Overcoming fears and self-limitations with international education
Dr. Laura Landolt
Assistant Professor
of Political Science
As a child I found it difficult to absorb and understand media images of international violence and injustice. Later, these images combined with an inadequate high school education to give me an immobilizing sense of apprehension about the world. How can we make the world a better place if entire nations are inexplicably evil or irrational? Fear compelled me to learn about and make better sense of the world, while research and travel abroad helps me discover ways to act in and try to improve it.
Not every student is as fearful or focused on alleviating that fear as I was, but as a rule, liberal arts communities work to develop students' thirst for knowledge and critical thinking skills. According to William Cronon, a liberal education nurtures the "growth of human talent in the service of human freedom." Before students can serve human freedom, however defined, they must first value and seek their own intellectual liberation. Once students take this difficult first step, they initiate a lifelong personal, and hopefully professional, quest.
This step is easier for some than others, and faculty are challenged daily by obstacles to students' intellectual freedom and creativity, including fear of the unknown, lack of curiosity, laziness, boredom, parochialism and intolerance. Of course, none of these obstacles are ever fully vanquished in ourselves or others, but if we are successful, our best efforts to model and serve human freedom are internalized by our students.
In order to stimulate intellectual liberation and critical thinking, a liberal arts curriculum is interdisciplinary, and a liberal arts community works tirelessly to forge interesting and productive connections within and between academic disciplines. This is why an international studies program comes so naturally to an ambitious liberal arts college like Virginia Wesleyan, seamlessly linking numerous academic departments including art/art history, English, foreign languages and literatures, history, management/business/ economics, music, philosophy, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology and theatre.
In addition, nothing, I mean nothing shakes students out of the self-limiting intellectual habits listed above more quickly than study abroad. This is because students have no choice but to confront their fears of, and develop curiosity about, the unknown. In a foreign environment, students lose familiar reference points while laziness, boredom, narrow mindedness and intolerance tend to dissipate. For these reasons, I daresay that for some students, a two-week study abroad trip may advance intellectual freedom and creativity more effectively than two years in the classroom.
As internal intellectual barriers crumble, lessons learned overseas are indelible. In a study-abroad experience, students see, touch, taste, hear and smell things that animate coursework. When they return to campus, they enhance every classroom they enter by sharing the excitement of these experiences with others. Ask any college professor: most engaged and effective students have either studied abroad, or desperately want to do so. I believe that even students with a history of average academic performance are more likely to show improvement following a study-abroad experience.
The National Model United Nations offers another opportunity for the intellectual stimulation and creativity promised by the liberal arts. College teams are assigned a country, and delegates literally become representatives of that country. The more they learn about the past and present social, political and economic characteristics and interests of their country, and the more effectively they integrate and present that knowledge to others, the more successful the team. I witnessed the palpable excitement and constant discovery of Virginia Wesleyan's 2007 National Model UN team (representing Nicaragua) not only in New York City, but also back home. Our students networked with peers from elite institutions all over the world, and drew remarkable connections between their experiences and coursework throughout the spring semester.
International studies, in all its manifestations, is a wonderful example of the liberal arts experience in that it stimulates students' desire and courage both to question their convictions, and to advance them to make our shared world a better place. I can't think of any better reason to teach, or to study.