post- war Germany the Folkshochschulen have played an active part in the development of democracy.

The integration of immigrants into our “European home” is a demanding task in which adult education must play an active role. Adult education organisations are both flexible and versatile. In addition they have wide contacts with different social groups, whether looking at age, social position, nationality, religion or locality. The history of adult education signifies that these organisations have an obligation to actively solve current social problems. One of the key issues to be tackled is the strengthening of multicultural awareness in Europe.

Nowadays individuals seek adult education as a means to fulfil their personal interests. Thus the wider social importance is given less emphasis. Seen from this angle such topics as “cultural pluralism”, “immigrants’ integration” and “cultural awareness” are not amongst the most appealing. It is obviously not sufficient to limit the target group to immigrants, this would mean that only they have to comply and integrate. The end result of such an approach would be a unilateral assimilation on the conditions set by the majority culture. Thus education has to be double-sided in these ways:. Firstly, the participants should represent both immigrants and the majority population. plus, the cultural contents and the cultural comparisons have to be sought in both the majority culture and the immigrants’ culture.

The socio-cultural education model described above is not amongst the most popular topics in adult education. To include topics such as the living conditions and culture of the new homeland into the professional, social and linguistic training offered to immigrants’ to improve integration should not be a difficult task. In the same way these topics are already taught to children and young immigrants alongside general and professional education, so the concept seems to be mastered from a cognitive- contextual viewpoint. In other words, children’s and young immigrants’ integrational topics are already partly included in their education.

The most important challenge is formed by adult immigrants on the one hand, and emotional and social educational aims on the other. The most challenging group of adults are formed by those not yet in employment. It is self-evident to say that the most natural way to integrate into the new social norms, life style and behaviour is through employment. Amongst immigrants, then, the most important target groups are those not involved in official employment, a large number of whom are women. Education of the majority population in immigrant cultures seeks for the participants’ attention amongst other adult educational topics.

To increase intercultural understanding and awareness requires the attainment of cognitive, emotional and social educational aims. We have together with five partners in the adult educational field used cultural events and productions as a learning environment. The aim of these educational events has been to attain cognitive, emotional and social educational aims through the participants’ own experiences. During the process intercultural communication has played a central role.

Elements of Intercultural Communication

Karl A. Kumpfmüller

"Everybody is the Other and Nobody is himself.“ Martin Heidegger
“Creativity can only take place where there is a difference.“ Yehudi Menuhin

Introduction
A survey conducted among Austrian youths in the context of the terror-attacks of September 11, 2001, revealed that one out of five respondents felt threatened by Islam. Half of those surveyed were unable to associate anything with “Mecca”, and one-third did not know what the “Koran” is. Forty percent expressed fear of further attacks by “Islamic groups”.
Why are people in Europe afraid of Islam? Obviously not because Islam as a religion poses a factual threat, but because a specific policy of interests encourages the media to recreate an image of Islam that is based on historical reminiscences, and to construe a Clash of Civilizations, a struggle between West and East and a crusade of good against evil.
This is the very opposite of intercultural communication – the deliberate creation of enemy images and cultural opposites which is based on a calculated play with prejudices and xenophobia. However, this strategy can only bear fruit if large parts of the population are not sufficiently conversant with the facts and have not gathered enough personal, favourable experience with individuals from this allegedly threatening culture.
This twofold deficit presents an explicit challenge to education, both as the act of imparting knowledge and as the act of facilitating emotional grasp. As a result, educational efforts are called for at the school, juvenile and adult level alike.

Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication as a prerequisite for integration is viewed as a mutual give-and-take process. If we agree that communication in general is “an exchange of messages between two or more communicating parties” which is “characterized by the intentional and conscious use of a mutually intelligible system of symbols” =, it appears that in most European countries this interaction between the respective representatives of the (indigenous) majority culture and the (migrant) minority culture is functioning with severe limitations at best.
As a rule we can even observe a pronounced communication gradientbetween the majority and minority cultures. More specifically, immigrants often know much more about the culture, religion, custom, habits and behavioural patterns of their new environment than vice versa. But how can integration work if large portions of the majority population lack a basic knowledge and hence, the most basic understanding, of the other culture? How, in this situation, are a fundamental acceptance of the foreigners and long-term peaceful coexistence feasible at all?

Cultural exclusion
The lack of this knowledge fosters incomprehension and =disassociation, fear and defensive-ness towards all that is unfamiliar. Migrants and their culture are excluded and depreciated, being viewed as a general threat to one’s own identity and culture, not as an enrichment of the self. Such “threat imagery” lays the groundwork for racism and the associated =depreciating and disparaging treatment of people originating from elsewhere the prime breeding ground for violence against foreigners. The general propensity =for violence and the rapid increase in violence against foreigners in =Europe are indeed alarming.

Cultural acceptance
For all that, foreign influences are generally perceived as enlivening and enriching, particularly among young people, in a world that is drawing ever more closely together. The truth of this observation is clearly borne out by much of today’s music and media scene, to say nothing of the fashion industry. When it comes to awakening cultural interest and transmitting cultural acceptance, the emotional sphere dominates over the cognitive one.
It follows that, to make intercultural communication work in an everyday context, a degree of emotional acceptance between the communicating parties is indispensable. This does not just imply passive tolerance, i.e., the practice of reluctantly putting up with the other person and/or leaving him alone because this is how you were brought up or feel compelled to behave as an enlightened citizen. As J. W. Goethe so =cogently phrased it: “Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to insult.
Emotional acceptance and active tolerance can be generated in manifold ways. At the level of personal encounter, from the meeting of individuals to the development of mutual sympathies, it is above all the diversity of cultural expressions which fascinate us in the respective other culture and its different people, the “strangers”: how they move, express themselves, talk, sing, laugh, show sadness, etc. Thus, it is their different language, music and expression or, quite simply, their entire cultural richness which captivates and often even inspires us.
Only if we experience this fascination we can develop an interest, a desire to find out more about these people, their fates, history, culture, religion, and other background. It is therefore essential that access to other cultures, whether for one’s one benefit or for that of others, should be gained initially via empathy, i.e., through the realm of the emotional, creative and subconscious. Cognitive interest and the acquisition of knowledge of other cultures will then follow all by itself.

Intercultural respect
As part of this mutual process of emotional and cognitive rapprochement and deepening of understanding, another key element of intercultural communication will evolve: appreciation of the other culture and the resulting fundamental respect for the other person. Such respect is both a necessary condition and key driver for replacing cultural ethnocentrism and hence, the sense of one’s own cultural superiority, with a more relativistic attitude. This makes it an important enabling force, allowing cultural contacts as bias-free and as equal as possible.
Intercultural learning
Respecting the culture of others while viewing one’s own with a healthy sense of relativism is part of an attitude which has become particularly important in the process of integrating minority with majority cultures a process that is taking place in all European countries today. Both are indeed indispensable if intercultural learning is to work as “a form of social learning which, through the experience of cultural differences and by the means of cultural comparisons, leads to a thorough analysis and the adoption of a relativistic view of one’s own standards and social systems, as well as to a reduction of cultural (national) prejudice (...)“. Needless to say, this applies to both sides, i.e., representatives of the majority and minority cultures alike.

Cultural production
If the experience and relativistic view of cultural differences is so essential for social and intercultural learning, a focus must be placed not merely on the act of imparting knowledge but also, and more significantly, on emotional =learning. An important contributor to this process is scenic understanding, a perception and comprehension technique based on the findings of psychoanalysis. Where knowledge is not enough, language fails and communication is not successful, images and scenes, reminiscences and fantasies, musical and creative elements can facilitate emotional access and reach deep layers of the psyche where cultural boundaries and differences are cancelled out or, at least, do indeed become relative. Instead, we obtain radically new, hitherto inconceivable patterns of contact and understanding between people of diverse origins.
The methods and media employed in this process are manifold. The range extends from drawing and painting memories and fantasy images to photographing and documenting impressions and events, narrating folk tales and histories, developing and performing various forms of theatre, making music and celebrating festivities together, learning new dances and songs, etc. Only creativity and imagination are the limits.

Cultural awareness
Regardless of which methodical approach is chosen, subsequent joint verbal reflection is particularly helpful in achieving intercultural communication. Under the guidance of a competent facilitator, it is possible to summarize key findings, fill in knowledge gaps, and convey new insights to all participants – all in an effort to attain a significantly higher level of mutual cultural acceptance. The training of skilled facilitators and moderators with appropriate intercultural experience is of major importance here.
Many such forms of creative methods, media and training were developed, tried and analysed in the participating adult education centres in four European countries as part of the present project, “Enhancing Cultural Awareness through Cultural Production“. The results and experience gained should encourage the continuation and reproduction of this approach, which is aimed at facilitating our understanding of our fellow Other and hence, ourselves – as the only way to improve cultural awareness.