Menu

yyang25

About yyang25

Posts by :

Global Citizens Do Community Service

/ /

Yuchen Yang

community-service-hours

Some comments

People talk about global citizenship more and more these days, as it has become a core value for elite schools. Global citizenship refers to a spirit of deep understanding of social and economic disparity, cultural diversity of society,  and the pursuit for social justice (1). As the definition mentions “disparity” and “social justice”, I began to think about community service requirements for the students at a Taiwanese elite school that I investigated. This activity seems to aim to promote the elite students to achieve social and economic justice. So, it is worthy to dig into the topic: To what extent does community service shape students’ awareness of global citizenship in that school? 

The elite school in Taiwan provides a curriculum for students from kindergarten to secondary education. There are many interviews of students at the school talking about their experiences and feelings of elite schooling. For community services, Most of the students talked about their experiences of doing local ones, and they gave sufficient comments on the services. An alumni, Ryan, commented that “the cool thing is we actually have this connection with this aboriginal village… we really try our best to um to be involved with to be involved within our own community at least.” According to the description, the aboriginal village has a significant social disparity compared to the students’ social status. So the connection between the two social groups helps Ryan to “engage” in the contribution of English education, which aims to broaden the horizons of the aboriginal village. Another student, Grace, stated that “(community service) makes me appreciate what I have a lot more. And it helps me see the different social classes.” Also, she pointed out that “without it, we would take everything for granted because we’re really lucky kids and our families provide us with everything.” Community service did help Grace to develop a clear recognition of social and economic inequity and this can contribute to the education of global citizenship. The only issue here is, all of the community services mentioned were done in Taiwan for local communities. It kind of fits in  the requirements for “global” citizenship, but lacks “global” engagement. Is it possible for students from this school to incorporate this factor from doing community service abroad?

It is actually doable. Let’s take a look at an interview between Maggie and Ainsley.  Ainsley went to Cambodia for a volunteering program, but it was not offered by this elite school. When talking about her feelings about this experience, she felt that “it gives you a chance to um help other people in need but also gives the students a chance to experience the actual real world…there can be a lot of surprises and things.” Even though she went to a different country, the takeaways from this experience were similar to the previous interviewees as she learned to “help other people in need” and “experience the actual real world”. Referring to the definition of global citizenship, though the previous students didn’t do community services in other countries, their gains reach the expectations in this definition of global citizenship to some degree, since “cultural diversity” can also be achieved in different local communities as the students found significant differences between their culture and the local culture they tried to engage in. 

Unfortunately, not all of the students have significant positive feedback on community service. When Simon was asked about his ideas on community service, he replied that “I think it’s important if you really care about others and you’re really willing to volunteer but I don’t think it’s good if you don’t want to be doing it.” He believes that community service’s influence depends on people’s attitude. The influence won’t be good if the participants have no interest in it, which will not have a positive effect on the building of global citizenship’s mindedness. Another student, Eno directly said that “Community service… Um I do, but now I don’t. Because I was trying to get the service hours for graduation, but now I finished those so I no longer do it.” His sole purpose of doing community service was just for graduation requirements and he stopped doing it after finishing the curriculum expectation. It is hard to tell whether he had a positive comment on the activity, but he did it anyway just for graduation. Well, it doesn’t seem that he was very into it. So, when community service becomes a forced requirement for all the students at the school, people will judge the activity differently. Some people don’t have an obvious positive feeling about it. They just think it’s a normal course requirement that can either be favored or disliked by different people. So, yeah, its further influence on global citizenship can be limited.

Well, generally, the community service practiced at this Taiwanese elite school helped students shape their awareness of global citizenship via the cultivation of embracing cultural diversity and understanding of social and economic injustice. This achievement can be gained through both domestic and international service programs. It seems that, according to different interviews, some students didn’t show a strong interest in community service and it didn’t eventually influence their cultivation of global citizenship, to some degree I mean. It requires deeper interviews to see if these students’ detailed opinions on the activity can help them grow global mindedness or not.

(1) P4, Rizvi__Teaching_Global_Interconnectivity_v.1,

Y(E)ee!-Exclusive Elite Education

/ /

meme elite

Content

For a long period of time, people always believed that elite education was mysterious and noble. So people would wonder, to what extent is elite education exclusive from other educational systems. This question has been researched by educational workers, but there are significant controversies among different opinions and a general conclusion is not easy to be generated eventually. It seems that the word “elite” is highly exclusive since people regard it as a special social class, but it is not always the case because of the shifts among different social classes.

Well, the term “elite education” certainly corresponds with the term elite, so it’s important to define it! For most sociologists, elites will be defined as a group that “has power over others” or “uses forces to affect the actions of others”. The role of the groups can be represented by the purposes of elite education as well, which aims to  provide education for the upper class and prepare for political and economical positions. Elite education only focuses on a certain class or specific people who are able to become leaders in administration, economy and culture aspects within the society and the content within the curriculum is training the target students to become the information analysts and decision makers. However, elite education also gives some opportunities for the other social class members to participate in modern society. For example, as France established its unique elite schooling system after the French Revolution, though some of them only target the upper class and aristocracies, a large portion of the system pays more attention to the cultivation of “technical intelligentsia”. This shows that considering the basic definition and purpose of elite and elite education, even though the relationship between the specific social class and its schooling is point to point. Not all elite education is exclusive since it has diversity of focus on the field of research and curriculum. 

The enrolling system of elite education is interesting as well. The United States and Britain have their own standardized admission exams such as SAT and IGCSE. The results from these exams can partially determine the competitiveness of a student. Some other large countries, such as Russia and China, also have their nation-based standardized exams that determine the students’ enrollment in higher education. With the development of the economy and the consolidation of standardized selection processes, The participation of higher education has increased up to around 10% in countries like China and Japan. However, higher education like universities are not all elite ones. The admission of these schools are particular and are designed by different institutions. Although nowadays the schools are no longer focusing on assimilating students and embracing the diversity of enrollment, the secondary school’s quality, the investment and resources of parents are still important factors to consider. In France and China, although familial and schooling backgrounds are not the primary things to consider, the similar exclusiveness of admission can be represented in different areas based on the examination results throughout the country. It seems that even though certain norms aim to undermine the exclusiveness that has been implemented in the admission process, the disparity of students’ social background and access to educational resources still keeps the privilege of enrollment.

The transfer among different social classes nowadays is another factor to consider when considering the exclusiveness of elite education. In the introduction of Friedman, the example of British class structure and flow has been explained. The chart that shows the flexibility among social class reveals that although there is certain social mobility within the middle class, the change of social class for the next generation in the top 10% of elite class and the lowest percentage of the working class population rarely takes place. The care and focus from family, the cultural influence and the participation of students, especially for the working class, inevitably create obstacles for them to access the elite schools. However, as experts like Brown and Aston stated, the term “knowledge capitalism” is shaping the social class in developed countries differently. As China and India are fast-growing countries, their educational systems are developing their own elite education that can compete with the traditional elite schools in the west. Also, due to the impact of massive immigrants from these countries in the US or Canada, the children of the middle class or expertized immigrants have outstanding performance in their school. With the financial support from their family, it is possible for them to enter the university and it leads to a competition between the higher middle class students and the traditional elite families while entering the elite schools. So instead of remaining a rigid enrollment system serving traditional elite families, the new immigrants can also enter the system which makes it less exclusive to some degree.

Although the elite schools are highly connected to the elite families to some extent, the admission system varies from nation to nation. Even though the inequity and inequality still exist among different social classes and regions, the elite education system is not as exclusive as people think because of the different focus in distinctive elite schools, establishment of standardized exams, and the more frequent social class changes and immigration. These factors will contribute to the undermining of exclusiveness in elite schools. 

So, in short, even though our destiny can determine where we are born, it doesn’t shut all the doors for us to access the upper classes. The crucial thing is, we need to work hard, play hard, make friends, and try our best to get in touch with the elites, and become one of them if possible!