Study Abroad Advisor

Class and Study Abroad

Combining Concern and Compassion With Critical Analysis

By Chip Peterson

As we near the end of the 20th century, the gap between haves and have-nots is widening not only among countries but within them. This increasing polarization ought to be a central concern of international educators, but in fact it is seldom discussed. At least two built-in professional biases hinder our attempts to understand it: we tend (uncritically?) to root for economic liberalization and we don’t particularly like to talk about social class.

At a CIEE conference a few years ago I attended a plenary entitled “U.S. National Policy and Global Competence.” The speaker, a political columnist and Washington insider, drew a stark picture of a battle he believed was underway between internationalism and isolationism. His speech sought to rally the troops against the forces of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. As his main example of internationalism, the speaker chose the then unratified North American Free Trade Agreement. Any true internationalist, he suggested, would favor NAFTA; those who did not fight the good fight for it were, by their silence, conceding the world to its Pat Buchanans. None of the subsequent questions and comments from the floor dissented from this perspective.

At the same conference, I attended a session on “Education for Responsible Global Citizenship.” The speaker described the educational model his college had developed for its study abroad programs based on the pedagogical principles of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Although he alluded in passing to various intercultural issues, he made it clear that at the center of these programs was the study of social injustice. When the speaker asked the audience for its thoughts on this radical departure from traditional program norms, virtually all comments were directed to the speaker’s secondary theme of intercultural communication, rather than to the central one of social oppression and inequality.

As I listened to both of these speakers and the responses to them, I thought about what a different picture of NAFTA and the value of what students can learn overseas would be represented at a conference of another organization to which I also belong, the Latin American Studies Association. Almost by reflex, my LASA colleagues would ask: “Who is pushing NAFTA?” and “Who are likely to be the economic and political winners and losers if this is implemented?” Surely, no one would dispute the internationalist credentials of LASA members. They simply ask different questions.

A Bias Toward Privilege

Because the professional interests of international educators lie with a free flow of students and ideas across national borders, by extension we are predisposed to favor a free flow of goods and capital as well. And because we are enamored of the explanatory power of culture, we tend to minimize the importance of class.

But if the intercultural understanding promoted through study abroad proves to be mostly between the more privileged sectors of different cultures, it may be little more than the understanding of one set of winners in the globalization game by another. Students’ impressions of how the world economy functions will remain highly distorted, and their ability to be effective agents in the cause of justice may be severely limited.

Since the ability to study abroad is still clearly a function of income, one way to address issues of social class is to continue seeking ways to increase access. Keeping program costs down, making financial aid fully portable, and expanding scholarship resources for study abroad ought to be important goals for all of us. But it would be naive to think that democratizing the opportunity to study abroad will, in and of itself, result in a generation of alumni better equipped and motivated to address issues of inequality. If class origin was the key determinant of social commitment, the new rich would behave far more responsibly than those who have inherited privilege.

Educating for Responsibility

Most college students, even if from humble origins, are ultimately destined to belong to the middle or upper classes. So, perhaps the more important issue for study abroad professionals is what happens to students, whatever their class backgrounds, as a result of their overseas experience. Let me suggest some questions that could fruitfully guide institutional programming and advising efforts:

Curriculum and Instruction: What do our students actually study while overseas? For what future roles are they preparing themselves? What sorts of class biases might be built into the curricula? When examples of the host culture and society are introduced, to what extent do those examples focus on elite or middle-class culture and society? Do the courses include material designed to help students think about how they can use their future lives as citizens and/or as professionals to ameliorate rather than reinforce class inequities?

Field Experience: What can we do to help our students develop a balanced view of the host society--its problems as well as its achievements, its victims as well as its favored? Do they live and study and play only with people from the more privileged sectors of the host society, or do they also rub shoulders with peasants and workers and members of the underclass? If we arrange structured experiences in “the community,” which community? Would we consider a field trip or field assignment to a peasant farm as well as a large corporate operation, a toxic waste dump in a poor neighborhood as well as a modern factory in a suburb, a small-scale wind energy project as well as a hydroelectric dam, a meeting of a squatter advocacy organization as well as a city council session? And if we do take our students beyond the world of the middle and upper classes, how much do we help them process their experiences? Do complementary readings, lectures, and discussions help them hypothesize about the causes of inequality and about strategies for reducing it? Do our programs promote a sort of dialogue between theory and practice, between the world of the classroom and the world beyond it?

Advising and Program Selection: In our advising sessions and our written materials, how do we portray program options to our students? For example, if we encourage students to select programs that offer substantial cultural immersion, are we biased in favor of the kind of immersion represented by study in regular courses at host-country universities? Or do we also point out opportunities for immersion in other kinds of social realities through programs offered by such organizations as Augsburg College’s Center for Global Education, the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA), the Partnership for Service Learning, or my own institution’s Minnesota Studies in International Development?

Orientation and Re-entry: As we develop our orientation and re-entry programs, as well as related written materials, do we use them to encourage our students to reflect on social class issues and about their own responsibility as citizens and future professionals? Have we acquainted ourselves with opportunities for returning students--now armed with powerful new comparative tools--to explore their own society? How much do we ourselves know about such options as service-learning programs, courses incorporating field assignments, or domestic off-campus study terms like the Philadelphia Semester, the ACM Chicago program, or the HECUA programs in the Twin Cities? Are we even in contact with the offices on our campuses that offer such opportunities? (Students already involved in domestic off-campus study or service are a natural but often overlooked target for our study abroad recruiting efforts.)

Are such questions too value-laden? Do they threaten to bias our approach to education? Quite the contrary. They simply encourage us to begin compensating in small measure for the built-in class biases inherent in our social order and educational system.

At most of our institutions, we still confer degrees upon students who have learned little or nothing about how the world looks from the perspective of its less-privileged sectors. Despite the growth of the service-learning movement, and despite some off-campus study programs that do immerse students in social realities different from their own, on the whole we put far more energy into educating for success than educating for responsibility.

Confronting Inequality

I am not suggesting that we push particular intellectual perspectives or political stances. Yes, we should encourage students to ask why things are as they are and how they can be changed. Yes, programs should produce empathy as well as insight. And, yes, they should force students to discuss alternative ideological perspectives and alternative theories, as well as issues of social ethics and personal responsibility.

But no, we need not advocate a given ideological stance or policy approach. As students grapple with issues and gain insights into the lives of those who too often remain voiceless, they inevitably will develop their own perspectives and politics. Our job is to provide advising and programming that will assist and inspire them to combine concern and compassion with critical thinking and analysis. To do this, we may have to recognize and overcome our own professional biases, which lead us to focus almost exclusively on culture while overlooking the realities of social inequity at home and elsewhere in the world.

CHIP PETERSON is Assistant Director for Curriculum and Academic Outreach, The Global Campus, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis.