https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/2dc83f69cf367415d48763f44eab1e3e.pdf f0ba602e1d657d9376170e1201d73fdc PDF Text Text Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 32: 999-1007, 2008 8^ Rai itloHno Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC {< , ,9® ISSN: 1066-8926 print/1521.0413 online « > TayloraFrandsCroup DOI: 10.1080/10668920701831274 PUTTING COMMUNITY BACK IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE: THE CASE FOR A LOCALIZED AND PROBLEM-BASED CURRICULUM Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad] AC: 32:36 * November 2009 Chad Hanson Department of Sociology, Casper College, Casper, Wyoming, USA In this article the move toward international education in the community college is questioned. Who benefits when two-year schools are globalized'? An alternative to the current international approach is suggested. The case is made that community colleges serve the public interest when curricula are centered on solving problems unique to the communities that host and support them. I Started teaching sociology at two-year schools during the decade of the 1990s, a time when the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) was encouraging educators to adopt international curricula (Heelan, 2001). Their efforts were successful. Based on the results of a 2001 survey returned by 307 institutions, AACC researchers Blair, Phinney, and Phillipe reported that “82 percent of the colleges had international components in their courses, com­ pared with 40 percent in 1995” (2001,.p. 1). In addition, “The number of colleges with international business programs grew from 23 per­ cent in 1995 to 60 percent in 2000” (Blair, Phinney, & Phillipe, 2001, p. 1). The 1990s were watershed years in the move to globalize commu­ nity colleges, and the momentum continues into the new century. Speakers visit campuses to promote the idea, colleges host confer­ ences on the subject, and grant money allows instructors to add international components to their courses (Cissell & Levin, 2002). Address correspondence to Chad Hanson, Department of Sociology, Casper College, 125 College Drive, Casper, WY 82601. E-mail: chanson@caspercollege.edu 999 �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) At: 22:26 4 November 2006 1000 C. Hanson Faculty leaders and administrators both remain committed to fashioning two-year colleges as institutions with an international flavor (King, 1990; Emerson & Newsom, 1995; Romano, 2002; Farnsworth, 2006). In the beginning, I was drawn to the idea. Sociologists like to think of themselves as worldly characters, and as such we are susceptible to movements that sound even vaguely cosmopolitan. But as I began learning about the effort to globalize two-year schools, the initiative began to seem inconsistent with my approach to teaching. And as I developed a better understanding of the move­ ment toward an international curriculum, I discovered that the move is out of step with the larger goals of social science or higher education. In the social sciences, international perspectives and cross-cultural comparisons are commonplace. They are regular parts of our courses. Sociologists have long understood that students learn about them­ selves by comparing their beliefs and values to those of others. We call the strategy “seeing the strange in the familiar” (Macionis, 2007). We view American life through the lens of other cultures. For example, in courses on crime and delinquency, the difference between American and Japanese parenting techniques are often discussed. The Japanese approach to discipline includes a practice similar to “grounding,” although when Japanese kids are grounded they are not allowed to be inside the home with their parents or sib­ lings (Barkan, 2004). By contrast, American children conceive time spent indoors as an infringement on their personal freedom, raising questions about how time spent with family came to be construed as punishment. Comparisons such as these abound in social science, but in the push to globalize public colleges, the intent has not always been to use the perspectives of others to cast illuminating light on our own norms or conventions. In particular, supporters of the new curricu­ lum are reluctant to use the views of others to raise questions about the actions or behaviors of international businesses (King, 1990). As I listened to speakers, and later as I read authors extolling the virtues of globalization, it became clear that the intent is to “shape student thinking primarily with employers in mind” (Farnsworth, 2006, p. B17). In the new curricula, little attention is paid to unfair labor practices or political movements meant to strengthen environmental laws. Similarly, global education advocates are seldom interested in test questions or in-class activities centered on the practice of outsourcing U.S. jobs or the techniques corporations use to avoid paying taxes. �• ' Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) AC; 33:26 4 November 2008 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1001 The move to adopt an international curriculum is driven by freemarket values. The movement’s origins stem, not from social philoso­ phy or research on student development, but from needs that grew out of human resource departments in the private sector. Tow explains, “Corporate Personnel Directors say their companies need managers and employees with greater international knowledge and experience,’’ and in response to the demand for employees familiar with the language and customs of others, community colleges altered their curricula to curry favor with companies trading across national borders (2001, p. 30). The upshot of the effort has been a surge of funds from govern­ ment agencies and corporations, both attuned to the idea that col­ leges contribute to the economy by training students to use skills of value in the labor force (Stoessel, 2002). The move toward interna­ tional curricula has been lucrative for colleges (Levin, 2001). But in the rush to transform the community college into a global institution, staff and faculty have become inclined to adopt a naive, uncritical, almost cartoon-like appreciation for all things international. For example, in a 2001 article for the AACC’s Community College Jour­ nal, Farnsworth suggested that international education holds the potential to change students to the point that their experience matches that of Dorothy, the main character in The Wizard of Oz. He recounts the moment in the picture when Dorothy is lifted away from her community by a tornado: Dorothy is ripped away from the sparse black and white landscape of rural Kansas by the tornado. She spins through a whirlwind of confus­ ing sights and sounds, drops with a jarring thud somewhere comple­ tely different. With her dog Toto under her arm, she hesitantly opens the monochrome door of the old farmhouse, and with a slight gasp... walks into the glorious Technicolor world of Oz (Farnsworth, 2001, p. 10). Farnsworth goes on to connect the imagery of Oz to education, by suggesting that “Part of the learning process—of becoming an ‘edu­ cated’ person—now must involve opening the lives and minds of stu­ dents to the wonders of the new Oz’’ (2001, p. 11). Societies marked by free-trade agreements and inexpensive consumer goods are the new Oz to which the American Association of Community Colleges hopes to orient students. However, global education of the kind pro­ moted by the AACC lacks a sustained critique of world trade; and if the dominant approach to curricula lacks a critical component, the �1002 C. Hanson framework cannot facilitate critical thinking or critical literacy on the part of students (Shor, 1992). In the literature published by the AACC, societies and cultures increasingly shaped by the advance of global capital are conceived as Oz-like worlds of “glorious Technicolor,” but the image of magnificence and wonder stands in contrast to the picture of globalization painted by academics. University of Wisconsin sociologist Al Gedicks explains: Downloaded By; [Hanson, Chad] AC: 23:26 4 November 2006 From the Amazon Basin to the frozen stretches of northern Saskatchewan, to the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia and Central Africa—energy, mining, logging, hydroelectric, and other mega-projects have uprooted, dislocated, and destroyed native communities (Gedicks, 1993, p. 13). As public nonprofit institutions, colleges and universities are charged to encourage students’ social, moral, and cognitive development. Each form of development involves fostering students’ skills in such a way that they can compare and assess competing points of view. The goal is to create settings in which students and teachers struggle to build a thorough understanding of human endeavors. “The deep purpose of higher education is to steward this transformation so that students and faculty together continually move from naivete through skepti­ cism to commitment” (Parks Dolaz, Keen, Keen, & Dolaz Parks, 1996, p. 12). Public colleges have a duty to move students away from credulity and toward a capacity to make judgments with respect to the merit and morality of the cultural patterns unfolding around them. With respect to such patterns, any assessment of the business practices shaping life in modern societies makes it plain that interna­ tional corporations are not staffed with cheery munchkins or wellintentioned fairies. In the case of global giants such as Enron the offices are no longer staffed at all, as the organization imploded in a flurry of greed and malevolence. Further, of those organizations currently successful in the world market, an examination of their work reveals a wide-spread pattern of disregard for social problems that arise in the locales where they do business (Stiglitz, 2002). In the parlance of international economics, persistent global poverty, geographic dislocation, and environmental degradation are described as “externalities.” They are considered unintended consequences of trade, not central to the process of profit-making. The new world of global commerce may be wrought in Techni­ color, it may even be glorious in some ways and for certain entities. But the faculty of public colleges have an obligation to evaluate �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) AC: 22:2$ 4 November 2008 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1003 international trade with a critical eye, and from a range of different perspectives. Unfortunately, international curricula fell into place before two-year college faculty debated their purposes. We have yet to conduct a close examination of the assumptions that lie at the foundation of the new approach to community college educa­ tion. In the absence of deliberations on the intent or consequences of the new approach, staff and faculty have come to believe that two-year schools exist to advance international business. With the wonders of inexpensive foreign-made goods dangled before us so as to produce an almost trance-like acceptance of the status quo, we find ourselves caught in the glow of international commerce, while matters of local concern smolder in our midst. For example, in the community college curriculum, we give scant attention to the battles waged by nonprofit organizations struggling to address the social and ecological problems that burgeon in the wake of eco­ nomic development (Schuyler, 1999). Consequently, in the spring of 2003 I presented a group of 35 students with a summary of a plan for drilling 50,000 new natural gas wells in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, 30 miles north of the Casper College campus (Beers, 2000; Lavelle, 2001). Students were dumbfounded. Certain of them had spent time overseas in nations such as Germany, Sweden, and Guam as members of the military or as part of high school or college student exchange pro­ grams. On the whole, the group was well-read and well-traveled, but they were unaware of the effort to turn a portion of Wyoming’s wide open spaces into an industrial landscape at the hands of global companies. Should natural gas development go ahead as planned, the commercial activity will benefit multinational corporations based throughout the U.S., Europe, and Canada. At the same time, the drilling rigs will degrade American public land and trample the geographic history and cultural values of long-time Wyoming residents (Duffy, 2005). My students were initially outraged by the prospect of their home state’s landscape becoming altered beyond recognition, and their pas­ sionate response to the threat posed by the new development fueled a lengthy in-class discussion about natural resources, consumer habits, and the stewardship of public land. Ideally, discussions such as these take place at meetings of the city council, the county commissioner, the state legislature, and in federal offices. As an educator, I can only hope the perceptions and sentiments formed in the context of college courses reach beyond the classroom, off the campus, and into our communities. I am confident, in the case of this example, that discus­ sions continue in other quarters. However, if I would have chosen a �Downloaded By; [Hanson, Chad] At: 22:26 4 November 2006 1004 C. Hanson topic far removed from local concerns, I could rest assured the dialo­ gue would have died as students stepped into the hallway after class. For instance, I could have planned an activity focused on an inter­ national problem such as deforestation in South America, but to do so would have kept students from the realization that global pro­ cesses have present and immediate implications. Without a strong focus on local issues and social problems, international education places a mask over forces and events that impact communities. More­ over, when conducted in uncritical terms meant to glorify students’ roles as consumers and employees, international education becomes apolitical, blinding students to their responsibilities as citizens. As a case in point, in the spring of 2001 1 asked a group of students in northern Wisconsin two questions with respect to the public ser­ vants representing them in our democracy. First, I asked them to write the names of all the Green Bay Packer’s players they knew or could remember. The lists were long. So lengthy, I was forced to give them more time than I planned. Roughly two-tliirds of the students finished the roster. Those students then began writing the names of retired players or athletes placed on injured-reserve. After they finished, I asked them to write the names of the officials that represent them at the city, county, state, and federal levels. Two-thirds of the students were familiar with the governor, roughly one half knew the city’s mayor, a handful of students cited one of the two senators represent­ ing them in Washington, but the majority either sat silent or laughed out loud in the manner of people asked to perform a hopeless task. My students are distracted from their duties as citizens in a self­ governed society. They are not alone, however. Whether we are pre­ occupied with sports, work, television or consumerism, the majority of us abdicate our role, our right, and our responsibility to play an active part in American public life (Putnam, 2000). Two-year colleges have the potential to serve as a hedge against the apathy that per­ vades our social and cultural networks. An engaged college classroom holds the promise of inspiring and empowering students to act upon the problems present in their localities. However, if the curriculum is centered on geographically distant themes, disconnected from com­ munities, then college courses simply serve as additional distractions. Higher education curricula must include international perspec­ tives—that much is understood—but the question is “Global edu­ cation for what purpose?” Currently, the international curriculum is aimed at equipping students with skills related to opening new labor markets (Tow, 2001; Farnsworth, 2006). The result of their work could well be a loss of jobs or a lower quality of life for neighbors and fellow citizens. By contrast, a genuine higher �Downloaded By: [Hanson, Chad) AC: 32:2fi 4 November 2008 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1005 education provides students with the ability to conceive global commerce in terms of its multiple and wide-ranging effects: social, economic, and environmental. A significant body of educational theory and research dating back to the work of John Dewey (1916) points toward the necessity of taking students from the local and particular, to the broad and general. Thus, from the standpoint of the two-year curriculum, the starting point is here at home, within our families, churches, schools, and neighbor­ hoods. For both social and educational purposes, our in-class activities must be drawn from our vicinities; and if public colleges are going to play a role in the effort to reconnect education to communities, it is going to mean “establishing or re-establishing relationships with com­ munity groups—and not just businesses” (Gamson, 1997, p. 13). Of course, courses and programs designed to spotlight local issues must eventually become regional if not global in scope. Responsible educators “pay careful attention to the patterns that connect the local and the regional with the global” (Orr, 1994, p. 160). But the intent is to create an environment where students develop the habit of analyz­ ing local conditions from the standpoint of how they are influenced by international forces. After all, if community college students are not willing and equipped to address the social and economic pro­ blems in their own communities, then who will address them? The citizens of other nations? Foreign governments? Neither scenario seems likely or desirable. In the preface to the 1983 Oz, Baum suggests that his story “aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out” (Baum, 1983, p. xvi). Similarly, the effort to internationalize the community college has been an attempt to sell the joys and wonders of globaliza­ tion, while drawing attention away from the “wars, pollution, starva­ tion, species extinctions, and genocides” associated with the new international order (Perkins, 2004, p. 57). It was an easy sell. The spectacle of otherness is seductive for both students and faculty, but the one-sided focus on the benign aspects of globalization puts us in the undesirable position of advocating, as opposed to evaluating international business or global politics. The literary critic Gore Vidal explains, “In sharp contrast to gray flat Kansas, Oz seems to blaze with color. Yet the Emerald City is a bit of a fraud. Everyone is obliged to wear green glasses in order to make the city appear emerald green” (1983, p. 258). In effect, by propagating uncritical probusiness international curricula, we are asking students to wear green glasses. Conversely, if colleges upheld their responsibility, the curriculum would function as a cold, clear �1006 C. Hanson microscope—classrooms serving as forums where global social and economic patterns could be assessed from the standpoint of human and ecological interests. In the light of clear and hard analysis, places like Kansas will seem less monochrome and more closely connected to global forces than students or faculty often imagine. Furthermore, if we put our communities back at the center of our efforts, students will likely come to see that “There is no place like home,” and that is a point upon which Dorothy and I agree. Downloaded By: [Hanson, ChadJ AC: 22:26 4 November 2006 REFERENCES Barkan, S. (2004). Criminology: A sociological understanding. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Baum, L. F. (1983). Preface. In M. P. Hearn (Ed.), The wizard of Oz: The critical heri­ tage series (pp. ix-xvi). New York: Shocken Books. Beers, C. (2000). It’s a gas. Wyoming Wildlife, 64(6), 22-29. Blair, D., Phinney, L., & Phillipe, K. (2001). International programs at community colleges. AACC research brief Washington, DC: American Association of Com­ munity Colleges. Cissell, A. & Levin, D. (2002). Federal funding for community college international education programs and activities. In R. Romano (Ed.), Internationalizing the community college (pp. 145-158). Washington, DC: The Community College Press. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: MacMillan. Dully, R. (2005). Political mobilization, venue change, and coal-bed methane conflict. Natural Resources Journal, 45(2), 409-440. Emerson, M. & Newsom, R. (1995). Further defining the role of the community college: A model taxonomy for international education programs. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 79(10), 501-516. Farnsworth, K. (2001). The values of a global perspective. Community College Journal, 8-14. Farnsworth, K. (2006). The four lessons that community colleges can learn from for-profit institutions. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 55(10), B17-B18. Gamson, Z. (1997). Higher education and rebuilding civic life. Change, 29(i), 10-13. Gedicks, A. (1993). The new resource wars: Native and environmental struggles against multinational corporations. Boston: South End Press. Heelan, C. (2001). Working toward a global view. Community College Journal, 77(4), 4. King, M. (1990). The community college’s international vision. AACJC Journal, 67(4), 37^0. Lavelle, M. (2001, March 12). High stakes on the prairie. U.S. News and World Report, 130, 52-54. Levin, J. (2001). Globalizing the community college: Strategies for change in the 21st century. New York: Palgrave. �Downloaded By; {Hanson, Chad] At: 22:26 4 November 2006 Putting Community Back in the Community College 1007 Macionis, J. (2007). Sociology. 11th ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Orr, D. (1994). Earth in mind: On education, environment, and the human prospect. Washington, DC: Island Press. Parks Dolaz, L., Keen, C., Keen, J., & Dolaz Parks, S. (1996). Lives of commitment: Higher education in the life of the new commons. Change, 25(3), 11-15. Perkins, J. (2004). Confessions of an economic hit man. San Francisco: BerretKoehler. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Romano, R. (Ed.) (2002). Internationalizing the community college. Washington, DC: The Community College Press. Schuyler, G. (1999). A historical and contemporary view of the community college curriculum. In G. Schuyler (Ed.), Trends in community college curriculum. New directions for community colleges. No. 108 (pp. 11-15). San Francisco; Jossey-Bass. Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical leaching for social change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stiglitz, J. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. New York: W. W. Norton. Stoessel, E. (2002). Curriculum development: Using federal grants to strengthen business programs and activities. In R. Romano (Ed.), Internationalizing the community college (pp. 99-110). Washington, DC: The Community College Press. Tow, K. (2001). The global student. Community College Journal, 7I{4), 30-31. Vidal, G. (1983). On rereading the Oz books. In M. P. Hearn (Ed.), The wizard of Oz: The critical heritage Series (pp. 256-270). New York: Shocken Books. � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Putting Community Back in the Community College: The Case for a Localized and Problem-Based Curriculum Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div id="dublin-core-rights" class="element"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text five columns omega"> <div class="element-text"><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2008-11 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chad Hanson Language A language of the resource ENG Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_11 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>Community College Journal of Research and Practice</em> is published by Taylor &amp; Francis Group, LLC