CULTURAL COMPETENCE??? GOOD GRIEF!

(sigh)
Have you heard all the recent uproar about the initiative they call "cultural competence" proposed by a handful of liberal-leaning universities? This is nothing more than a fancy name for "sensitivity," which, by the way, was the watchword of the 70s. I never cease to be amazed at the extent to which the political left extends itself toward the soft issues. Not that this particular sidelight is necessarily bad, but the over-reaching is beyond belief. Let me explain.
Cultural competence is defined as "a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals and enables them to work effectively in cross-cultural situations" (Cross et al., 1989; Isaacs & Benjamin, 1991). Bottom line: Know your audience. If you are a Caucasian teacher instructing a classroom of African-American children, it behooves you to be as knowledgeable as possible of their culture and customs so as 1) not to offend and 2) to be effective. But some of the materials on cultural competence which offer "insight" into what works is so far "out there" as to be laughable. Take, for instance, the information put out on the Cultural Competence home page which suggests that even though African-American adults use eye contact and facial expression to discipline their children, this is not effective with ALL African-American youngsters. Duh. It suggests that while this method works with some that one may need to use loud and demanding tones in order to achieve the same result with others. Okay. It's common sense that everything does not work for everyone in every situation, but to imply that Caucasian teachers in a similar situation should be AWARE AND KNOWLEDGEABLE of all intra-group differences is absurd.
This home page is an interesting read because it brings to light how diverse we are in this country with cultures within cultures, ad infinitum. I was overwhelmed when reading it because it's so very obvious that employment of even a fraction of the suggestions put forth is, at the very least, impractical. A couple of the examples given are that in some matrilineal societies the father resides in a different domicile and has little interaction with the children, but the maternal uncle has a large role to play in the children's upbringing. This implies that school faculty members should know NOT to call a child's father but to instead call the child's UNCLE, and a MATERNAL UNCLE, at that! Additionally, some cultures do not recognize TIME as being a factor in everyday living and therefore children have difficulty arriving for classes in a TIMELY fashion. Some cultures rely only on oral communication in learning and are therefore flummoxed by textbooks. Are we to expect our public schools to cater to the kaleidoscope of nuances of each and every culture and sub-culture?
The University of Oregon's mandate of cultural competence by its professors has met with scathing remarks by other educators, the most compelling being those from Rutgers Professor Norman Levitt. Read what he has to say about this:
" 'Cultural Competence,' or rather, your presumed lack thereof, is what you will be clobbered with if you are imprudent enough to challenge or merely to have qualms about 'affirmative action,' 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism,' as those principles are now espoused by their most fervent academic advocates.
...In the context of higher education, cultural competence necessitates abject refusal to articulate or defend ideas that might make certain protected groups uncomfortable. Professors can only be deemed 'culturally competent' if they openly profess the approved corpus of received values."
Professor Levitt continues by saying that administrators at the University of Oregon "prescribed a draconian regime of attitude adjustment aimed at professors and instructors. They proposed that all faculty be required to 'participate in ongoing cultural competence professional development' under their tutelage. But this was just the beginning. The drafters further called for academic departments, across the board, to reconstruct their hiring policies so as to make affirmative action the central factor in generating job offers. They insisted that every course in the school be scrutinized for its consistency with multicultural doctrine. Above all, in hiring, promotion and determination of salary, they called for a formal evaluation of the candidate's cultural competence! Stripping it down to its essence, the message to faculty was this: you're going to adopt our sociopolitical point of view (or pretend to) or pay the price; so far as hiring and retention is concerned, your professional standards shall be modified or overruled to insure the predominance of people of whom we approve because of their race, sex, sexuality or doctrinal purity; if you give us any trouble, lacking tenure you'll be out on your ear and even with tenure you'll be out a lot of money."
So troubling in Oregon's journey into the absurd is the underlying thesis that there should be a forfeiting of our personal value systems in order to cater to these newly-defined cultural essences. This is not a sacrifice for the greater good but a dumping of our own psychologies to accommodate an outre educational hierarchy's quest for cultural correctness. We have become such a litigious society and are so quick to take a whack at our fellow man that we have lost sight of the fact that it is not possible to mandate and legislate every aspect of our cultures. We shouldn't WANT that anyway. To be sure, most of us can use a little diversity honing, but a sensitivity to and an awareness of (rather than a proficiency in) cultural competence should be enough to move us forward. (sigh again)