The Insular American

[chlamor]

The insular American

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  April 29, 2005

NOBEL LAUREATE Wole Soyinka used to ask people not to exaggerate the insularity of Americans by saying things like: ''Can you imagine the Americans? Nobody else plays baseball and yet they call their series the World Series." He used to say, ''C'mon, that's not the issue. That's superficial."

He does not defend us anymore. ''I'm sorry," he says, chuckling. ''I've come around to the conclusion that it's not superficial at all, that it is an index we better be aware of."

Soyinka, who turned 70 last year, is in Cambridge to be honored by Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. In an interview yesterday, Soyinka, who has braved death many times in his native, turbulent Nigeria, says that for all of our technology, Americans are now among the most insular and least curious people in the world.

He says it remains common for him to hear people wonder whether Africa is still colonized by the British, and conflate world events to where ''they think the Yugoslav war was taking place in Asia against Chinese Communists." He says Americans' lack of curiosity is stunning. ''It doesn't matter whether it's blacks, it doesn't matter the class, it doesn't matter the level of education," Soyinka says. ''Some of the most brilliant of my colleagues in universities here are so insular that it hurts. I find it very difficult.


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/29/the_insular_american?mode=PF

[Geo55]

1. This enables the B* thugs sooooo much. n/t

[KlatooBNikto]

2. My daughter's seventh grade class was asked by her teacher to

name an Arab country.Fully 80% of the class answered Israel.

[Demeter]

4. You Know The Palestinians Outnumber the Jews in Israel, Right?

So Israel is de facto an Arab state, with a Zionist government.

[KlatooBNikto]

5. Interesting.I was not aware of that.But I seriously doubt that the kids

in the class were thinking about that either. As far as our kids go, it is what the heck, they all are Arabs.there is no difference.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Only if you include the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well

Israel proper is about 80% Jewish, 20% Arab.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/is.html#People

[Demeter]

8. Israel Includes It

That's good enough for me. Until it changes, of course.

[silverweb]

3. What a sad commentary.

What he says is so true. Most of our people are completely ignorant of the rest of the world except for the fantasies fed to them by current nationalistic opinion.

I know a rabidly laissez-faire Libertarian ideologue who absolutely insists that "the socialist countries, like the Netherlands and France and Germany, are all gray and drab and the people are a sad-faced, miserable lot." He says he "read it someplace" (but can't say where), and he knows "someone" who was there and told him, and he "spent two weeks" once (at least 10 years ago). He also opined that "people there are afraid to dress as though they have any money because it makes the other socialists jealous and enrages them."

I've never heard such a load of garbage, but he absolutely insists that his view is accurate.

:crazy:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I was talking with an American expatriate in Tokyo last fall, and

he was complaining about those of his relatives back home who had hardly ever been outside their county and had no desire to see anything because "we have everything right here."

My greatest frustrations as a foreign language professor were students who 1) had no curiosity about the country whose language they were studying, 2) made no effort to associate with Japanese exchange students or any other international students, 3) refused to go on the very affordable study abroad programs, 4) didn't attend the wonderful cultural events on campus, and 5) hated taking any class that didn't directly lead to a job.

[ikojo]

9. Lydia, I agree with everything you said except point number

5) hated taking any class that didn't directly lead to a job:
As a working class American, when I was in school studying philosophy and religious studies, I often heard from my family, "what kind of job will you be able to get with a degree in philosophy?" The cost of a college education is so outside the reach of most Americans (even state schools these days) that unfortunately, it has been reduced to a jobs program.

Personally, I still adhere to the notion that the best education includes a very healthy dose of history and other social sciences for I see education as creating a well rounded citizen and not only an employee. I appear to be in the minority in that opinion these days.

When I was in school I did take advantage of all of the cultural events offered. I was in college right after Reagan took office and often discussed events in Iran with the Iranian students as I preferred hearing information first hand rather than from the media. I could not afford any of the study abroad programs as they were outside my financial reach.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. I'm not talking about working class students

I understand that situation because I couldn't afford to study abroad as an undergraduate either.

The students who didn't want to take anything that didn't lead to a job were by and large from affluent families, as were the students who didn't want to study abroad. When I told one of my potential recruits for study abroad that she could take her financial aid with her, she shrugged and said, "I don't need financial aid." Another whose parents wouldn't let her spend a year in Japan was given the "consolation prize" of a three-week Hilton hopping tour of Asia.

My take on the affluent students who lacked a sense of intellectual curiosity or a sense of adventure was that their parents were focused exclusively on money. For the most part, their parents had told them what the acceptable majors were (mostly finance, marketing, accounting, and other majors under the business department), and I think that the parents feared that if their crown princes and princesses saw something outside affluent American suburbia, they might be tempted to break the family pattern.