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Knowledge of Asia Seen as Vital, bu



Subject: Knowledge of Asia Seen as Vital, but Lacking in America 

13 December 1999 
source:US Dept. Of State
            Knowledge of Asia Seen as Vital, but Lacking in America 

            (Asia Society announces board to improve K-12 Asian studies) (600)
            By Nadine Nigel Leavitt
            Washington File Staff Writer

            Washington -- Surveys of approximately 2,000 Americans last summer
            reveal that 82 percent of adults and 74 percent of college-bound
            students agree that knowledge of Asia will be essential to
success in
            the coming 21st century -- yet more than 25 percent of those
surveyed
            could not even identify the Pacific Ocean as the body of water
            separating the United States and Asia.

            Two telephone interviews sponsored by the Asia Society of 1,012
            college-bound students and 810 adults across the United States in
            August and September 1999 revealed that Americans are seriously
            undereducated about the Asia-Pacific region. For example, less than
            one in four could correctly identify Jakarta as the capital of
            Indonesia despite the country's recent heavy presence in the
news, and
            almost half of those surveyed said Vietnam was an island. Only 5
            percent of the students and 15 percent of adults correctly
identified
            India as the world's largest democracy.

            "Knowledge about Asia will be very important for tomorrow's
citizens,
            who are today's students," John Kelly, Founding President of the
            National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, said at the Asia
            Society December 9 in announcing the establishment of the National
            Commission on Asia in the Schools. "And there are problems because
            they're not studying it."

            "The world has changed a lot since the Second World War, and 25
to 50
            years is a relatively short time as school curriculums go," Kelly
            added. "And they've just been slow to respond to this major new
            priority."

            Kelly is the Vice-Chair of The National Commission on Asia in the
            Schools, which has been established to strengthen Asian Studies
            programs in American elementary and secondary schools by suggesting
            improvements in standards, lessons, teacher knowledge, and
textbooks.
            The commission is composed of 30 leading education, public
policy, and
            business professionals; co-chairs of the commission include North
            Carolina Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., and Chang-Lin Tien, former
            chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. The Freeman
            Foundation has provided an initial grant of $10 million to
support the
            commission and its follow-up activities, which will be led by
the Asia
            Society.

            "We joke ... about Asia taught through the set of three Fs:
Food, Fun,
            Festival," said Namji Kim Steinemann, vice president of the Asia
            Society's Education Division and executive director of the National
            Commission on Asia in the Schools. She said the commission's goal is
            to have U.S. schools "really take into consideration the change that
            Asia has undergone, to look at the long history of Asia, and to
get a
            real sense of what Asia is today."

            Steinemann said a recent Asia Society survey of common U.S.
textbooks
            found "there's quite a lot of problem in terms of inaccuracy, in
terms
            of data information, whether they are statistics or other types of
            figures, to perspectives where Asia appears only in interaction with
            the West."

            As an example, she said the Asia Society found that one widely used
            textbook covers more than 5,000 years of Asian history, including
            European imperialism, in less than 55 pages. The same popular
            textbook, however, devotes 270 pages to the history of Europe.

            The Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpolitical foundation set up in
            1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd to build bridges of understanding
            between Americans and Asians.

            (Distributed by the Office of International Information
Programs, U.S.
            Department of State)