The World Beckons

EDWIN O. REISCHAUER is preeminent among scholars in his ability to express complex issues in a comprehensible manner. In his new book, Reischauer has chosen to advocate the modification of our educational system to produce individuals who consider themselves to be members of an international society. If others have failed by dint of words to sway the public on this issue, Reischauer may succeed.

The present climate in international affairs is the subject of the first section of the book. Reischauer envisions a dominant world role for Europe, Japan and North America as an interacting political-economic entity. He assumes that the Soviet Union and China will remain closed societies, out of the international main-stream. As a result, the developed non-communist countries will find it increasingly necessary to deal with the nations of the third world as equals.

Reischauer's intimate knowledge of the pitfalls in relations between Western countries and Japan has convinced him that the situation will become increasingly serious when the developed countries find themselves dealing with a large number of third world countries as equals. For instance, some of the developing countries oppose pollution control, which they consider to be an impediment to economic growth. Solution of the pollution problem will continue to require international cooperation nevertheless. Reischauer comments:

Prior to the development during the past century of huge concentrations of urban population, even the failure of the nation state might not have been completely catastrophic. But today, if we fail to develop a viable world community, the collapse of civilization may be total.

In order to create a "viable world community," Reischauer postulates, it will first be necessary to train world citizens. He advocates, in part, "a basically comparative rather than unilinear approach" to the study of the human experience. A student would learn the characteristics of his own society and culture as well as the responses that other societies have made to the human dilemma in terms of politics, economics, family relations, literature, philosophy, morality, etc. As a result of such a course of study, the student would obtain a less parochial view of the world and an understanding of how societies change. Perhaps most important, it is Reischauer's view that the new comparative education would help the student to realize that in the course of human events, the solution to one problem only breeds new ones.

Professor Reischauer's proposal to train international citizens could have as its by-product the improvement of the educational system as a whole. The act of converting the educational system in the United States to train persons with an international rather than a national consciousness may help to make education more meaningful to the student.

Another Japan scholar, Professor Ronald Dore of Sussex University, has lamented in a recent article in Pacific Affairs that in many countries, the process of education has degenerated into the business of training people who are "qualified." Dore comments that in Japan a college education is almost mandatory for self-advancement. As a result there is extreme pressure on students to qualify for college entrance, but the Japanese have managed to retain the spirit of improving themselves as individuals rather than merely acquiring qualifications. Dore attributes the Japanese desire for self-improvement to the existence of a pedagogical tradition before the Western intervention in the middle of the last century. The old education system had to cope with a society where there existed little social mobility. It sought to train people to improve their performance in inherited jobs. As a result, in Japan unlike other countries, there is a tradition of an educated peasantry.

OTHER COUNTRIES which inherited educational systems from the colonial period have been less fortunate than Japan. Dore had the opportunity to visit Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) in 1971, shortly before the outbreak of a rebellion led by educated youth. According to Dore, education in Ceylon had prepared students for jobs that were unavailable. Students thought of jobs as status symbols without "intrinsic satisfaction," or opportunities for self expression and self development and useful service to society." The Ceylon government quelled the rebellion with the most violent means available including arms obtained at the spur of the moment from abroad. However, the Ceylon elite seems not to have gotten the message that there was something seriously wrong with the educational system. How else, asks Dore, could a Ceylon newspaper rail at the existence of "clusters of clean young men whom we thought were being groomed to be scholars with their bundles of books and earnest looks (who) prowl menacingly around; firearms in their hands and murder in their eyes."

The problems of Ceylon's educational system should convince us of the folly of training people solely to qualify for jobs. Educating people to think of themselves as international citizens may give them a greater sense of identity and purpose in their own society.