Harry Harding
A World Transformed: Creating Curiosity About International Affairs

November 21, 2002 Washington, D.C. --
Just this morning, the National Geographic Society released a survey, conducted by the Roper organization, of what it called "geographic literacy" -- knowledge of international affairs -- of young adults around the world. Students in nine countries were surveyed: Japan, United States, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden.

The results were, to put it mildly, disappointing. No country scored particularly well. For Sweden, the country with the highest marks, the average number of correct answers was 40 out of 56, or 71% -- a D grade, or even an F, by most standards. But the U.S. scored particularly poorly: the average number of correct answers was 23 out of 56, or 41% -- the lowest of any country in the survey except for Mexico. By any criterion, that's an F. Indeed, where I went to college, we had two levels of failure: simple failure and what was called "flagrant neglect." A score of 41% has to be considered an example of flagrant neglect.

To give some examples:

• Only 58% of young Americans knew that Afghanistan was the base of the Taliban and al-Qaeda -- even though we had just gone to war there.
• Only 17% could find Afghanistan on a map, only half as many as knew that the island featured on last season's television program, "Survivor," was located in the South Pacific.
• Only 42% could locate Japan on a map of the world.
• Only 31% could locate Great Britain.
• Only 25% had an approximate idea of the total U.S. population.
• Only 19% could name four of the world's nuclear powers.
• Only 13% could identify Iraq -- a country with whom we soon could be at war -- on a map of Asia and the Middle East.

Although, as noted above, the rest of the countries surveyed did not do very well overall, the top (the continental powers of Europe) scored roughly twice as high as the U.S.

This flagrant neglect of world affairs is extremely difficult to understand:

• Objectively speaking, in an era of globalization, the world is impinging more and more on the United States. We are increasingly the beneficiary -- and the victim -- of global trends and of international developments. If we ignore the world, or are ignorant of what is happening outside our borders, we will lose our ability to anticipate, react, and even shape the developments that have such a large impact on us. As Governor Hunt has just reminded us, knowledge of international affairs is not a luxury, but a necessity.
  
  
• At the same time, more and more information is available about the rest of the world, thanks to the revolution in information and communications technology. The problem is not that the information is not available. To be sure, it may be featured less prominently in some media -- particularly network news broadcasts and regional and local newspapers -- than it was in the past, and that's a problem. But information about the world is readily available through other sources, including cable news channels, national newspapers, a variety of magazines, and the Internet. The problem is that people are choosing not to access that information; they are literally tuning it out.

But of course there are exceptions to these disturbing trends. Some young people, even in the United States, scored well on that National Geographic survey. A number of high school students, both interested in and knowledgeable about the world, filled the State Department auditorium yesterday for a special edition of "It's Academic," focused on international affairs. Applications to both the undergraduate and graduate programs at my school, the Elliott School of International Affairs, were up 30% last year.

The National Geographic survey provides some suggestive clues about why these exceptional young people are interested in international affairs. Those clues can help us design programs to reach the average ones who are not yet interested in international affairs.

As I read the survey, three factors jumped out, which I will call "exposure," "relevance," and "self-awareness." Those factors create curiosity about international affairs. And it's that curiosity about the world -- the desire to know, to appreciate, to understand the human condition beyond our borders -- that we need to encourage and cultivate.

• Exposure: Those who studied a foreign language, those who had taken geography courses in school, those who read newspapers, those who turned to the Internet for news, and those who had traveled abroad tended to be more curious about -- and therefore more knowledgeable about -- international affairs. In the aggregate, the problem is that fewer Americans do these things than do young people in other countries. But within the sample of young Americans surveyed, those who have had such exposure are more knowledgeable the world. That exposure opens pathways to knowledge and develops new interests about international affairs, which young people will want to maintain. Exposure, in short, is the first step to curiosity.
  
  
• Relevance: As I've already suggested, the problem is not the absence of available information about international affairs. If anything, it's a surfeit. Faced with an explosion of information, people understandably tend to create filters that help them select the information they want to obtain and to screen out the information they don't find useful. The most obvious filter is that of perceived relevance. The news media often advertise that they now focus on "news you can use." Often, that means local news, or financial news, rather than news about places seemingly far away. And the National Geographic survey found that young Americans knew more about what could be seen as "life-affecting issues." That is, they knew more about issues such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, El Nino, and immigration patterns than they did about which countries possess nuclear weapons. That finding suggests that the challenge -- and the opportunity -- is to show young Americans that other international issues are just as relevant.
  
  
• Accurate self-awareness: I called one of my closest Chinese friends this morning. When I told her that I would be speaking to you today, and would try to explain the paradox of why young Americans seem to care so little about the shrinking world around them, she immediately replied: "That's because they think they are the world." And the National Geographic survey suggests the validity of this insight. The survey reveals that not only young Americans, but also young people in other English-speaking countries (the U.K. and Canada), study fewer foreign languages. It's not hard to imagine why: it's because they perceive less need to do so than do people in non-Anglophone countries. Similarly, I would guess that Americans are less aware of foreign cultures, because they assume that the rest of the world is becoming just like them. Most interesting, the survey shows that young Americans greatly exaggerate the population of the United States: an absolute majority of young Americans (58% of those surveyed) thought it was more than 500 million; and of those, fully 30% thought it was more than one billion people. My hunch is that those who think they are the world, or who exaggerate their country's relative place in the world, perceive less need to understand others. Those who realize they are only one part -- and a very privileged part -- of the world may perceive more.

To me, the lessons are clear. We need to increase our citizens' exposure to the rest of the world, as a way of stimulating and maintaining their curiosity. We need to produce a more accurate self-awareness of the relative position of the United States in the world. But above all, we need to demonstrate the relevance of the rest of the world -- and in doing so show that international affairs are both important and interesting.

George Washington University has the honor of being one of eight National Resource Centers in International Studies in the United States, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. As such, we have an obligation to design and implement outreach programs to help key constituencies understand international affairs -- an obligation that we welcome. One of our flagship outreach programs is "Governing in the Global Age." This program brings delegations of state and local leaders to Washington each summer to discuss the impact of globalization on local governments. From that program, we have obtained a better sense of four specific ways in which the world affects state and local communities across the country -- in other words, of the ways in which the world is relevant to Americans. Let me share those insights with you, and also suggest that Asia -- the special focus of this meeting -- provides illustrations.

• Economic interdependence: Globalization is producing greater challenges and opportunities not only for the United States in the aggregate, but also for individual local communities. Imports may threaten jobs. So may decisions to move production outside a community, particularly overseas. At the same time, exports provide jobs, as does incoming foreign direct investment. Consumers benefit from low-cost imported goods; they suffer when oil prices rise; they are affected by changes in exchange rates; the value of their stock portfolios are influenced by changes in the international economy. These pocketbook issues are the ones we emphasized when we first launched Governing in the Global Age, and they obviously remain important.
  
  As the economically most dynamic region of the world, Asia exemplifies these trends. Asia has, for almost two decades now, been our largest overseas trading partner. Simply take a group of students to any department store, and see how many imported goods come from Japan, China, and the rest of Asia. In many American communities, one can readily find examples of Asian companies that have made direct investments, or have established sales offices or distribution centers, in the United States.
  
  
• Cultural integration: But there are other issues beyond economic interdependence. In many communities, immigration is a key short-term challenge but long-term opportunity. The challenge is to help newcomers from different and diverse backgrounds to integrate into American society. As it has throughout our history, meeting that challenge begins with the public schools.
  
  But we increasingly see the opportunities that come from these new immigrants as well. It's not just that they, like the waves of earlier immigrants before them, will become productive and creative citizens. It's that, in a globalized world, they are extraordinary resources that can link the United States and their local communities with their countries of origin.
  
  But there's more to it than that. Americans are used to being exporters of culture, and indeed we think of ourselves as the creator of popular global culture. But we are less aware of the fact that we are importers as well, in part (but only in part) because of our openness to immigrants. We import (and enjoy) the cuisines of every country in the world. We import music, fashion, religions, sports, and ideas.
  
  Many of these cultural imports come from Asia. This is because immigrants from Asia are a growing part of our population mix, especially in certain parts of the country. But it's also because Americans find many of Asia's cultural products to be attractive. When I was a boy, growing up in New York City, the only Asian cuisine with which I was familiar was Chinese -- and that was largely Cantonese or, as it was then known, "Chinese-American." There were, as I recall, only two Japanese restaurants in all of Manhattan. Now, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Asian restaurants. They offer every major cuisine from China -- as well as the foods of Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Burma, India, and more. Americans have imported Asian religions and philosophies (Buddhism, Falun Gong, and Daoism), sports (judo, taekwondo, kungfu), video games, manga and anime, "Hello Kitty" products, and thousands of other cultural products.
  
  Moreover, we have not just imported Asian culture, we have modified it, and we are starting to export back to Asia the resulting fusion of East and West. I recall a fascinating article in The New York Times not long ago about a young Japanese woman who, fascinated by the Americanized sushi she encountered in the United States, decided to open a "California-style sushi restaurant" back in Tokyo. She thought that the American style of sushi, together with a Californian ambience, could compete effectively with Japanese-style sushi restaurants.
  
  
• National security: When I grew up, we all knew the direct threats to national security produced by the nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The easing, and then the ending, of the Cold War in the 1980s and early 1990s gave us a ten-year respite from these security concerns. But 9/11 has reintroduced these direct threats to the security of our homeland, and in new and even more terrifying forms. It also alerts us to the need to understand the root causes of terrorism in the Islamic world -- and indeed anywhere in the world where poverty and injustice produces anger and grievance.
  
  Asia is, today, a laboratory in which every kind of national security threat can be found. It is home to two regional Cold War disputes -- on the Korean peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait -- that have not yet been resolved. Both of them could bring the United States into war, and both of them may ultimately involve the threatened use of nuclear weapons against America. The rise of first China, and soon India, generates another security concern: the possibility of competitive, or even conflictual, relationships between rising powers and status quo powers. And, although in many ways the version of Islam found in Southeast Asia is less militant and radical than that found in the Middle East, recent acts of terrorism in the Philippines and Indonesia, and warnings of similar attacks in Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, warn us that Asia is not immune from this new form of security threat.
  
  
• Human security: Increasingly, analysts of international affairs are becoming concerned with what they call "human security," as opposed to "national security." By this they refer to threats to human well being from dangers other than the use of military or physical force. And of these, perhaps the most commonly recognized international threats to human security are environmental pollution and climate change and the spread of communicable disease. It's interesting that, according to the National Geographic survey, the problem of human security seems to be the international issue that young Americans now focus on most and understand best.
  
  And again, Asia is the home of many of these serious human security problems. China presently has a coal-based energy system. As China grows and consumes more energy, it will pollute its environment and most likely contribute to global warming. And as Chinese grow more wealthy and begin to acquire more automobiles, the use of internal-combustion engines may have similar results. India appears to be following that same trajectory.
  
  Similarly, although HIV/AIDS is widely seen as an epidemic that is centered is in Africa, it is spreading rapidly in Asia. Again, India and China are the countries of greatest concern in this regard; in both of them, the spread of HIV/AIDS could ultimately have the same economic and demographic consequences that it has had in Africa.
  
  

In short, those of us involved in international affairs education have a big job to do. There's no doubt that the United States is more affected by the world than at any time in our history. There's also no shortage of information about those connections; indeed, there's probably information overload. The challenge is to make students curious enough about those connections to seek the information.

We can do this in a number of ways: by increasing exposure, by encouraging self-awareness, and by demonstrating relevance. I've suggested that Asia is a laboratory of all the connections between the U.S. and the world, and thus may be an ideal way to promote that curiosity.

Harry Harding is Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University.

LINKS
The Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University

National Geographic Society/Roper Poll on student geographic knowledge

The Elliot School's Governing in the Global Age conference