On the importance of discovering water: Educating psychologists for the global village

Abstract

The current education of undergraduate psychology students leaves them relatively unable to address problems posed by a rapidly emerging worldwide society. In particular, teachers of psychology too often educate their students as naive empiricists who lack the intellectual tools to identify and question the often-unarticulated cultural assumptions that maintain cultural status quos. An alternative approach to educating these students is to stress a more ironic postmodern epistemology/ontology in order to teach them to better critique their own cultures and help find solutions to global problems.