U.S. Senator Richard Durbin [D-IL] speaking at the NAFSA/Goucher College policy event "A Global Education: No Longer Optional" during International Education Week 2011

You can learn more about this event on the NAFSA website here.

So happy that Dick Durbin is my Senator!

House Appropriations Committee's (H.R. 1) to cut U.S. State Department International Exchange Programs by 21%

The Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange has issued an Action Alert stating that "the House Appropriations Committee announced Friday night the completion of its spending bill (H.R. 1) to fund the remainder of FY 2011. In the bill, State Dept. international exchange programs would receive a 21 per cent cut, or a reduction to $501.3 million from the current funding level of $635 million."  Read more about this concerning development via the Alliance Policy Monitor here and take action.


The Alliance is also reporting that "President Obama requested $637.1 million for Department of State educational and cultural exchange programs.  This request is an increase of $2.1 million over the FY 2010 actual level and the current FY 2011 continuing resolution level, both $635 million."  You can read more about this as well as review a breakdown of the FY 2012 budget request for educational and cultural exchanges here.


Many thanks to the Alliance for posting this information!


Photo credit: el7bara

Is it a Good Thing to Limit the Number of Foreign Exchange Students?

The Killeen Daily Herald (Texas) posted an article yesterday entitled “CCISD board considering foreign exchange student limit” which, of course, caught my attention. In the article, the Copperas Cove Independent School District board is considering to institute a “three-year limit of six foreign exchange students in the district in order to prevent exchange students from taking up too much of a campus' resources.” You can link to the article here.

Here are some links to additional documents on this issue:
1) CCISD Regular Meeting Agenda Packet for Tuesday, December 8, 2009 where you can link to the "Action Sheet" and the "Foreign Exchange Student Waiver" in order to “Consider and Act to Approve Foreign Exchange Student Waiver for The 2010-2011, 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 School Years”
2) The Texas Education Agency “Foreign Exchange Student Waiver Guidelines”
3) The Texas Education Agency “Foreign Exchange Students Frequently Asked Questions”

Finally, according to TEC §25.001 (e) (1) (2) (3), the district may only limit the number of foreign exchange students if the commissioner determines that the admission of a foreign exchange student would:
1) create a financial or staffing hardship for the district;
2) diminish the district’s ability to provide high quality educational services for the district’s domestic students; or
3) require domestic students to compete with foreign exchange students for educational resources.

I checked the Killeen Daily Herald and the CCISD websites today to see what decision, if any, came from last night’s meeting but can’t find anything. I’ll try to check from time to time to learn what the CCISD board decided on this.

What are your thoughts on this?

Photo credit: AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker

ACT Locally - Attend an August Town Hall Meeting in Support for International Education

This IHEC Blog post is a copy and paste job (with permission) from an e-mail message I received from Kari Lantos, Manager of Grassroots Outreach at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, as I’m registered for NAFSA’s Advocacy Centered Team (ACT).

Mark your calendar and attend a town hall meeting during the summer district work period, August 4 - September 7! Throughout August, members of Congress will be in their home state to meet with constituents and learn more about local issues. This is your opportunity to meet your members of Congress at local events and discuss the significance of international education within your state and district that they represent.

While the idea of approaching your elected officials may seem daunting, it is quite simple (see 10 Strategies below) and extremely important in order to provide further information on the benefits of having international students in your community and sending local students to study abroad. An excellent example of a NAFSA member's participation in a town hall meeting is as follows:

In 2008, Dr. Susan Steen, Director of, International Education at the University of Southern Mississippi, attended a town hall meeting with Senator Roger Wicker. When she had the opportunity to speak to Senator Wicker, she asked a question about his level of support for international education, but more specifically, the Simon Study Abroad bill. She found that not only was he supportive of study abroad but his son was studying in China at that time and both of his daughters had had the opportunity to study abroad. After the town hall meeting, Susan contacted NAFSA to share her feedback from the event. Earlier this year, NAFSA was looking for a Republican Senator to serve as the lead cosponsor on the Simon Study Abroad bill and immediately thought of Senator Wicker. Susan contacted his office on behalf of NAFSA, and reminded his staff of the conversation from last summer. Susan provided information on study abroad statistics along with some anecdotal stories from the state and was able to get Senator Wicker to sign on as the lead Republican cosponsor of the bill. Had Susan not attended this town hall meeting, we would not have known Senator Wicker's level of support and commitment to getting the Simon Study Abroad Act enacted.

When meeting your legislators, you should share personal stories about your international and study abroad students and the life changing experiences they have had, relevant data (such as the Economic Impact Statements or Study Abroad Participation by State) and positive outcomes in your community as a result of having access to the world through student exchanges. Even better, take an international or study abroad student with you when you attend the event, giving the member of Congress a face to associate with the issue.

If you would like to receive notification of a town hall meeting in your district/state, please register for NAFSA’s Advocacy Centered Team (ACT) here.

Resource:
Prepare to attend a local event -- 10 Strategies for Using Congressional Town Hall Meetings to Advance your Legislative Agenda.
(Source: Knowlegis)

Best,
Kari Lantos
Manager, Grassroots Outreach
NAFSA: Association of International Educators

Sod photo credit: Dan4th

National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y)

I briefly touched on the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) in a previous post but wanted to come back to discuss the program with this post. While cultural and educational exchanges have been a part of the U.S. secondary school landscape for decades the NSLI-Y, which was started in January 2006 as part of the larger National Security Language Initiative, not only provides an opportunity to infuse mutual understanding and foreign language competency into internationally engage secondary students but it is also a way for the U.S. Government to begin the recruitment process for internationally competent and fluent employees who understand and speak such critical languages as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, Korean, Russian and Turkish and understand the people and cultures of these languages (see my previous post on this).

Those of you who are interested in learning more about the NSLI might find the following report Enhancing Foreign Language Proficiency in the United States: Preliminary Results of the National Security Language Initiative (2008) by the U.S. Department of Education to be of interest.

Post-World War II Federal Interest in International Education Exchange

As I was organizing many of my research documents on my computer I came across the following text I was working on some time ago that never found a home so I thought I’d post my notes to the IHEC Blog.

The post-World War II higher education environment in the United States had changed considerably from the first half of the twentieth century. Upon the conclusion of World War II there was a fundamental shift in orientation of the foreign policy of the United States. The Presidents Committee on Higher Education (1947) reported that:

"the need for maintaining our democracy and peace with the rest of the world had compelled our initiative in the formation of the United Nations, and America’s role in this and in other agencies of international cooperation requires our citizen’s knowledge of other people, their political and economic systems, and their social and cultural institutions"

As the Committee’s purpose implied, the GI Bill (otherwise known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) was a way to maintain our nation’s democracy while maintaining peace with the rest of the world. The United States and her citizens took on a new sense of responsibility in world affairs. During this time period, the United States worked to build bridges to connect her higher education system to the rest of the world. In 1945, as a direct response to the tragedy of World War II, Senator J. William Fulbright introduced legislation sponsoring exchange programs for students and faculty between the United States and foreign countries that was eventually signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on August 1, 1946. Further, the international educational exchange and foreign language components from additional legislation such as The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (also known as The Smith-Mundt Act), amendments to The Mutual Security Act of 1951, and The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 were consolidated into The Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 (better known as The Fulbright-Hays Act). The Fulbright Act set in motion a new and renewed focus on international educational exchanges between the United States and the rest of the world.


Higher Education for Democracy: A Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education. (New York, 1947)

Analysis of U.S. Approach to International Education Legislation

I've started preliminary research on my dissertation and I will be focusing on international education and public diplomacy and soft power. I still need to do much more research before I can narrow down my topic and formulate a question. An early observation I've made in this area follows:

Throughout the United States’ history of international education legislation and funding it is clear that soft power is an underlying objective of the federal government. The legislative language and the language used in the related literature during the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s focused more on “mutual understanding between cultures” while the language used during the 1990’s up to today has had a much stronger tone and emphasizes the benefit to U.S. “national security.” An exception to this is the National Defense Education Act of 1958 which encouraged and supported international education exchanges but the focus was more on U.S. national security and competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Language Flagship – Statements Before the House Armed Services Committee

On September 23, 2008 the House Armed Services Committee listened to statements from the following four individuals on the Language Flagship program:

- Dr. Dana S. Bourgeire, Director, The National Chinese Flagship Center at Brigham Young University

- Dr. Terri E. givens, Director, Texas Language Roadmap and the University of Texas at Austin

- Dr. Robert O. Slater, Director, National Security Education Program

- Mr. Galal Walker, Director, National East Asian Languages Resource Center at Ohio State University

You can download their statements in PDF format as well as watch the webcast on the hearing at the following website: http://tinyurl.com/59yogo

Mobility Barometer of the Let’s Go Campaign

Those of you conducting research on global student/scholar mobility trends may find the Mobility Barometer on the Let’s Go Campaign to be helpful. The Mobility Barometer highlights the specific mobility situation for students and higher education and research personnel in 46 countries within the European region. You can access the Mobility Barometer here: http://tinyurl.com/5pnkoe

The Lets Go Campaign was launched by Education International and the European Students’ Union (ESU). You can access the main website for the Let’s Go Campaign here: http://www.letsgocampaign.net/

The Federal Republic of Education

The Die Bundesregierung (The Press and Information Office of the Federal Government) website reported late in October, 2008 that the German federal and state governments plan to increase educational spending to 10% of the country’s gross domestic product by 2015. Chancellor Angela Merkel aims for Germany to become the Federal Republic of Education.

You can read more here: http://tinyurl.com/65lf4x

Presidential Election Day in Hyde Park Chicago

I live and work in Hyde Park, Chicago and it is in the heart of Obama country. Barack Obama lives only four blocks from me and it's been very interesting to see how the security around his house has changed since he began to have Secret Service protection earlier in the year. Yesterday and today you hear helicopters flying all over the neighborhood.

My German host brother (from when I was an exchange student in Rosenheim, Germany during 1988) is here visiting for two weeks and I think it is a great time and a great neighborhood to be visiting. While I'm working he's using my bicycle to tour the city and he rides by Obama's house everyday which he finds "very cool". I'm encouraging him to head downtown tonight to see the Obama rally. He doesn't have a ticket but he is sure to get a good vibe from the action just by being outside before, during and after.

My 7 year old daughter is proudly wearing her Obama button to school today and enjoys finding signs, stickers and anything else that says Obama everywhere we walk and drive. We'll be sure to keep her up later than normal tonight to watch the election results. She's pretty engaged in the process for someone so young.

While there are many many important issues that frame this campaign I'm providing links to the candidates (at least the two that have a chance at the presidency) education policy sections of their websites so you know where they stand on the issues:

The Obama/Biden Education Policy: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

The McCain/Palin Education Policy: http://tinyurl.com/5rzo6j

Education (In)Equality from the 1870’s to 1954 – A Brief History

In Pennsylvania, the 1870’s was a time of important legislative movement. In 1870, the Republicans in the state legislature of Pennsylvania introduced legislation to end discrimination of African Americans in schools and in 1874 an antidiscrimination bill passed the state senate.[1] By 1881, a county court ruled on a case brought by an African American father, Elias H. Allen, who wanted his children to attend a White public school in Meadville, Pennsylvania and determined that “the Pennsylvania segregation law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” and required that African American children be admitted to public schools that were closest to their homes.[2] Vincent Franklin reports that the Philadelphia school system in 1908 consisted of nine Black public schools yet a majority of African American children attended mixed schools. A complicating factor during this time period was that African American teachers were not allowed to teach White children in the Philadelphia public school system. Several research studies by individuals such as Byron Phillips and Howard Odum focused on intelligence and compared White and African American school aged children. The “results” showed that African American children were “retarded” more than White children were which further fueled the argument that African American and White children were to be schooled under different curriculums and that African American school children were to be segregated from White children.[3] Public education in the South was especially challenging for African Americans during this time period. The Southern education movement from 1901 to 1915 saw a resistance in educational reform for African Americans.[4] African Americans experienced both racist attitudes and laws in all aspects of their lives including their education. During this time period, Whites in South Carolina opposed public education for African Americans and Whites in North Carolina were strongly against taxation for African American schools while Georgia allowed school boards to exempt African American children from the compulsory school attendance law that was passed in 1916.[5]

A challenge for public school systems in Northern cities, including in Philadelphia, were the large numbers of African American families that migrated from the South primarily from 1915 to 1930. Vincent Franklin reports that by 1920, the number of African Americans in Philadelphia grew 58.9% to 134,000 people in ten years and by 1930 the number of African Americans had grown by 63.5% to over 200,000 people.[6] Major cities in the Midwest also saw significant increases in the growth of the African American population during the first few decades of the twentieth century or what many called the “Migrant Crisis.” Between 1910 and 1920, the city of Chicago saw a sharp increase in its African American population by 148% or 124,000 people, Detroit’s African American population grew by 35,000 or 611% and the African American population in Cleveland grew 308% or 26,000 people.[7] The migration of large numbers of African Americans to northern cities also had an impact in Southern states and the public funding of schools for African Americans in the South. Many White landowners in the South were concerned with the loss of cash tenants, share-croppers, and laborers who were migrating north and returned public tax funds in order to build rural schools in the hope that many African Americans would consider staying in the South.[8] James Anderson reports that nearly half of the African American’s in Georgia left the state during the 1920’s.[9] To be sure, the considerable demographic shifts witnessed in the urban cities of the North and in the Southern states from the early 1900’s to the 1930’s had a significant impact on the schooling of African Americans during this time period.

The decade preceding the Brown v. Board decision continued to be a time of difficulty for African Americans in the United States. Civil rights abuses were part of the every day life of African Americans. This post-World War II time period for African Americans, despite all of the discriminatory practices they encountered, was also one of hope. In 1947, President Harry Truman was keen on passing civil rights legislation and he commissioned the Congressional Committee on Civil Rights to provide the United States with a public agenda for change.[10] The Committee report outlined the discrimination that African Americans experienced all across the United States. The Committee reported that the legal school segregation found in seventeen states and the District of Columbia was inappropriate and unfair and stated “whatever test is used-expenditure per pupil, teachers’ salaries, the number of pupils per teacher, transportation of students, adequacy of school buildings and educational equipment, length of school term, extent of curriculum-Negro students are invariably at a disadvantage.”[11] Of the 48 states that made up the United States at the time of the Brown v. Board decision in 1954, seventeen states and the District of Columbia required school segregation, four states permitted school segregation to a certain degree, sixteen states prohibited school segregation and eleven states had no specific laws on school segregation.[12] The history of African American struggles for educational equality dating back to the Roberts v. The City of Boston case in 1849 to the various school segregation laws of the 48 states of the Union in 1954 laid the groundwork for Oliver Brown et al.[13] to have their case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. The time period leading up to the Brown v. Board decision and the years immediately following the case were challenging times in American education. While desegregation efforts were important for African American school children and their families this effort was part of a much larger issue in American society, that being the Civil Rights Movement.

[1] Franklin, V.P. The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority Community, 1900-1950. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 34.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, p. 41-48.
[4] Anderson, J.D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 101.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid, p. 60-61.
[7] Dougherty, J. More than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 52.
[8] Anderson, 159.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ravitch, D. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), 21.
[11] Cited in Ravitch, p. 22 from To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947).
[12] Data obtained from analysis of a map showing the status of school segregation law prior to the Brown v. Board case that is presented in Dougherty, 37.
[13] Other legal case included with the Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case included: Briggs v. Elliott (South Carolina), Bolling v. Sharpe (Washington, D.C.), Belton v. Gebhart (Delaware), and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia).

Postmodern Discourse

This is the seventh and final post where I will briefly review the works of comparative education scholars and place them along an epistemological spectrum. For this post, I’m looking at postmodern discourse.

Rust, V.D. 1991. “Postmodernism and its Comparative Education Implications,” Comparative Education Review 35, no. 2: 610-626.

Postmodern discourse is another “fringe epistemology” on Epstein’s epistemological spectrum. During his presidential address to the Comparative and International Education Society, Rust argued that “postmodernism should be a central concept in our comparative education discourse.”[1] Rust confesses that his “own orientation is a tempered acceptance of the notion of an era shift. Of course, the world is so pluralistic that a variety of conditions and orientations will always exist simultaneously; however, the pervasive ideology of modernism and modernity has been ruptured and is undergoing radical reconstruction.”[2] There are two passages by Rust that stand out in his argument for a postmodern discourse theoretical position. First, he states that “the postmodern world is decentered, constantly changing, without the chains and conventions of modern society. Its proponents believe the story of pluralistic contemporary society is being written by a number of narratives and reject philosophical systems of thought that provide some universal standard.” [3] In relation to Vandra Masemann’s call “for the legitimacy of varied ways of knowing”, Rust argues that “postmodernists would support that claim and reject any claim that one way of knowing is the only legitimate way. Rather, they would say our task is to determine which approach to knowing is appropriate to specific interests and needs rather than argue some universal application and validity, which ends up totalizing and confining in its ultimate effect.”[4] Rust’s extreme relativistic/ideographic approach to comparative education in his work finds a home in postmodern discourse with other comparative education scholars such as Rolland Paulston, Martin Liebman, Peter Ninnes and Gregory Burnett.

In conclusion to these series of posts, comparative education scholars approach their scholarship from a wide variety of epistemological viewpoints. This, in my opinion, is necessary in all academic scholarship and something that is very important in all fields of academia. An interesting question that surfaces from time to time in the field is the impact that comparative education research has on policy. An interesting perspective to this question was put forward by Keith Watson when he wrote that “the widely held criticisms that comparative education is too fragmented and irrelevant for policy makers is harder to refute…there are many reasons for this: personality clashes, arguments over terminology, too much emphasis on methodology and not enough on substance.”[5] My posts do not attempt to answer the question of comparative education’s impact on educational policy. I present Watson’s position only to provide an interesting perspective on the different epistemological positions that comparativists bring to the table.

[1] Rust, V.D. “Postmodernism and its Comparative Education Implications,” (Comparative Education Review 35, no. 2, 1991), 610.
[2] Ibid, 611-612.
[3] Ibid, 616.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Keith Watson, “Comparative Educational Research: The Need for Reconceptualisation and Fresh Insights,” Compare 29, no. 3, (1999): 237.