Competence or awareness?

Darla Deardorff wrote a book about Intercultural Competence. But what do you think of this expression?

I personally like it, but I loved it when a colleague of mine from China said she perceived it as arrogant. She asserted that in her home country such a concept would not be understood. Competence? Why do we need to talk about competence? Is that something that someone has and someone else doesn't? In my opinion: yes, but I wouldn't say that this competence is given by only traveling and living abroad.

I often happened to think about this: traveling and living abroad in itself does not give you any competence, you can live abroad but stick to your habits, beliefs, behaviours and not open up to the diversity of the world. Or you can never leave your home town and be the most generous, sharing, helpful and sympathetic person who makes no difference between human beings from different cultures. I know a few people like these both.

So... is competence the right word? How can you acquire such a 'thing'?

It's sure that, for me, everything started when I first visited a non-European country. I felt really lost and shaken up as for my personal and cultural identity and that helped me a lot understanding that not everybody in the world thinks and feels as I was taught to think and feel. But is that a competence that someone can teach us? Can we learn that at school? Maybe we can. Maybe history, foreign languages, literature, geography could be taught in a perspective so to slowly broaden our horizons and perceptions. In that case, people who are not led by their own life experiences to reach that comprehension and awareness, could be helped by forward-looking professors and teachers to bridge that gap. Nevertheless, neither teachers nor professors can teach us something we are not ready to accept. 

Intercultural Competence would be that ability to not judge cultural behaviours and not to look at them as if they were weird, bad or inadmissible. They are just culture-based. Nothing is universal. Everything is cultural. Not even the way we raise up our children, teaching them what politeness is, is universal. So, of course traveling and living abroad can help a lot, but not always, not for everyone.

Sometimes a good teacher can help. Sometimes our own sensitivity will do it all.

So, since that is not something you learn, cause you need to have a correspondence within you, wouldn't it be better to call it awareness or even openness?

E.