Reflection on Education

Class discussion on Friday moved to the subject of education. Does everyone deserve the right to an education? I think everyone does deserve the opportunity to receive an education, but that opportunity is scarce and close to non-existent in many developing countries.

Ideally, everyone should have access to a school. Children who live in Africa, for example, should be able to walk to a local school and learn about things beyond their villages.

The presentation given by the World Bank informed us that the organization helps developing countries foster good health and education. However, on many occasions the corrupt governments of these countries misuse the aid, so education and health issues are not resolved. I think the World Bank can be more effective if it was able to bypass these corrupt governments and lend the aid to non-profit and community organizations.

I think what the World Bank does is very helpful to those who live in developing countries. I believe that no one should be put at a disadvantage because of where they live, whether it be an affluent neighborhood in France or a slum in India. We all share ties to one another as humanity and to cut some of those ties is to damage our humanity.

Reflection: WBO and fairness

I think the World Bank Organization is a great organization. Lending out money to poor and developing countries helps the betterment of the world. When those countries that got the help develop, they return the money and continue the cycle. At first I wondered why first world countries would be interested in donating to the WBO. Then I figured out that the more a country donates, the more it gets to decide how the money is used. The nations in charge decide which programs and countries are appointed money. While this sounds bad at first glance, this actually means the third-world countries get a big assurance that the programs will succeed. If the program fails, the donators receive no return on their investment. Sure certain countries may be favored over others in development, but the quicker the process the faster the rest of the nations receive aid. Once everything plays out, every single country in the world should at least have a stable government with decent standards of living. Even though this may be too idealistic, I think the WBO has its heart in the right place.

The discussion about fairness is quite complicated and can’t be answered 100% for one side. If you saw someone on the side of the street visibly starving, you would be a heartless monster to let the person starve. However, starvation happens all the time in African countries, yet we don’t really lose sleep over it. We seem to be okay with this unfairness. The kids born to families who can’t provide for them really have no chance at getting anywhere in life or possibly even surviving to reach adulthood. Children born in the U.S. are much more likely to have plenty of food and live to 80 just for having the luck to be born there. I don’t think that’s fair at all, but we didn’t do anything wrong. We can’t immediately change the situation so that all kids have the same opportunities. However, organizations like the WBO help these disadvantaged kids. To put it in a simple, but not so simple terms at the same time, we can’t all agree that fairness is fair. But we can agree that we should do our best so that future generations are born into a world that is fairer. Fairness is confusing.

The Value of Different Perspectives

I believe that there is significant value in different perspectives on world politics. I think many agree that a narrow mind is not an intelligent one. Narrow world politics isn't very intelligent either.

Tickner focused on a feminism perspective and explained that there is value in looking at world politics in the light of feminism. This can extended to many different perspectives of different groups. Ultimately, world politics and the decisions made by political leaders affect people. So examining different perspectives of different groups, from women to natives, from the poor to ethnic groups, can give valuable information to the identities of these groups and how the decisions of world politics will affect them.

Although examining a subject like world politics through many different lenses and groups' perspectives can give rise to discrepancies among theories, I think having different ways to look at a single subject also gives rise to valuable options.

History in the Making. Or perhaps it's just a re-run.

What happens if we were to include every little minute perspective difference in every situation we see?  Bringing fringe groups to the table has really never been tried in the past, and is there a good reason for that?

Don't you sort of create a meaner spirit about....well, just about everything?  I mean, if the two political parties in Congress voted on things using criteria of their experiences and perspectives based on where they lived and their environment, would anything ever get done?  While this is theoretically the way our government is supposed to work, particularly the House of Representatives, we have seen that this is not the case, as members generally vote on party lines strictly, which has become especially evident recently.  You can't expect two people to fully agree on one thing EXACTLY.  There's going to be different perspectives about an issue or thought process, but in the end they will come together.  This is evident even in the United Nations, the supranational example of world politics.  While not all interests for every nation are met in each resolution, the continuity of things supersedes individual interests of nations

THAT SAID..:

Tickner mentioned that the idea of what constitutes good knowledge have been disproportionately weighed against the value of statistics and hard numbers.  We have, it seems in the past, come to the conclusion that the best way to ascertain knowledge appears to be looking at the background of an event on Wikipedia or in a history book/encyclopedia.  While such an exercise will certainly give you an idea of how an event or time period was carried out from a factual standpoint, how do you know what the true emotional background of the event is?  You rarely, if ever, hear of eyewitness interviews of someone who lived through the feminist suppression of early modern Europe and beyond into the 20th century.  And perhaps that has to do with the saying that she gave, that "history is written by the victors."  How are we supposed to know how men became the victors in our society though?  Ideas of what constitutes good knowledge, we prioritized numbers and statistics, and not the emotional background of the knowledge

The political elite in governments across the world need to take into account the implications, not just on the hard numbers or statistics, but also the emotional implications of the decisions they make.  Perhaps then we wouldn't be so eager to enter wars, and perhaps be more willing to worry about domestic issues.  Anyone can argue that Medicare wasn't exactly the greatest fiscal triumph in our government's history, but most people regardless of political affiliation agree that it has provided this nation with an unparalleled social net that has become a bedrock of this nation's ideals.  I think, eventually, the healthcare reform passed earlier this year will meet the same fate.

We do have to listen to more perspectives, because if we have a blinded view of history, what precedence does that set?  Remember, those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it.  Also, how can we understand world politics without understanding the people?  While it's interesting to talk about the actors in international affairs, it's really the people that are the foundation of what we discuss, seeing that they are the rational force behind decision making, but are rarely discussed in the context of world affairs.  Perhaps now we are seeing a shift away from the interests of the state to the interests of the people.

I feel that this is a pertinent quote/an excellent way to get out some of my frequent dislike of Ronald Reagan.  This is the speech Mario Cuomo gave to the Democratic National Convention in 1984, and I feel that it outlines well how we have to stop looking at the prices of stocks and start looking at the value of our people as a whole:

"In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city."

It's all about perspective

Of course there is an inherent value to analyze world politics from alternative perspectives. The question should rather be how different perspectives make up world politics. In IR theory, realism, liberalism, and constructivism are perspectives that explain how nations act in the international stage. If we view a country’s actions from only one lens, we turn a blind eye to what its real intentions are. If the U.S. saw China’s rise in a purely realist way, we might view China solely as a threat and pursue a relationship more as rivals. If we saw it in a purely liberal way, the U.S. might relax its stance and pursue a friendly relationship. In the first scenario, hostile situations will rise and war could happen. In the second scenario, the U.S. might become too complacent and quickly be overtaken by China. Because both situations are unwelcome, a hybrid of perspectives that strikes a balance is ideal.

The value of foundational or what-it-could’ve-been stories are priceless. Throughout history the strong and the majority have reined over the masses. For example, women throughout history have been silenced and oppressed. Even today in the U.S., women are still being marginalized. I recently read an article that states that for the first time in recent history, there may be fewer women in Congress in 2011 than 2010. Now this wouldn’t be such a big deal if Congress was around 50% female, except women make up about 17% of Congress. Even if Hillary Clinton had a real shot at the presidency, women still have a ways to go to be on equal grounds with men. Suppose women made up half of Congress when the healthcare bill was being pushed. I seriously doubt the bill would have taken so long and withered down the way it was. I remember reading about studies and surveys that show women are more proactive about health issues than men. I’m sure this is debatable, but I think healthcare reform is very proactive. When such a large segment of the population is not being heard, government cannot effectively provide its citizens with what they need. We will never know what would have happened had women had equal footing with men, but we can work to make sure we know what it means with examples in the future.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

When a subject or school of thought, such as World Politics, is taught and discussed in the same way, with the same assumptions, for a long time, it becomes easy to start assuming that that particular way is also the only correct way to go about it. This is more often untrue than not, and can even be a dangerous assumption to make. There is an inherent value in analyzing world politics from multiple perspectives, even more so than many other schools of thought, because the very concept of world politics incorporates bringing together many different perspectives on issues that affect many different actors, all of which are the ones who have said differing perspectives. Without that element present, world politics cannot legitimately include the word “world” in its name. And when dealing with a subject so dependent on multiple perspectives, brushing away different views on the subject itself as unnecessary or incorrect seems very hypocritical and self-defeating.

Alternative foundational stories about global politics are valuable in its study, because they help us to look at things we take for granted in a different light, and realize that we may be drawing lines in the sand based on artificial assumptions that are not universal, but we have accepted as such in the absence of alternate explanations. When we only have one way of going about things, it becomes easy to define the “proper” approach to a problem, or the “valid” explanation of a phenomenon, without taking other approaches or explanations into account. When this happens, things begin to appear in terms of black and white, truth and lies, when really, the only thing they do is conform, or defy, the generally-accepted foundational story about a very broad idea. An idea that is usually a human construct invented to categorize a certain collection of the random and multi-faceted actions that make up world politics, not to label a discrete, single phenomenon. Adding different stories about the nature of an issue, or concept, or convention makes said nature more complex, more inclusive, and more natural, while avoiding the pitfalls, logical fallacies, and oversimplifications that come with making up laws and definitions based on the combination of a short period of observation and contradictory or incomplete informations passed down from past, perhaps obsolete times; all taken from one particular perspective.

For example, Tickner placed particular emphasis on marginalized populations, who are deeply affected by the exact same issues that policymakers and experts wrestle with in the elite sphere of international diplomacy, but unlike the latter, have no voice. This is a problem that badly complicates, misleads, and reduces the efficiency of the systems in place meant to deal with said issues. Marginalized populations such as the very poor, the uneducated, women (to varying degrees depending on the country), children, and minority populations not only have a perspective on global politics very different from the perspective of the powerful, highly educated, well-connected officials working in governmental state departments; but they are very different from each other; and very different from the rich, the educated, men, adults, and majority populations. The non-marginalized populations have not just a voice, but many different voices with which they can influence the experts who have the power to agree to make changes in some aspect of global politics, while the marginalized populations do not. This means that only half of a story is being told. It doesn’t make the half that is told invalid, it just makes it incomplete. No single story is the complete story, only when all different perspectives are taken into account, and all different versions of what makes up the foundation of global politics are told and given equal weight, does the “real” story emerge. Like the proverbial blind men with an elephant, a single story can be a very accurate portrayal of what it deals with, just as a blind man touching the elephant’s trunk can give a perfectly valid and accurate description of the trunk. It is only when the trunk is declared (by, perhaps, if we want to make this metaphor even more obvious; an english-speaking blind man to another english-speaking blind man, ignoring the non-english-speaking man holding the elephant’s ear) to be the whole elephant; that is to say, when a particular story is billed as the whole truth, do problems arise.

Reflection: National Security

The trip to the Pentagon on Wednesday meshed very well with the issues we have been discussing in class this past week. One of the topics we kept circling is why we, as a population, consider issues like terrorism to “qualify” as part of national security, while other sources of American deaths and danger, such as high speed limits, do not. Some of the debate seems to be about how according to public perception, terrorism is more dangerous, even though car accidents kill many more people on average. However, while this observation is very likely true, I do not believe it is the whole answer. Neither danger, nor the perception of it, are the qualifications for national security -- cancer is considered an extremely urgent and dangerous issue, but no one considers it part of national security. It seems instead that while national security includes domestic policy, it must also include an external threat to the country’s safety.

Of course, given the fact that in the national security strategy, securing the nation against threats to it means taking domestic actions that on the surface have nothing to do with a particular danger, this issue has a difficult time separating the domestic and foreign policy spheres. What is the best way to protect the U.S? Strengthening ourselves at home to eliminate weaknesses, or striking out to eliminate the threats themselves? The national security strategy stresses both approaches, but its obvious that the latter triumphs in matters of crisis. The discussion of overreaction seemed to constantly become entangled with the point that we have very different approaches to foreign and domestic issues. In foreign issues, we want government, strong government, and lots of it, to act directly upon the people and forces who threaten us and eliminate them. In domestic issues, we have an opposition that sometimes borders on paranoia to government intervention, from regulation of the economy to the clash between federal and state issues. We profess that this is because we would rather have the freedom to do what we want without going through rules and regulations, rather than put up with such interference and become safer and better off. Yet when foreign threat occur close to home rather than far away, we still allow the government to get deeply involved, to the point of wiretapping and holding people with dubious cause when the situation is -- in the point of view of the American people -- dire enough.

When we visited the Pentagon, I was disappointed that our planned briefing was cancelled, but it seemed appropriate that it was cancelled for the reasons it had -- a situation had cropped up somewhere overseas, and people were called away to attend to it. I don’t know if everyone would share this with me, but I am sure that if we were visiting the Department of Justice, for example, and our presenters suddenly got called away, I’d feel much less charitable towards them than those at the Pentagon. In foreign affairs, it is rather impressive and commendable that these people drop everything to ensure our security, whereas in domestic issues, it wouldn’t feel nearly as justified.

Perhaps it is because in foreign affairs, there is usually a clear-cut “them”. There is Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban. Even when there isn’t a face or title to attach to the threats, they are still a “them”. There are undemocratic regimes that strip women of natural rights, corrupt leaders that blatantly rig elections without consequence, and violent factions that kill people for being a member of a certain race. These are un-American. These are enemies of the United States. With domestic issues it’s much harder. There may be some labels we can apply, but they tend to be contradictory and vague, and highly dependent on the times -- CEOs, bank executives, criminals who deal in everything from drugs to high-level fraud, deluded liberals, teacher’s unions, corporate sponsors, crazy conservatives, oil companies, car companies, insurance companies...how vague and riddled with qualifiers are these “threats”, in the eyes of the public (and the media) as opposed to the seemingly clear ones faced in foreign affairs? How exactly do we “overreact” to the financial system’s failings without hurting ourselves in ways much more obvious than the convoluted, long-term, and highly indirect ways we hurt ourselves when we overreact to foreign threats? We overreact to foreign threats because we can, because there is, or we think there is, something there to react to and defeat. It is hard to secure our nation against domestic issues, because we have the notion -- sometimes correct, sometimes woefully shortsighted -- that domestic action will affect the American people much more than foreign action will.