Message from hdao

This was my first time ever participating in anything like this. I’ve always had to pay to have access to quality education, and now I was being paid a small stipend (pending submission of my lesson plan) to learn more about a subject I am personally interested in at the prestigious USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. The seminar, “Movement In East Asia: The Flow Of People, Goods, and Ideas” is of particular interest to me as an educator because I believe that in order for my students to become successful, they need to be worldly. That is they need to know about the world beyond their neighborhood. Despite, sometimes having an entirely different culture right outside their front door, they have learned to ignore it, preferring to act instead as though those strange customs and languages constituted a mere oddity amidst our mass culture, which isn’t much of a culture at all.

I don’t intend on introducing East Asia as a “foreign culture,” and I don’t want my students to get the impression that Asia is some exotic far away land. There is the temptation to turn it into a romantic exploration of the orient, but my hope is to always keep the discussion as down to earth as possible, while focusing on the history of East Asia, and the mutual exchange of ideas. If at the end my students can understand the contributions that East Asia has made to our human cultural heritage, I think they will be in a good position to embrace and be a part of the new and changing world. I hope to incorporate into my lessons many of the topics that were discussed at the seminar, such as the history of ramen and other foods that have become a part of the American culinary landscape. Buddhism is gaining in popularity in America, especially the idea of mindfulness, in addition to cheap Chinese manufactured goods, which has played a huge roll in the US trade deficit. The idea that, “east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet,” is an erroneous and outdate view, and one that needs to be discarded into the dustbin of history.

People and ideas are constantly moving across cultural and political boundaries, and I suspect there was perhaps a greater exchange in the past than those in academia are cognizant of. Today, of course the world has become much smaller and ideas and financial resources can move at lightning speed to overthrow governments and erect entire economies, seemingly overnight. While this is the new reality, what is not certain is the effect these changes will have on individuals, and how they in turn may put pressure on the political bodies of their governments. We are living in exciting times that present both danger and opportunity. Danger for those who want to stick their heads in the ground, but opportunity for those who can understand the changes and are able to reposition themselves. Interestingly, the two Chinese characters for danger and opportunity also make up the character for crisis. The spread of new ideas almost always brings about crisis. Of greater relevance however, to the students’ knowledge and skill set, is the understanding of how new ideas are absorbed and integrated into existing the ones.

I’m okay with crisis and I want my students to be okay with it too. Being a child of the Vietnam War, I was literally born into crisis. It has helped me to keep perspective in troubled times. The USC-China Institute Summer Seminar was an excellent opportunity for me to reconsider some of the ideas I had brewing in my own head, and to be introduced to few other things I hadn’t given any thought to, in a very relaxed and enjoyable setting. Thank you once again for the wonderful professional development opportunity that you provide to educators!
edited by hdao on 8/27/2016
edited by hdao on 8/27/2016