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Stating that man's intellectual and spiritual horizons need to be expanded through educational programs and approaches in cross-cultural understanding, the author claims that a greater world perspective is attained through the study of social studies, foreign language, English, fine arts, and science, particularly in interdisciplinary programs. The Whorfian hypothesis of language and culture is reviewed, citing France as an example, in a discussion of values. Relevance, communication, provincialism, ethnocentricism, world community, sociocultural context, anthropology, and formal and deep culture are concepts discussed in the address. (RL)

A systematic cross-cultural study of French and Hispanic cultures is made in three major areas in this guide designed to help integrate sociocultural subject matter into the foreign language instructional program. Human nature, social relations, man and nature, time, and space--as universal problems of cultural orientation--serve as the foundation for the author's structuring of the inventory of the sociocultural systems. First, "historical" culture is presented including value systems, underlying assumptions of fact, art forms, language, and paralanguage and kinesics. The unit on social structure involves the family, leisure-time activities, and a wide variety of material relating to everyday living. Finally, the section on ecology ranges from the physical and social environments to technology. An annotated bibliography of books, periodicals, pamphlets, and reports is provided. (RL)