Today, traveling the world and learning about education elsewhere on the planet is as easy as a mouse click on the computer. It wasn’t always that way, but that has not kept Kappa Delta Pi and its members from exploring education from an international perspective.
KDP has examined through its publications a variety of international educational issues over the years. As a result, the Society’s influence on and communication with education professionals around the world has helped advance education and teaching.
The articles often reflect current events shaping the world in which they were written—particularly the advent of World War II, the Cold War, and even American looks inward during the domestically challenging times of the 1960s and 1970s. The articles also reflect a variety of writers, many of them noteworthy in their time, for specific areas of research and expertise.
Here’s a sampling, through the years, of what KDP publications have put before their readers as part of an international focus.
Teaching Abroad
By the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, the idea of teaching abroad was more popular than ever for American-trained teachers. KDP sought to help its members interested in such explorations via a partnership with the Commission on International Education.
In 1970, KDP promoted the commission, a not-for-profit organization providing educational services for American schools overseas, and for American teachers who sought to serve overseas. The program was coordinated via the U.S. State Department and St. John’s University.
“The International Schools Service seeks to register men and women interested in working abroad in education who meet basic professional standards of training and experience,” the Record reported in April 1970 (Kappa Delta Pi Record 1970, 130).
The standards for teachers included a bachelor’s degree, at least two years of experience teaching in an accredited U.S. school, and “motivation and suitability for overseas service are important as well” (130).
“An important consideration peculiar to overseas living is the size of a person’s family,” KDP advised its members. “Most overseas salaries would not support many dependents, and living quarters suitable for a large family are not always available” (130).
A Trip to China
In 1997, the Record took an in-depth look at the possibility of beginning a new chapter at Shandong Teachers University, School of International Exchange in China. As part of that, KDP members traveled to the Shandong Province and witnessed Chinese education up close.
Dr. Bernard F. Bull, professor of education at Carson-Newman College of Tennessee and KDP chapter counselor, offered a fine narrative of everyday school life in this part of China. He noted teachers had classrooms jam-packed full with as many as 30 to 45 students, and that all students sat in strict rows of desks, including kindergarten children. Kindergarten, however, included children as young as three years of age.
The teachers’ role varied greatly from what American educators would know. Teachers not only provided their students with three meals each day, but they also supervised a mandatory daily rest period from noon to 2 p.m. (where students would sleep on school-provided cots).
“The school I visited is said to be the best in the (Shandong) Province,” Bull reported. “The school was clean and well equipped. Students’ artwork and academic achievements were displayed in a trophy room. While the children, all wearing yellow caps as they left school, walked home or caught a city bus, most faculty members lived in apartments beside the school. For them, teaching is hard work for relatively low pay” (KDP Record 1970, 70).
Learning among most students was by “rote memory,” Dr. Bull explained, including for secondary students in the middle school years. Chinese students, however, were learning English as part of their regular studies.
The Shandong Teachers University (STU) trained Chinese teachers for all levels of instruction, and was operated in part by the Communist Party Secretary of the Province who headed the educational system.
“For the privilege of attending STU, (teaching candidate) students must forfeit marriage until age 25 for men and age 23 for women,” Bull wrote. “This is a common practice among Chinese universities, where there is little obvious dating and practically no display of public affection. Instead, the students pursue excellence in academics” (71).
Education in Post-War Europe
Much focus was paid to rebuilding educational systems in Europe (and Japan) following World War II, and The Educational Forum took a specific look at efforts in war-torn France in 1950.
Monsieur George Emile Roger, Inspector General of Public Instruction for France and the Colonies of the French Ministry of Education, updated KDP members on “Educational reforms in France since the war” via his November 1949 address to U.S. audiences at Brooklyn College, the University of Maryland, New York University, and Ohio University.
Roger provided a brief overview of France’s educational system prior to World War II, one which he described as out of touch with modern society, and had failed to keep pace with advances in technology and science.
While not overly optimistic that the French government would ultimately approve “new education” ideas for the nation, Roger said, “I think that the experiment is well worth trying” and would help “explode the old notion according to which children were supposed to adjust themselves to a rigid system of education” (The Educational Forum 1950, 442).
“Instead, every reasonable educationalist agrees that each pupil represents a personality to be studied, whose gifts are to be discovered and who, as a result, can be oriented at school and in work in directions which provide a harmonious and satisfying relationship with life,” Roger stated (442).
Roger said the overriding hope was that French students would become citizens who were “broader-minded, better informed and happier citizens, not only of France, but of our new, freer world. However, all these welcomed changes should not make us forget that our traditional education, with its glorious past is responsible for the present position of France in the world. Whatever its defects and failings, it was, owing to (the educational system), that during the tragic hours of defeat and German occupation that the French people knew how to resist victoriously to lying propaganda” (442).
SOURCES:
Kappa Delta Pi Record. 1970. (page 130)
Kappa Delta Pi Record. 1970, (Winter, page 70)
Kappa Delta Pi Record. 1977. (China)
Roger, G. E. 1950. The Educational Forum (May, page 442) |
