Cross-Cultural Instruction, Consciousness Raising, and Inviting Heightened Self-Esteem

Abstract

It is beyond debate that one’s culture plays a significant role in the self-evaluative process.However, each particular culture uses different measurements to determine who will becrowned with respectability and who will not. The wider the gulf between the actual self andthe culturally influenced ought self, the greater the chances are that one will experience a selfconceptdominated by the negative. Deep cultural instruction in both the classroom and incounseling has the potential to assist one in recognizing that his or her self-esteem may be culture-bound. This realization has the potential to assist one in recognizing cultural irrationalityand ameliorating culturally created personal assumptions that do not contribute to a happy andpositive life.