Global and Local

Experiential Learning Blog 5:

I agree in many ways with what McKay Jenkins has to say in his article "Why I'm Not Preparing My Students to Compete in the Global Marketplace." He touches on the dangers of imperialism, which always poses a threat in light of this globalization that faces us today. If we are too quick to focus our attention overseas, to problems in foreign countries, we are making a quiet assumption that they are graver than those which contaminate our own backyards (literally and figuratively speaking).
Something I've learned from living abroad for these last months is how difficult it truly is to integrate into a new culture. The transformation from being an outsider looking in, to becoming a part of a community and understanding the sentiment behind even the slightest gesture, is wonderfully challenging. It is also, I've learned, incredibly crucial. To understand the problems that face a society, one first must understand the people within it, and how they view the problems they face. To simply possess an academic understanding of, say, the effects of deforestation in Southeast Asia does absolutely nothing in light of this problem without some level of cultural understanding.

As a philosophy major interested in social welfare, I chose health care and Social Security as the topic of my final paper in Spanish Society class. Spain has one of the most universal health care systems in the world, even providing free healthcare to tourists and undocumented immigrants in Spain. Well, amongst the economic crisis that this country is facing today, Spain's Popular Party decided to change this law, requiring immigrants to pay for health care (with a few exceptions). Nevertheless, hundreds of doctors, and six out of 17 regions of Spain, pledged to ignore this new law and continue to provide health care to immigrants despite any lack of documentation. To an onlooker, this might seem crazy, considering Spain's economic struggle today. For me, this reaction is so obvious in light of the culture I have become to understand little by little. Nearly everyone in Spain is being affected by the economic crisis, especially in Andalucía which as a southern region is poorest of all. Despite these circumstances, I continue to see people helping other members of the community that are even the slightest worse-off economically or just the same. There is an ideology deeply rooted in Spanish culture that creates a connection between people, and this connection thrives despite what the government determines as law.

Thus, learning to "compete in the global marketplace" is not so helpful after all, since more importantly we must learn how to understand each other as people.