I’ve been involved in planning a globalization-themed for our local Penn State educational technology professionals, and a question people are asking is “How does this apply to us?” More than a few of us have struggled to make our passion for globalization understandable, but it does still seem to be a struggle. I now realize that my default answer “Because it’s so COOL” isn’t working, so let me try this another way.

Practically

I’ve always been instinctively interested in other cultures, but if that doesn’t move or seems too “politically correct,” you may want to consider this:

1. Penn State and other universities are trying to focus on increasing “global awareness” in students. For some people, that alone could be critical.
2. More importantly though, we really do live in a world where nations are connected to each other. The roots of some of our most pressing domestic U.S. issues such as the war on terror, immigration, drug trafficking, job creation and loss, the weakness of the U.S. dollar, the high price of oil, pollution, weaknesses in food distribution and the fight against killer bees (to only name a few) lie outside the U.S. as well as within in it. If you ever wonder why soda pop switched from sugar to corn syrup, it’s partly because there has been a historical trend to restrict sugar imports to the U.S. to “protect” the domestic sugar industry.
3. Have you wondered why some countries are so “uncooperative”? Understanding another culture and their political complexity can help answer that. Some reasons are be the result of negative interactions with the West that our students are unaware of, but almost as many deal with local issues. An issue can seem completely irrelevant to use, but can be to someone else.
4. Are you interested in world peace and decreasing poverty? This also requires understanding the culture and the technology you are working with. Transplanting a system that works for us can often catastrophically fail if you don’t understand WHY it works here, but may not work “over there.”
5. Or maybe you are interested in green technology and other important innovations. Some important ideas for improving our way of life have come from traditional cultures who understand how to flourish in different climate conditions. It’s amazing how traditional building practices in the desert/tropics can really really reduce the need for air conditioning.
6. Maybe the most important reason to understand globalization is to understand ourselves (or as a colleague put it, “travel far to come home”). The U.S. has always been connected to other parts of the world. World events could trigger waves of immigration, and the U.S. has always needed to negotiate its relations with neighbors and superpowers. They can provide missing pieces of the puzzle (e.g. I just found out that Mexico was a critical trigger in how the U.S. entered World War I).

The History Angle

Another theme that I push is history (sometimes Bronze Age history). I am amazed at how learning an event from “before our time” impacts us today.

For instance, have you ever noticed how many plantations were in the South vs the North? It wasn’t a complete accident. Because of the English Civil War (and events from before), large landowners were fleeing for the south at one point, while in previous eras, people from different middle-class oriented religious sects (e.g. Puritan) fled to New England and the Mid Atlantic.

Well before slavery began, the roots of a cultural disconnect that led to the U.S. Civil War were beginning to form here in the U.S….all based on events in 17th-16th century Europe.

I’ve participated in and/or observed a lot of hot academic debates such as “language rules or language constraints?”, “qualitative or quantitative research?”, “English or Spanish?” “Mac or PC” and a new addition “Is history about trends or dates?” The premise behind many of these discussions is that you must choose between or option OR another. Rarely is it the case that a discussion centers around the idea that maybe BOTH categories could be appropriate.
As a linguist, I believe in categories, but have you noticed that items often fall into more than one category? Or that depending on what “filter” you have on at the time – items may appear different?
Take the social science debate of “quantitative” (data primarily from statistical analysis) “qualitative” (data from interviews). Quantitative specialists prefer this method because results are more precisely quantified and easier to generalize (assuming your survey pool is long enough). On the other hand qualitative specialists feel that interviews allow to learn unexpected details that a survey might miss and will allow you to follow an productive inquiry path with a subject as needed.
But guess what – I think both perspectives are both right…in their own way. I do like that qualitative studies can give you more details and unexpected twists, but it usually is hard to generalized (unless you bring in some statistical analysis). On the other hand, quantitative statistics is great for highlighting oddball trends a casual user might miss in an interview. The only problem is that if you don’t ask for the right input, you might miss a discovery. Using both strategies might give you a fuller picture of a social trend.
Yet from what I have seen students in the social science pursuing a degree are typically forced to choose EITHER quantitative or qualitative. Only rarely are you allowed to combine BOTH quantitative and qualitative together. The idea that you might want to combine two techniques seems almost heretical.
FYI – Linguistics has the same “either/or” issues to suffer through. For instance it’s rare to find a linguist comfortable with both formal grammatical theory and sociocultural issues.
And it’s not just academia. I often hear discussions of whether immigrant children in the US should learn English or their parents’ language. Why not both? Their little brains are set up for multiple languages.
Or maybe you wonder if a university should be all PC or all Mac. Maybe the answer depends on whether you are working on supply chain managment (PC probably) or video editing (Mac probably). This is one reason why a major university usually has to support both platforms…even if to adds to overhead.
I know there are sometimes we have to choose (left turn or right turn to the grocery store) but there are many times I wish society was more willing to explore some “both/and” options.
For instance, maybe it really is OK for people to say both “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” – I never understood why either side asked us to choose just one holiday salutation.

I’m not sure of the particulars, but it looks like the Bowdoin Student Government passed two resolutions asking the administration to begin Arabic language instructions. Part of one bill says, “it is the opinion of BSG that the Academic Affairs division of the College should address these requests for the teaching of Arabic.”
Obviously I’m impressed that the student body is pushing their administration in their desire to expand the range of languages taught. And no matter what your political views are, I would hope most people realize that knowledge of Arabic today is as important to U.S. policy as Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, French and other world languages.
And while we’re at it, we shouldn’t forget Persian (Iran), Kurdish (Northern Iraq) and Urdu (Pakistan) either – I think we really do want to try to understand what’s going on in these regions as well.