Mixed feelings on the U.S. image

The Pew Global Attitudes Project shows 2 basic trends for most countries involved--when Bush was President, the U.S. favourability rating dropped, and when Obama was elected, it recovered. Is it wrong to suggest that this had nothing to do with public diplomacy efforts, and everything to do with a perceived change in unpopular policies?

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1512/restoring-americas-reputation-globally-gains-may-be-fragile

Note how I said a "perceived" change--if the policies don't actually change, i.e. if the prison at Guantanamo Bay doesn't actually close down soon, then those "gains may be fragile" like this report from last year notes. So far, it looks like the gains are holding up--if anything, the title of another 2010 report suggests that he's "more popular abroad than at home". Maybe the U.S. image crisis doesn't exist anymore, and the real 'image problems' are domestic...

One of my big questions that keeps coming up: do student exchanges like Fulbright even matter any more?

1) America is actually globally popular now--no image crisis to resolve, no 'hearts and minds' to win over

2) Students can go abroad without the help of the State Dept.--international study just isn't as special & expensive as it used to be

3) The internet gives us the tools to interact with foreign publics & communicate globally without even going abroad

I feel like such a traitor saying these things, though, because all of the literature sings the praises of the Fulbright Program and student exchange. It will create mutual understanding and world peace, it doesn't cost that much compared to what we spend on defense, etc. And on a personal level, I don't think it should be abolished. I think it's still nice that we spend taxpayer dollars on international education, even though students could just take out loans like I'm doing. But when the annual budget is being drawn up, how do you decide between something that's "nice" to do, and something that should be prioritised?

Going Native

Since I've been in the UK off and on for 3 1/2 years now, I often think of myself as having "gone native." I don't feel like a tourist anymore. I have 'a local' to call home, as well as favourite cafes and shops around town. I understand most British pop culture references, but sometimes I don't get American ones (Beiber fever, for example...I was completely clueless on that phenomenon until I looked it up). I'm not entirely sure when the shift happened, but it was probably when I stopped living with international students and started living with a real live English person. My culture learning became "immersive", 24/7 contact with the culture and I no longer had an international "bubble" to live in. It's been about 18 months now, and I definitely feel more & more English.

Last week, however, I went to London and realised that I was wrong. I hadn't "gone native" to Britain--I had "gone native" to the North. It's really gotten me thinking about the stereotypes of Northerners and Southerners (there's a long history of this...Gaskell wasn't the first nor the last to notice differences between the two).

I found myself getting annoyed with Southerners. Heads down, bumping into me as they push past on the pavement, their cold stares answering my smile...What a bunch of miserable people. At the British Museum, I mostly just ran into tourists-- Americans, French, Germans and Italians. But in the rest of Bloomsbury and Holborn, I saw locals being miserable. They'd bang right into you and you'd say sorry and they wouldn't say anything--but English culture dictates that you both say sorry. In the pubs, their behaviour was worse--we actually saw a man drinking a pint from a straw. Who does that??? He was also unacceptably boisterous and irritating, throwing chairs about and being a nuisance. If that had happened in a pub in Headingley, he would've been kicked out. In another pub the next night, the waitress was very rude when I ordered a pint. She took Richard's order and then when I asked for an IPA she didn't believe me. "You want ale?" I smiled and said yes, an IPA. "Are you sure?" Ummm...yes? I drink pints. Is that so hard to believe? Eventually she got it and brought us our pints. While she was gone, I looked around and noticed that among all the suits in the pub, all the men were drinking pints (mostly lagers), and all the women were drinking white wine. It suddenly made sense--as a girl, I "shouldn't" like ale. Well, up north, I never get asked "are you sure?". They just give me what I ask for, which is much more in line with the American customer service ethic, 'the customer is always right.' Besides, up north, women are 'allowed' to drink pints ;)

As a disclaimer, the other pubs we went to weren't full of suits, and nobody thought it was odd that I ordered a pint there. There were also Southerners who didn't shove past on the pavement, who smiled when I smiled, and weren't drinking pints from straws. But, it's easier to remember the outliers than the commonplace ones. This is especially important to keep in mind when I do my research and try to interpret student experiences...

In terms of my research, this observation shows how important context is to a student's experience. Regional differences become cultural differences--someone who just went to Leeds would say women drinking pints is acceptable in the UK, while someone who went only to London would say it's frowned upon in the UK. The important thing to do is to get as many experiences/views as possible, so that we can get some generalisable results that go beyond stereotypes.

For the next couple of weeks, I'll be working on my upgrade document. As always happens when I'm trying to write something, though, I keep finding more and more vital, seminal literature to read. Just today I found 2 more in the library: the 1976 book The World's Students in the United States by Spaulding & Flack, et al., and Students as Links between Cultures, a UNESCO publication from 1970, edited by Ingrid Eide. Tomorrow might be spent in the library...

Viral disillusionment

http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?story_id=17723223

Several of my old Euromasters colleagues have been posting this article on Facebook. I read it in the print edition when flying back after Christmas break (The Economist is one of my usual in-flight reads--along with Cosmo). When I skimmed it at the time, I just thought it was really depressing. The subtitle reads "Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time"--and here I was reading this in my 3rd month as a PhD student. I thought I was starting out on this great academic career, and then this article shot that dream down. I was so disillusioned...but now, reading it again only a few months later, I've come to appreciate some of its points and take the article not as a dream-breaker, but as a word of caution.

One major point is that students should only choose to do a PhD for the right reasons, i.e. if it will actually materially benefit them in their future careers. "In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting." That's a pretty lousy excuse to spend three years accumulating student loan debt. The first time I approached Phil Taylor about doing a PhD, he asked me why I wanted to do it. I said that I wanted to stay in academia and become a lecturer, and he said that's the right answer. He warned me that in order to successfully complete a PhD, you have to be sure--sure that you want to do this particular topic, that you want to be an academic, that there's nothing else you'd rather spend 3 years doing, etc. The article is basically giving the same advice he did, but in a much harsher way by saying that the "PhD is often a waste of time"--it's a waste of time for people who go into it for the wrong reasons.

There was one passage that I really disagreed with, though : "One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread." How can the Economist of all magazines possibly call PhD work "slave labour"??? Other articles in the same magazine discuss countries that actually have slave labour--agricultural laborers working sunrise to sunset in the fields, children in sweatshops making athletic shoes and carpets and hand-embroidered dresses. And they have the audacity to call TA-ing, grading essays and reading academic journals "slave labour"? When I'm drinking my caramel macchiato and typing up notes in a netbook, I don't exactly feel like a slave.

I get the main argument. There is an oversupply of PhD's. It will be hard to get a job when I graduate. Fair enough--but since the PhD is often a prerequisite for a job in academia, not doing the PhD would make it even more impossible to do what I want to do.

If we were all to follow this author's advice and not take the steps required to do what we've dreamed of doing because it's statistically very difficult, then there would be no artists, no professional athletes, no poets, no novelists--and no journalists writing for The Economist!

Summing up the TA Experience

I led my final seminars of the term yesterday, so I thought I'd write-up a few thoughts on my first TA-ship.

1) I learned so much. It made me really think about getting students to talk, about keeping them on task, about teaching in general. There were definitely times when I thought to myself, "They're all just staring, and nobody's saying anything. What do they want from me?!" But now I think I've figured that out: they all want different things. You have to learn the dynamics of the class and cater to their style. What worked in my morning group would fail to engage my afternoon group, so I learned to change the lesson (and my overall style) a bit for them.

2) First-years need some basic instructions, but they really will rise to the occasion when challenged. It's about finding a balance--don't go too easy on them because they're only 18, but don't expect them to be at a postgrad level, either. I think that once you've set guidelines and instructions, they really can surprise you with great responses. They just don't know what you're looking for until you tell them--it's their first year!

3) I definitely want to stay in academia. Even when it wasn't easy, it was always rewarding, and the whole experience has convinced me that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. My favourite teachers throughout the years all had one thing in common: they loved teaching. They were brilliant at it, and that's why students got so much from their classes, but at the end of the day, it was their passion that made them such great teachers. Mr. Johnson, one of my favourite high school teachers, wrote on his Facebook wall the other day to a former student that in his 35+ years of teaching, he never went to work one day--he went to school. I love that idea...

And, if this all seems way too positive, it's because I'm trying to keep it professional. Yes, some students did frustrate me, but I'm keeping those rants private. Unlike this woman--http://abcnews.go.com/US/pennsylvania-teacher-wrote-insulting-blog-posts-students-suspended/story?id=12929001

This high school English teacher blogged her frustrations and went way beyond "unprofessional", calling students "rude, lazy, disengaged whiners." Now she's suspended during an investigation. Yikes!

World's Strictest Parents

I've been watching BBC's The World's Strictest Parents this season, and I just realised this morning that it actually relates to my research. It's like a week-long exchange of persons program!

Basically, two teenagers are sent to live abroad with a strict family for a week. They're usually spoiled, not in school and not working, and they treat their parents like crap (and the parents throw their hands up and say 'I don't know what to do anymore!'). They always start out all defiant & rude, and then they always have some kind of breakdown, and end up learning so much about life and want to be better and more respectful of their parents. A lot of them are from single-parent households, and there are a disproportionate number of teens on the show from Essex.

I love working out the producers' thought process--why choose this family and this country for this kid? What is it about the context that will help this particular kid sort out his/her problems? For example, there was a girl with serious anger management problems, and she went to Sri Lanka where the Buddhist family introduced her to meditation and it changed her life. On another episode, they took 2 school drop-out, party-types to the Netherlands, where it was legal for them to drink and smoke pot, but where they met teens who took their education very seriously. My favourite episodes (where kids change the most) are the ones in developing nations. They stay with wealthy families in the host countries, but 'wealthy' in the developing world is middle-class in the UK (and these kids are spoiled), and they also usually have to do some charity work where they'll have contact with the poorer groups in the host country.

Last summer when I was back in the States, I caught a few episodes of the American version on CMT, but it's different. The unruly teens don't go abroad--they just live with stricter parents somewhere else in the States. The process and results look the same as the BBC version--the kids act up, have a breakdown, and come home changed for the better. But I still think the BBC version probably results in a more drastic change, and possibly a longer lasting one. It would be interesting to see these kids over time, and compare how the CMT and BBC ones changed over time.

On a side note, I get annoyed with the emphasis on naughty kids being raised by single moms. The narrator on the show always shows their bad behaviour, and then says "His father left when he was 3", or "She was brought up by her hardworking single mum", as if that explains everything. In their interviews, too, the kids blame everything on their absent father. I don't do that. I was raised by a single mom, and while I did have my rebellious stage like all teens, I was still a good kid. I stayed in school, aced my AP classes, got into great universities, etc. I didn't get expelled, or pregnant, or arrested. These kids are just using their absent dads as a cop-out. It's easy to blame someone who's not around to deny it...

International Students and the Coalition Government

BBC News article: Germany top for foreign students

Apparently Germany is the place to go to university--even if you only speak English. They have entire degree courses taught in English, and they've just been rated the most supportive country for international students on a league table. Another bonus: they don't charge tuition fees, even for international students.

Meanwhile, UK universities are raising fees for home and foreign students, and the government is trying to reduce the numbers of student visas--despite the fact that international students contribute huge £££ and make up huge numbers of postgrad students (the postgrads in my own department are mostly international, and the same thing is going on over at the business school, just to name a couple of examples here at Leeds).

Public diplomacy organisations, like the British Council, understand the value of foreign students. The article quotes the Council's director of higher education:

"an increase in international partnerships between universities has become a global trend. These partnerships can then become pathways, establishing a route for exchanges between students and staff.

For the UK's universities, she says overseas students are becoming particularly important for postgraduate courses.

"It's a hugely important trend, bringing students to the UK and supporting the research base. It's internationalising the whole system, she says.

It's a picture in which globalisation will "intensify" she says, expecting both more competition and collaboration between university systems."

And by 'supporting the research base', I think they mean 'contributing lots of money'...

So why the disparity on views of foreign students between the coalition government and the British Council? From a public diplomacy standpoint, foreign students are valuable--they encourage positive relationships between countries & mutual understanding between peoples of different countries. From an economic standpoint, foreign students are valuable--they pay more in fees than domestic students. Even if you don't charge fees, as is the case in Germany, they're still contributing to the economy simply by spending their foreign money to live in your country. I really don't understand what's going on here. What's the motivation against foreign students? What are the downsides to letting them come study in the UK? Are there British postgraduate applicants who are getting turned down because foreign students are taking their places? Somehow I don't think that's the case...

A few weeks ago PM David Cameron said he agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's assessment that 'multiculturalism has failed.' His comments were directed at certain elements of radical Islam, like the homegrown terrorists behind the 7/7 London tube bombings. But the same day he made his comments, the English Defence League was holding a demonstration in Luton. (For those outside the UK, the EDL thinks if you're not white, then you're not English--and Luton is an ethnically-diverse area north of London). It might be a terrible coincidence that the event was taking place at the time that Cameron made his comments, but for a PR-savvy man like Cameron is, it seemed more like bad taste rather than bad timing. Are the coalition's proposed visa changes protectionist (creating more spaces for British students), or are they representative of a larger ideology that distrusts multiculturalism?

While you were out...

My supervisor Robin Brown was at a conference in Montreal last week (and I went on a long weekend to Venice...we're such jet-setters). I've had a read through his paper and thought I'd write up a few thoughts from it--concrete proof that I read his blog and that I'm still getting some work done on the PhD. Of course, knowing he might read my blog, the pressure is on to get it right...

His paper, Public Diplomacy and Social Networks, looked at some of the current challenges in PD studies and argued for a social network approach to PD studies. There were quite a few points that really hit home for my research--instead of reviewing his paper, I'll just outline those.

3 challenges in PD studies:

--The first challenge he named was "de-Americanising PDS", and its one that I really have to come to grips with myself. PD is an American term, and obviously my own background makes it hard for me to be critical of the US-based approach to PD. America's approach often just seems intuitive to me. I need to learn to take it out of context and think critically.

--The second challenge Robin mentioned was structuring the research agenda, and in this section, his point about evaluation really caught my attention. He pointed out the need to understand successes and failures of PD in different contexts--i.e. what works for one country doesn't necessarily work for another. This is an important point to consider in my research. Fulbrighters are unique individuals, going to unique destinations, and their experiences and outcomes should be expected to vary as such. My research should consider PD successes & failures in these varied contexts, and seek to derive some overall advice for student exchange PD 'best practice'.

--His third challenge was about bridging the gap between international relations and communications studies within PDS. This is something I've struggled with before--really, ever since starting the lit review. My project has a couple more disciplines thrown into the mix, with education and psychology lit, but his point remains the same: there needs to be more comprehensive, interdisciplinary work done in the field. Of course, I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment, and I'm definitely going to take some of his citations as reading suggestions now. One author he mentioned in the next section, R.S. Zaharna, is already in my long annotated bibliography. She's written a few pieces on relational frameworks that I've really liked.

His argument for using social network analysis was convincing (all the more so because I'd already heard it from him in seminar). As far as I know, nobody has studied the social networks of student exchange participants. Yet they are a prime subject for it--one of the objectives Fulbright himself put forward was the establishment of international peer networks. There are so many unasked questions relating to the social networks of Fulbrighters--do they make friends with host country peers, do they maintain friendships over time, how strong are their relationships, do they use them for personal reasons (friendship) or career functions (networking), etc. At this point, I'm not sure where it will all fit in with my research...but it's an interesting and original direction.

In terms of my research process, I'm starting to think more about the upgrade document. Apparently it should be a chapter-size piece of the dissertation, dealing with your theoretical basis, literature and research questions, and in some ways that's easier than the proposal (5,000 word summary of every bit of your proposed project!). One idea I've had about this chapter has been to do some work on the debate about the role of PD in student exchange. After all, that's kind of my whole jumping off point when I started the project--I didn't know PD came into student exchange at all, and the idea that governments spent money in this way really surprised me. The debate is essentially arguing over the extent to which foreign policy should or should not come into student exchange. There are other questions, too: If it's such a long-term practice, how can it be of any use to short-term foreign policy interests? Where does strategy come into it, if at all? Should taxpayers pay for a student to go to country X or country Y, or both or neither? All in all, I'm actually looking forward to the upgrade. It'll be great to get it out of the way, and if/when I pass, I'll be a real PhD candidate and I'll be eligible for travel grants so I can go to conferences...just like a real academic.