Mark Bartels, Uganda Studies Program Kimberly Spragg, Australia Studies Centre Critical...
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Educating Global Citizens v. Training Global Nomads Mark Bartels, Uganda Studies Program Kimberly Spragg, Australia Studies Centre Critical Breakthroughs in Student Learning at the Uganda Studies Program and the Australia Studies Centre
Mark Bartels, Uganda Studies Program Kimberly Spragg, Australia Studies Centre Critical Breakthroughs in Student Learning at the Uganda Studies Program
Mark Bartels, Uganda Studies Program Kimberly Spragg, Australia
Studies Centre Critical Breakthroughs in Student Learning at the
Uganda Studies Program and the Australia Studies Centre
Slide 2
Slide 3
Rather than learning how to become native to ones place to know
the people and plants and animals and customs of a particular
locale and thus to live sustainably in that place we are socialized
into a materialistic way of life that blinds us to both the
cultural and the ecological realities of our community and our
landscape. We assume we will (and should) move upward and become
more mobile, moving from place to place. --Wes Jackson Steven
Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh. Education for Homelessness or
Homemaking? The Christian College in a Postmodern Culture.
Christian Scholars Review 32, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 283.
Slide 4
education today often dislocates people from their native place
to such a degree that it has created a powerful class of itinerant
professional[s] --Wendell Berry Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J.
Walsh, 281.
Slide 5
the conventional wisdom holds that all education is good, and
the more of it one has, the better... The truth is that without
significant precautions, education can equip people merely to be
more effective vandals of the earth. --David Orr Steven
Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh, 281.
Slide 6
Our question is: What happens if we allow homecoming to be the
guiding metaphor for our educational praxis? Steven Bouma-Prediger
and Brian J. Walsh, 282.
Slide 7
Approach the world as a series of complex interactions.
Comfortable with uncertainty and contradiction. Cosmopolitan in
outlook. Accommodating to change. Less concerned with accumulation
of wealth. Understand their environment. No such thing as alone.
Robyn Davidson. No Fixed Address: Nomads and the Fate of the
Planet. Quarterly Essay 24 (2006): 49.
Slide 8
Uprooted from place. Superficial local attachments. Fragile
kinship and community bonds. Movement based on whim and wealth.
Misses the interconnectedness of all things. Robyn Davidson,
50.
Slide 9
And the more mobile we become, the less sense we have of being
sensually enmeshed with our world and interdependent with,
responsible for, others. Robyn Davidson, 51.
Slide 10
Slide 11
True education is always about learning to connect knowing with
doing, belief with behavior; and yet that connection is incredibly
difficult to make for students in the modern university. Steven
Garber. The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and
Behavior. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 57
Slide 12
True education is always about learning to connect knowing with
doing, belief with behavior; and yet that connection is incredibly
difficult to make for students in the modern university. This issue
and how we resolve it matters. For those whose vocations give them
responsibility for students, it is not enough to know that they are
able to answer all the questions posed during their university
yearseither those that come formally within the classroom or those
that come late at night in a caf. Steven Garber, 57
Slide 13
the Pilgrim and the Monk
Slide 14
Slide 15
To embrace the identity of pilgrim now is first of all to
embrace a certain type of mobility in the context of
globalization... To accept our status as pilgrims on our way back
to God is, as Augustine saw, to accept the provisional nature of
human government. Our status as pilgrims makes clear that our
primary identity is not that defined for us by national borders.
The pilgrim seeks to transgress all artificial borders that impede
the quest for communion with God and with other people. William T.
Cavanaugh. Migrant, Tourist, Pilgrim, Monk: Mobility and Identity
in a Global Age. Theological Studies 69 (2008): 351.
Slide 16
Humility, therefore, was the essential virtue of the pilgrim.
Pilgrimage was a kenotic movement, a stripping away of the external
sources of stability in ones life. The pilgrims way was the way of
the cross: If any want to become my followers, let them deny
themselves and take up their crosses and follow me. (Mk 8:34). The
journey required a disorientation from the trappings of ones
quotidian identity, in order to respond to a call from the source
of ones deeper identity. William T. Cavanaugh, 349.
Slide 17
I think the biggest lesson I will have learned from this all
will be something about arrogance, something about how subtle it
can be, something about how much I wish it wasnt so engrained into
my identity. Ive also learned a bit more about my privilege, the
weight of choice, and the need to set limits for myself (because no
one is about to tell me that I can not do anything that I want to
do). I dont think I ever would have understood these concepts had I
not studied abroadat least not the on the scale of cultural
arrogance. USP Student-Fall 2009
Slide 18
No account of pilgrimage could be complete without an analysis
of those on whom the pilgrim depends. Those who journey as pilgrims
are not self-sufficient, but must rely on those who abide along the
way, those who remain in place in order to offer hospitality to
those who journey. William T. Cavanaugh, 353.
Slide 19
Slide 20
Because the practice of hospitality is so significant in
establishing and reinforcing social relationships and moral bonds,
we notice its more subversive character only when socially
undervalued persons are welcomed. In contrast to a tame hospitality
that welcomes persons already well situated in a community,
hospitality that welcomes the least and recognizes their equal
value can be an act of resistance and defiance, a challenge to the
values and expectations of the larger community. Christine D. Pohl.
Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition.
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999),
62.
Slide 21
A resident is a temporary occupant, putting down few roots and
investing little, knowing little, and perhaps caring little for the
immediate locale beyond its ability to gratify... The inhabitant,
by contrast, dwells... Good inhabitance is an art requiring
detailed knowledge of a place, the capacity for observation, and a
sense of care and rootedness. -- David Orr Steven Bouma-Prediger
and Brian J. Walsh, 288.
Slide 22
Amidst the hypermobility of a globalized world, there is much
to recommend stability... And yet... There is nothing inherently
superior about stability over mobility, the local over the global.
The telos of stability and mobility makes all the difference.
William T. Cavanaugh, 355.
Slide 23
The Praxis of Home-making
Slide 24
Coaxing the Colonial Student to Jump Off the Veranda.
Slide 25
Like children of empire, colonial students have a sense of
entitlement, as if the world is theirs for discovery, if not for
the taking. New cultures are experienced in just the same way as
new commodities are coveted, purchased and owned. Anthony Ogden.
The View from the Veranda: Understanding Today's Colonial Student.
Frontiers: the Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 17
(Fall/Winter 2007-2008): 37-38.
Slide 26
Seldom identifies with host community. Place/location little
more than a home-base for further travel. Embrace status as short
term guest. Meaningful relationships with community not high on
list of priorities. Interested in socializing with their peers only
when interactions are on their own terms. Do not anticipate
encountering intercultural difficulty. Anthony Ogden, 38-39.
Slide 27
Student tourist issues: Enter into the study abroad experience
on their own terms. Expect the host native to welcome them in the
way they require.
Slide 28
Thus, dichotomies surfaced because students wanted to be
treated as part of the family only when they wanted to receive
certain attention, but at other times, when the mothers began to
treat them as their own children in a protective sense, they
resisted this familial relationship. Barbara C. Schmidt-Rinehart
and Susan M. Knight. The Homestay Component of Study Abroad: Three
Perspectives. Foreign Language Annals 37, no. 2 (Summer 2004):
259.
Slide 29
Student tourist issues: Enter into the study abroad experience
on their own terms. Expect the host native to welcome them in the
way they require. Struggle with the global issues emphasis of the
core classes.
Slide 30
Frankly, all this political stuff that we had to learn for this
class I really dont care about. To me, politics are something
corrupt, just as human beings are, and I dont involve myself into
understanding them too deeply at the risk of actually figuring out
what the stupid people who run the countries of this world really
think about. Art and Environment are kind of my forte, so for me
they teach me the most about what I want to know about the culture
and explain so much more to me than any of the other things really
could. Probably because the language used in art and environment is
something that I am used to, while the political stuff is all
gibberish and unintelligible to me. ASC Student-Fall 2009
Slide 31
I decided... to ask a few more general questions and... I
learned that... the man, was from Vietnam... Usually I would be
like, thats cool or whatever, tell me more about your family . But
NO! I suddenly asked him Do you experience a lot of prejudice being
Vietnamese and living in America after the Vietnamese war? Since
when do I ask questions like that of strangers?... I felt really
smart at that moment. Because I asked him this I got to learn
thathe was 12 at the time of that war, his brother was in the FBI
and had to fight on the Americans side... ASC Student-Fall
2009
Slide 32
Coaxing students off the veranda: Accessible to the wimpy
student. Discomfort essential to student learning.
Slide 33
One of the things I learned in Australia was that if I allowed
my American citizenship and loyalty to be greater than my heavenly
citizenship, my vision of the world would always be skewed, and
never accurate. It was a very uncomfortable discovery. ASC
Student-Spring 2008
Slide 34
Coaxing students off the veranda: Accessible to the wimpy
student. Discomfort essential to student learning. Study of
Indigenous cultures aimed at homemaking.
Slide 35
I would love to see some of our Anglo church leaders, when
asked to help a Native church, say, Yes, but on one condition: only
if you will in turn send your pastors and leaders to come and equip
us with the grace and gifting God has given you as Native people.
When that day comes, it will verify that we are seen by our Anglo
brethren as equal colaborers in the mission of the church. Richard
Twiss. One Church, Many Tribes : Following Jesus the Way God Made
You. (Revised. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2000)
Slide 36
Coaxing students off the veranda: Accessible to the wimpy
student. Discomfort essential to student learning. Study of
Indigenous cultures aimed at homemaking. Emphasis on practical
hospitality and action.
Slide 37
Coaxing Crusading Students Down Off Their (High) Horses.
Slide 38
Coaxing Crusading Students Down Off Their (High) Horses. Engage
in intellectual and relational aspects of the semester within the
context of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.
Slide 39
Coaxing Crusading Students Down Off Their (High) Horses. Engage
in intellectual and relational aspects of the semester within the
context of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. We are as
worried about being a hope-friendly and love-friendly program as we
are about being a faith-friendly program.
Slide 40
USP student tourist issues:
Slide 41
how the posture of Helper can objectify others as much as the
posture of Tourist.
Slide 42
But it is not said of Jesus that he reached down from on high
to pull us up from slavery, but that he became a slave with us.
Gods compassion is a compassion that reveals itself in servanthood.
Jesus became subject to the same powers and influences that
dominate us, and suffered our fears, uncertainties, and anxieties
with us. Jesus emptied himself. Henri Nouwen, Donald MacNeill and
Douglass Morrison. Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life.
Revised. (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 23.
Slide 43
To try to lift others up to our own privileged position is
honorable and perhaps even an expression of generosity, but to
attempt to put ourselves in a position of disrepute and to become
dependent and vulnerable seems to be a form of masochism that
defies the best of our aspirations. Henri Nouwen, et al, 28.
Slide 44
The world is more complicated than I thought. The program was
not what I was expecting I thought I would learn about how I could
help Ugandans, how to change the problems here, but instead I
learned a lot about myself. USP Student-Fall 2009
Slide 45
USP student tourist issues: how the posture of Helper can
objectify others as much as the posture of Tourist.
Slide 46
USP student tourist issues: how the posture of Helper can
objectify others as much as the posture of Tourist. easily
substituting knowledge & activism for Christian
compassion.
Slide 47
There appears to be a general assumption that it is good for
people to be exposed to the pain and suffering of the world. Henri
Nouwen, et al, 51.
Slide 48
There appears to be a general assumption that it is good for
people to be exposed to the pain and suffering of the world. Can we
reasonably expect compassion from the many isolated individuals who
are constantly being reminded in the privacy of their homes or cars
of the vast extent of human suffering? Henri Nouwen, et al,
51.
Slide 49
There appears to be a general assumption that it is good for
people to be exposed to the pain and suffering of the world. Can we
reasonably expect compassion from the many isolated individuals who
are constantly being reminded in the privacy of their homes or cars
of the vast extent of human suffering? We might ask, however,
whether mass communication directed to millions of people who
experience themselves as small, insignificant, powerless
individuals does not in fact do more harm than good. Henri Nouwen,
et al, 51.
Slide 50
I have tried, in writing this book, to make an attempt to
explore an approach to men of another faith and culture which is
reverent and attentive, and which consists essentially not of
assertion, not even of action, but of presence. John V. Taylor. The
Primal Vision: Christian Presence Amid African Religion. (SCM
Press: London, 1963), 135.
Slide 51
I have tried, in writing this book, to make an attempt to
explore an approach to men of another faith and culture which is
reverent and attentive, and which consists essentially not of
assertion, not even of action, but of presence. Africans believe
that presence is the debt they owe one another. John V. Taylor,
135.
Slide 52
I have tried, in writing this book, to make an attempt to
explore an approach to men of another faith and culture which is
reverent and attentive, and which consists essentially not of
assertion, not even of action, but of presence. Africans believe
that presence is the debt they owe one another. The Christian,
whoever he may be, who stands in that world in the name of Christ,
has nothing to offer unless he offers to be present, really and
totally present, really and totally in the present. John V. Taylor,
135, 136.
Slide 53
Our rural home stays had a significant impact on me. Watching
the people of Soroti interact with each other, everyone knew each
other. The community provided, as much as it could, for the needs
of its members based on intimate knowledge of one another. They
relied far more on each other than on any outside entity-the
Ugandan government, NGOs, aid agencies. USP Student-Fall 2009
Slide 54
Slide 55
Yes. Books read in Faith and Action, talks about community and
compassion (suffering with people) have all influenced me to
believe that as a Christian, I need to develop community and be
near to those suffering; we should all be grounded in a place to do
that well. USP Student-Fall 2009
Slide 56
Yes. Books read in Faith and Action, talks about community and
compassion (suffering with people) have all influenced me to
believe that as a Christian, I need to develop community and be
near to those suffering; we should all be grounded in a place to do
that well. A part of me is really excited about having a more
permanent home because weve learned about good things like
establishing community and caring for your neighbors. Before I
hadnt been excited about this because it seemed like a boring
lifethe life of my parents and my friends parentsbut now I am more
excited about this sort of adult life because I have some more
creative ideas about how to do it. USP Students-Fall 2009
Slide 57
Know that, as Melanie says, You can bring the magic with you...
You make the place around you magical. It's not Australia that
opened your eyes, it's the experience that asked you to step
outside of yourself, evaluate, and assess. This can be done in your
local, convenient, mundane context but we do not take nearly enough
time to look for the magic, to look for the lessons, to experience
the bigger picture. ASC Student-Fall 2008
Slide 58
I think about how i have ignored cultures here and i am
beginning to think about how i, personally, have marginalized
people back at home. The economics lecture really taught me ways in
which I can influence my local community as well as the immediate
importance to do so. I've learned the importance of being rooted in
a community vs. being a nomad/traveller who doesn't really have a
place to call home. ASC Students-Fall 2009
Slide 59
Bouma-Prediger, Steven, and Brian J. Walsh. Beyond
Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement. Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008.
Bouma-Prediger, Steven, and Brian J. Walsh. Education for
Homelessness or Homemaking? The Christian College in a Postmodern
Culture. Christian Scholars Review 32, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 281-95.
Cavanaugh, William T. Migrant, Tourist, Pilgrim, Monk: Mobility and
Identity in a Global Age. Theological Studies 69 (2008): 340-56.
Davidson, Robyn. No Fixed Address: Nomads and the Fate of the
Planet. Quarterly Essay 24 (2006): 1-53. Garber, Steven. The Fabric
of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior. Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. Iyer, Pico. The Global Soul:
Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2000.
Slide 60
Nouwen, Henri, Donald MacNeill and Douglass Morrison.
Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life. Revised. New York:
Doubleday, 2005. Nouwen, Henri. Can You Drink the Cup? Notre Dame,
IN : Ave Maria Press, 2006. Ogden, Anthony. The View from the
Veranda: Understanding Today's Colonial Student. Frontiers: the
Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 17 (Fall/Winter
2007-2008): 35-55. Pohl, Christine D. Making Room: Recovering
Hospitality as a Christian Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999. Schmidt-Rinehart, Barbara C.,
and Susan M. Knight. The Homestay Component of Study Abroad: Three
Perspectives. Foreign Language Annals 37, no. 2 (Summer 2004):
254-62. Taylor, John V. The Primal Vision: Christian Presence Amid
African Religion. SCM Press: London, 1963.
Slide 61
Twiss, Richard. One Church, Many Tribes : Following Jesus the
Way God Made You. Revised. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2000. Volf,
Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of
Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville, TN: Abingdon
Press, 1996. Wallis, Jim. Biblical Politics. Sojourners Magazine
(April 1974).