{"id":5272,"date":"2018-10-11T11:16:12","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/?p=5272"},"modified":"2018-10-11T11:16:12","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T15:16:12","slug":"thinking-outside-my-box-cultural-relativism-in-the-research-of-elite-schooling-in-jordan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/2018\/10\/11\/thinking-outside-my-box-cultural-relativism-in-the-research-of-elite-schooling-in-jordan\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking Outside my Box: Cultural Relativism in the Research of Elite Schooling in Jordan"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not cosmopolitan. \u00a0I may not be considered well traveled. I, physically, have stepped on ground not within the jurisdiction of the United States of America for what amounts cumulatively to less than a week of my life. \u00a0I don\u2019t have a passport. I do have a card that gets me into Canada the one time a year I cross country ski race for Colby College in Quebec. The last two Thanksgiving weeks, when these races occur, are the only time I\u2019ve ever left the country I am a citizen in. \u00a0I know the land of coca-cola and baseball, the SAT test and Friday night football games. *For this project, I am studying elite schooling in Jordan, a country in the Middle East. There appears to be a discrepancy. <\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to write this post as someone appearing downtrodden and unfortunate. \u00a0I am writing this for a class at an elite college in the US which I have the privilege to attend. \u00a0This concept, social privilege, the advantages I have been granted by no other virtue than my identity within a society, is something I learned to identify in myself while attending that elite college. \u00a0My life experience may not have been cosmopolitan, but it was certainly put me in a place where I could imagine myself at an elite institution of higher learning. I have a caring mother and father. I grew up in a safe neighborhood in a small and safe community in Wisconsin. \u00a0That community was 95% white. I am white. I went to a public high school of three-hundred students that was not elite, but was also a safe environment to learn in. I benefited from a gifted and talented program at the school. I took AP classes. I need not look no further than the fact that the little international experience I have has come on behalf of the elite institution I attend to remind me that the project I\u2019m working on is an interesting area of study\u2013how elite schools from around the world form notions of global citizenship. \u00a0Here, cosmopolitanism and elite schooling aren\u2019t discrepant forces, but instead are the opposite; correlated.<\/span><\/p>\n

In embarking on this research project then, the tension between my relatively sheltered experience and the overwhelming international scope of the study my group is working on has created somewhat of a sublime experience. \u00a0It has meant having to see not only the object of study within the context of the forces of globalisation, but also myself as a researcher. I\u2019ve had to expand my own global imaginations, or, at least, recognize how the psychic distance between places in the world has shrunk even when geographic distance has remained the same. \u00a0My own education in global interconnectivity has been accelerated in two dimensions via this research. In one dimension, my focus as a researcher on questions of the correlation of global citizenship to elite schooling is an analysis of global interconnectivity. In another, I myself as a researcher am affected by the forces I am studying and must recognize and reconcile this as my global imagination is broadened. <\/span><\/p>\n

My group\u2019s research efforts are focused on Olive Grove Academy in Jordan, which is an interesting school in that its educational philosophies are based on the founder of the school\u2019s experience at a New England boarding school. \u00a0A Westernized educational experience in the Middle East. With the educational model of the school escaping the larger context of the country of Jordan it resides in, the school represents a site where cross cultural exchanges are part of the curriculum. Our research question focuses on how students navigate the milieu of cultural exchange in their own education outcomes and imagined futures. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the qualitative analysis of this question, I\u2019ve found the theoretical concept of cultural relativism to become a praxis; a key to my cross cultural study. \u00a0The concept of relativism, associated with the work of the cultural anthropologist Franz Boas, asserts that cultural practice must be taken in the context of that culture. \u00a0It is important in that it avoids ethnocentrism\u2013the practice of drawing parallel of one cultural practice in another culture to one\u2019s own culture. Relativism has important to my approach as researcher in that it allows me to navigate the constant interaction of cultures seen in the application of Western principles of education to a school in Jordan.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also important in that my place as a researcher in this project is inherently cross-cultural. In analysis, I\u2019ve had to navigate the seemingly normative nature of interviews that reveal an education that is familiar to me because it is inspired by a culture I have spent all but a week of my life in. \u00a0For example, in my initial reading of the data, I noticed that most of the student\u2019s interviewed were involved in some sort of Advanced Placement (AP) classes. This is nothing remarkable in the United States. The AP system originated in the United States. I took AP classes in my secondary education. Relative to my own experiences in the context of my upbringing in the US, AP classes are not unusual to find in a school. \u00a0The AP system did not originate in Jordan though. Most students in the public school system of Jordan don\u2019t take AP classes. Here, in the curriculum of a school situated far away geographically from the US there is a unique feature of US education that appears to be an essential part of the curriculum at Olive Grove. Relative to its cultural context in Jordan, this is a phenomena worth examining.<\/span><\/p>\n

This example is representative of the constant meta-analysis of the data I\u2019ve learned that this project requires. \u00a0At each turn I\u2019m required to ask where, culturally, I am situated. In my examination of my own culture\u2019s influence on the formation of imagined futures for students in Jordan, I am brought closer to the ways in which our cultures are engaged in a dynamic interconnectivity. \u00a0The imaginations of the students I am study include my culture and increasingly mine is engaged with theirs. I am able, in this dynamic imagining of global interconnectivity, to overcome the tension between my own sheltered life experience and the global nature of the research I am doing. The Western nature of the cultural interconnectivity I\u2019ve been exploring I think will require some more analysis to determine to what extent these global imaginations are informed by lingerings of the hegemonic forces of colonialism. \u00a0That\u2019s a blog for another day though. The acknowledgment of the importance of cultural relativism and my place as a researcher is an important first step. A step out of the comfort of my own life experiences into a place where I am brought by the broad sweep of globalisation to places geographically separated but connected in important, ideological ways.*<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not cosmopolitan. \u00a0I may not be considered well traveled. I, physically, have stepped on ground not within the jurisdiction of the United States of America for what amounts cumulatively to less than a week of my life. \u00a0I don\u2019t have a passport. I do have a card that gets me into Canada the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7713,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[277213,277212,277211],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7713"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5274,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272\/revisions\/5274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}