Among the greatest dangers inherent in attempting to describe any culture are both the Columns and Rows problem and the related out-group homogeneity bias (Park & Rothbart, 1982). We see things from the vantage points that we have. We can try to be aware of our vantage points, work hard to understand other vantage points, and do our best to respect other vantage points. Still, in the end, we are each taking the single journey through life that we are taking.

How, then, can we finalize Section Four’s discussion of something as diffuse as our entire profession’s history, underlying assumptions, and culture? Even attempting to focus, as this website is trying to do, on topics related to culture, language, and identity, remains a large task, open to multiple missteps, misinterpretations, and hopelessly self-centered pronouncements. As we said in Module 13, this entire Section, and arguably this entire website, is effectively committing the error of trying to describe an entire culture (speech-language pathology) based on one author’s interpretations.

One thing we can do, as we have mentioned in several other places throughout this website, is to be aware of the fallacies and biases that characterize human thinking and then actively use the tools of critical thinking to attempt to counteract those biases (for applications in speech-language pathology in particular, see Finn, 2011; Finn et al., 2016; Thome et al. 2025). Let’s try, therefore, to seek and interpret evidence from multiple directions, or, in this case, to tell two competing stories — and then to think about your stories and think about the influence of our stories on our actions.