On occasion, students are asked to describe in writing or orally what they think is happening in an illustration or photograph that is shown to them. Unfortunately, most textbooks and other sources used by student always tell readers what is happening in the caption that normally accompanies each visual. While understandable and at times helpful, this practice greatly reduces chances that students will ever develop true visual literacy. In our visual age, that is a serious shortcoming. Students, instead, must be helped to "see," not simply to "look at" the illustrations they confront in their study and research on other nations, peoples or cultures. To practice this skill, have students do the following. Shown a single painting, photograph or other visual depicting, e.g., an historical event, a busy urban street scene or a busy market scene in a developing nation, have individual students first write down what they believe is going on. Have them analyze what is shown by dividing their visual into sub-sections, e.g., the foreground, the middle background and the distant background as well as the left, center and right. Next, have them meet in teams to discuss their individual thoughts and to suggest two or more additional explanations for whatever they originally believed was going on. Finally, the class should share their descriptions. This exercise also demonstrates how different observers often"see" the same thing very differently.