Values tend to become distorted at the intercultural level. What is considered "good" in one society may be criticized as "bad" or "incomprehensible" in another. For example, American culture tends to value time to the point of obsession, whereas Hispanic cultures subordinate temporal considerations to interpersonal relationships. The resulting clash which will occur between representatives of divergent cultures may then be predicted accurately. It should convince teachers, it is argued, of the necessity to adopt a flexible frame of reference and an attitude of suspended judgment in dealing with any crosscultural circumstances. What is needed, is the ability to look at the world through someone else's eyes and to perceive it in the manner determined by the viewer's own cultural filter. Such a skill is simply a matter of acquiring the needed competences in cross cultural understanding. Without this empathy for other cultures, the effectiveness of an adult educator will be considerably reduced, as a result of restrictive communication at the cognitive, as well as the affective and psychomotor levels. The task of the adult educator is not so much that of "changing" the learners' values as that of helping him (1) acquire an additional and different set of values, and (2) learn to behave differentially according to context. (Author/JM)