Universities Abroad Join Partnerships on the Web
Over the last year, elite American universities have raced to stake out a place in the new world of free online courses — and now, universities around the globe are following suit.
This week, the two largest ventures providing what are known as MOOCs — massive open online courses — are announcing new partnerships with leading universities in Canada, Mexico, Europe, China, Singapore, Japan and Australia, and signing additional American universities.
Coursera, founded by two Stanford University computer professors, is adding 29 universities — including École Polytechnique in France, the National University of Singapore, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and National Autonomous University of Mexico — to its current 33 partners.
Meanwhile, edX, a nonprofit venture started by Harvard and M.I.T., is doubling its university partners to 12, adding Rice University, the Australian National University, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and, in Canada, McGill and the University of Toronto.
“We have had an international student community from the very beginning, and bringing these leading universities, from North America and Europe and the Asia Pacific, into the edX organization will help us meet the tremendous demand we are experiencing,” said Anant Agarwal, the president of edX.
The rush into a still-experimental field comes as no surprise to William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton and founding chairman of Ithaka, a nonprofit concerned with education and information technology.
“One of the characteristics of academia is that nobody wants to be left behind,” he said. “There’s great promise here, great potential, but we need more careful research, and there has not been sufficient attention to that, partly because a lot of the people creating these courses are missionaries, and missionaries are not by and large interested in testing their message.”
Coursera, which has attracted 2.7 million students to its 222 courses since it was started last spring, has recently had growing pains. This month, its course Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Applications, offered by the Georgia Institute of Technology, was suspended because of technical glitches. And last weekend, one month into his Microeconomics for Managers course, Richard B. McKenzie, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Irvine, quit, telling students that “because of disagreements over how to best conduct this course, I’ve agreed to disengage from it, with regret.” The course is continuing, with his materials.
Among Coursera’s new partners are a Spanish business school, several United States public universities, including the University of California campuses in San Diego and Santa Cruz, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and the California Institute of the Arts.
With the array of international partners, Coursera will offer courses in Spanish, Chinese, French and Italian.
“We are equally excited about the prospects of bringing higher education to places where access is limited, and of giving established educational institutions opportunities to raise their impact both on and off campus,” said Andrew Ng, a co-founder of Coursera, in a statement.
Both Coursera and edX are moving to help students earn college credit for their free online courses, for a fee, using identity-verified certificates, proctored exams and the American Council on Education’s recommendations, which many universities consider for transfer credit.
EdX, which began with a single M.I.T. electrical engineering course taught by Dr. Agarwal, now offers about two dozen courses, a roster that will grow to 50 to 100 next fall.
EdX expects to serve a billion students worldwide over the next decade on its open-source educational platform, Dr. Agarwal said. About 700,000 individuals are using the platform now, he said, with more than 900,000 course enrollments.
As important as providing free access to students worldwide, Dr. Agarwal said, is edX’s goal of using the platform for research on how students learn, and better on-campus pedagogy.
So far, most MOOCs have had dropout rates exceeding 90 percent.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/education/universities-abroad-join-mooc-course-projects.html?ref=education&_r=0
By TAMAR LEWIN
www.languagecorpsasia.com
Showing posts with label American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Educational Detente Across Taiwan Strait
Educational Détente Across Taiwan Strait.
TAIPEI — Last January, Chao Ying, a student from northeastern China, stepped out of the train station into the rain at Jiufen, a picturesque former gold mining town in northern Taiwan, and saw something that puzzled her.
A politician from the governing Kuomintang party, who had won a legislative seat in Taiwan’s elections the day before, was standing in the back of an open van that was driving up and down the road outside the station, shouting his thanks through a loudspeaker to passers-by.
“At first I didn’t know who this might be, or what exactly he was doing,” said Ms. Chao, 25, who is studying veterinary sciences at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, in central Taiwan. “I had to ask someone on the street.”
“I thought it was very good to see a politician thanking the people,” she said. “The Taiwanese must be very touched when they see such a thing.”
It was one more eye-opening experience for a mainland Chinese student in Taiwan. Ms. Chao is among more than 1,000 mainlanders who, for the first time, have been permitted to study for academic degrees in Taiwan and have just completed their inaugural academic year.
The government of Taiwan, the self-ruling island over which Beijing claims sovereignty, has been inching toward more amicable relations with the mainland in recent years. The full opening of the island’s universities to students from across the strait last year followed more limited academic exchange programs and the expansion of tourism and direct flights from the Chinese mainland.
The new admissions policy has been hailed as a success by universities and officials in Taiwan. Allowing young people who could eventually rise to influential positions in Communist-ruled China to immerse themselves in Taiwan society, they say, should enhance sympathy for the mainland’s democratic neighbor.
“Many Taiwanese students go to the U.S. and return very pro-American. We want to generate that same kind of effect,” said Ho Jow-fei, director general of higher education in the Ministry of Education. He added, “It is possible that some of the mainland students who come to study here may one day become political leaders.”
Taiwan also sees a partial solution to the problem of maintaining enrollments and standards as a falling birth rate shrinks the pool of applicants at home.
As for the motives of the students from mainland China, several cited an education system modeled on that of the United States that could position them well for a career abroad, but at a more reasonable cost and offered in Mandarin.
Xu Jincheng, 22, of Shanghai, who is studying engineering at Feng Chia University, said that in Taiwan he was learning to think on his feet. At his mainland university, which he did not want to identify for fear of embarrassing his former teachers, the approach was “too narrow and theoretical.”
His tutors in Taiwan, he said, push him to come up with creative solutions to real-life challenges. This was useful, he added, because “in many companies the boss expects employees to solve practical problems.”
The mainland students have grown up hearing their government’s oft-stated position that Taiwan, separately ruled since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, rightfully belongs to China and that no means, including military force, can be excluded to achieve eventual reunification.
Still, Joseph Wong, a University of Toronto political science professor, said the students were likely to return home with the message that “these two societies are unlikely to become one.”
“These mainland Chinese students tend to experience Taiwan as a fundamentally different place,” said Mr. Wong, who also teaches at Fudan University in Shanghai and says he visits Taiwan at least twice a year.
One student who has noted sharp contrasts is Zhu Haoqing, a 24-year-old from Hebei Province who is studying for a master’s degree in land management at Feng Chia University in Taichung.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/world/asia/educational-detente-across-taiwan-strait.html?ref=educationandschools
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
TAIPEI — Last January, Chao Ying, a student from northeastern China, stepped out of the train station into the rain at Jiufen, a picturesque former gold mining town in northern Taiwan, and saw something that puzzled her.
A politician from the governing Kuomintang party, who had won a legislative seat in Taiwan’s elections the day before, was standing in the back of an open van that was driving up and down the road outside the station, shouting his thanks through a loudspeaker to passers-by.
“At first I didn’t know who this might be, or what exactly he was doing,” said Ms. Chao, 25, who is studying veterinary sciences at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, in central Taiwan. “I had to ask someone on the street.”
“I thought it was very good to see a politician thanking the people,” she said. “The Taiwanese must be very touched when they see such a thing.”
It was one more eye-opening experience for a mainland Chinese student in Taiwan. Ms. Chao is among more than 1,000 mainlanders who, for the first time, have been permitted to study for academic degrees in Taiwan and have just completed their inaugural academic year.
The government of Taiwan, the self-ruling island over which Beijing claims sovereignty, has been inching toward more amicable relations with the mainland in recent years. The full opening of the island’s universities to students from across the strait last year followed more limited academic exchange programs and the expansion of tourism and direct flights from the Chinese mainland.
The new admissions policy has been hailed as a success by universities and officials in Taiwan. Allowing young people who could eventually rise to influential positions in Communist-ruled China to immerse themselves in Taiwan society, they say, should enhance sympathy for the mainland’s democratic neighbor.
“Many Taiwanese students go to the U.S. and return very pro-American. We want to generate that same kind of effect,” said Ho Jow-fei, director general of higher education in the Ministry of Education. He added, “It is possible that some of the mainland students who come to study here may one day become political leaders.”
Taiwan also sees a partial solution to the problem of maintaining enrollments and standards as a falling birth rate shrinks the pool of applicants at home.
As for the motives of the students from mainland China, several cited an education system modeled on that of the United States that could position them well for a career abroad, but at a more reasonable cost and offered in Mandarin.
Xu Jincheng, 22, of Shanghai, who is studying engineering at Feng Chia University, said that in Taiwan he was learning to think on his feet. At his mainland university, which he did not want to identify for fear of embarrassing his former teachers, the approach was “too narrow and theoretical.”
His tutors in Taiwan, he said, push him to come up with creative solutions to real-life challenges. This was useful, he added, because “in many companies the boss expects employees to solve practical problems.”
The mainland students have grown up hearing their government’s oft-stated position that Taiwan, separately ruled since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, rightfully belongs to China and that no means, including military force, can be excluded to achieve eventual reunification.
Still, Joseph Wong, a University of Toronto political science professor, said the students were likely to return home with the message that “these two societies are unlikely to become one.”
“These mainland Chinese students tend to experience Taiwan as a fundamentally different place,” said Mr. Wong, who also teaches at Fudan University in Shanghai and says he visits Taiwan at least twice a year.
One student who has noted sharp contrasts is Zhu Haoqing, a 24-year-old from Hebei Province who is studying for a master’s degree in land management at Feng Chia University in Taichung.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/world/asia/educational-detente-across-taiwan-strait.html?ref=educationandschools
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Friday, July 27, 2012
Vietnam Scholars Win USA Scientific Research Awards
Vietnam scholars win USA scientific research awards.
Vietnam has recently earned two awards in the first round of a USA government program to fund scientific research in developing countries, the U.S. Embassy said Tuesday in a press release.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have accordingly decided to provide grants to two research projects on climate change headed by Vietnamese scholars from local institutes and universities, with support from their Indonesian and American partners.
The two winning research projects include Assessment of Impacts of the Emission Reduction Measures of Short-lived Climate Forcers on Air Quality and Climate in Southeast Asia, and Research and Capacity Building on Reduced Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD+) Livelihoods, and Vulnerability in Vietnam, both of which will be conducted from now until May 2015.
The funding is given under the Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) awards, meant to award research collaboration grants to support and build scientific and technical capacity in the developing world.
PEER is a USAID-funded competitive grants program that is administered by the National Academy of Sciences in coordination with NSF.
Read more at http://www.tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/education/education-news/vietnam-scholars-win-u-s-scientific-research-awards-1.77734
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Vietnam has recently earned two awards in the first round of a USA government program to fund scientific research in developing countries, the U.S. Embassy said Tuesday in a press release.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have accordingly decided to provide grants to two research projects on climate change headed by Vietnamese scholars from local institutes and universities, with support from their Indonesian and American partners.
The two winning research projects include Assessment of Impacts of the Emission Reduction Measures of Short-lived Climate Forcers on Air Quality and Climate in Southeast Asia, and Research and Capacity Building on Reduced Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD+) Livelihoods, and Vulnerability in Vietnam, both of which will be conducted from now until May 2015.
The funding is given under the Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) awards, meant to award research collaboration grants to support and build scientific and technical capacity in the developing world.
PEER is a USAID-funded competitive grants program that is administered by the National Academy of Sciences in coordination with NSF.
Read more at http://www.tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/education/education-news/vietnam-scholars-win-u-s-scientific-research-awards-1.77734
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Monday, May 21, 2012
The Odyssey of Learning
The Odyssey of Learning.
"When this old world starts getting me down," as the old song goes, and the usual antidotes -- family, friends, writing, and music -- can't soothe my soul, I take comfort in knowing there's one place I can always go that's akin to being "Up on the Roof." And that's my annual engagement with the inspiring students enrolled in UW-Madison's Odyssey Project. While I'm typically there with my colleague and collaborator, Professor Craig Werner, to talk about music and the Vietnam War, I always come away from those evenings awed and stimulated by the students and their insights. My encounter this past week was no exception.
Craig and I have been giving this talk to Odyssey Project students for years, but no two presentations are ever the same because the Odyssey students are so genuine and candid. They bring their own life experiences to the conversation, and that makes the dialogue rich and powerful -- and unique -- every year.
Plus, thanks to Odyssey Project director Emily Auerbach and her co-pilot Marshall Cook, there's not the usual distance between teacher and student, nor is there the hierarchical posturing that often gets in the way of learning.
And what learning there is.
We talk a lot about race during our presentation on music and Vietnam, using songs like "Chain of Fools," "What's Going On," and "Dock of the Bay" as touchstones. Even though we're more than 40 years removed from that time and these songs, and many/most of the students in the room weren't even born, they cut to the heart of the matter faster than you can say Marvin Gaye.
And why shouldn't they? These are folks from our own community whom we've marginalized. They regularly confront Vietnam-like challenges of survival, stereotyping, misunderstanding and injustice. They know what we're talking about because they've lived it. As one female student told us last Wednesday, "'What's Going On' would be a hit today because it's telling the truth about what's going down."
The UW-Madison Odyssey Project was inspired by the work of Earl Shorris, an educator who began the Clemente Course in the Humanities in New York in 1995. Now in its tenth year, it brings about 30 adult students together for three hours every Wednesday from September to May. They hear from a number of committed and celebrated UW faculty as they read and discuss everything from Shakespeare and Sojourner Truth to the Federalist papers and Vaclav Havel's 'Essay on Civility.'
All Odyssey participants are enrolled as "Special Students" at UW-Madison and receive six college credits through the English department when they complete the course. The Project also provides these adult men and women with a variety of support services, including bus transportation, childcare, counseling, and guidance on post-project applications and financial aid.
Although many of the Odyssey students are confronting very difficult circumstances -- some live at the local Salvation Army, some have lost their homes, and others are dealing with tough personal and medical crises -- their spirits, and their energy, are always high.
"They are somehow managing -- despite all of these obstacles -- to get to class with their work done," Emily Auerbach told a local newspaper last week. "I find it incredibly moving and inspiring."
There's probably nothing more inspirational than the annual Odyssey graduation ceremony. This year's is slated for May 9. Laughter, tears, and shouts of joy fill the room, and you realize that lives have indeed been changed. As Denise Maddox, one of the first Odyssey Project graduates, told her teachers and fellow graduates: "I would never have thought that classes in the humanities would change my life forever. I mean 'forever' without exaggeration because Writing, Art History, American History, Literature, and Philosophy transported me into a new world, where written words came alive and made magic inside my heart."
And that's exactly the kind of magic that education should be all about.
Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-bradley/odyssey-project-wisonsin_b_1442553.html?ref=education&ir=Education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
"When this old world starts getting me down," as the old song goes, and the usual antidotes -- family, friends, writing, and music -- can't soothe my soul, I take comfort in knowing there's one place I can always go that's akin to being "Up on the Roof." And that's my annual engagement with the inspiring students enrolled in UW-Madison's Odyssey Project. While I'm typically there with my colleague and collaborator, Professor Craig Werner, to talk about music and the Vietnam War, I always come away from those evenings awed and stimulated by the students and their insights. My encounter this past week was no exception.
Craig and I have been giving this talk to Odyssey Project students for years, but no two presentations are ever the same because the Odyssey students are so genuine and candid. They bring their own life experiences to the conversation, and that makes the dialogue rich and powerful -- and unique -- every year.
Plus, thanks to Odyssey Project director Emily Auerbach and her co-pilot Marshall Cook, there's not the usual distance between teacher and student, nor is there the hierarchical posturing that often gets in the way of learning.
And what learning there is.
We talk a lot about race during our presentation on music and Vietnam, using songs like "Chain of Fools," "What's Going On," and "Dock of the Bay" as touchstones. Even though we're more than 40 years removed from that time and these songs, and many/most of the students in the room weren't even born, they cut to the heart of the matter faster than you can say Marvin Gaye.
And why shouldn't they? These are folks from our own community whom we've marginalized. They regularly confront Vietnam-like challenges of survival, stereotyping, misunderstanding and injustice. They know what we're talking about because they've lived it. As one female student told us last Wednesday, "'What's Going On' would be a hit today because it's telling the truth about what's going down."
The UW-Madison Odyssey Project was inspired by the work of Earl Shorris, an educator who began the Clemente Course in the Humanities in New York in 1995. Now in its tenth year, it brings about 30 adult students together for three hours every Wednesday from September to May. They hear from a number of committed and celebrated UW faculty as they read and discuss everything from Shakespeare and Sojourner Truth to the Federalist papers and Vaclav Havel's 'Essay on Civility.'
All Odyssey participants are enrolled as "Special Students" at UW-Madison and receive six college credits through the English department when they complete the course. The Project also provides these adult men and women with a variety of support services, including bus transportation, childcare, counseling, and guidance on post-project applications and financial aid.
Although many of the Odyssey students are confronting very difficult circumstances -- some live at the local Salvation Army, some have lost their homes, and others are dealing with tough personal and medical crises -- their spirits, and their energy, are always high.
"They are somehow managing -- despite all of these obstacles -- to get to class with their work done," Emily Auerbach told a local newspaper last week. "I find it incredibly moving and inspiring."
There's probably nothing more inspirational than the annual Odyssey graduation ceremony. This year's is slated for May 9. Laughter, tears, and shouts of joy fill the room, and you realize that lives have indeed been changed. As Denise Maddox, one of the first Odyssey Project graduates, told her teachers and fellow graduates: "I would never have thought that classes in the humanities would change my life forever. I mean 'forever' without exaggeration because Writing, Art History, American History, Literature, and Philosophy transported me into a new world, where written words came alive and made magic inside my heart."
And that's exactly the kind of magic that education should be all about.
Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-bradley/odyssey-project-wisonsin_b_1442553.html?ref=education&ir=Education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Does Social Studies Matter?
Does Social Studies Matter?
On a recent 13-minute drive home from baseball practice, my 15-year-old explained to me how World War I started.
Mind you, I knew the bit about Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand being assassinated by a Bosnian Serb but I couldn’t have told you why other countries started joining in like it was a brawl at an NHL game.
For most of us, information has a use-it-or-lose-it quality. If we’re not called on in daily life to remember who was president during the Spanish-American War, it might slip our minds.
What stays are concepts. How America’s founders enshrined freedom of speech, religion and the press in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. That America came to England’s aid to defeat Hitler. How Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders used non-violence to force this country to see the shamefulness of the Jim Crow system.
I bring this up because the Allentown School District is considering combining social studies with English in the sixth grade in order to free up time for more math, according to The Morning Call. The district’s math scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests drop off after elementary school, which puts it at odds with the federal No Child Left Behind law. The Allentown School Board could vote on the change April 26.
Combining the subjects might sound like it makes sense because so many works of literature can shed light on historical events: Have a class read “Animal Farm” to learn about communism or “To Kill a Mockingbird” to discuss segregation in the South.
But unless those classes are team-taught by an English teacher and a Social Studies teacher, one of the subjects will be slighted. Plus the time on these subjects would be cut in half.
Allentown is in a pickle. The regiment of high stakes standardized testing instituted by No Child Left Behind diminishes the importance of anything not on the PSSAs, including social studies.
While I was researching other efforts to combine social studies and English, I spoke to Corbin Moore, vice president of the Ohio Council for the Social Studies and a former history teacher.
Moore said he’s seen the combining of such subjects done successfully but only when they were team-taught.
“It can work, but my fear would be that social studies would get the short end of the stick like it usually does,” Moore said. “Pretty much what gets tested, gets taught. You talk about No Child Left Behind, well …social studies was the subject that got left behind.”
Here’s what gets lost: Creativity – one of the hardest talents to measure -- germinates in our frame of reference. Learning world history is key to expanding that.
Social studies helps us understand who we are as a country and what is worth saving. It reminds Americans from diverse backgrounds, ages and ethnicities of our common bond and shared rights and responsibilities. It teaches us what solutions to problems have – and have not – worked.
Perhaps a clergyman I know said it best: Science and math can tell us how to build gas chambers and opera houses. Social sciences like history teach us which one to build.
Read more at http://easton.patch.com/articles/does-social-studies-matter
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
On a recent 13-minute drive home from baseball practice, my 15-year-old explained to me how World War I started.
Mind you, I knew the bit about Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand being assassinated by a Bosnian Serb but I couldn’t have told you why other countries started joining in like it was a brawl at an NHL game.
For most of us, information has a use-it-or-lose-it quality. If we’re not called on in daily life to remember who was president during the Spanish-American War, it might slip our minds.
What stays are concepts. How America’s founders enshrined freedom of speech, religion and the press in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. That America came to England’s aid to defeat Hitler. How Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders used non-violence to force this country to see the shamefulness of the Jim Crow system.
I bring this up because the Allentown School District is considering combining social studies with English in the sixth grade in order to free up time for more math, according to The Morning Call. The district’s math scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests drop off after elementary school, which puts it at odds with the federal No Child Left Behind law. The Allentown School Board could vote on the change April 26.
Combining the subjects might sound like it makes sense because so many works of literature can shed light on historical events: Have a class read “Animal Farm” to learn about communism or “To Kill a Mockingbird” to discuss segregation in the South.
But unless those classes are team-taught by an English teacher and a Social Studies teacher, one of the subjects will be slighted. Plus the time on these subjects would be cut in half.
Allentown is in a pickle. The regiment of high stakes standardized testing instituted by No Child Left Behind diminishes the importance of anything not on the PSSAs, including social studies.
While I was researching other efforts to combine social studies and English, I spoke to Corbin Moore, vice president of the Ohio Council for the Social Studies and a former history teacher.
Moore said he’s seen the combining of such subjects done successfully but only when they were team-taught.
“It can work, but my fear would be that social studies would get the short end of the stick like it usually does,” Moore said. “Pretty much what gets tested, gets taught. You talk about No Child Left Behind, well …social studies was the subject that got left behind.”
Here’s what gets lost: Creativity – one of the hardest talents to measure -- germinates in our frame of reference. Learning world history is key to expanding that.
Social studies helps us understand who we are as a country and what is worth saving. It reminds Americans from diverse backgrounds, ages and ethnicities of our common bond and shared rights and responsibilities. It teaches us what solutions to problems have – and have not – worked.
Perhaps a clergyman I know said it best: Science and math can tell us how to build gas chambers and opera houses. Social sciences like history teach us which one to build.
Read more at http://easton.patch.com/articles/does-social-studies-matter
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Sunday, April 8, 2012
A Cambodian American Who Can Never Go Home
A Cambodian American who can never go home.
Immigrants taken to the US by their parents as young children grow up as Americans - but on paper they remain foreigners. This means they can be deported if they commit a crime, and condemned to a life of permanent exile.
Sam's first memory is riding a sledge in the snow on the way to primary school in New Hampshire.
His favourite film is Scarface and in breaks during our conversation, he raps Tupac lyrics. He loves skateboarding and going to the gym.
There are millions of American 20-somethings just like Sam but unlike them, Sam can never set foot in the US again.
Two-and-a-half years ago, Sam was deported from the US to Cambodia, a country he had never even visited before. A land of chaotic traffic, fermented fish and endemic corruption.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime, the US granted asylum to thousands of Cambodians fleeing the anarchy in their home country.
They set up home in places like Lowell, Massachusetts, and Long Beach, California. They got jobs, went to school, learned the language and became, in all but name, Americans.
Given permanent resident status, many never thought of applying for citizenship but in March 2002, in the wake of 9/11, the US and Cambodia signed an agreement allowing any non-citizen refugees who had committed felonies to be deported back to Cambodia.
Since then several hundred have been returned. Today they are stranded and lost, a long way from home.
I first met Sam in Phnom Penh 2010, just a few months after he'd arrived in Cambodia. Since then we have met several times to talk about what has happened to him.
Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, he arrived in the US one month old, with his mother, brother and sister.
Sam is proud of his childhood. Thrust into a bewildering, new world, things were not easy but he still talks happily of how he and the few other Khmer kids stuck together. And even though they were smaller than the rest, they would look out for each other and hold their own in fights.
After high school, Sam did a range of jobs, mainly factory work. He had a stint in juvenile detention for refusing to help a police investigation and a couple of other short stays in prison, including one for stealing a car radio and speakers.
But by 2009 he was working, living with his girlfriend and caring for his young son. That was when the immigration authorities took him in.
His earlier robbery of the car stereo made him liable for deportation at any time. After several months in detention, he was forced on a plane to Cambodia.
Last week, as we sat in a cafe Sam told me about what it was like arriving in the country.
"First day I get off the flight, officials surround me like vultures, because they think I got money. I got no money? They were talking to me in Cambodian, but I couldn't' understand."
Rubbing his head intently, as though still unable to process his experience, he continued: "Then we get out and it is hot. Hot! And all I've got is the clothes on my back and 28 cents in an envelope. And I was like, 'What the hell am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?'"
Fortunately for Sam, the organisation RISC, which helps new returnees, picked him up from immigration at the airport and gave him a bed for a few nights. But this support is unusual. Most Cambodians have not warmed to the returnees.
"People die every day to try and go to America and for you to come back here? They think you're some kind of terrible person," Sam says.
Being a returnee is not something that's easy to hide. Sam has spent a long time in the gym in the US, he's twice the size of most Cambodian men, he has tattoos and speaks the language with a strong American twang. Blending in is not a possibility.
At first he spent a lot of his time with fellow returnees. Now he says he doesn't want to - that it doesn't help him settle in.
Many, already suffering from drug dependencies and untreated mental illnesses, find themselves drawn back into crime. It is not uncommon for returnees to end up trapped in Cambodia's bewildering and brutal penal system.
Sam has tried to get work but in a country where the average monthly salary is considerably under $50 (£32) a month it's not easy to find a job to support himself. Whenever we talk he tells me he feels like he's in a "daze", a feeling that he can't shake, a sense of bemusement. Although he knows it to be true, he can't accept that America has shunned him so completely. That it won't forgive him. Ever.
In the two years since I first met him, things have got a little better. He has joined a church which seems to provide him with a sense of belonging, his Khmer language skills have improved and with the help of friends and family in the States he can afford to rent an apartment.
But when I ask him if he might ever feel at home in Cambodia, he is adamant: "NO! Never! Definitely. Never ever! No matter how long I'm here. The feeling of being home is when you're really home. I'll never have that feeling again."
Read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17527030
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Immigrants taken to the US by their parents as young children grow up as Americans - but on paper they remain foreigners. This means they can be deported if they commit a crime, and condemned to a life of permanent exile.
Sam's first memory is riding a sledge in the snow on the way to primary school in New Hampshire.
His favourite film is Scarface and in breaks during our conversation, he raps Tupac lyrics. He loves skateboarding and going to the gym.
There are millions of American 20-somethings just like Sam but unlike them, Sam can never set foot in the US again.
Two-and-a-half years ago, Sam was deported from the US to Cambodia, a country he had never even visited before. A land of chaotic traffic, fermented fish and endemic corruption.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime, the US granted asylum to thousands of Cambodians fleeing the anarchy in their home country.
They set up home in places like Lowell, Massachusetts, and Long Beach, California. They got jobs, went to school, learned the language and became, in all but name, Americans.
Given permanent resident status, many never thought of applying for citizenship but in March 2002, in the wake of 9/11, the US and Cambodia signed an agreement allowing any non-citizen refugees who had committed felonies to be deported back to Cambodia.
Since then several hundred have been returned. Today they are stranded and lost, a long way from home.
I first met Sam in Phnom Penh 2010, just a few months after he'd arrived in Cambodia. Since then we have met several times to talk about what has happened to him.
Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, he arrived in the US one month old, with his mother, brother and sister.
Sam is proud of his childhood. Thrust into a bewildering, new world, things were not easy but he still talks happily of how he and the few other Khmer kids stuck together. And even though they were smaller than the rest, they would look out for each other and hold their own in fights.
After high school, Sam did a range of jobs, mainly factory work. He had a stint in juvenile detention for refusing to help a police investigation and a couple of other short stays in prison, including one for stealing a car radio and speakers.
But by 2009 he was working, living with his girlfriend and caring for his young son. That was when the immigration authorities took him in.
His earlier robbery of the car stereo made him liable for deportation at any time. After several months in detention, he was forced on a plane to Cambodia.
Last week, as we sat in a cafe Sam told me about what it was like arriving in the country.
"First day I get off the flight, officials surround me like vultures, because they think I got money. I got no money? They were talking to me in Cambodian, but I couldn't' understand."
Rubbing his head intently, as though still unable to process his experience, he continued: "Then we get out and it is hot. Hot! And all I've got is the clothes on my back and 28 cents in an envelope. And I was like, 'What the hell am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?'"
Fortunately for Sam, the organisation RISC, which helps new returnees, picked him up from immigration at the airport and gave him a bed for a few nights. But this support is unusual. Most Cambodians have not warmed to the returnees.
"People die every day to try and go to America and for you to come back here? They think you're some kind of terrible person," Sam says.
Being a returnee is not something that's easy to hide. Sam has spent a long time in the gym in the US, he's twice the size of most Cambodian men, he has tattoos and speaks the language with a strong American twang. Blending in is not a possibility.
At first he spent a lot of his time with fellow returnees. Now he says he doesn't want to - that it doesn't help him settle in.
Many, already suffering from drug dependencies and untreated mental illnesses, find themselves drawn back into crime. It is not uncommon for returnees to end up trapped in Cambodia's bewildering and brutal penal system.
Sam has tried to get work but in a country where the average monthly salary is considerably under $50 (£32) a month it's not easy to find a job to support himself. Whenever we talk he tells me he feels like he's in a "daze", a feeling that he can't shake, a sense of bemusement. Although he knows it to be true, he can't accept that America has shunned him so completely. That it won't forgive him. Ever.
In the two years since I first met him, things have got a little better. He has joined a church which seems to provide him with a sense of belonging, his Khmer language skills have improved and with the help of friends and family in the States he can afford to rent an apartment.
But when I ask him if he might ever feel at home in Cambodia, he is adamant: "NO! Never! Definitely. Never ever! No matter how long I'm here. The feeling of being home is when you're really home. I'll never have that feeling again."
Read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17527030
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Friday, March 30, 2012
Chinese, Ibero-American Educators Meet to Promote Chinese Teaching
Chinese, Ibero-American educators meet to promote Chinese teaching.
Education officials from China and the directors of Confucius Institutes in the Ibero-American countries have opened a conference to consider ways of boosting the overseas teaching of the Chinese language.
The Second Congress of Confucius Institutes in Ibero-America, which opened Saturday in this Chilean coastal city, is aimed at sharing experiences among Confucius Institutes directors.
It also seeks ways to better teaching, improve teaching materials and provide additional training for educators.
The three-day event groups delegations from Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico and China.
Meanwhile, like its first session in the Spanish city of Valencia in 2008, the congress is also committed to strengthening cooperation between Confucius Institutes in Latin America and Hanban, the headquarters of Confucius Institutes in Beijing.
As part of the event, a group of university students from Shanghai on Saturday staged a variety of Chinese dances, songs, fashion shows and martial arts in the Hall of Honor of the Chilean Congress in the adjacent city of Valparaiso.
The artistic performances highlighted the motif of the ongoing World Expo in Shanghai, namely "Better City, Better Life," and its goal of promoting understanding between peoples.
The latest figures from Hanban show that 316 Confucius Institutes and 337 Confucius Classrooms have been set up around the world.
The establishments, named after an ancient Chinese scholar and educator whose thoughts remain influential worldwide after 2,500 years, are dedicated to promoting the Chinese language and culture.
Twenty-five Confucius Institutes and two Confucius Classrooms have been inaugurated in the Ibero-American countries. In the host country Chile, Chinese has become the second most popular foreign language, after English.
Read more at http://english.sina.com/life/2010/0718/329874.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Education officials from China and the directors of Confucius Institutes in the Ibero-American countries have opened a conference to consider ways of boosting the overseas teaching of the Chinese language.
The Second Congress of Confucius Institutes in Ibero-America, which opened Saturday in this Chilean coastal city, is aimed at sharing experiences among Confucius Institutes directors.
It also seeks ways to better teaching, improve teaching materials and provide additional training for educators.
The three-day event groups delegations from Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico and China.
Meanwhile, like its first session in the Spanish city of Valencia in 2008, the congress is also committed to strengthening cooperation between Confucius Institutes in Latin America and Hanban, the headquarters of Confucius Institutes in Beijing.
As part of the event, a group of university students from Shanghai on Saturday staged a variety of Chinese dances, songs, fashion shows and martial arts in the Hall of Honor of the Chilean Congress in the adjacent city of Valparaiso.
The artistic performances highlighted the motif of the ongoing World Expo in Shanghai, namely "Better City, Better Life," and its goal of promoting understanding between peoples.
The latest figures from Hanban show that 316 Confucius Institutes and 337 Confucius Classrooms have been set up around the world.
The establishments, named after an ancient Chinese scholar and educator whose thoughts remain influential worldwide after 2,500 years, are dedicated to promoting the Chinese language and culture.
Twenty-five Confucius Institutes and two Confucius Classrooms have been inaugurated in the Ibero-American countries. In the host country Chile, Chinese has become the second most popular foreign language, after English.
Read more at http://english.sina.com/life/2010/0718/329874.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Thursday, December 15, 2011
A Day in the Life of the Awkward American Traverler in Cambodia - LanguageCorps Asia
A Day in the Life: A LanguageCorps Asia TESOL Classroom in Cambodia.
It is LanguageCorps Asia pleasure to introduce an exerpt from our teacher Margaret Ulrich, currently teaching English abroad in Cambodia.
RePosted from her blog “Awkward American Traverler”, which you can Check out here: http://awkwardamericantraveler.wordpress.com/
Any idiot knows what happens when you assume. So why do I keep feeling like the only ass here?
My latest blunder came from teaching at an orphanage. I assumed I’d be teaching little darlings. But I was what, class? Very good, kids, I was wrong.
Part of our training for the LanguageCorps certificate included two weeks of student teaching. For three of us who stayed in Phnom Penh—some moved to either Thailand or Vietnam—we were assigned to teach at an orphanage called SSD.
Read more at http://www.languagecorps.com/blog/a-day-in-the-life-a-languagecorps-tesol-classroom-in-cambodia/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
It is LanguageCorps Asia pleasure to introduce an exerpt from our teacher Margaret Ulrich, currently teaching English abroad in Cambodia.
RePosted from her blog “Awkward American Traverler”, which you can Check out here: http://awkwardamericantraveler.wordpress.com/
Any idiot knows what happens when you assume. So why do I keep feeling like the only ass here?
My latest blunder came from teaching at an orphanage. I assumed I’d be teaching little darlings. But I was what, class? Very good, kids, I was wrong.
Part of our training for the LanguageCorps certificate included two weeks of student teaching. For three of us who stayed in Phnom Penh—some moved to either Thailand or Vietnam—we were assigned to teach at an orphanage called SSD.
Read more at http://www.languagecorps.com/blog/a-day-in-the-life-a-languagecorps-tesol-classroom-in-cambodia/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Monday, October 31, 2011
The American DREAM
The American DREAM.
No facet of our country's immigration debate is more heartless or economically foolish than our failure to support undocumented children who have grown up on American soil. These students have gone to school alongside their native-born peers and in many cases have shown themselves to be outstanding scholars, athletes and entrepreneurs and yet when they graduate from high school, they enter a legal limbo with limited resources to pursue higher education and climb the economic ladder. Help from Congress won't be forthcoming given Republican intransigence. Even the so-called "moderate" Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, recently said that opposing financial aid to undocumented students was not heartless, but smart. It's up to us to step off the sidelines and give these young people a shot at the American Dream.
Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/reshma-saujani/the-american-dream_1_b_996723.html?ir=Education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
No facet of our country's immigration debate is more heartless or economically foolish than our failure to support undocumented children who have grown up on American soil. These students have gone to school alongside their native-born peers and in many cases have shown themselves to be outstanding scholars, athletes and entrepreneurs and yet when they graduate from high school, they enter a legal limbo with limited resources to pursue higher education and climb the economic ladder. Help from Congress won't be forthcoming given Republican intransigence. Even the so-called "moderate" Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, recently said that opposing financial aid to undocumented students was not heartless, but smart. It's up to us to step off the sidelines and give these young people a shot at the American Dream.
Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/reshma-saujani/the-american-dream_1_b_996723.html?ir=Education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
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