The American belief in equality of opportunity is illustrated by the Horatio Alger myth. Horatio Alger was a nineteenth-century American novelist who wrote stories about poor boys who became successful. His books told about the little newsboy or bootblack who, because he was hardworking, honest, and lucky, grew up to become rich and respected. These popular "rags-to-riches" stories exemplified the American Dream-the belief that any individual, no matter how poor, can achieve wealth and fame through diligence and virtue.
The "American Dream"
In the United States there is a belief that people are rewarded for working, producing, and achieving. Many people believe that there is equality of opportunity that allows anyone to become successful. This belief is illustrated by stories written by a nineteenth-century American novelist, Horatio Alger, who wrote about the" American Dream." In his stories he described poor people who became rich because of their hard work, honesty, and luck. The stories reinforced the idea that all individuals, no matter how poor, were capable of becoming wealthy as long as they were diligent and virtuous. For many Americans, however, Horatio Alger's "rags-to-riches" stories do not represent the reality of opportunity. Many poor immigrants who came to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were able to rise on the social and economic scales. Today, however, the poor generally do not rise to the middle and upper classes. The" American Dream" is now described as a myth; it is still difficult for several million Americans to "get ahead."
Which Kind of University?
These excerpts provide two versions of life on North American University campuses. Which version would be most helpful to foreign students in general? Should a choice be made?
A college community is an interesting and lively place. Students become involved in many different activities-extracurricular, religious, social and athletic. Among the extracurricular activities are college newspapers' musical organizations, dramatic clubs, and political groups. Some of these have faculty advisers. Many religious groups have their own meeting places where services and social activities can be held. Student groups run parties of all types-from formal dances to picnics. Most colleges have a student union where students can get together for lunch, study sessions, club meetings, and socializing.
At many schools, campus life revolves around fraternities (social and, in some cases, residential clubs for men) and sororities (similar clubs for women). These organizations exist on more than 500 campuses. The best known are national groups with many chapters at schools throughout the country. Their names are Greek letters such as Alpha Delta Phi. These groups have been much criticized for being cruel and prejudiced because membership is limited and selective. A student must be invited to join. There is often great competition among freshmen and sophomores who want to join. Those who seek membership must go through rush (a period when prospective members visit different houses to meet and be evaluated by current members). The whole experience can be very painful if a student goes through rush and then is not asked to pledge (become a trial member of) any of the houses he or she has visited. Sororities and fraternities also tend to limit membership to one particular racial and religious group, thereby depriving its members of the wonderful opportunity that college offers for broadening social contacts. However, these groups do help students find friends of similar backgrounds; thus, they help combat loneliness for those away from home.
Student life at American universities is chaotic during the first week of each quarter or semester. Registering for classes, becoming familiar with the buildings on campus, buying books, adding and dropping classes, and paying fees are confusing for everyone. During this busy period there is little time for students to anticipate what they will later encounter in the classroom.
International students, accustomed to their countries' educational expectations, must adapt to new classroom norms in a foreign college or university. Whereas in one country prayer may be acceptable in a classroom, in another it may be forbidden. In some classrooms around the world students must humbly obey their teacher's commands and remain absolutely silent during a class period. In others, students may talk, eat, and smoke during lectures as well as criticize a teacher's methods or contradict his or her statements. It is not always easy to understand a new educational system.
Diversity in Education
There is considerable variety in university classrooms in the United States. Because of diverse teaching methods and non-standardized curricula, no two courses are identical. Undergraduate courses are considerably different from graduate courses. The classroom atmosphere in expensive, private universities may differ from that in community colleges which are free and open to everyone. State-funded universities have different requirements and expectations than do parochial colleges. Nevertheless, there are shared features in American college and university classrooms despite the diversity of educational institutions of higher learning.
The differences between cultures are leaded to misunderstandings in many points.
3. FACTORS INFLUENSING VALUES
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: A GUIDE TO MEN OF ACTION
Anyone who has traveled abroad or dealt at all extensively with non-Americans learns that punctuality is variously interpreted. It is one thing to recognize this with the mind; to adjust to a different kind of appointment time is quite another.
In Latin America, you should expect to spend hours waiting in outer offices. If you bring your American interpretation of what constitutes punctuality to a Latin-American office, you will fray your temper and elevate your blood pressure. For a forty-five-minute wait is not unusual -no more unusual than a five minute wait would be in the United States. No insult is intended, no arbitrary pecking order is being established. If, in the United States, you would not be outraged by a five-minute wait, you should not be outraged by the Latin-American's forty-five-minute delay in seeing you. The time pie is differently cut, that's all.
Further, the Latin American doesn't usually schedule individual appointments to the exclusion of other appointments. The informal Clock of his upbringing ticks more slowly and he rather enjoys seeing several people on different matters at the same time. The three-ring circus atmosphere which results, if interpreted in the American's scale of time and propriety, seems to signal him to go away, to tell him that h~ is not being properly treated, to indicate that his dignity is under attack. Not so. The clock on the wall may look the same but it tells a different sort of time.
The cultural error may be compounded by' a further miscalculation. In the United States, a consistently tardy man is likely to be considered undependable, and by our cultural clock this is a reasonable conclusion. For you to judge a Latin American by your scale of time values is to risk a major error.
Suppose you have waited forty-five minutes and there is a man in his office, by some miracle alone in the room with you. Do you now get down to business and stop "wasting time"?
If you are not forewarned by experience or a friendly advisor, you may try to do this. And it would usually be a mistake. For, in the American culture, discussion is a means to an end: the deal. You try to make your point quickly, efficiently, neatly. If your purpose is to arrange some major affairs, your instinct is probably to settle the major issues first, leave the details for later, possibly for the technical people to work out.
For the Latin American, the discussion is a part of the spice of life. Just as he tends not to be overly concerned about reserving you your specific segment of time, he tends not as rigidly to separate business from non-business. He runs it all together and wants to make something of a social event out of what you, in your .culture, regard as strictly business.
The Latin American is not alone in this. The Greek businessman, partly for the same and partly for different reasons, does not lean toward the "hit-and-run" school of business behavior, either. The Greek businessman adds to the social element, however, a feeling about what length of discussion time constitutes go09 faith. In America, we show good faith by ignoring the details. "Let's agree on the main points. The details will take care of themselves."
Not so the Greek. He signifies good will and good faith by what may seem to you an interminable discussion which includes every conceivable detail. Otherwise, you see, he cannot help but feel that the other man might be trying to pull the wool over his eyes. Our habit, in what we feel to be our relaxed and friendly way, of postponing details until later smacks the Greek between the eyes as a maneuver to flank him. Even if you can somehow convince him that this is not the case, the meeting must still go on a certain indefinite-but, by our standards, long-time or he will feel disquieted.
The American desire to get down to business and on with other things works to our disadvantage in other parts of the world, too; and not only in business. The head of a large, successful Japanese firm commented: "You Americans have a terrible weakness. We Japanese know about it and exploit it every chance we get. You are impatient. We have learned that if we just make you wait long enough, you'll agree to anything."
Whether this is literally true or not, the Japanese executive singled out a trait of American culture which most of us share and which, one may assume from the newspapers, the Russians have not overlooked, either.
By acquaintance time we mean how long you must know a man be fore you are willing to do business with him.
In the United States, if we know that a salesman represents a well known, reputable company, and if we need his product, he may walk away from the first meeting with an order in his pocket. A few minutes conversation to decide matters of price, delivery, payment, model of product-nothing more is involved. In Central America, local custom does not permit a salesman to land in town, call on the customer and walk away with an order, no matter how badly your prospect wants and needs your product. It is traditional there that you must see your man at least three times before you can discuss the nature of your business.
Does this mean that the South American businessman does not recognize the merits of one product over another? Of course it doesn't. It is just that the weight of tradition presses him to do business within a circle of friends. If a product he needs is not available within his circle, he does not go outside it so much as he enlarges the circle itself to include a new friend who can supply the want. Apart from his cultural need to "feel right" about a new relationship, there is the logic of his business system. One of the realities of his life is that it is dangerous to enter into business with someone over whom you have no more than formal, legal "control." In the past decades, his legal system has not always been as firm as ours and he has learned through experience that he needs the sanctions implicit in the informal system of friendship.
Visiting time involves the question of who sets the time for a visit. George Coelho, a social psychologist from India, gives an illustrative case. A U.S. businessman received this invitation from an Indian businessman: "Won't you and your family come and see us? Come any time." Several weeks later, the Indian repeated the invitation in the same words. Each time the American replied that he would certainly like to drop in-but he never did. The reason is obvious in terms of our culture. Here "come any time" is just an expression of friendliness. You are not really expected to show up unless your host proposes a specific time. In India, on the contrary, the words are meant literally-that the host is putting himself at the disposal of his guest and really expects him to come. It is the essence of politeness to leave it to the guest to set a time at his convenience. If the guest never comes, the Indian naturally assumes that he does not want to come. Such a misunderstanding can lead to a serious rift between men who are trying to do business with each other.
Time schedules present Americans with another problem in many parts of the world. Without schedules, deadlines, priorities, and timetables, we tend to feel that our country could not run at all. Not only are they essential to getting work done, but they also play an important role in the informal communication process. Deadlines indicate priorities and priorities signal the relative importance of people and the processes they control. These are all so much a part of our lives that a day hardly passes without some reference to them. "I have to be there by 6: 30." "If I don't have these plans out by 5:00 they'll be useless." "I told J. B. I'd be finished by noon tomorrow and now he tells me to drop everything and get hot on the McDermott account. What do I do now?"
In our system, there are severe penalties for not completing work on time and important rewards for holding to schedules. One's integrity and reputation are at stake.
You can imagine the fundamental conflicts that arise when we attempt to do business with people who are just as strongly oriented away from time schedules as we are toward them.
The Middle Eastern peoples are a case in point. Not only is our idea of time schedules no part of Arab life but the mere mention of a dead line to an' Arab is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. In his culture, your emphasis on a deadline has the emotional effect on him that his backing you into a corner and threatening you with a club would have on you.
One effect of this conflict of unconscious habit patterns is that hundreds of American-owned radio sets are lying on the shelves of Arab radio repair shops, untouched. The Americans made the serious cross-cultural error of asking to have the repair completed by a certain time.
How do you cope with this? How does the Arab get another Arab to do anything? Every culture has its own ways of bringing pressure to get results. The usual Arab way is one which Americans avoid as "bad manners." It is needling.
An Arab businessman whose car broke down explained it this way:
First, I go to the garage and tell the mechanic what is wrong with my car. I wouldn't want to give him the idea that I didn't know. After that, I leave the car and walk around the block. When I come back to the garage, I ask him if he has started to work yet. On my way home from lunch I stop in and ask him how things are going. When I go back to the office I stop by again. In the evening, I return and peer over his shoulder for a while. If I didn't keep this up, he'd be off working on someone else's car.
If you haven't been needled by an Arab, you just haven't been needled.
A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING
We say that there is a time and place for everything, but compared to other countries and cultures we give very little emphasis to place distinctions. Business is almost a universal value with us; it can be discussed almost anywhere, except perhaps in church. One can even talk business on the church steps going to and from the service. Politics is only slightly more restricted in the places appropriate for its discussion.
In other parts of the world, there are decided place restrictions on the discussion of business and politics. The American who is not conscious of the unwritten laws will offend if he abides by his own rather than by the local rules.
In India, you should not talk business when visiting a man's home. If you do, you prejudice your chances of ever working out a satisfactory business relationship.
In Latin America, although university students take an active interest in politics, tradition decrees that a politician should avoid political subjects when speaking on university grounds. A Latin American politician commented to. anthropologist Allan Holmberg that neither he nor his fellow politicians would have dared attempt a political speech on the grounds of the University of San Marcos in Peru-as did Vice-President Nixon.
To complicate matters further, the student body of San Marcos, anticipating the visit, had voted that Mr. Nixon would not be welcome. The University Rector had issued no invitation, presumably because he expected what did, in fact, happen.
As a final touch, Mr. Nixon's interpreter was a man in full military uniform. In Latin American countries, some of which had recently overthrown military dictators, the symbolism of the military uniform could hardly contribute to a cordial atmosphere. Latin Americans need no reminder that the United States is a great military power.
Mr. Nixon's efforts were planned in the best traditions of our own culture; he hoped to improve relations through a direct, frank, and face-to-face discussion with students-the future leaders of their country. Unfortunately, this approach did not fit in at all with the culture of the host country. Of course, elements hostile to the United States did their best to capitalize upon this cross-cultural misunderstanding. However, even Latin Americans friendly to us, while admiring the Vice President's courage, found themselfes acutely embarrassed by the behavior of their people and ours in the ensuing difficulties.