Coming Home

I did not receive any form of a global education while studying at the Duke Marine Lab.  It was located within a small town in the United States with low cultural diversity, there were no international students, and the subject materials did not focus on international problems or awareness. Even in my ecology course that focused on environmental issues, we did not focus on international issues or cohesion for solving problems.  This was very surprising to me as the majority of my environmental science courses at Allegheny have had a large focus on international information.  This is very logical to me because by nature, environmental problems are global and the ability to solve them requires communication between cultures as well as cultural understanding.  For example, Americans cannot attempt to fix the deforestation problems occurring in South America without understanding the cultural significance behind them.  Without respect for another culture, you cannot hope to tackle their environmental problems that have global implications.

This overall lack of global education at the Duke program I attended was one of the major pitfalls.  However, I believe this occurred because it was such a small program with only twenty-two students so it is difficult to ensure a diversity of students that includes international students.  Additionally, with block scheduling courses were only three or four weeks long which did not give professors very much time to delve into subjects at the depth a standard 16-week long course might.

Fortunately, at Allegheny I have a much better experience with this globalized education.  A large portion of my friends are international students from South Korea, Vietnam, China, and Morocco.  Therefore, I gain significant personal experience through my time with them, primarily through direct questioning.  I frequently find myself asking my international friends series of cultural-related questions.  Although I am sure it is annoying to them to some degree, I find it very beneficial to indirectly gain a different perspective of the world.  Many things are so different that I never would have suspected it.  Beyond friendship, I gain a lot of intercultural awareness by having international students in the same classroom as me, especially in discussion based classes.  For example, a student from Singapore was in my FS 201 course, and he often incorporated culturally-based viewpoints into the discussion to indicate how environmental perceptions can influence decision making.  An example that I recall is the idea of not overfishing as it negatively impacts both the ecosystem as well as the people through depletion of a food source.  However, on an individual level you cannot judge individual fishermen for overfishing or fishing endangered species as they are relying on it for survival and to provide for their family.  It is not as if they are at the same socioeconomic status as all of us at this expensive liberal arts college, they do not necessarily have the privilege to take into consideration the long term, global implications of their actions when they are just trying to survive.

Overall, I agree with the author that global education is critical because regardless of whether or not globalization is a beneficial phenomenon, it is already occurring-- business, travel, education, philosophy, war, and environmental problems are not isolated to single countries and cannot be understood without the incorporation of a global perspective.  Even the most well-intentioned, open-minded person can become trapped by their American or western perspective and inaccurately view it as the norm or the only way of approaching a situation.  It is impossible to view things broadly without actually thinking about things broadly by incorporating global information and actually including people from different cultures into the foundation of the educational system-- through the student body, professors, and material.  I have learned a lot from my friends that I never would have if I attended a college similar to my high school: no international students, and all middle to upperclass white students from conservative/republic households i.e. the epitome of a lack of diversity. Growing up in that environment then entering college demonstrated to me how inadvertently closed-minded you become regardless of how much you strive to think open-mindedly.

A global perspective greatly affects the way you interact with the world.