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
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Friday, July 27, 2012
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Global Education-Bringing the World to Your Classroom
Global Education: Bringing the World to Your Classroom.
I love to travel. In my eight years of teaching, I have seized several (free) opportunities to see the world. Travel has enriched my teaching, allowing me to bring international experiences directly back to my students.
This year I participated in the Teachers for Global Classrooms fellowship, a program of the U.S. State Department.
I joined 64 teachers from around the country in completing an online course on best practices in global education. In February, we attended a global education symposium in Washington, D.C., accompanied by administrators from our schools.
And I just returned from an eye-opening trip to Brazil with 10 other TGC teachers. We spent two weeks observing and co-teaching in schools (both public and private). Other teachers in the program traveled to India, Ghana, Indonesia, Morocco, and Ukraine.
One takeaway from my fellowship experience is a clearer understanding of what teaching global competencies might look like in practice. The Asia Society and the Council of Chief State School Officers have produced a series of global competence matrices (PDF). I started using these matrices this year as a way to evaluate my own curriculum. Recently, I've been embedding competencies into my student assessment rubrics.
The four main elements of the global competence matrix are:
• Investigate the world.
• Recognize perspectives.
• Communicate ideas.
• Take action.
We should be teaching our students these skills, and of course, mastering the competencies ourselves. They probably sound familiar: Some call them 21st-century skills, and others refer to them as the new basics. Students need to go beyond their comfort zones and actively learn from (not just about) people who have different worldviews.
This is not a call to throw out the curricula that we are currently using. On the contrary, it's an opportunity to enhance our practice and create a more rigorous and meaningful learning environment for our students.
In teaching U.S. history this past school year, I have worked with colleagues to revise our Progressive Era and Great Depression units, incorporating more opportunities for students to develop global competencies.
Investigate the World and Recognize Perspectives
Progressive Era unit: After a look at Teddy Roosevelt and the creation of the national parks system, students learned about differing views on the management of public lands a hundred years ago (focusing on John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and Richard Ballinger). Students analyzed and debated the decision to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite. We tried to push students to recognize their own perspectives within the spectrum of preservationist, conservationist, and laissez-faire attitudes.
Great Depression unit: We redesigned our Great Depression unit to follow an arc that led to a study of the Great Recession of 2007-09. We began by looking at the causes of the 1929 stock market crash and the widespread bank failures that followed. Then we moved on to study the "alphabet soup" of New Deal programs and the impact of the depression on people's everyday lives. Next, we compared different economic perspectives on the causes of and responses to the Depression, including a theoretical comparison of capitalism and communism.
Communicate Ideas / Taking Action
Progressive Era unit: We finished the unit by turning to the present. Students studied the current debate over the Keystone Pipeline project. After role-playing a town hall meeting on the pipeline issue, students wrote letters to President Obama that showed an understanding of multiple perspectives and incorporated the history of American conservationism and environmentalism. We hope that the President will be impressed by the level of global competence in the 100 letters, especially the act of sending them.
Great Depression unit: Similarly, we ended the Great Depression unit in the present. We looked at the recent economic recession, focusing on the collapse of the housing bubble, and the growing income inequality gap. Students debated three perspectives on economic policy:
• The call for a "New New Deal" and increased taxation of the wealthiest Americans.
• A focus on deficit reduction and tax cuts.
• A call for a new, more just system altogether.
Background materials included rhetoric from the Obama campaign, the Republican Party's economic platform, and the Occupy Movement. We hope that students take action by personally engaging with these important issues, and that those who are eligible voters will feel informed enough to participate in this November’s presidential election.
But you don't have to be a social studies teacher to incorporate the global competencies—the matrices address numerous content areas.
And you don't have to take students across international borders. You can help your students practice the skills of recognizing different perspectives and communicating ideas effectively in your own classroom, engaging the diverse perspectives found in your own community and school.
There are also easy ways to connect with classrooms around the world. You can start by simple class-to-class communication and then advance to collaborating with classes in other countries on specific projects. (I've listed some of my favorite resources below.)
The time to take global education seriously is now. Whether you believe we need to prepare students to compete economically with students from other nations or that graduates need to have the skills to collaborate with others to solve complex problems, the global competencies are critical.
Read more at http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/07/03/tln_zeichner.html?tkn=NXVDqq2alkusePtHLnERebzr7NQfrwDKMPu0&intc=es
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
I love to travel. In my eight years of teaching, I have seized several (free) opportunities to see the world. Travel has enriched my teaching, allowing me to bring international experiences directly back to my students.
This year I participated in the Teachers for Global Classrooms fellowship, a program of the U.S. State Department.
I joined 64 teachers from around the country in completing an online course on best practices in global education. In February, we attended a global education symposium in Washington, D.C., accompanied by administrators from our schools.
And I just returned from an eye-opening trip to Brazil with 10 other TGC teachers. We spent two weeks observing and co-teaching in schools (both public and private). Other teachers in the program traveled to India, Ghana, Indonesia, Morocco, and Ukraine.
One takeaway from my fellowship experience is a clearer understanding of what teaching global competencies might look like in practice. The Asia Society and the Council of Chief State School Officers have produced a series of global competence matrices (PDF). I started using these matrices this year as a way to evaluate my own curriculum. Recently, I've been embedding competencies into my student assessment rubrics.
The four main elements of the global competence matrix are:
• Investigate the world.
• Recognize perspectives.
• Communicate ideas.
• Take action.
We should be teaching our students these skills, and of course, mastering the competencies ourselves. They probably sound familiar: Some call them 21st-century skills, and others refer to them as the new basics. Students need to go beyond their comfort zones and actively learn from (not just about) people who have different worldviews.
This is not a call to throw out the curricula that we are currently using. On the contrary, it's an opportunity to enhance our practice and create a more rigorous and meaningful learning environment for our students.
In teaching U.S. history this past school year, I have worked with colleagues to revise our Progressive Era and Great Depression units, incorporating more opportunities for students to develop global competencies.
Investigate the World and Recognize Perspectives
Progressive Era unit: After a look at Teddy Roosevelt and the creation of the national parks system, students learned about differing views on the management of public lands a hundred years ago (focusing on John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and Richard Ballinger). Students analyzed and debated the decision to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite. We tried to push students to recognize their own perspectives within the spectrum of preservationist, conservationist, and laissez-faire attitudes.
Great Depression unit: We redesigned our Great Depression unit to follow an arc that led to a study of the Great Recession of 2007-09. We began by looking at the causes of the 1929 stock market crash and the widespread bank failures that followed. Then we moved on to study the "alphabet soup" of New Deal programs and the impact of the depression on people's everyday lives. Next, we compared different economic perspectives on the causes of and responses to the Depression, including a theoretical comparison of capitalism and communism.
Communicate Ideas / Taking Action
Progressive Era unit: We finished the unit by turning to the present. Students studied the current debate over the Keystone Pipeline project. After role-playing a town hall meeting on the pipeline issue, students wrote letters to President Obama that showed an understanding of multiple perspectives and incorporated the history of American conservationism and environmentalism. We hope that the President will be impressed by the level of global competence in the 100 letters, especially the act of sending them.
Great Depression unit: Similarly, we ended the Great Depression unit in the present. We looked at the recent economic recession, focusing on the collapse of the housing bubble, and the growing income inequality gap. Students debated three perspectives on economic policy:
• The call for a "New New Deal" and increased taxation of the wealthiest Americans.
• A focus on deficit reduction and tax cuts.
• A call for a new, more just system altogether.
Background materials included rhetoric from the Obama campaign, the Republican Party's economic platform, and the Occupy Movement. We hope that students take action by personally engaging with these important issues, and that those who are eligible voters will feel informed enough to participate in this November’s presidential election.
But you don't have to be a social studies teacher to incorporate the global competencies—the matrices address numerous content areas.
And you don't have to take students across international borders. You can help your students practice the skills of recognizing different perspectives and communicating ideas effectively in your own classroom, engaging the diverse perspectives found in your own community and school.
There are also easy ways to connect with classrooms around the world. You can start by simple class-to-class communication and then advance to collaborating with classes in other countries on specific projects. (I've listed some of my favorite resources below.)
The time to take global education seriously is now. Whether you believe we need to prepare students to compete economically with students from other nations or that graduates need to have the skills to collaborate with others to solve complex problems, the global competencies are critical.
Read more at http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/07/03/tln_zeichner.html?tkn=NXVDqq2alkusePtHLnERebzr7NQfrwDKMPu0&intc=es
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Redefining Success and Celebrating the Ordinary
Redefining Success and Celebrating the Ordinary.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ordinary and extraordinary lately. All year, my sons’ school newsletters were filled with stories about students winning prizes for university-level scientific research, stellar musical accomplishments and statewide athletic laurels.
I wonder if there is any room for the ordinary any more, for the child or teenager — or adult — who enjoys a pickup basketball game but is far from Olympic material, who will be a good citizen but won’t set the world on fire.
We hold so dearly onto the idea that we should all aspire to being remarkable that when David McCullough Jr., an English teacher, told graduating seniors at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts recently, “You are not special. You are not exceptional,” the speech went viral.
“In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another — which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement,” he told the students and parents. “We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.”
I understand that Mr. McCullough, son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, is telling these high school seniors that the world might not embrace them as unconditionally as their parents have. That just because they’ve been told they’re amazing doesn’t mean that they are. That they have to do something to prove themselves, not just accept compliments and trophies.
So where did this intense need to be exceptional come from?
Madeline Levine, a psychologist, said that for baby boomers, “the notion of being special is in our blood.” She added: “How could our children be anything but? And future generations kept building on that.”
More recently, parents seem to be increasingly anxious that there just isn’t going to be enough — enough room at good colleges or graduate schools or the top companies — for even the straight-A, piano-playing quarterback, and we end up convinced that being average will doom our children to a life that will fall far short of what we want for them. As Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work and author of the book “The Gifts of Imperfection” (Hazelden, 2010) said, “In this world, an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.”
And that’s a problem. Because “extraordinary is often what the general public views as success,” said Jeff Snipes, co-founder of PDI Ninth House, a corporate leadership consulting firm. “You make a lot of money or have athletic success. That’s a very, very narrow definition. What about being compassionate or living a life of integrity?”
Ordinary and normal smack too much of average. It seems that we all want to live in Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Wobegon, where all children are above average.
Ms. Levine said she was once scheduled to give a talk on parenting the average child at a school in Marin County, Calif. Although she usually packs in the audiences, not one person showed up.
“Apparently no one in the county has an average child,” said Ms. Levine, the author of the forthcoming book, “Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success” (HarperCollins).
While there are some extraordinary children out there, the myth is that all children in high school will be like that, she said. And that, Ms. Levine said, is putting enormous stress on students.
Most people, she said, have talent in some areas, are average performers in many areas and are subpar in some areas.
The problem is that we have such a limited view of what we consider an accomplished life that we devalue many qualities that are critically important.
“We would do kids a great service if we opened the tent a little more,” Ms. Levine said.
The Toronto Star did that in March 2012 when it printed a column about Shelagh Gordon, who recently died of a brain aneurysm, with the headline, “Shelagh was here — an ordinary, magical life.” At the same time, The Star ran online interviews with more than 100 people whose life had been touched by the 55-year-old Ms. Gordon.
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/your-money/redefining-success-and-celebrating-the-unremarkable.html?_r=1&ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ordinary and extraordinary lately. All year, my sons’ school newsletters were filled with stories about students winning prizes for university-level scientific research, stellar musical accomplishments and statewide athletic laurels.
I wonder if there is any room for the ordinary any more, for the child or teenager — or adult — who enjoys a pickup basketball game but is far from Olympic material, who will be a good citizen but won’t set the world on fire.
We hold so dearly onto the idea that we should all aspire to being remarkable that when David McCullough Jr., an English teacher, told graduating seniors at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts recently, “You are not special. You are not exceptional,” the speech went viral.
“In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another — which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement,” he told the students and parents. “We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.”
I understand that Mr. McCullough, son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, is telling these high school seniors that the world might not embrace them as unconditionally as their parents have. That just because they’ve been told they’re amazing doesn’t mean that they are. That they have to do something to prove themselves, not just accept compliments and trophies.
So where did this intense need to be exceptional come from?
Madeline Levine, a psychologist, said that for baby boomers, “the notion of being special is in our blood.” She added: “How could our children be anything but? And future generations kept building on that.”
More recently, parents seem to be increasingly anxious that there just isn’t going to be enough — enough room at good colleges or graduate schools or the top companies — for even the straight-A, piano-playing quarterback, and we end up convinced that being average will doom our children to a life that will fall far short of what we want for them. As Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work and author of the book “The Gifts of Imperfection” (Hazelden, 2010) said, “In this world, an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.”
And that’s a problem. Because “extraordinary is often what the general public views as success,” said Jeff Snipes, co-founder of PDI Ninth House, a corporate leadership consulting firm. “You make a lot of money or have athletic success. That’s a very, very narrow definition. What about being compassionate or living a life of integrity?”
Ordinary and normal smack too much of average. It seems that we all want to live in Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Wobegon, where all children are above average.
Ms. Levine said she was once scheduled to give a talk on parenting the average child at a school in Marin County, Calif. Although she usually packs in the audiences, not one person showed up.
“Apparently no one in the county has an average child,” said Ms. Levine, the author of the forthcoming book, “Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success” (HarperCollins).
While there are some extraordinary children out there, the myth is that all children in high school will be like that, she said. And that, Ms. Levine said, is putting enormous stress on students.
Most people, she said, have talent in some areas, are average performers in many areas and are subpar in some areas.
The problem is that we have such a limited view of what we consider an accomplished life that we devalue many qualities that are critically important.
“We would do kids a great service if we opened the tent a little more,” Ms. Levine said.
The Toronto Star did that in March 2012 when it printed a column about Shelagh Gordon, who recently died of a brain aneurysm, with the headline, “Shelagh was here — an ordinary, magical life.” At the same time, The Star ran online interviews with more than 100 people whose life had been touched by the 55-year-old Ms. Gordon.
Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/your-money/redefining-success-and-celebrating-the-unremarkable.html?_r=1&ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Is Education a Girl Thing?
Is Education a Girl Thing?
I'm chatting with a well-known, prolific (male) education blogger, whose work I greatly admire--and whose name I'm not going to reveal. I love what he writes, because it's deep--reaching past media flip-offs and who's winning the policy wars and whether they're Gates-funded. He writes about things like how children think, deconstructing the impact of competition on learning, and organic leadership that isn't laid out in seven steps by a Famous Author. We're talking about a mutual passion: how to get more teachers, beginning with bloggers, into rich professional conversation networks. He says:
How can we get the guy who works in urban schools, the guy who made his name on using tech tools in the classroom, the guy who teaches poor kids in a remote rural school, and the guy who teaches in the high-performing 'burbs to talk together?
There's a pause. That's a lot of guys, I say. Can girls play, too?
Immediately, he's self-conscious about the language that came without thinking. We talk about how the gender makeup of the teaching force impacts the profession's willingness to stand up for itself. How this gender disproportion impacts all kinds of issues, from why teachers can't get family insurance (the presumption there's a husband whose job will provide it) to why Scott Walker stripped away teachers' rights, rather than firefighters.' We discuss iconic women (Randi Weingarten, Diane Ravitch, Wendy Kopp) who are held up as "proof" that the national discourse on education reform is gender-diverse.
But it's not. It's a heavily male-dominated arena. Men are making the policy arguments and pronouncements, hosting the virtual communities and producing the media. Women are carrying out the policy orders, teaching kids to read using scripted programs and facing 36 students in their algebra classes. And when teachers are bold enough to mention this, they're likely to be reminded that fixing public education is far more important than their "feelings" about being slighted--a depressingly familiar argument to women of a certain age who consider themselves feminists.
This is more than unsubstantiated blah-blah. There's plenty of evidence that men are the loudest voices in the media around social issues like education. Here, here, here and here, for example. And when women are powerful, smart and respected, the negative pushback is especially vicious--on both sides of any ed-policy disagreement.
Makes me wonder: Has the "reform" movement (the one where public education is an untapped market, and testing the linchpin strategy) gotten as far as it has because those most motivated to mobilize resistance--K-12 teachers and parents--are predominantly female? If more women were writing and speaking powerfully about education policy, philosophy and practice, would public schools be perceived as America's best, albeit neglected, hope for the future--rather than an opportunity for profit and control?
My friend David Loitz recently posted a call for educators to name their favorite female education heroes and influences--a blog that's garnered 67 comments with nearly 100 nominees, from eminent figures to very personal inspirations. It's been thrilling to see new names go up every day--and wonder why those names aren't better known.
I posted a few suggestions of my own--but kept thinking there were names I was missing. There's a bookcase in my office stocked with my go-to ed-library. I have boxes and boxes of books about education, but keep the ones I use most often in writing and workshops handy. Just for fun, I counted the titles by women (or groups of mostly women). Grand total: 192 books, 34 by female authors. An appalling 18%.
Read more at http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2012/06/is_education_a_girl_thing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TeacherInAStrangeLand+%28Teacher+in+a+Strange+Land%29
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
I'm chatting with a well-known, prolific (male) education blogger, whose work I greatly admire--and whose name I'm not going to reveal. I love what he writes, because it's deep--reaching past media flip-offs and who's winning the policy wars and whether they're Gates-funded. He writes about things like how children think, deconstructing the impact of competition on learning, and organic leadership that isn't laid out in seven steps by a Famous Author. We're talking about a mutual passion: how to get more teachers, beginning with bloggers, into rich professional conversation networks. He says:
How can we get the guy who works in urban schools, the guy who made his name on using tech tools in the classroom, the guy who teaches poor kids in a remote rural school, and the guy who teaches in the high-performing 'burbs to talk together?
There's a pause. That's a lot of guys, I say. Can girls play, too?
Immediately, he's self-conscious about the language that came without thinking. We talk about how the gender makeup of the teaching force impacts the profession's willingness to stand up for itself. How this gender disproportion impacts all kinds of issues, from why teachers can't get family insurance (the presumption there's a husband whose job will provide it) to why Scott Walker stripped away teachers' rights, rather than firefighters.' We discuss iconic women (Randi Weingarten, Diane Ravitch, Wendy Kopp) who are held up as "proof" that the national discourse on education reform is gender-diverse.
But it's not. It's a heavily male-dominated arena. Men are making the policy arguments and pronouncements, hosting the virtual communities and producing the media. Women are carrying out the policy orders, teaching kids to read using scripted programs and facing 36 students in their algebra classes. And when teachers are bold enough to mention this, they're likely to be reminded that fixing public education is far more important than their "feelings" about being slighted--a depressingly familiar argument to women of a certain age who consider themselves feminists.
This is more than unsubstantiated blah-blah. There's plenty of evidence that men are the loudest voices in the media around social issues like education. Here, here, here and here, for example. And when women are powerful, smart and respected, the negative pushback is especially vicious--on both sides of any ed-policy disagreement.
Makes me wonder: Has the "reform" movement (the one where public education is an untapped market, and testing the linchpin strategy) gotten as far as it has because those most motivated to mobilize resistance--K-12 teachers and parents--are predominantly female? If more women were writing and speaking powerfully about education policy, philosophy and practice, would public schools be perceived as America's best, albeit neglected, hope for the future--rather than an opportunity for profit and control?
My friend David Loitz recently posted a call for educators to name their favorite female education heroes and influences--a blog that's garnered 67 comments with nearly 100 nominees, from eminent figures to very personal inspirations. It's been thrilling to see new names go up every day--and wonder why those names aren't better known.
I posted a few suggestions of my own--but kept thinking there were names I was missing. There's a bookcase in my office stocked with my go-to ed-library. I have boxes and boxes of books about education, but keep the ones I use most often in writing and workshops handy. Just for fun, I counted the titles by women (or groups of mostly women). Grand total: 192 books, 34 by female authors. An appalling 18%.
Read more at http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2012/06/is_education_a_girl_thing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TeacherInAStrangeLand+%28Teacher+in+a+Strange+Land%29
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Friday, May 18, 2012
Half Of New Graduates Find They Are Jobless Or Underemployed
Half of new graduates are jobless or underemployed.
A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.
Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.
STORY: Economists' outlook brightens
An analysis of government data conducted for the Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor's degrees.
Opportunities for college graduates vary widely.
While there's strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.
Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor's degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.
"I don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.
Initially hopeful that his college education would create opportunities, Bledsoe languished for three months before finally taking a job as a barista, a position he has held for the last two years. In the beginning he sent three or four resumes day. But, Bledsoe said, employers questioned his lack of experience or the practical worth of his major. Now he sends a resume once every two weeks or so.
Bledsoe, currently making just above minimum wage, says he has received financial help from his parents to help pay off student loans. He is now mulling whether to go to graduate school, seeing few other options to advance his career. "There is not much out there, it seems," he said.
His situation highlights a widening but little-discussed labor problem. Perhaps more than ever, the choices that young adults make earlier in life — level of schooling, academic field and training, where to attend college, how to pay for it — are having a long-lasting financial impact.
"You can make more money on average if you go to college, but it's not true for everybody," says Harvard economist Richard Freeman, noting the growing risk of a debt bubble with total U.S. student loan debt surpassing $1 trillion. "If you're not sure what you're going to be doing, it probably bodes well to take some job, if you can get one, and get a sense first of what you want from college."
Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University who analyzed the numbers, said many people with a bachelor's degree face a double whammy of rising tuition and poor job outcomes. "Simply put, we're failing kids coming out of college," he said, emphasizing that when it comes to jobs, a college major can make all the difference. "We're going to need a lot better job growth and connections to the labor market, otherwise college debt will grow."
By region, the Mountain West was most likely to have young college graduates jobless or underemployed — roughly 3 in 5. It was followed by the more rural southeastern U.S., including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Pacific region, including Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, also was high on the list.
On the other end of the scale, the southern U.S., anchored by Texas, was most likely to have young college graduates in higher-skill jobs.
The figures are based on an analysis of the 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers and supplemented with material from Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. They rely on Labor Department assessments of the level of education required to do the job in 900-plus U.S. occupations, which were used to calculate the shares of young adults with bachelor's degrees who were "underemployed."
About 1.5 million, or 53.6%, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41%, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.
Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.
Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.
In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).
According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.
College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level; those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely.
In Nevada, where unemployment is the highest in the nation, Class of 2012 college seniors recently expressed feelings ranging from anxiety and fear to cautious optimism about what lies ahead.
With the state's economy languishing in an extended housing bust, a lot of young graduates have shown up at job placement centers in tears. Many have been squeezed out of jobs by more experienced workers, job counselors said, and are now having to explain to prospective employers the time gaps in their resumes.
"It's kind of scary," said Cameron Bawden, 22, who is graduating from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in December with a business degree. His family has warned him for years about the job market, so he has been building his resume by working part time on the Las Vegas Strip as a food runner and doing a marketing internship with a local airline.
Bawden said his friends who have graduated are either unemployed or working along the Vegas Strip in service jobs that don't require degrees. "There are so few jobs and it's a small city," he said. "It's all about who you know."
Any job gains are going mostly to workers at the top and bottom of the wage scale, at the expense of middle-income jobs commonly held by bachelor's degree holders. By some studies, up to 95% of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations such as bank tellers, the type of job not expected to return in a more high-tech age.
David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, said a bachelor's degree can have benefits that aren't fully reflected in the government's labor data. He said even for lower-skilled jobs such as waitress or cashier, employers tend to value bachelor's degree-holders more highly than high-school graduates, paying them more for the same work and offering promotions.
In addition, U.S. workers increasingly may need to consider their position in a global economy, where they must compete with educated foreign-born residents for jobs. Longer-term government projections also may fail to consider "degree inflation," a growing ubiquity of bachelor's degrees that could make them more commonplace in lower-wage jobs but inadequate for higher-wage ones.
That future may be now for Kelman Edwards Jr., 24, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who is waiting to see the returns on his college education.
After earning a biology degree last May, the only job he could find was as a construction worker for five months before he quit to focus on finding a job in his academic field. He applied for positions in laboratories but was told they were looking for people with specialized certifications.
"I thought that me having a biology degree was a gold ticket for me getting into places, but every other job wants you to have previous history in the field," he said. Edwards, who has about $5,500 in student debt, recently met with a career counselor at Middle Tennessee State University. The counselor's main advice: Pursue further education.
"Everyone is always telling you, 'Go to college,'" Edwards said. "But when you graduate, it's kind of an empty cliff."
Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-04-22/college-grads-jobless/54473426/1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.
Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.
STORY: Economists' outlook brightens
An analysis of government data conducted for the Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor's degrees.
Opportunities for college graduates vary widely.
While there's strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.
Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor's degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.
"I don't even know what I'm looking for," says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.
Initially hopeful that his college education would create opportunities, Bledsoe languished for three months before finally taking a job as a barista, a position he has held for the last two years. In the beginning he sent three or four resumes day. But, Bledsoe said, employers questioned his lack of experience or the practical worth of his major. Now he sends a resume once every two weeks or so.
Bledsoe, currently making just above minimum wage, says he has received financial help from his parents to help pay off student loans. He is now mulling whether to go to graduate school, seeing few other options to advance his career. "There is not much out there, it seems," he said.
His situation highlights a widening but little-discussed labor problem. Perhaps more than ever, the choices that young adults make earlier in life — level of schooling, academic field and training, where to attend college, how to pay for it — are having a long-lasting financial impact.
"You can make more money on average if you go to college, but it's not true for everybody," says Harvard economist Richard Freeman, noting the growing risk of a debt bubble with total U.S. student loan debt surpassing $1 trillion. "If you're not sure what you're going to be doing, it probably bodes well to take some job, if you can get one, and get a sense first of what you want from college."
Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University who analyzed the numbers, said many people with a bachelor's degree face a double whammy of rising tuition and poor job outcomes. "Simply put, we're failing kids coming out of college," he said, emphasizing that when it comes to jobs, a college major can make all the difference. "We're going to need a lot better job growth and connections to the labor market, otherwise college debt will grow."
By region, the Mountain West was most likely to have young college graduates jobless or underemployed — roughly 3 in 5. It was followed by the more rural southeastern U.S., including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Pacific region, including Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, also was high on the list.
On the other end of the scale, the southern U.S., anchored by Texas, was most likely to have young college graduates in higher-skill jobs.
The figures are based on an analysis of the 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers and supplemented with material from Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. They rely on Labor Department assessments of the level of education required to do the job in 900-plus U.S. occupations, which were used to calculate the shares of young adults with bachelor's degrees who were "underemployed."
About 1.5 million, or 53.6%, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41%, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.
Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.
Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.
In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).
According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.
College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level; those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely.
In Nevada, where unemployment is the highest in the nation, Class of 2012 college seniors recently expressed feelings ranging from anxiety and fear to cautious optimism about what lies ahead.
With the state's economy languishing in an extended housing bust, a lot of young graduates have shown up at job placement centers in tears. Many have been squeezed out of jobs by more experienced workers, job counselors said, and are now having to explain to prospective employers the time gaps in their resumes.
"It's kind of scary," said Cameron Bawden, 22, who is graduating from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in December with a business degree. His family has warned him for years about the job market, so he has been building his resume by working part time on the Las Vegas Strip as a food runner and doing a marketing internship with a local airline.
Bawden said his friends who have graduated are either unemployed or working along the Vegas Strip in service jobs that don't require degrees. "There are so few jobs and it's a small city," he said. "It's all about who you know."
Any job gains are going mostly to workers at the top and bottom of the wage scale, at the expense of middle-income jobs commonly held by bachelor's degree holders. By some studies, up to 95% of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations such as bank tellers, the type of job not expected to return in a more high-tech age.
David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, said a bachelor's degree can have benefits that aren't fully reflected in the government's labor data. He said even for lower-skilled jobs such as waitress or cashier, employers tend to value bachelor's degree-holders more highly than high-school graduates, paying them more for the same work and offering promotions.
In addition, U.S. workers increasingly may need to consider their position in a global economy, where they must compete with educated foreign-born residents for jobs. Longer-term government projections also may fail to consider "degree inflation," a growing ubiquity of bachelor's degrees that could make them more commonplace in lower-wage jobs but inadequate for higher-wage ones.
That future may be now for Kelman Edwards Jr., 24, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who is waiting to see the returns on his college education.
After earning a biology degree last May, the only job he could find was as a construction worker for five months before he quit to focus on finding a job in his academic field. He applied for positions in laboratories but was told they were looking for people with specialized certifications.
"I thought that me having a biology degree was a gold ticket for me getting into places, but every other job wants you to have previous history in the field," he said. Edwards, who has about $5,500 in student debt, recently met with a career counselor at Middle Tennessee State University. The counselor's main advice: Pursue further education.
"Everyone is always telling you, 'Go to college,'" Edwards said. "But when you graduate, it's kind of an empty cliff."
Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-04-22/college-grads-jobless/54473426/1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Monday, May 7, 2012
United States And Indonesia Partnering for Higher Education
United States And Indonesia Partnering for Higher Education.
Nearly a year after the Obama administration set a priority of improving higher education exchanges with Indonesia, the U.S. is increasing its ‘commitment to cultural diplomacy’, writes Sara Schonhardt at Voice of America.
As part of the outreach, the administration aims to double the number of Indonesian students studying in the U.S., which officials say will help the U.S. economy and improve relations with the rapidly developing Muslim-majority nation.
Last June, to support university partnerships and student exchange programs, the Obama administration earmarked $165 million over five years. This would support subjects such as agriculture, business and information technology.
The U.S. is continuing to reach out to fast-growing economies like Indonesia and Vietnam as potential new markets for U.S. goods and services. International students injected nearly $19 billion into the U.S. economy last year, and Indonesia’s rising middle class could open new opportunities for U.S. universities to bring in more tuition dollars.
The U.S. says, in an attempt to improve understanding between the two countries, it also wants to send more American students to Indonesia. U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Scot Marciel said student exchanges create a “personal basis for better relations.”
But to entice more Indonesians to American schools, Marciel said the U.S. must research and market better:
“We have to do a much better job of A, marketing our universities, which are the best in the world; and B, changing this terrible perception that you can’t get a student visa. So I’m literally almost out on the streets grabbing people as they walk by saying, ‘hey, we’ll give you a visa if you go study in America.’”
The number of Indonesians studying in the U.S. has fallen steadily over the last decade because the Asian financial crisis curtailed some families’ resources to send their kids to study in America. Visa issues also contributed to the drop in numbers, and it is still to rebound fully. Fewer than 7,000 Indonesians studied in the United States in 2010, down about eight percent from 2009.
With improvements in universities in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, more Indonesians are choosing to study at cheaper options closer to home.
There is, however, the undeniable lure of quality: the U.S. is home to many of the world’s most prestigious universities and research institutions. Many Indonesians who have studied abroad say the combination of strong academics and unique life experience from study in the United States is invaluable.
American officials say that improving educational opportunity is crucial to the economic growth and political stability of a key ally, writes Karin Fischer at the Chronicle.
“We can’t change the rainfall”, says Cameron R. Hume, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. “But we can change people. We can improve opportunity for a generation of young people”.
For Education Minister Mohammad Nur, the exchange is a part of enhanced cultural diplomacy that will help develop Indonesia and strengthen bilateral friendship, writes Schonhardt.
“There is a lot of history behind Indonesia’s relationship with America, he said. That is why it needs to be strengthened. But Indonesia also wants to strengthen ties with Europe and other countries that can give it new insights.”
Some students, at the education fair, said it does not matter which country they study in, as long as they can afford it. Others said they want to experience life in the United States, as long as there are good scholarship opportunities, writes Schonhardt.
Read more at http://www.educationnews.org/higher-education/us-indonesia-partnering-for-higher-education/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Nearly a year after the Obama administration set a priority of improving higher education exchanges with Indonesia, the U.S. is increasing its ‘commitment to cultural diplomacy’, writes Sara Schonhardt at Voice of America.
As part of the outreach, the administration aims to double the number of Indonesian students studying in the U.S., which officials say will help the U.S. economy and improve relations with the rapidly developing Muslim-majority nation.
Last June, to support university partnerships and student exchange programs, the Obama administration earmarked $165 million over five years. This would support subjects such as agriculture, business and information technology.
The U.S. is continuing to reach out to fast-growing economies like Indonesia and Vietnam as potential new markets for U.S. goods and services. International students injected nearly $19 billion into the U.S. economy last year, and Indonesia’s rising middle class could open new opportunities for U.S. universities to bring in more tuition dollars.
The U.S. says, in an attempt to improve understanding between the two countries, it also wants to send more American students to Indonesia. U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Scot Marciel said student exchanges create a “personal basis for better relations.”
But to entice more Indonesians to American schools, Marciel said the U.S. must research and market better:
“We have to do a much better job of A, marketing our universities, which are the best in the world; and B, changing this terrible perception that you can’t get a student visa. So I’m literally almost out on the streets grabbing people as they walk by saying, ‘hey, we’ll give you a visa if you go study in America.’”
The number of Indonesians studying in the U.S. has fallen steadily over the last decade because the Asian financial crisis curtailed some families’ resources to send their kids to study in America. Visa issues also contributed to the drop in numbers, and it is still to rebound fully. Fewer than 7,000 Indonesians studied in the United States in 2010, down about eight percent from 2009.
With improvements in universities in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, more Indonesians are choosing to study at cheaper options closer to home.
There is, however, the undeniable lure of quality: the U.S. is home to many of the world’s most prestigious universities and research institutions. Many Indonesians who have studied abroad say the combination of strong academics and unique life experience from study in the United States is invaluable.
American officials say that improving educational opportunity is crucial to the economic growth and political stability of a key ally, writes Karin Fischer at the Chronicle.
“We can’t change the rainfall”, says Cameron R. Hume, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. “But we can change people. We can improve opportunity for a generation of young people”.
For Education Minister Mohammad Nur, the exchange is a part of enhanced cultural diplomacy that will help develop Indonesia and strengthen bilateral friendship, writes Schonhardt.
“There is a lot of history behind Indonesia’s relationship with America, he said. That is why it needs to be strengthened. But Indonesia also wants to strengthen ties with Europe and other countries that can give it new insights.”
Some students, at the education fair, said it does not matter which country they study in, as long as they can afford it. Others said they want to experience life in the United States, as long as there are good scholarship opportunities, writes Schonhardt.
Read more at http://www.educationnews.org/higher-education/us-indonesia-partnering-for-higher-education/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Friday, May 4, 2012
Myths Americans Believe About Vietnam
Myths Americans Believe About Vietnam.
1. Religion is not tolerated in Vietnam.
Quite the contrary! Sometimes I read stories on the web about religious persecution in Vietnam, but what I see here in Ho Chi Minh City is a very religious people, far more religious in general than Americans. People here will nearly all say they are either Catholic or Buddhist; it's hard to find anyone who would call themselves Agnostic or Atheistic- I haven't met one yet.
The Catholic Church is one of the biggest property owners in Ho Chi Minh City. There are huge, newly built churches everywhere. I can see a gimongous church being built in the distance from the window where I'm sitting right now. In the evenings and on Sundays there are crowds of people at all the churches, often spilling out into the street and adding to the traffic mayhem. The most popular tourist attraction in Saigon is a cathedral- the Notre-Dame Cathedral in District 1.
There are also Buddhist temples in every neighborhood; many of them are huge. Thich Nhat Hanh, the rock star of Buddhist monks who was living in exile in France for many years, recently returned to tour Vietnam with an entourage of over 300 monks.
Granted, there are conflicts between the Vietnamese government and some religious leaders who get involved in politics. I don't know the details of these conflicts but I'd venture to say they involve only a tiny minority of religious people. In the past, certainly there has been severe religious persecution in Vietnam, but things have changed a lot. The official government line is that religion is free and accessible to all, and I haven't seen anything different.
2. The Vietnamese hate Americans because of "The American War."
My own experience is only in the south, and it may be different in the north, but what I have experienced would actually be the opposite. Even when I first came to Vietnam as a tourist in 1996, I never heard or felt anything but tremendous love and respect for America and Americans.
To the Vietnamese, just like to people in developing countries everywhere, American is the promised land, the land of opportunity. Nearly every Vietnamese family has at least one member living in the USA, so America is the country that is taking care of their loved ones.
Unlike Americans, especially baby boomers, who will never get past the Vietnam war, the Vietnamese have gotten over it. The bulk of the Vietnamese population, it's own baby boom, is only in their mid-20's. Their parents have stories but most people are too young to remember the war.
Also consider Vietnamese history. Americans don't have much of a history, but the Vietnamese collective memory goes back 5000 years. The Chinese occupied Vietnam for 1000 years. France occupied Vietnam for 100 years. America was here for all of 30 years, merely a small blip in Vietnamese history. Contrary to Americans' sense of self-importance, the American episode isn't all that significant. (I don't know how accurate those figures are; those are the numbers that Vietnamese people will recite if you ask them.)
This is a topic that is big enough for it's own article, but suffice it to say that I've noticed far FAR more tension between the north and south of Vietnam and between local Vietnamese and overseas Vietnamese, than between Vietnamese and Americans. (My personal plea to Americans: get over it!)
3. They're all Communists.
I cringe when I hear Americans refer to the Vietnamese as "those commies," as if everyone was running around in blue suits. Vietnamese people are just like everyone else: most of them couldn't care less about politics. They just want a decent job, food on the table, and an iPhone. Most of them will bitch about their government if given a chance, just like Americans. The number of people who are actually in the Communist Party is a very tiny number, even smaller than the number of people in Vietnam's Cao Dai religion.
4. Vietnam doesn't have modern technology.
Out in the countryside, this is true. My wife's family just got electricity at their house a few months ago. They still don't have running water. But in the cities it's different. I'm typing on a computer that I bought here in Ho Chi Minh City, using a broadband connection that is just the same (as far as I can tell) as in America. My university classroom is wired with wifi and a projector; I have to tell my students to close their laptops and pay attention. I've heard there are some schools that have those touchscreen interactive projectors, but I haven't used one yet. I'd brag about my modern cell phone but I can't afford one. My students can, though, and I'm often envious of their gadgets. There are electronic gadgets or sale in my neighborhood computer store that I can't even identify.
I have a friend who works for the Vietnam office of a British architectural firm and he said their counterparts in England were worried that the Vietnamese staff might not be able to open the AutoCAD documents they sent, because surely the Vietnamese must be using some ancient version. In fact, because of the lax enforcement of copyright laws, the opposite was true. The Vietnam office had the latest version, whereas the British office only had an older version! Since all the latest software is practically free here in Vietnam, it's common for people to have $20,000 worth of software on their computers, if not more.
5. Vietnamese people are not "free."
What is freedom, anyway? The ability to do what you want, right? If you want to rock the boat politically in Vietnam, of course you're going to have a tough time, but citizens do rally against their government. And for big-business people, you're going to run into restrictions. But for the average person, like me for example, Vietnam feels much more "free" than America.
Here in Vietnam, it's all up to your local police guy. If he's happy then everything's okay. You want to open up a company in your house, maybe even a school? No problem, just pay your local official a (very) small sum and off you go. Try to do the same in the USA and you are screwed. Try to open a school or a restaurant in America and you'll be shut down if your stairway is an inch too narrow. In my experience, the average person is much more free in Vietnam to do what they want than in America.
Take a look at the traffic police. Here in Vietnam your traffic cop has no radio, no computer, many don't have guns. They can often be pacified with a hundred-thousand Dong ($6). In America an ordinary policeman has a fast car with a computer and is armed to the teeth. Disobey one small traffic law and instantly your entire criminal record is on their screen.
One of the tragedies of America that people don't talk about much is it's prison population: the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world. It has less than 5% of the world's population but over 23% of the world's incarcerated people- four times the world average. America's prisons are full of men and women whose lives have been virtually ruined because of some small, victimless crime they committed. Is that freedom?
Obviously, the contrary to what I'm saying here could easily be argued. The government and police in Vietnam are basically the equivalent of the Mafia, and they do what they want, arbitrarily. But I'm talking about what your average person can and can't do, and especially just the way it feels to live here vs. the USA. One of the reasons I love living in Vietnam is that I feel much more "free" here than I do in America. You can argue the opposite all you want, but this is the way it feels to me- Vietnam: free. America: not free.
Read more at http://ezinearticles.com/?5-Myths-Americans-Believe-About-Vietnam&id=2257242
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
1. Religion is not tolerated in Vietnam.
Quite the contrary! Sometimes I read stories on the web about religious persecution in Vietnam, but what I see here in Ho Chi Minh City is a very religious people, far more religious in general than Americans. People here will nearly all say they are either Catholic or Buddhist; it's hard to find anyone who would call themselves Agnostic or Atheistic- I haven't met one yet.
The Catholic Church is one of the biggest property owners in Ho Chi Minh City. There are huge, newly built churches everywhere. I can see a gimongous church being built in the distance from the window where I'm sitting right now. In the evenings and on Sundays there are crowds of people at all the churches, often spilling out into the street and adding to the traffic mayhem. The most popular tourist attraction in Saigon is a cathedral- the Notre-Dame Cathedral in District 1.
There are also Buddhist temples in every neighborhood; many of them are huge. Thich Nhat Hanh, the rock star of Buddhist monks who was living in exile in France for many years, recently returned to tour Vietnam with an entourage of over 300 monks.
Granted, there are conflicts between the Vietnamese government and some religious leaders who get involved in politics. I don't know the details of these conflicts but I'd venture to say they involve only a tiny minority of religious people. In the past, certainly there has been severe religious persecution in Vietnam, but things have changed a lot. The official government line is that religion is free and accessible to all, and I haven't seen anything different.
2. The Vietnamese hate Americans because of "The American War."
My own experience is only in the south, and it may be different in the north, but what I have experienced would actually be the opposite. Even when I first came to Vietnam as a tourist in 1996, I never heard or felt anything but tremendous love and respect for America and Americans.
To the Vietnamese, just like to people in developing countries everywhere, American is the promised land, the land of opportunity. Nearly every Vietnamese family has at least one member living in the USA, so America is the country that is taking care of their loved ones.
Unlike Americans, especially baby boomers, who will never get past the Vietnam war, the Vietnamese have gotten over it. The bulk of the Vietnamese population, it's own baby boom, is only in their mid-20's. Their parents have stories but most people are too young to remember the war.
Also consider Vietnamese history. Americans don't have much of a history, but the Vietnamese collective memory goes back 5000 years. The Chinese occupied Vietnam for 1000 years. France occupied Vietnam for 100 years. America was here for all of 30 years, merely a small blip in Vietnamese history. Contrary to Americans' sense of self-importance, the American episode isn't all that significant. (I don't know how accurate those figures are; those are the numbers that Vietnamese people will recite if you ask them.)
This is a topic that is big enough for it's own article, but suffice it to say that I've noticed far FAR more tension between the north and south of Vietnam and between local Vietnamese and overseas Vietnamese, than between Vietnamese and Americans. (My personal plea to Americans: get over it!)
3. They're all Communists.
I cringe when I hear Americans refer to the Vietnamese as "those commies," as if everyone was running around in blue suits. Vietnamese people are just like everyone else: most of them couldn't care less about politics. They just want a decent job, food on the table, and an iPhone. Most of them will bitch about their government if given a chance, just like Americans. The number of people who are actually in the Communist Party is a very tiny number, even smaller than the number of people in Vietnam's Cao Dai religion.
4. Vietnam doesn't have modern technology.
Out in the countryside, this is true. My wife's family just got electricity at their house a few months ago. They still don't have running water. But in the cities it's different. I'm typing on a computer that I bought here in Ho Chi Minh City, using a broadband connection that is just the same (as far as I can tell) as in America. My university classroom is wired with wifi and a projector; I have to tell my students to close their laptops and pay attention. I've heard there are some schools that have those touchscreen interactive projectors, but I haven't used one yet. I'd brag about my modern cell phone but I can't afford one. My students can, though, and I'm often envious of their gadgets. There are electronic gadgets or sale in my neighborhood computer store that I can't even identify.
I have a friend who works for the Vietnam office of a British architectural firm and he said their counterparts in England were worried that the Vietnamese staff might not be able to open the AutoCAD documents they sent, because surely the Vietnamese must be using some ancient version. In fact, because of the lax enforcement of copyright laws, the opposite was true. The Vietnam office had the latest version, whereas the British office only had an older version! Since all the latest software is practically free here in Vietnam, it's common for people to have $20,000 worth of software on their computers, if not more.
5. Vietnamese people are not "free."
What is freedom, anyway? The ability to do what you want, right? If you want to rock the boat politically in Vietnam, of course you're going to have a tough time, but citizens do rally against their government. And for big-business people, you're going to run into restrictions. But for the average person, like me for example, Vietnam feels much more "free" than America.
Here in Vietnam, it's all up to your local police guy. If he's happy then everything's okay. You want to open up a company in your house, maybe even a school? No problem, just pay your local official a (very) small sum and off you go. Try to do the same in the USA and you are screwed. Try to open a school or a restaurant in America and you'll be shut down if your stairway is an inch too narrow. In my experience, the average person is much more free in Vietnam to do what they want than in America.
Take a look at the traffic police. Here in Vietnam your traffic cop has no radio, no computer, many don't have guns. They can often be pacified with a hundred-thousand Dong ($6). In America an ordinary policeman has a fast car with a computer and is armed to the teeth. Disobey one small traffic law and instantly your entire criminal record is on their screen.
One of the tragedies of America that people don't talk about much is it's prison population: the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world. It has less than 5% of the world's population but over 23% of the world's incarcerated people- four times the world average. America's prisons are full of men and women whose lives have been virtually ruined because of some small, victimless crime they committed. Is that freedom?
Obviously, the contrary to what I'm saying here could easily be argued. The government and police in Vietnam are basically the equivalent of the Mafia, and they do what they want, arbitrarily. But I'm talking about what your average person can and can't do, and especially just the way it feels to live here vs. the USA. One of the reasons I love living in Vietnam is that I feel much more "free" here than I do in America. You can argue the opposite all you want, but this is the way it feels to me- Vietnam: free. America: not free.
Read more at http://ezinearticles.com/?5-Myths-Americans-Believe-About-Vietnam&id=2257242
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Despite More College Grads US Workforce Needs Even More
Despite more college grads, U.S. workforce needs even more.
The number of adult Americans who have earned college degrees has been increasing, but not fast enough to keep up with workforce demands, according to a report released Monday.
At the current rate, employers in 2025 will need about 23 million more degree-holders than the nation's colleges and universities will have produced.
"We are nowhere near at the pace that we need to be says," Jamie Merisotis, president of the non-profit Lumina Foundation, which released the report. "Look at it as an alarm, an urgent call to action."
The foundation wants to increase the percentage of working-age Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60% in 2025 — a goal similar to one set by President Obama in 2009. Obama said he wants the United States to reclaim its position as the world leader in the proportion of college graduates by 2020. If the current pace continues, that figure will reach just 46.5% by 2025, the Lumina report says.
The Lumina Foundation report released Monday, based on 2010 Census data, found a positive overall trend: 38.3% of Americans ages 25 to 64 had at least an associate's degree in 2010, up from 38.1% in 2009 and 37.9% in 2008.
Last month, the Census Bureau noted a historic high in the number of adults with at least a bachelor's degree. That figure, 30%, represented an "important milestone," said Kurt Bauman, the chair of the Census Bureau's education branch.
Yet Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show that the USA has slipped, to 16th, in the share of adults ages 25 to 34 holding college degrees. South Korea, Canada and Japan are the top three.
The Lumina report's analysis of attainment rates for the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas, where about two-thirds of all Americans live, also reveals differences by region. Completion rates are among the lowest for working-age adults in fast-growing metropolitan areas in the South and West.
Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-26/college-degrees-adults/53793160/1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
The number of adult Americans who have earned college degrees has been increasing, but not fast enough to keep up with workforce demands, according to a report released Monday.
At the current rate, employers in 2025 will need about 23 million more degree-holders than the nation's colleges and universities will have produced.
"We are nowhere near at the pace that we need to be says," Jamie Merisotis, president of the non-profit Lumina Foundation, which released the report. "Look at it as an alarm, an urgent call to action."
The foundation wants to increase the percentage of working-age Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60% in 2025 — a goal similar to one set by President Obama in 2009. Obama said he wants the United States to reclaim its position as the world leader in the proportion of college graduates by 2020. If the current pace continues, that figure will reach just 46.5% by 2025, the Lumina report says.
The Lumina Foundation report released Monday, based on 2010 Census data, found a positive overall trend: 38.3% of Americans ages 25 to 64 had at least an associate's degree in 2010, up from 38.1% in 2009 and 37.9% in 2008.
Last month, the Census Bureau noted a historic high in the number of adults with at least a bachelor's degree. That figure, 30%, represented an "important milestone," said Kurt Bauman, the chair of the Census Bureau's education branch.
Yet Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show that the USA has slipped, to 16th, in the share of adults ages 25 to 34 holding college degrees. South Korea, Canada and Japan are the top three.
The Lumina report's analysis of attainment rates for the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas, where about two-thirds of all Americans live, also reveals differences by region. Completion rates are among the lowest for working-age adults in fast-growing metropolitan areas in the South and West.
Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-26/college-degrees-adults/53793160/1
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 23, 2012
Those Who Know English Will Travel China or The USA
Those Who Know English Will Travel China or The USA.
A novel concept is marrying budget-conscious travelers to the nation with hungry-for-English yuppie Chinese. Shi Yingying reports
When 22-year-old Ammon Cunningham and his wife Marissa from Utah's Salt Lake City decided to visit Shanghai in the middle of June, accommodation was the last thing on their mind, despite it being peak time for hotel occupancy, thanks to the on-going Expo. The young couple had arranged to stay in a 140-square-meter apartment in Putuo district for free, in exchange for English conversation everyday with their hosts - 18-year-old Wu Siwei and his mother, Jin Yujun.
This was made possible by a non-profit Chinese organization called Tourboarding, which offers a virtual platform for free lodging in Chinese homes in exchange for English tutoring. Guests are required to speak at least two hours of English every day in return for their stay, giving their Chinese hosts the chance to learn from a resident live-in English teacher for free - lessons that can otherwise costs 200-350 yuan ($30-50) an hour, and even more than 1,000 yuan an hour at some training institutions.
"I think it is very nice to actually be this close to the local culture," says Ammon. "We would like to not only visit tourist spots, but also see how a Chinese family lives, what their customs are like, and what's their favorite television show."
Although Ammon's company in the US would have covered his cost of accommodation as one of the aims of his 15-day trip is to expand business with the Shanghai branch of Gymboree (an early childhood education company), the young man chose the Shanghai family over a star hotel.
He chanced on the Tourboarding website while "looking for information on Chinese culture and what's okay to do".
"I thought this might be fun to try," says Ammon. "So we contacted Wu's mother and the rest is history."
Wu, a recent high school graduate, was most excited when he heard that two English-speaking foreigners would be staying at his home. The teenager is currently preparing for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) for his future plans to study in the US.
"Unlike the formal teaching in my school, the conversations I have with Ammon and Marissa are more like everyday conversations between friends," Wu says.
"To spend more time with them, I show them around Shanghai and that means far more than two hours of English every day."
Ammon says they talk about diverse topics. "I think that's really good as in China, students usually memorize everything so they can clear a test. This kind of conversation is a lot more difficult for them."
As to suitable US universities for Wu, Ammon's 20-year-old wife Marissa, who is still in her last year at university says, "I'd definitely encourage him to go to the University of Utah. It is very famous and near our city."
Marissa says the biggest cultural shock for her is the lack of personal space. "Here in China people are always right next to each other, but in the US, everyone tries to keep away as much as possible.
However, the couple have their own separate bedroom and bathroom in Wu's house.
"Our bedroom is done up in the Japanese tatami style, while the living room is decorated with traditional Chinese calligraphy, and that's cool," says Marissa.
The Cunninghams usually have their breakfast and dinner "at home", talk to the family in English and spend the day either traveling or working.
"We even did dumpling together once with Wu and his mother," says Ammon who first picked this up from his father who lived for a while in Taiwan and is good at Chinese cuisine. "We're grateful for the treat and are thinking of preparing an American-style breakfast for them before leaving."
The most interactive moments between the American couple and their Chinese hosts come after dinner, when they either watch the popular TV matchmaking show If You Are the One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao), play the card game, Beat the Landlord, or Chinese chess. "It (the show) is so funny," says Ammon.
Wu says his mom Jin loves to try new things and her English is so good that she could communicate with the Cunninghams without any problem.
But doesn't Jin worry about their safety with two complete strangers in the house?
"Shanghai is my city, even if anything goes wrong, they will be more afraid than us," says Jin. "However, I have no concerns, the Cunninghams seem nice and friendly."
Tourboarding is the brainchild of an intrepid backpacker, 38-year-old Ken Chen. He says he found that 80 percent of tourists to China come as part of tour groups, while the comparative figure for Europe and America is 30 percent.
"That's when I came up with the idea of accommodating backpackers with ordinary Chinese families," says Chen, adding that the English tutoring is tailor-made for the Chinese.
Chen quit his job at Nike Sports China and joined forces with Nuno Zhang, 28, a former Google employee and a few expats to launch Tourboarding in April.
Their research showed that about 130 million Chinese fall in the 18-40 age group - their target host families - who are open to foreign cultures and eager to learn English. About 47 percent have evinced interest in the Tourboarding concept and 21 percent are willing to give it a try.
"In the past two months, more than 10,000 users have signed up on our website," says Chen. "We are especially popular in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Our overseas promotion now extends from English-speaking countries to Europeans and Japan."
According to Chen, most Chinese families interested in the program are those with children. "But they are also those with apartments that are big enough. Even some of young white collar workers are interested in Tourboarding, although they might still be renting their apartment and are not allowed to bring strangers home."
Spurred by the enthusiasm for Tourboarding, Chen is also thinking about building a "foreigners' city".
"Why should we not bring an English-speaking environment to China?" he asks.
"We can build a mini-city peopled with foreign backpackers who can be encouraged to live like they do in their home countries. English will be the only language of communication
"The Chinese can visit this 'city' and quickly improve their language skills," he says.
Read more at http://english.sina.com/life/p/2010/0721/330234.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
A novel concept is marrying budget-conscious travelers to the nation with hungry-for-English yuppie Chinese. Shi Yingying reports
When 22-year-old Ammon Cunningham and his wife Marissa from Utah's Salt Lake City decided to visit Shanghai in the middle of June, accommodation was the last thing on their mind, despite it being peak time for hotel occupancy, thanks to the on-going Expo. The young couple had arranged to stay in a 140-square-meter apartment in Putuo district for free, in exchange for English conversation everyday with their hosts - 18-year-old Wu Siwei and his mother, Jin Yujun.
This was made possible by a non-profit Chinese organization called Tourboarding, which offers a virtual platform for free lodging in Chinese homes in exchange for English tutoring. Guests are required to speak at least two hours of English every day in return for their stay, giving their Chinese hosts the chance to learn from a resident live-in English teacher for free - lessons that can otherwise costs 200-350 yuan ($30-50) an hour, and even more than 1,000 yuan an hour at some training institutions.
"I think it is very nice to actually be this close to the local culture," says Ammon. "We would like to not only visit tourist spots, but also see how a Chinese family lives, what their customs are like, and what's their favorite television show."
Although Ammon's company in the US would have covered his cost of accommodation as one of the aims of his 15-day trip is to expand business with the Shanghai branch of Gymboree (an early childhood education company), the young man chose the Shanghai family over a star hotel.
He chanced on the Tourboarding website while "looking for information on Chinese culture and what's okay to do".
"I thought this might be fun to try," says Ammon. "So we contacted Wu's mother and the rest is history."
Wu, a recent high school graduate, was most excited when he heard that two English-speaking foreigners would be staying at his home. The teenager is currently preparing for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) for his future plans to study in the US.
"Unlike the formal teaching in my school, the conversations I have with Ammon and Marissa are more like everyday conversations between friends," Wu says.
"To spend more time with them, I show them around Shanghai and that means far more than two hours of English every day."
Ammon says they talk about diverse topics. "I think that's really good as in China, students usually memorize everything so they can clear a test. This kind of conversation is a lot more difficult for them."
As to suitable US universities for Wu, Ammon's 20-year-old wife Marissa, who is still in her last year at university says, "I'd definitely encourage him to go to the University of Utah. It is very famous and near our city."
Marissa says the biggest cultural shock for her is the lack of personal space. "Here in China people are always right next to each other, but in the US, everyone tries to keep away as much as possible.
However, the couple have their own separate bedroom and bathroom in Wu's house.
"Our bedroom is done up in the Japanese tatami style, while the living room is decorated with traditional Chinese calligraphy, and that's cool," says Marissa.
The Cunninghams usually have their breakfast and dinner "at home", talk to the family in English and spend the day either traveling or working.
"We even did dumpling together once with Wu and his mother," says Ammon who first picked this up from his father who lived for a while in Taiwan and is good at Chinese cuisine. "We're grateful for the treat and are thinking of preparing an American-style breakfast for them before leaving."
The most interactive moments between the American couple and their Chinese hosts come after dinner, when they either watch the popular TV matchmaking show If You Are the One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao), play the card game, Beat the Landlord, or Chinese chess. "It (the show) is so funny," says Ammon.
Wu says his mom Jin loves to try new things and her English is so good that she could communicate with the Cunninghams without any problem.
But doesn't Jin worry about their safety with two complete strangers in the house?
"Shanghai is my city, even if anything goes wrong, they will be more afraid than us," says Jin. "However, I have no concerns, the Cunninghams seem nice and friendly."
Tourboarding is the brainchild of an intrepid backpacker, 38-year-old Ken Chen. He says he found that 80 percent of tourists to China come as part of tour groups, while the comparative figure for Europe and America is 30 percent.
"That's when I came up with the idea of accommodating backpackers with ordinary Chinese families," says Chen, adding that the English tutoring is tailor-made for the Chinese.
Chen quit his job at Nike Sports China and joined forces with Nuno Zhang, 28, a former Google employee and a few expats to launch Tourboarding in April.
Their research showed that about 130 million Chinese fall in the 18-40 age group - their target host families - who are open to foreign cultures and eager to learn English. About 47 percent have evinced interest in the Tourboarding concept and 21 percent are willing to give it a try.
"In the past two months, more than 10,000 users have signed up on our website," says Chen. "We are especially popular in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Our overseas promotion now extends from English-speaking countries to Europeans and Japan."
According to Chen, most Chinese families interested in the program are those with children. "But they are also those with apartments that are big enough. Even some of young white collar workers are interested in Tourboarding, although they might still be renting their apartment and are not allowed to bring strangers home."
Spurred by the enthusiasm for Tourboarding, Chen is also thinking about building a "foreigners' city".
"Why should we not bring an English-speaking environment to China?" he asks.
"We can build a mini-city peopled with foreign backpackers who can be encouraged to live like they do in their home countries. English will be the only language of communication
"The Chinese can visit this 'city' and quickly improve their language skills," he says.
Read more at http://english.sina.com/life/p/2010/0721/330234.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Friday, January 13, 2012
More Foreign Students Studying in USA
More foreign students studying in USA.
International students and their dependents contributed more than $20 billion to the U.S. economy last year as record numbers of foreigners enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, reports to be released today show. The numbers of U.S. students earning college credit abroad also is on the rise.
The number of international students at U.S. colleges and universities rose 4.7% to 723,277 during the 2010-11 academic year, says an annual report by the Institute of International Education (IIE), which has tracked data since 1949.
Enrollments of international students have overcome a four-year period of flat or declining growth that began in 2002-03 and reflected concerns about safety and U.S. immigration policies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-13/foreign-students-boost-usa-economy/51188560/1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
International students and their dependents contributed more than $20 billion to the U.S. economy last year as record numbers of foreigners enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, reports to be released today show. The numbers of U.S. students earning college credit abroad also is on the rise.
The number of international students at U.S. colleges and universities rose 4.7% to 723,277 during the 2010-11 academic year, says an annual report by the Institute of International Education (IIE), which has tracked data since 1949.
Enrollments of international students have overcome a four-year period of flat or declining growth that began in 2002-03 and reflected concerns about safety and U.S. immigration policies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-13/foreign-students-boost-usa-economy/51188560/1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
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