Grateful Dead Donate Their Archives to UC Santa Cruz

In April, Mickey Hart and Bob Weir annouced that the Grateful Dead would donate their archives to the University of California, Santa Cruz. You can read the Santa Cruz press announcement here: http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=2142 and access the Grateful Dead Archive here: http://library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/GD_archive.html.

The Historic “Seven Sisters”

In 1927 seven women’s colleges came together to form the “Seven Sisters” in an effort to promote private, independent women’s colleges and separate but equal liberal arts education for women.

Institutions that made up the “Seven Sisters” are:

Barnard College (New York, NY)
Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA)
Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA)
Radcliffe College (Cambridge, MA)
Smith College (Northampton, MA
Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)

The organizational website: http://eclipse.barnard.columbia.edu/~sga/seven/

U.S. Image Sees Slight Improvement In Many Countries

The results of a new study released last Thursday by The Pew Global Attitudes Project indicate that the image of the United States has improved slightly in many countries over the past year. Improvements in the United States' image abroad were strongest in Tanzania, South Korea and Indonesia. In many countries, including many in Western Europe, the United States continues to maintain a poor image and, while not surprising, the U.S. is viewed as highly unfavorable in the Muslim world. You can view this Pew Research Center report here: http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/260.pdf

Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act

Yesterday, the Christian Science Monitor pbulished an article entitled "Send More Students Abroad" by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton (former chair and vice chair of the 9/11 commission). It's an interresting read and you can access the article here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008//p09s01-coop.html.

National Character Analysis

This is the fifth 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 national character analysis.

Bereday, G.Z.F. 1964. Sir Michael Sadler’s “Study of Foreign Systems of Education.
Comparative Education Review 7, no. 3: 307-314.

Sir Michael Sadler’s How Far Can We Learn Anything of Practical Value from the Study of Foreign Systems of Education? clearly falls within the national character analysis epistemological framework of comparative education. Sadler emphasized the importance of experiencing and observing life outside of the school or classroom when studying foreign systems of education. This emphasis is found in several of his statements such as “if we propose to study foreign systems of education, we must not keep our eyes on the brick and mortar institutions, nor on the teachers and pupils only, but we must also go outside into the streets and into the homes of the people, and try to find out what is the intangible, impalpable, spiritual force which, in the case of any successful system of Education, is in reality upholding the school system and accounting for its practical efficiency”[1] and “in studying foreign systems of Education we should not forget that the things outside the schools matter even more than the things inside the schools, and govern and interpret the things inside…A national system of Education is a living thing, the outcome of forgotten struggles and difficulties, and ‘of battles long ago.’ It has in it some of the secret workings of national life. It reflects, while it seeks to remedy, the failings of the national character.”[2]

Renner, R.R. 1988. “Developing Homeplace Values in Children: European Origins and
American Implications. American Journal of Education 96, no. 4: 519-532.

I place the work of Richard Renner under national character analysis on the epistemological spectrum. Renner’s ideographic approach is found throughout the article and in particular when he states that “educational rhetoric places a high value on the tradition of local control; local knowledge, however, is relatively unimportant.”[3] Renner argues that “nonvaluing of homeplace knowledge, that bit of life the child knows best, is widely believed to foster an attitude of rootlessness, valuelessness, and alienation.”[4] Further, the underlying concept of homeplace lore, “is the premise that all who share a common homeplace or community are unavoidably linked to a valued destiny.”[5] Finally, Renner states that “the larger world can be mastered only by beginning with one’s particular surroundings; only thus can develop the self-assurance so necessary for a solid foundation later in life. Too often is it forgotten that only through homeplace mastery can one attain sufficient awareness of self to profit from further exploration of strange or foreign ways.”[6] While I placed Renner’s work under national character analysis I leave the possibility open that he may be a better fit under relativism on the epistemological spectrum.

[1] Bereday, G.Z.F. Sir Michael Sadler’s “Study of Foreign Systems of Education. (Comparative Education Review 7, no. 3, 1964): 309.
[2] Ibid, 310.
[3]Renner, R.R. “Developing Homeplace Values in Children: European Origins and American Implications. (American Journal of Education 96, no. 4, 1988) 519.
[4] Ibid, 520.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid, 30.

Internationalization of German Higher Education

I recently came across three very interesting reports on the internationalization of German Higher Education that I thought I'd share with readers. The publications with links follow:

Internationalization of Higher Education
-Foreign Students in Germany
-German Students Abroad
By the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (http://www.bmbf.de/pub/internationalization_of_higher_education_2008.pdf)

Analysing the Future Market – Target Countries for German HEIs
Working Paper No. 107
by CHE Centre for Higher Education Development
http://www.che.de/downloads/Analysing_the_Future_Market_Target_Countries_for_German_HEIs_AP107.pdf

How to Measure Internationality and Internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions! Indicators and Key Figures
by CHE Centre for Higher Education Development
http://www.che.de/downloads/How_to_measure_internationality_AP_92.pdf

Paul Simon Video on NAFSA's YouTube Page

NAFSA: Association of International Educators recently started their own YouTube page. One of their videos is of Paul Simon discussing via video on November 13, 2003 (just 3 1/2 weeks before his death) how the United States is viewed around the world and the importance of sending more U.S. students abroad via the Lincoln Fellowship.

If you haven't urged your Senators to pass the Simon Study Abroad Act via NAFSA's Take Action Center (http://capwiz.com/nafsa/home/) then I urge you to watch this 4:59 minute video of Senator Simon and then take 1 minute to Take Action!

You can access NAFSA's YouTube page here: http://www.youtube.com/user/nafsatube