Running head: CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS

INFECTIVE

Critique of Why Cultural Sensitivity Training is Infective

Yousuf Khalid Abo Rahama
American University of Sharjah
Department of Writing Studies
WRI 102
Dr. D. Fredrick

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

Introduction:
Susana Rinderle, the author of the article, Why Cultural Sensitivity
Training Is Ineffective and Insensitive, published on August 6, 2014, in
Talent Management, is based on the statement that Cultural Sensitivity
Training (CST) is ineffective and insensitive since it places the excessive
responsibility on the dominant group, fails to encourage the development of
new skills, and doesnt have a clear aim. Rinderle possesses sufficient
credentials to write about CST issues since she is a trainer, coach, facilitator,
and inclusion professional committed to human evolution and social justice.
With 40 years of personal and professional cross-cultural experience,
Rinderle has a strong expertise to make the claim that CST does not work as
it should. I would recommend her article to WRI 101 students, who will learn
how to extract the syllogism from the enthymeme, evaluating the conclusion
based on the major and minor premises, while highlighting some of the
informal fallacies inherent in this article.
Summary:
The primary purpose of the article Why Cultural Sensitivity Training Is
Ineffective and Insensitive by Rinderle (2014) is to show that CST is not
effective. There are three factors supporting ineffectiveness of CST: training
places responsibility on the dominant group, doesnt include new skills development, and doesnt
have a clear goal. Moreover, CST causes damages to the targeted groups by
emphasizing inequality instead of contributing to creation of fair
environment. While training people to develop intercultural effectiveness is

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

much better than learning about other groups, it is important to set clear
goals for a program before implementation. Otherwise, time and efforts will
be wasted and no result will be achieved.

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

Evaluation:
Although Rinderles argument may appeal to the citizens of multicultural countries such
as the United States and the United Arab Emirates, it is clear that her conclusion is wholly
unconvincing to the average person since her whole argument is a confirmation bias that is
demonstrated through a focusing effect by cherry picking, relying on unwarranted fallacious
assumptions, and committing many other logical fallacies. Firstly, lets consider her major
enthymeme, which represents her final claim constituting her thesis statement:
Susana claims that CST is ineffective since it places the responsibility on the dominant
group members (para. 2), fails to build new skills (para. 4), and doesnt have a clear goal
(para. 6).
Focusing on the first part (in red), where, if we work out the major primes to find the hidden
assumption, we would end up with the following:
The Major Premise:

Syllogisms
Everything places the responsibility on the dominant group is

The Minor Premise:

ineffective
CST places the responsibility on thedominant group

The Conclusion:

CST is ineffective

From the above syllogism it is clear that Rinderle assumed that anything that places the
responsibility on the dominant group is ineffective. This, of course, is a false assumption, and
something that represents one of the major fallacies in writers a faulty generalization. To
determine why the major primes constitute a faulty generalization, lets
consider Teachers Training Courses (TTC) where teachers or people who
intend to work as teachers learn how to treat, deliver information to, and be
sensitive to students. Doesnt it place more responsibilities on the teachers

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

and push them to be more sensitive to students? Yes it does, however, we

still can say that it is affective to a certain extend. In fact, by training
teachers, we effectively improve the teacher-student relationship, enthuse
students for learning and going to class, and improve the whole learning
process. A good example to demonstrate how effective TTC is, is modern
government schools in the UAE, such as MBRS, where the teachers are well
trained to deal with several type of students, and, therefore, MBRS is
considered as the best government school in Dubai and one of the best
schools in the UAE. This clearly shows that not anything placing
responsibilities on people or making them sensitive is in affective since TTC
do the same, yet it is effective. In fact, not only fallacious is her hidden assumption, but
she also commits many other logical errors in her minor premises; indeed, if the minor primes
didnt hold true, the argument would fall down like a building with a faulty foundation.
However, Before addressing the minor premise, I would like to draw your
attention to the overall argument, which clearly shows a confirmation
biasthe tendency to interpret and search for information in a way that
confirms one's theories or beliefs while giving less attention to evidence that
contradicts it, and a focusing effect which is a cognitive bias that happens
when people overly place importance on one aspect of an event, and that
happens since Rinderle considers only the disadvantages of CST rather than
showing both the advantages and the disadvantages. For the minor premise, that
CST places the full responsibility of relation successes on the trainee is what Rinderle assumes
(para. 2), which implies that she is not considering others as being capable of acting as mature

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

adults; indeed, being sensitive to others is actually the norm, and if people nowadays deviate
from this norm owing to life circumstances doesnt mean that this is wrong. In fact, by
considering what the majority of people believe to be true to be true, Rinderle has committed an
argumentum ad populum fallacy.
Response:
Taking into account the writer syllogism and the above evaluation, it is
obvious that the major problem in Rinderles (2014) article is logical fallacies.
The argument made by the author would be strong if logical fallacies are
eliminated or ideas are better supported. First, focusing effect and the
confirmation bias these are two of the fallacies that we need to remove. To
achieve this goal, it is necessary to introduce the beneficial characteristics of
the CST to the article, which in turn would empower Rinderle to maintain
ethos throughout the article. If the rationale behind preferences or the
benefits of CST in health care, as an example, were discussed, the
arguments would be strong. In addition, it would be a good idea to mention
an experiment conducted with the objective to evaluate CST in medical care:
After 1 year patients of mostly European and British origin, who received
care from trained providers, showed improvement in utilizing social
resources and overall functional capacity without an increase in health care
expenditures (Majumdar, Browne, Roberts, Carpio, 2004, p.161).
Next, we should eliminate fallacies in both premises. First, to eliminate
the Faulty Generalization, we need to make the major premise more specific
or the minor premise more general. However, generalization of minor

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

premise will result in a weak argument that is very exposed to fallacies.

Hence, we need to determine what kind of responsibility CST creates or to
what extend it does so and to adapt both premises to it. Thus, the minor
premise may be expressed in the following way: CST places heavy
responsibilities on the dominant group, and then supported by adding few
examples and comparing it with other methods such as developing
intercultural effectiveness. Now since you are familiar with arguments and
fallacies lets put your understanding to a test. How can we fix the Argumentum
ad populum in the third paragraph of the article? I know you have the answer,
however, Im going to demonstrate one of the systematic methods to correct
it. Why did the Argumentum ad populum fallacy occur in the third paragraph? The
reason is rather apparent - we look to the majority thoughts rather than the
reasons. The next step in fixing this fallacy is to negate the cause. To do so
we should look to the reason rather than the majority thoughts. Further, it is
necessary to check whether the negation causes a new fallacy. In this
example, it does not cause a new fallacy. The final step is to apply the
negated statement (underlined). So what the author needs to say to
strengthen the argument is that being overly sensitive to others is abnormal
since it distracts the trainee and pushes him/her to overly-focus on the other
person rather than on his/her actions, which in turn creates peculiarity in
relationships by removing both the confidence and the simplicity.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Rinderles (2014) article is highly recommended to WRI

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

101 students because it sets an excellent example for learning how to

extract the syllogism from the enthymeme, to evaluate the conclusion based
on the major and minor premises, and to identify and fix logical fallacies. For
students interested in learning more about logical arguments and fallacies, I
recommend reading The Book of Common Fallacies by Philip Ward and The
Power of Logic by Frances Howard-Snyder. The first book discussed types of
fallacies and methods for fixing them, while the second one is enriched with
numerous examples. To ace this topic, go through both books. Review and
analyze the examples. Absorb the concepts. Apply it.

CRITIQUE FOR WHY CULTURAL SENSITIVITY TRAINING IS INFECTIVE

References
Majumdar, B., Browne, G., Roberts, J., & Carpio, B. (2004). Effects of cultural
sensitivity training on health care provider attitudes and patient
outcomes. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 36(2), 161-166.
Hamblin, J. (2014, August 6). Why Cultural Sensitivity Training Is Ineffective
and Insensitive. Talent Management. Retrieved from
http://www.talentmgt.com/blogs/14-global-workplace/post/6681-whycultural-sensitivity-training-is-ineffective-and-insensitive