It's the way of the world, and it's unstoppable
by Barry Henderson
John Shumaker said it last week. "The best universities will be those that globalize." The president of the University of Tennessee knows whereof he speaks. What Shumaker means is that the universities that attract more international students and that send more of their students to other countries to complete a semester's or a year's work will be the leaders in American education—indeed world education—in the future.
Shumaker's goals, to be tracked in his "UT 2010 Scorecard" approach to improvements he seeks, are modest. The aim is to increase enrollment of students from other countries by about 600, from 1,416 last year to 2,000 in 2010. In the same eight years, he wants to increase the number of UT's American students studying abroad from 425 to 1,200.
Other components of his program include partnering with institutions in other countries. China, Mexico, Qatar, Singapore, and South Korea are on the list proposed for joint programs, and more may be explored as time goes on.
The import of Shumaker's initiative is hard to maximize. The exposure UT students get to other cultures is already invaluable in Knoxville and can only be enhanced if more foreign students are enrolled. The experience of spending substantial time living and studying in another country's environs can be an education in itself for UT students.
Learning firsthand of the social, political, and religious traditions, the art, and the lifestyles lived outside the United States gives Americans—particularly younger Americans—the perspectives necessary to understand what the 21st century is bringing to the world in terms of international interaction. The 20th century put in place advances in the speed and usage of travel and communication that shrank the globe to the point where national borders are more lines on a map than actual boundaries that enclose specific peoples within their own cultures.
Those who oppose the concept of globalization—a negative buzzword to many Americans—are missing the point. They don't seem to have a clear idea of the meaning of international rights and responsibilities, of business interrelationships and shifts of producer, consumer, and labor markets in a free economy among free peoples. That's not something that can be stopped by organized effort, even by national effort, even by the United States of America. Globalization is happening. John Shumaker seems to know that.
Tag-o-mania
There are few issues that should be as uncontroversial or as inconsequential as that of the lettering and numbering on license plates. Yet those little tags that identify registered motor vehicles are all over the news map of Tennessee and some other states.
The tags are issued to provide a recognizable state of origin and the number of the vehicle to whom ownership is registered. In Tennessee, the county of origin is also supposed to be displayed.
Individualized license plates offered by the state have become mere extensions of bumper stickers, with gimmicky lettering, slogans, college logos, and political statements, such as support of a variety of environmental factors, taking over the tags' intended role.
Most recently, the Legislature authorized the issuance of plates bearing the slogan, "Choose Life," an anti-abortion appeal that strikes one of the most controversial chords in American society.
Many Tennesseans, including Gov. Phil Bredesen, recognized that the measure opened the way to demands for other, equally discordant, political statements to be sought on license plates. He called it a bad precedent, yet let the bill become law without his signature, perhaps to illustrate the folly into which the legislative majority was leading the way.
Americans, like no other people, have come to exercise their right of free speech and expression by slathering their autos and trucks with advertising, political slogans, sly aphorisms, and all manner of other adornments for windows, decklids and bumpers. That right shouldn't have ever been extended to the states' license plates, but it appears almost too late to draw back now. It would take practically an act of Congress to inhibit this silly example of individualism gone awry.
June 26, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 26
© 2003 Metro Pulse
| 
