While here on the Fulbright mission one of the goals, and the primary one at that, is to foster cross-national understanding to promote peace and tolerance. I am finding that the classroom is a good place to pursue that mission. Interacting with graduate students of public administration, public management and foreign affairs, we learn to understand each other's values and beliefs. The key has been fostering interaction in the classroom rather than one way lecture. Interactive learning is not the norm here. However, it's been easier to implement than I had thought it might be. Using basic western teaching techniques and exercises, the sudents jump at the chance to interact and express their thoughts. This is not S.E Asia where speaking out is rude , it is E. Europe where opinions are repressed because of fear of repercussions (like getting fired). I give them a classroom environment with no superiors, and an agreement that what is said by the group stays with the group -- "it's just us" -- and the students are more than ready to speak up and participate in the teaching and learning. They are smart, they are informed, and given the chance they are ready to lead as necessary.
Once this interactive environment is established, we learn from each other. In all three courses I teach here, we continuously find both mis-conceptions and common ground across cultures. In general, we have found that once one gets past the tiny minority composed of top politicians and other power players, the differences across majorities in cultural values and behaviors are endearing rather than mutually exclusive. We may not have all the same values, we do not have the same visions and beliefs, but their is nothing so different at the level of ordinary people that should ever lead to anything but peaceful relations and stimulating debate.
I typically present students with a problematic situation, one that could occur in their Moldavian work lives and could also occur in N. American work lives, and have them figure out what are the key issues according to them, than I help them to see the key issues through N. American administrative eyes and minds. We can then see the similarities and differences in how we view the administrative world, in what we see as important issues, and in how we think it might be appropriate to address issues. The best moments of work are like the one captured in the photo below of a group of student in my management of change course in the school of public managment. They are engaged, debating and learning without me, or any other professor lecturing at them. I've done this by introducing the case method.
It also seems that from both sides, the people think it is the top politicians, caught up in gamesmanship, favoritism and executive narcissism, that create the very problems they struggle so hard to solve. Why is it that leaders do not know when it is time to step aside? Why is it that leaders think that because they led well once in one situation, it means they must lead again now and in the future? One of the great fallacies of leadership is the born-to-lead illusion. We are all born to lead, at the proper time and particular situation. When done, it is someone elses right time. Leaders who hand on after their moment simply can't get out of their own way, or out of everyone else's way. In team ball sports we call it 'clogging' and it always stalls the offense. The basic principle is no different -- catch, pass, clear out, run through.
I have also found it amazing how the older students that grew up here during Soviet times were taught when they were younger that USA is the enemy, full of bad and evil and so forth --- JUST LIKE WE WERE TAUGHT, but the other way 'round. And guess what? It was all such a bunch of hooey. Everything Soviet was not bad, and everything USA was not good, and everything USA was not bad, and everything Soviet was not good. The distortion perpetrated by our governments and by our media and by movies and so forth must not be repeated. But we can be sure it is happening again with the Islamic countries and the USA.
The graduate students at the AAP are mostly accustomed to listening to someone lecture and taking notes furiously the whole time. They are less accustomed to having to read articles and cases prior to class in preparation for discussion and debate. So while I've wanted to use the case method as much as possible during my lectures, I've had to build up to it little by little.
Thank goodness for short cases like "Moses at the Red Sea," "Robin Hood" and "In the Garden." I wish I had more like those. Firstly, everything has to be translated into Moldavian, so short cases make that feasible. Secondly, and more importantly, I've found the students more able to open up if we speak about issues metaphorically or allegorically. If I were to ask them about issues in their own offices, it would be risky I guess for them to comment openly and honestly, or at the very least it would be bad form. However they are perfectly willing to jump all over Moses's inability to make a decision and keep relying upon some big other power to bail out the Israelites. If you know Moldova, then you get the allegory. They have an easy time speaking , debating and arguing about the border hedges of a garden than they do about national defense. So it starts with the garden, and soon they are speaking about national defense strategies and open versus closed boarders, and so forth.
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