CAPA WORLD

"Thoughts on Education Abroad" is a monthly column written by CAPA The Global Education Network's Deputy President and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Michael Woolf.

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In this month's column, Dr. Mike Woolf discusses the allyship and inclusivity of the LGBTQ+ community in sports, as well as how the notion of masculinity is exemplified and communicated throughout time. He also draws upon artistic references from music to movies to illustrate how destructive sentiments are reflected and shares how we can welcome diversity, affirm the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community, and celebrate their contributions through education abroad.

"Thoughts on Education Abroad" is a monthly column written by CAPA The Global Education Network's Deputy President and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Michael Woolf.

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In this month's column, Dr. Mike Woolf identifies the priorities set forth by study abroad providers and addresses the significance of academic objectives and outcomes of each student experience. He also looks at the relevance of studying abroad from a cultural perspective and discusses the impact and consequences of globalization.

"Thoughts on Education Abroad" is a monthly column written by CAPA The Global Education Network's Deputy President and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Michael Woolf.

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In this month's column, Dr. Mike Woolf focuses on the importance of libraries as an exploratory establishment and space for preservation of knowledge, themes, politics, and stories. He also discusses the physical and ideological impressions of libraries and its utility for public use, education, and intellectual discourse. 

"Thoughts on Education Abroad" is a monthly column written by CAPA The Global Education Network's Deputy President and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Michael Woolf.

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In this month's column, Dr. Mike Woolf examines the ways and reasons people search for wisdom. Be it through a pilgrimage or personal travels, education is available on various cultures and ready to be sought out. He also details significant points in religious history and its revelations on wisdom.

Exceptional City

London is a modern Babylon.
–Benjamin Disraeli (1847)

Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner
That I love London so I get a funny feeling inside of me
Just walking up and down
Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner
That I love London town.—Hubert Gregg (1953)

The assertion that “London is not England” is, of course, literally true. Like all cities, borders distinguish, to some degree or another, urban, suburban, and rural space. However, the assertion contains a coded message beyond geography; there is an “authentic” England from which London deviates. Negative implications suggest that the city distorts and corrupts traditions designated as representative of “real” England.

An alternative perspective relates London to a cluster of other cities that transcend conventional ideas of national identity. These cities are, in one sense or another, “global”; Sydney, New York, Shanghai, Barcelona, Florence, Dublin, and so on represent characteristics that transcend the local. They form a contested terrain where myths coexist with realities, where civilizations meet, and where diversity brings creative and intellectual energy, and conflict. They are within the geographic nation but are not constrained by those borders.

What is Europe?

Europe is not just geographical space. Defining Europe by geography is complex, contested, and controversial. Russia and Turkey are within and without. The British use the term the “Continent” to mean everywhere in Europe except Britain. We should also recall the headline that may or may not have appeared in The Times when Britain was enjoying Imperial pomp (and when “Great Britain” was not irony): “Fog over the Channel. Europe cut off.”

By the early 14th century…in textile manufacturing towns like Ypres… workers found themselves regulated not by the flow of activity or the seasons but by a new kind of time – abstract, linear, repetitive… work time was measured by the town’s bells, which rang at the beginning and end of each shift.
—Ray Patel, Jason Moore, “The True Cost of Cheap Food,” The Guardian, 8 May 2018.

History and Metaphor

Discussions of colonialism and its legacies are rarely conducted in an ethos of reasoned neutrality. In the midst of the passion and turmoil that marks the discourse, it is possible to discern two distinctive narratives.

The first is historical. In that context, the focus is on the imposition of European control over “less developed” regions and nations for approximately 80 years, broadly from the 1880s to the 1960s. The primary colonial powers were European. Geographically, while there were many colonized regions, much of the debate centers around Africa. The primary example of a colonial power is Great Britain, probably because it was the most dominant and long-lived. Post-colonialism refers to the subsequent emergence of independent nations, often following prolonged liberation struggles, in the 1950s and 60s.

Blue-Remembered Hills

The playwright Dennis Potter (1935 – 1994) associated the idea of nostalgia for childhood with “blue-remembered hills”: a metaphor for locations distant in time that are formed and reformed in our memories. The notion of “blue-remembered hills” precisely captures the process of reconstruction through which we selectively revisit days long ago and the people who populated that dreamed space. We invest the past with colors that are emotionally, if not literally, true.

What we remember

The ending of the First World War (1914- 1918) will be widely commemorated on November 11^th  2018. It was a global conflict that began and ended in Africa; thirty per cent of the British troops served on the Eastern Front. The conflict reshaped the international environment.  Old monarchies failed. The Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires collapsed. New countries in Europe and the Middle East emerged from the ruins including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Trans-Jordan. The consequences of that war are still part of our global political landscape.