09 June 2008
Student Exchanges Build Relations Between Countries
Podcast discusses relationship between public diplomacy, global education
(begin transcript)
Narrator:
Today on America.gov -- we visit with one of Washington DC’s top universities to discuss how the practice of public diplomacy is benefiting from global education. Stay with us….
Many Americans remember foreign exchange students from their high schools. Foreign exchange programs, where students come to America to study for a school term and Americans students go abroad, have been a part of educational systems for a long time. But only in the past 10 years or so has education along with economics and other areas become truly globalized.
Globalization is driven by technologies, and one more than any other -- the Internet. The ability to interact with others around the world at literally any time is making cultural understanding and communication increasingly important in diplomacy and business.
The development of communications technology has made interaction with other languages and cultures a daily possibility. How are educational institutions moving to increase global awareness and the abilities of its students? The practice of public diplomacy is receiving more and more attention from governments and universities as officials recognize its importance. One way for students to prepare is to learn by doing through projects.
Next – we talk with the students of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs on how global education and public diplomacy are coming together in classrooms and in practice.
Alberto, Liz, and Becca are graduate students at the Elliott school. They recently participated in the school course on public diplomacy. We joined them for a conversation -- and asked them about their experiences as American students overseas, the perceptions of America, and the impact of technology on their lives. Many American university students like Alberto have deep knowledge of other cultures.
Alberto:
I grew up mostly in Heidelberg, Germany. First, I went to school in Madrid for a year, and then I transferred back to the school in Germany and then I went to Penn State. I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world but probably what compelled me most was just what happened, you know, after 9-11. …
Liz:
Like Alberto, I actually grew up abroad. My dad was actually involved in public diplomacy so that’s perhaps part of the reason I was interested in the subject.
Narrator:
Liz studies the relations between Russia and America. Like many of her classmates, her background is more related to culture than politics.
Liz:
My undergraduate I actually did comparative literature as my major because I was really interested in the more language and culture aspect of the world around us and didn’t quite know what to do with that when I graduated. I did find myself being very much interested in what was going in the world around us and thought that my background would be useful in some capacity for studying something like this; you know, this is something I care about and interested in.
Narrator:
Like Liz and Alberto, Becca also studied overseas.
Becca:
I spent my junior year in France at the University of Tours so I mainly was with an international crowd living with a French family. I feel like our program allows for a lot of flexibility, so I just decided I wanted to mainly take courses on the Middle East, so my foreign policy degree is geared towards that region. Really that did coincide with 9-11 like Alberto because I was in France at the time. That did give me the reason to try to see if I could either, well, be involved in the policy-making process or some supporting level for advising the policy process or else on the communication side of it.
Narrator:
Technology has opened up possibilities for citizens to make their voices heard literally across the world. Now, students and young people everywhere now have the tools to make a real contribution to international relations. The iContact project is an example of this in action.
Liz:
You know the project was supposed to be a real world, applicable, useable idea, and they actually liked some of the stuff that we put together, not just our projects but some of the other groups.
Becca:
I hope that what we came up with would be actionable.
Liz:
The program’s been really useful. I really like this approach of real-world experience and really getting your feet wet. The public diplomacy class is just one example.
Alberto:
I guess the thing that I learned most was the fact that our ideas can be useful and that people will take our ideas and implement them.
Liz:
As far as developing the project, I really like the simplicity of it. I feel like in this day and age when you can talk to your brother in China on Skype and have instantaneous conversations, there’s really no reason why the communication gap should exist. I like the idea of Facebook where you know that the person on the other end is real.
Narrator:
The U.S. State Department welcomes the engagement of young people in exchange and cross-cultural learning programs; technology is enabling public and private institutions to reach ever larger audiences. But despite the power of the Internet and telecommunications, successful public diplomacy still requires the same basic ingredients of tolerance and a willingness to understand others.
Alberto:
The more you travel, the more you realize that people are just really all the same. We all have families, we all like music, we all like sports, we find similar things humorous.
Liz:
We seem like this sort of behemoth superpower society -- all you want to do is just communicate and say “I come from a good family, we care, we pay attention to what’s going on.” I think that’s the important thing is to show that there is nuance and depth.
Becca:
One of the things that motivates me about public diplomacy is that I think there’s an opportunity to explain on the US end, too. So if I’m in a conversation with somebody who may be generalizing about the Muslim world or something I can say, ‘Well, you know the family I know in Tunisia is like this. Within this family, there are this many different points of view.” That -- I think that holds true.
Liz:
You know, and Alberto and I both spent a lot of time in Germany and I think feel very much at home going back there too. It’s not just one foreign country -- I think you go anywhere and you meet people and they’re trying to put themselves through school or figure out what it is they want to do and I think that any opportunity to show that our democratic process is functioning and that people care about this stuff and they talk about it within their families and friends.
Narrator:
Alberto, Liz and Becca are part of a generation on the leading edge of a communications revolution. In the future, they and their counterparts in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere will undoubtedly experience international relations in a deeper, more personal way than previous generations.
Liz:
They all pointed to 9-11 as, you know, this is what got me interested. They were all Elliott School students or at least had some interest in foreign affairs. And they talked about 9-11 as a life-changing experience.
Becca:
I feel like we’re part of a whole generation of young people who are motivated to work on either policy or communicating policy.
Prerecorded narrator:
This podcast is produced by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs. Links to other Internet sites or opinions expressed should not be considered an endorsement of other content and views.
(end transcript)
