The tipping point was when a 10th grader asked me who movie star Mel Gibson is and whether he actually is, as the “Cool News” section of her textbook stated, “the most beautiful man in the world.”
No joke. The headline actually read: “Mel Gibson: The Most Beautiful Man in the World.” The rest of the article would be best described as an ode to Gibson in the key of Gag Me.
Finding a bootleg copy of a Gibson blockbuster like Mad Max or The Passion of Christ in Indonesia is easy; finding relevant teaching material is another story - a story that, for me, started with a Fulbright ETA assignment in a remote district of Sumatra, called Sekayu, and - in just six months - has evolved into a national Radio for Education (or Radio Ed) initiative in classrooms throughout the archipelago.
As a journalism major, my background was in radio—I knew nothing about being a high school English teacher. But luckily radio turned out to be the perfect teaching tool in this rural, information-starved area.
Thanks to Mel Gibson, and other random celebrities like him, I decided to ditch the text books and search for more relevant teaching material. This turned out to be a lot more difficult to find than it sounds—until I stopped looking and started listening.
I started using segments from a bi-lingual current affairs radio program called Asia Calling to substitute the textbook’s “cool news” with real news and information. To my surprise, real news turned into real debate and discussion. The more I used Asia Calling, the more critical thinking, analysis and questioning (in other words learning) actually took place in my classroom. And all I had to do was turn on the radio, prepare a few questions and define some vocabulary. Asia Calling’s engaging content and the kids’ curiosity take care of the rest. Keep reading →
“Learning, reading, recitation, the ancient books are all corrupt…” (Dharwadker, 2003) This saying, attributed to the 15th century Indian poet-saint named Kabir, would seem to throw a cloud over all academic ventures, not least of the entire research trip I am currently engaged in. But rather than spending all of my time in India in ancient archives, I am trying to discover how modern members of the Kabir Panth (a sect in North India devoted to the saint) view the central figure in their tradition. People have been telling stories and writing books about Kabir since before he died. However, I argue that when someone says or writes “Kabir said…” or “Kabir did…” it is not just a narration of a story or moral, but it is intimately intertwined with relationships of class and power. I am trying to discover how modern devotees of Kabir view him, what sort of ‘Kabir’ they construct, and for what purposes. I intend to find out how the stamp of Kabir’s name and authority is applied today by members of his following. Keep reading →
It’s New Year’s Eve in Cagayan de Oro, a city of 500,000 people on one of largest of the Philippine archipelago’s 7,107 islands. The pops and bangs of firecrackers join the usual jeepney honks and tricycle engine drones to make for a noisy night. The ubiquitous gun-toting security guard sits outside my hotel smoking a cigarette, as if he wasn’t already ingesting enough toxic chemicals from the steady barrage of vehicles careening down the streets. The predominantly Catholic Filipinos enthusiastically embrace Christmas, and the hotel lobby is a testament to that holiday spirit. A Christmas tree and two wreaths bring light, and red and green paper stars the sizes of stop signs add color to the otherwise nondescript setting.
After a meal at Jollibee, the Filipino archrival of McDonalds, that included the common rage-inducing occurrence of someone cutting in front of me in line, which was quickly neutralized by the very friendly, although thankfully not bubbly, demeanor of the young woman taking my order, I walked around the city looking for pirated DVDs, CDs, video games, and software. I’m researching intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement in the country, so when I’m traveling outside of my base Manila, I try to take some time to get a feel for the level of pirated and counterfeit goods. Keep reading →
by UW-Madison student Catherine Skroch
Read more about Catherine’s Adventures in Africa.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I am majoring in Political Science, International Studies, and an individual major in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution. I came to Senegal knowing that I wanted to research the little-known conflict in the southern region of Casamance. Frankly, I knew almost nothing about it either, except that it has been going on for a long time and that it has mostly been ignored by the international community. So I started doing my homework.
Most violent conflicts are born out of complex webs of fears and rivalries, spirals of retribution, and civic frustration. It is often difficult to determine who fired the first shot, and normative judgements like ¨who’s right and who’s wrong?¨ are near to impossible. When it comes to civil war like this one, it is hard to tell the difference between civilian and soldier. The Casamance Conflict is no different. Everyone has been affected. Everyone’s got scars.
The Casmance Conflict is a small-scale civil war that has been waged between the Senegalese government and the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance since 1984. The question was originally over the independence of the Casamance region, which is separated from greater Senegal by the Gambia and inhabited mostly by the Jola people. However, as conflicts seem to do, the reason behind the violence began to shift as the Casamancaises began to feel marginalized by the Senegalese government, whom they felt was cutting them off economically and socially as a form of punishment for the separatist movement. Keep reading →
“I don’t feel I’ve ever had a career,” says Constance Konold without apology as she sips Earl Grey tea in a fashionable café on Paris’ Left Bank where the maitre d’ knows her by name. No, she explains, hers has been more of a non-career just doing what she wanted to in life, a life that, so far, has taken this businesswoman, executive coach, consultant and self-described adventurer around the world to posts with top international companies. What’s made it possible, Konold tells you, is UW-Madison. It gave her the language skills, cosmopolitan attitude, and job contacts necessary to succeed.
Drawn to UW-Madison by Hoofers and the French House, Konold majored in French. It was a language she had begun studying, along with Latin, at St. Mary’s Academy in South Bend, Indiana, the town she moved to from the New York area when she was ten. She remembers having classes with some of UW-Madison’s “greats,” acclaimed French professors Germaine Bree, and Helen Cassidy. In the History department, her favorite was French historian Harvey Goldberg. “He was spellbinding and unorthodox, people hung from the rafters,” Konold says, recalling how hundreds of students would cram into Goldberg’s lecture hall. Konold has kept her notes from her course with Goldberg. “He gave us such insight,” she says, keys to understanding the world. Keep reading →
As a young man, George McReddie didn’t plan to travel or have a career in international finance. He had no idea he would become Senior Managing Director at Bear, Stearns & Co., a leading global investment banking, securities trading, and brokerage firm based in New York. Back in the 1960s, he was just your average American teenager growing up on Long Island, New York.
Then one day, when McReddie was a sophomore in high school, his father, who was born in Argentina, announced to the family he was moving them to Buenos Aires. A few months later, McReddie (BA, Political Science/Ibero-American Studies,’76) was living in that capital city, enrolled at the American Community High School. “It was quite an upheaval,” he says. He spoke very little Spanish at the time.
Fate stepped in again when it was time for McReddie to go to college. His high school principal in Buenos Aires, Thomas Kalish, had earned his B.B.A., M.S. and Ph.D. (Educational Administration) at UW-Madison. Kalish encouraged McReddie, who was becoming interested in both political science and Latin-American studies, to go to Madison. “It was a campus that was engaged in world affairs and that appealed to me,” McReddie says. Keep reading →
