Cultural illiteracy of U.S. students poses economic threat

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

They have found that ignorance of Asian language and culture among U.S. students is so widespread that it portends serious negative consequences for America's economic, political and cultural interests in the Pacific-Rim region.

The three-year project, "Re-thinking the U.S.-Japan Educational Exchange," began in 1994 and is funded by the U.S.-Japan Foundation. Project Director is William K. Cummings, professor and director of the Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education at UB.

The project team, which met in New York City, has spent two years analyzing the U.S.-Japan exchange policy that has been in place for nearly 50 years.

Cummings says that U.S.-Japan relations comprise the main axis of Pacific-Rim economic, cultural and political interaction. Twenty-five percent of America's overseas trade is with Japan-a percentage equal to its trade relationship with all of Western Europe. This relationship is challenged by persisting disputes over trade and defense, Cummings said.

He added that an important long-term strategy for strengthening Pacific-Rim interactions and containing disputes is to build skills in cultural diplomacy-the kind of sensibility that evolves through rich international educational experiences.

"The Pacific Rim is a region of medium to high economic growth, with a projected annual growth rate of 6 percent," Cummings points out. "Existing and emerging businesses and industries in this massive market require large numbers of employees with what we've come to call 'transnational competence.'

"That's a...competence defined not only by specific technical, scientific and intellectual skills, but by a refined sense of the culture in which one is operating. In the case of Japan and other countries, it requires special language ability, as well."

Cummings adds: "Without this competence-and most American students don't have it-the United States will not have the skilled workforce required to function well in the realms of international business, banking, law, manufacturing, science or education" as we enter the next century.

He points out that the current structure for educational exchange between the two countries has not functioned effectively for many years. The most obvious indication of this, Cummings said, is the modest number of young Americans who achieve facility in Japanese language and culture relative to the large number of Japanese who achieve proficiency in English and an understanding of American culture and society.

Every year, for instance, only 1,300 young Americans study abroad in Japan, a number that has decreased for the past two years. In comparison, 40,000 Japanese youth study in the U.S. every year-a number that has quintupled over the past decade

This fact alone, says Cummings, gives the Japanese an enormous advantage in international trade. Their business people know what Americans like and want because they've lived here and learned about the American market. American businesses, on the other hand, he said, do not know how best to sell to the Japanese because they do not understand Japanese culture.

Among the U.S. recommendations are new roles for the corporate sector, local communities and schools in providing intensive transnational learning experiences for every American high-school student.

This would include instruction in critical languages-languages of world regions in which business is conducted principally in the language of the region. Although English is the international language of commerce, Cummings cites some exceptions, including Japan, parts of the Middle East, much of China, and, to some extent, Russia.

A widely held assumption among U.S. educators and government officials is that Japan has effectively closed its doors to American students by restricting access to Japan's premier educational institutions.

This erroneous belief and the practices that result from it, said Cummings, explain why the energy devoted to strengthening U.S-Japanese educational exchange over the past several decades has produced modest results at best. "It has led American policymakers to promote practices that discourage international educational and cultural competence among American students and scholars," he said.