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Michigan Governor John Engler has been a prominent promoter of increasing and improving teaching about Asia. He created a commission to assess teaching about Asia, highlight model programs, and provide recommendations for improvements.

The report argues that learning about Asia is important for reasons of trade, because more residents of Michigan are of Asian ancestry, and because children will have to live and work in a complex multicultural world.

The report calls for the infusion of Asia throughout the curriculum, especially promoting the study of Asian languages. It sets a target of having 10% of Michigan students studying an Asian language by 2012. Teachers are to have exemplary materials to use with students and will be well-prepared to use them. And the report contends that Michigan must become the national leader in instruction on Asia.

A copy of the 2002 report is attached.

The economic imperative is highlighted in this observation:
"Without future employees with international knowledge, language expertise, and an understanding of foreign affairs, Michigan businesses will be less competitive..."

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In 2002 the Asian Studies Association of Australia produced a report Maximizing Australia's Asia Knowledge. A copy of the report is attached. The effort to produce the report was driven, in large part, by a fear that hard-won knowledge was not being renewed, that scholars were retiring or leaving Australia and that insufficient numbers of new specialists were not being prepared.

Here's the gist of the report:

"Australia’s capacity to understand its nearest neighbours and largest trading partners
is stagnant or declining at a time when pressures of globalisation impel us to interact
effectively and sensitively with the countries of Asia."

It notes that in 1988 a target of having 20% of undergraduate work involving Asia has not been met. In 2001, just 5% of undergraduate work focused on Asia. China is the most popular Asian subject and Chinese the most popular Asian language, but fewer than 2% of Australian undergrads are studying China or Chinese.

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Teachers interested in learning more about Korea and how to bring it alive in their classrooms can do so at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles on Nov. 5. Mary Conner, a distinguished educator and the author of a book on Korea, is the seminar director. For details about the seminar, please go to:

http://www.kccla.org/html/Calendar.asp?EventID=262&sMonth=10&sYear=2005

UCLA's John Duncan (director of our Center for Korean Studies) is among the presenters. [Edit by="Clay Dube on Oct 21, 7:19:35 AM"][/Edit]

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Information, including applications, on the Korean Cultural Center workshop Tracy mentioned is available at:

http://www.kccla.org/html/Calendar.asp?EventID=262&sMonth=10&sYear=2005

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Howard French, writing for the NY Times and the International Herald Tribune, shared the ideas of noted Chinese scientist Xu Tian. Xu's work on genes has attracted a lot of attention. He divides his time between labs at Fudan University in Shanghai and Yale University. He worries that the Chinese education system and society in general must change dramatically to value innovation and investigation. He complains that China's overcommercialized (remember that he spends a lot of time in the US, so he can readily draw comparisons). See the full article at:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/14/news/letter.php

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Torrance, CA teacher Michael Alvarez saw this article in the NY Times on Oct. 14, 2005 and shared it in the Torrance forum. Because it is of wider interest I thought we should provide a link to it here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/national/15chinese.html

Free registration is required to access the NYT website and free access to articles is limited to a week or so. Here are some highlights:

1. big federal investment in promoting Chinese language instruction ($700k grant to Portland schools, $1.3 b bill introduced by Senators Lieberman and Alexander)

2. AP Chinese starts in fall 2006 (in part with money provided by the Chinese government)

3. an estimated 50,000 children in US schools are studying Chinese

4. Mayor Richard Daley: "I think there will be two languages in this world." "There will be Chinese and English."

5. 3,000 students, of all ethnicities, are studying Chinese

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On Monday, Oct. 17 PBS will air an American Experience documentary entitled Two Days in October. The program looks at two days in Oct. 1967 where American ideas about the Vietnam War were dramatically challenged. In Vietnam, a US battalion was ambushed and 61 soldiers were killed. In Wisconsin, students protested the arrival of Dow Chemical (producer of napalm) recruiters on campus. The protest turned violent.

In Los Angeles, KCET, ch. 28 will be broadcasting the documentary at 9 pm. It won't be aired on KOCE or KCLS until sometime later.

The website includes a teacher's guide.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/twodays/index.html

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Hi Folks,
There's a terrific article in Foreign Policy magazine detailing the history of basketball in China. Turns out it was there before it was in Houston!

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3177

Among the tidbits in this article: YMCA missionaries brought Bibles and a copy of "Thirteen Rules of Basketball" with them when they went to Tianjin in the 1890s.

China's taking sports very seriously, investing heavily, developing leagues and so on. The Chinese won 32 gold metals at the 2004 Olympics, only 3 behind the US.

The NBA effort to cultivate the Chinese market began with a 1989 trip by commissioner Davidl Stern. Stern found that people were already fans of player Michael Jordan and his team, the Bulls, who would win 6 NBA championships.

You can also read a review of the documentary of Yao Ming's first NBA season at the Asia Pacific Arts website:
http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=23054

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David -- Here's an Asia Pacific Arts article about BRAIN FAILURE:

http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=23360 -- Larry Kao caught their act.

Here's an earlier APA article that included photos of the group:

http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/041103/music_chinapunk.html

They've also been written up for a Japanese site (the link is to the English version):
http://www.sister.co.jp/china/BrainFailure/bf_band.html

http://www.badnews.co.jp/main/en/public/cgi-bin/artist_main.cgi?id=bncp86 (notes they sing in English and Mandarin).

http://www.aversion.com/bands/reviews.cfm?f_id=1986[Edit by="Clay Dube on Oct 15, 10:08:22 PM"][/Edit]

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Jemila asked about the offspring of American and Vietnamese pairings. Much has been written about the challenges these children confronted and continue to face. Here are a few resources:

Daughter from Danang, a heart-wrenching story of a woman who grew up in the US thinking of her Vietnamese mother
http://www.daughterfromdanang.com/
-- the PBS website for the film includes materials for teachers
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/daughter/

An essay by Christian Langworthy, who was born Nguyen Van Phoung (part of the PBS American Experience website): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/reflect/langworthy.html

An article by Shandon Phan at the Asian Nation website:
http://www.asian-nation.org/amerasians.shtml

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Nicholas recommends a wonderful resource, Education About Asia. It's published three times a year and most teachers completing seminars with National Consortium for Teaching about Asia programs (such as ours at UCLA) receive one year subscriptions to it. Lucien Ellington, a professor of education and a Japan specialist at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, is the editor of the magazine.

EAA is published by the Association for Asian Studies. You can see the tables of contents of back issues as well as sample articules and supplementary materials at the AAS website:

http://www.aasianst.org/eaa-toc.htm

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Robert's observations are appropriate. In the interest of time and clarity, it is necessary to boil somewhat more complicated doctrines down. That said, I dare say that among these four schools only Daoism approaches the complexity of Buddhism. And, of course, it was Daoism that sprang to the minds of the first Chinese who heard about Buddhism. They were convinced that Buddhism was a slightly corrupted form of a belief system that originated in China. Initially rendering Buddhist ideas into Chinese using Daoist terms only furthered this line of thinking. Which raises the important question of how we know what we know -- how do we come to grasp the unfamiliar but through approximations drawing upon the familiar?

Finally -- let's move the rest of this philosophical exchange to the Chinese philosophy thread....

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Hi Folks -- As Therese pointed out tonight -- Daoism is more sophisticated that hinted at in the brief slogans we've explored. In fact, its elaborate structure persuaded many that it was a precursor to Buddhism.

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Hi Folks -- Jay reports on news articles concerning Chinese kimchi in Korea. Here are some examples:

Korea Times Sept. 27, 2005

Asia Times Online Sept. 29, 2005

Choson Ilbo Sept. 25, 2005

Reuters Sept. 28, 2005

I found these articles via a Google News search.

I think this discussion would be of general interest and could go on in the Asia on My Mind forum.

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I type something profound. Or maybe not.

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