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This week we are going beyond the scope of traditional education, to look at an example of what might be termed "applied education".
This involves a real-life attempt to enhance people’s understanding and sharpen their perceptions – not of academic subject matter, but of a country and its culture. What’s makes this particularly interesting is that the process originates at the highest levels of the United States government.
If this sounds a bit mysterious, it isn’t. The process takes place through what is known as educational and cultural exchange. It is something widely practiced by both government and private organisations around the world.
Perhaps none, however, carry out exchanges on the scale of the US government. Last year alone, the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs helped fund over 35,000 visits. Academics head the list, but September 11, 2001 prompted another category of visitor, including many community leaders from the Muslim world.
Recently the learning post had the opportunity to discuss the American exchange programme with the head of the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs, US Assistant Secretary of State Patricia de Stacy Harrison.
Finding a common value
 US Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, Patricia de Stacy Harrison |
Ms Harrison was in Bangkok for a short visit while on her way to speak at a conference in Singapore. It would have been odd, she says, "to come all the way to Singapore and not come to Thailand where we have so many programmes."
These include the well-known Fulbright and Hubert Humphrey programmes, but they also embrace a host of other lesser-known exchanges, including "Quick Start" which was set up by the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs in response to September 11.
"We looked at what we could do within the menu of exchanges we had," Ms Harrison explained. "We needed to jump-start programmes that I feel need to be aimed at a younger population in the Muslim world. Right after September 11 it was very important that we communicate that this was not a war against Islam".
Another post-September 11 programme aimed at younger people is called Partnerships for Learning.
"Partnerships for Learning is based on the idea that if you don’t have a successor generation, nobody gets to succeed," says Harrison. "And some young people are not really being prepared to access any kind of opportunity. Hope is being deferred and channeled into other areas.
"This is something that moves beyond foreign policy," Ms Harrison observes. "We are all getting together to say if terror is our common enemy, then what’s a common value? Partnership for Learning affirms that education is a common value."
Dawning awareness
The US government’s International Visitor Program has been in existence for 60 years and has more than 700,000 alumni. All this is expensive, and obtaining the requisite funding from the US Congress is an annual challenge.
"We compete, as does every entity within the government, so my mandate is to be an effective communicator to Congress," Harrison says.
She is fortunate, she adds, to have the support of top state department officials. "We meet with Secretary Powell every morning at 8:30 and he is very supportive of the exchange process and in fact meets with many, especially of the young people who come over."
Also in her bureau’s favour, she says, is a growing recognition in Congress that grassroots international contacts are important. "There is a dawning awareness that educational and cultural exchanges are not just a nice thing to do when everything is fine," Harrison observes.
"They’re also not things to do when everything is bad. They have to be ongoing. You can’t just keep jump-starting something and hope for a return on investment by next Thursday at three o’clock."
However, Harrison says she still must provide concrete evidence that the exchange programmes are cost-effective. "I can’t just go to Congress and say ‘These are wonderful things, take my word for it,’" she explains.
Instead, she provides members of Congress with solid data on how exchange programmes have helped forge ties with people of influence throughout the world.
"Let me show how many alumni of, let’s say, the International Visitor Program, are now in a position of power in their countries," Harrison tells congressional overseers.
"People like Hamid Karzai and Megawati Sukarnoputri and Tony Blair and so many others. Let me show you how many people came on our programme and are now part of the President’s coalition against terrorism or are leaders in health or business within their communities."
Fair hearing
It is times like the present in which the US administration is struggling to persuade reluctant world governments of the dangers posed by the Iraqi regime that such contacts can be extremely valuable. It will not guarantee acquiescence, as the current impasse at the United Nations clearly shows, but it will usually ensure a fair hearing.
"Not everybody leaves (the US) saying ‘I now agree with everything the United States does,’" Harrison says. "We don’t ask them to sign a pledge or an oath. They are free to form their own opinions."
What they do come away with is a much better understanding of the country and its culture without many of the stereotypes they arrived with, Harrison says.
"I never knew…" is a frequently-heard refrain. "I never knew there was a spirit of volunteerism like this. I never knew there were so many religions in the United States. I never knew that Americans care about their families," she comments.
Mutual benefit
Assistant Secretary Harrison’s conversation is laced with anecdotes, almost invariably about women in developing countries, a long-time interest.
She has been especially affected by the Afghan women who have gone to the United States on exchange programmes, such as those who risked their lives teaching women in underground schools.
"We are giving computer training to a group of Afghan women who taught under the radar screen of the Taliban," Harrison says. "We have another group that we’re giving training at the University of Nebraska and they are going to go back and train other teachers.
"Their stories are chilling. We spent a great deal of time with them. They are very self-effacing people who were just incredibly courageous for doing what they did. I wanted to know what motivated them because their husbands were threatened and they just said they had to do it."
Long active in political circles, Harrison has also encouraged woman from developing countries to become politically aware. "We had a group of women from Middle Eastern countries who are interested in becoming politically involved. Some of them come from countries that enable them to do that more readily, some not.
"They were there during our mid-term elections. It was amazing for me to see them watch the election process and all that entails in the United States. They went to rallies and they were so inspired. They are now e-mailing me and still very excited about what they feel they can do with this new perspective."
The governments in the Middle East are surprisingly accepting of such programmes, Harrison says. "Exchanges seem to operate within an understandable environment of good will, in terms of ‘We think this is good for you and for us and together’.
"The Minister for Culture in Saudi Arabia, for example, is very interested in having young people go to his country," Harrison says. "In fact, we did an exchange there and Saudi’s have come to our country. There is something about the exchange process that’s viewed as positive."
As the Saudi programme illustrates, exchange is not a one-way street, Harrison stresses. "Our mandate is to increase mutual understanding among the people of the United States and other countries. You can’t have mutual understanding if it’s just supposed to be understanding from one part of the world and not the American part as well."
Changing perceptions but not minds
In talking to recent Thai participants in international visitor programmes, the experience in the United States seems remarkably successful in fostering mutual understanding. But this appears largely confined to people to people and cultural understanding. Politics and foreign policy, it seems, are another matter all together.
Archarn Suraiya Sulaiman, a member of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at the Prince of Songkhla university in Pattani is a good example. On the one hand, she says her perceptions of American culture were changed in a largely positive way by her one-month visit to the United States. A prominent member of the Muslim community in southern Thailand, Archarn Suraiya was part of a group brought to the US last April to explore America’s religious diversity.
Archarn Suraiya told the learning post that prior to her visit her perception of the United States was largely shaped by the media and the entertainment industry – the typical Hollywood stereotypes which portray the culture as materialistic and pleasure-seeking.
What she found were friendly, caring people willing to listen and learn. She said she was very impressed with charity work in the United States, which was a full-time occupation for many.
The visit did nothing to change her outspoken opposition to US foreign policy, however. The US government, she says, is perceived as oppressive in her part of country for "obvious reasons".
Take Iraq, for example. "Every child knows that Saddam was supported by the US against Iran when he was perceived as supporting US interests, but now he is a satan," Archarn Suraiya says.
"The US is too self-centred and looking out for its own interests. It must learn to share the wealth, even if that means a slight reduction in its own living standards. The world has sufficient resources if they are shared," she says with obvious conviction.
Archarn Sulaiman particularly objects to what she terms President Bush’s worldview that makes US dominance paramount. "The days of the Roman Empire are gone," she says.
Archarn Nuntaga Thawut, a Hubert H. Humphrey fellowship recipient from Rajabhat Chandrakasem Institute, has a similar story to tell. Interestingly, she was in the United States when the September 11 attacks occurred – part of a group of 140 participants from 84 countries.
When the event was discussed among her group, she says, all felt sympathy for Americans. She says the opinion of the Muslims in the group was that the attack was "not a real religious cause, and that those who carried out the attacks had interpreted the Koran in a wrong way."
Archarn Nuntaga says she met many Americans both socially and in connection with the English programme at Pennslyavania State University and feels great warmth toward them.
What impressed her most was the support of the community, the volunteer spirit. Retired teachers and housewives volunteered to meet with international students on a one-to-one or two-to-one basis to help them with their English. Also, Masters students from the university provided tutoring.
Like Archarn Sulaiman, Archarn Nuntaga says her experience has not altered her opposition to going to war over Iraq. As a result of her visit, she now realises many groups within the United States are opposed to the war as well.
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Bangkok Post’s Fulbright scholar The Bangkok Post has a Fulbright scholar in the person of Alongkorn Parivudhiphongs, a writer for the Outlook section. He spent two years at Michigan State University, earning an MA in Telecommunications in 2000. 
His course of study focused largely on the news media in the digital age which makes use of cutting-edge technology. While not always directly applicable to his work as an Outlook journalist, Alongkorn says his training helps him cover education-related topics such as e-learning and distance learning. Alongkorn is generally quite positive about his experience in the United States. He was very much on his own, he says, with no input or pressure from the United States government. "It’s free," he says. "You go there, you live your life for two years and you absorb the lifestyle." Alongkorn says he had little difficulty adjusting to American life having been through a Christian school in Thailand and having studied with an American professor at Thammasat. "I was pretty much Americanised," he says. Still his perceptions of the country did change. Alongkorn found that the US was not as morally liberal as portrayed in the media and he also obtained a deeper understanding of the black-white relationships. "I found out there could be very well bred, educated black people and also white trash, so stereotypes are not always true. It looked more real to me than how racism is described in the textbooks." Alongkorn says he also observed the cultural diversity he had read about, but not the unity. "Even in New York which is called a cultural melting pot, I see you have little China, little Italy. It’s sort of like ‘yeah’ the diversity is there, but in terms of unity, I am not sure." Alongkorn says that his experience in the US does not affect his objectivity as a journalist. "Just because I understand their lifestyle doesn’t mean that I support their political movements," he comments. |
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |