Book review. Appiah K.A. "Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in the world of strangers"

The book “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in the world of strangers” was written by Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006), British philosopher of Ghanaian origin with roots in Asante ethnic group, but primarily human being and cosmopolitan person. The work of prominent in the field of cosmopolitanism author, comprises a range of disciplines as well as Appiah’s personal experience to build a main argument that cosmopolitanism is the philosophy, ideology and, as written on the back cover of his book, a “moral manifesto for a planet of strangers” who need to live together. Ten chapters of the book complemented by introduction present an insightful and engaging reading for the scholars as well as for sophisticated readers who are accustomed with philosophical school of thought. Author builds his work drawing a general picture of what is the cosmopolitanism referring to influential thinkers as well as examples from literature and history. In the next chapters, he proceeds to outline his philosophical position, illustrate fallacies of other schools of thought and continues by giving us a practical approach towards understanding, living and collaboration with people inhabiting our planet. Appiah also brings to attention a set of responsibilities which we share as human beings.

The main argument of the book is an appeal to humanity to take a responsible stance over our relations with varying strangers coming from different parts of the planet and sharing diverse beliefs and values. It is Appiah’s urge to take a stance of cosmopolitanism as the driving philosophy and ethical way of living. Author is sure that “cosmopolitanism is an adventure and an ideal” (p. xviii) and, at the same time, “there’s a sense in which cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution but of the challenge” (p. xiii). Indeed, the book defined by Kofi Annan as “the great human project of trying to live together” needs a solid philosophical stance and moreover it should be a practical and manageable motivation for action. Kwame Anthony Appiah is not a slave of illusions and he believes that “we need to develop habits of coexistence: conversation [emphasis added] in its older meaning, of living together, association” (p. xvii). But how do we approach this conversation? Appiah believes that the dialogue from positivist and relativist positions is circled to not bring us to final destination. For instance, he suggests that the cornerstone of positivists thinking, namely rationale, fails when labeling our values as true or false (p. 22). Appiah proposes that even if such universal values as kindness or humanness cannot be rationally justified, they still make sense to us and we still value them (p. 21). Indeed, Appiah’s concern about vision of the world in black and white colors, labeled as true or false has to be demolished by scholars again and again as a remnant of the past which does not make sense today. Yet another extreme – relativism (p. 31) – has nothing to offer for conversation of strangers as it denies any objectivity of values, certain universal agreements which are valued by the whole humankind.

Appiah develops his argument of the need for thoughtful conversation throughout the chapters of the book. It should be said that he proposes a kind of guide to enter this interaction. To begin with, author states that “we enter every conversation … without a promise of final agreement” (p. 44). It is reality and this should not stop us from making this conversation happen. It is always easy to say that someone is not possible to convince, however even if the dialogue is not about consensus it may be about understanding of positions. Appiah’s second argument is that even if we do not take values of our interlocutors seriously we are able to listen and understand why they make sense to them (p. 56). Putting it simply, the conversation – in Appiah’s position it is not limited to physical presence but is about “engagement with the experience and the ideas of others” (p. 85) – in which people are trying to understand one another may be a first step for them “to get used to another” (p. 85). As a result, distant strangers are no more strangers for us but people we know. Third, Appiah talks about the language of conversation itself. When the dispute may have the same vocabulary of values, it does not guarantee us that we share the same criteria of their evaluation, interpretations and degree of importance (p. 67). This is to say that even universal from a first look values may be rooted into local context differently. As a solution, author comes to the main from my perspective conclusions “we can agree about what to do even when we don’t agree why” (p. 67) and “we can live together without agreeing on what the values are that make it good to live together” (p. 71). Indeed, if in our conversation we are trying to stick to these powerful insights, we may find ourselves far beyond those who share different understanding of the dialogue. Finally, Appiah stipulates that we as human beings have a lot in common and are connected to one another “despite difference” (p. 135).  Rationally or not, we have certain obligations to strangers, as put by Appiah “we owe to others” (p. 165), and we are responsible to contribute feasible efforts (p. 164) to sustain basic needs every human being has (p. 163). By saying this, author concludes his appeal to cosmopolitanism leaving us with many answers, questions and, at the same time, actions to do.

This reading highly resonates with my perception of the word and surely adds many perspectives for my order of though on this matter. I see many connections to what I have read during my course of studies as well as connections to my research project in the process. For example, I find that writers whose readings fascinate me the most do talk about certain concepts in the similar way. Appiah mentions Adam Smith (2002) who states that there is no guarantee that strangers “have the same grip on our sympathies” (p. 158) and we cannot “demand” (p. 158) them to have. The word “demand” simultaneously triggered me to think about Nel Nodding’s philosophy of care where she acknowledges that when we care about someone we do not wait or do it to receive response. From my perspective, cosmopolitanism may theoretically benefit taking ideas of caring relations in conversation it is talking about. Yet another sentence which caught my attention is Appiah’s reflections on the nature of culture: “we do not need, have never needed, settled community, a homogeneous system of values, in order to have a home. Cultural purity is an oxymoron” (p. 113). Similarly, Pieterse (2015) talks about “cultural differentialism” (p. 42) and “cultural convergence” (p. 42) as opposed to “cultural hybridization” (p. 42). I find that authors correlate in their position that neither emphasizing difference neither stressing homogeneity does not move us closer to conversation capable to bring shared understanding. We may also find an inference to United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (2017) call for “building a sense of belonging to a common humanity” (para. 1). Not surprising that many powerful thinkers and recognizable organizations take for ideological basis what cosmopolitanism talks about. In turn, when making connections to my research project, I should acknowledge that the philosophical position of cosmopolitanism may offer me a more comprehensive picture of the reality and our social role inside of it. For example, when it is easy to apply the theory of the knowledge based economy for the notion of the 21^st century skills, which I use in my thesis, I would better think about turning it into the discourse of human rights and creation of cosmopolite identities through the mean of education.

In conclusion, the book of Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006) is certainly kind of a desk book which talks about complex issues simply. Complemented by sound philosophical discussion, it presents a practical claim for action to start a conversation between people from cosmopolitan position of thought. Appiah builds his argument around necessity of this conversation when stressing the importance of mutual understanding and recognition of obligations which “we owe” (p. 165) to humanity. This book widens the horizons of thinking and presents us alternatives we did not know before. I find this book highly relevant to my dissertation and intent to use it as a moral reference in my research activities. Jason’s future students might find this interesting given its relevance to our course themes and topics. For example, Appiah’s book comprises the most appealing to the problems of humanity concepts and puts them into one theory of cosmopolitanism capable to bring the question of morale into the matter of education in relation to globalization.

References

Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in the world of strangers. England: Penguin Books.

Noddings, N. (2012). Philosophy of education (3 ed.). Westview Press.

Pieterse, J. N. (2015). Globalization and culture: Three paradigms. In J. N. Pieterse, Globalization and culture: Global mélange (pp. 41-58). USA: Rowman & Littlefield.

Smith, A. (2002). The theory of moral sentiments. (K. Haakonssen, Ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

UNESCO. (2017). Global Citizenship Education. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from WWW.UNESCO.ORG: http://en.unesco.org/gced/approach

Reflection on thesis writing when it is over

In my blog entry I would like to share my feelings about thesis writing. In general thesis writing can be a challenging experience, but eventually it brings a lot of satisfaction when you get the result. When reading literature I met an inspring author Simon Marginson whose works strongly my research and my vision of higher education in general.

Writing the literature review was a big challenge for many. So many theories about globalization and the role of global university rankings in it. I was especially impressed by the writings of Australian scholar Simon Marginson who gives a very deep insight in the processes of competition in higher education, relations of power and Anglo-American dominance in higher education. Such authors as Simon Marginson can be really inspiring for young researchers.

However, when I was reading Marginson and other notable scholars, I did not agree with some of their points. I thought that Western scholars do not understand post-soviet higher education issues and challenges, and I expected to receive different results from what I read in the literature review. To my surprise, I received findings which strongly support opinion of Western scholars about global university rankings, despite the fact that I was conducting my research in the post-soviet context. My practical experience made me value western research methods more than I was learning about them from books: I see this as a big learning outcome for me: I understood that Western scholarly approach is very valid and prcatical and that it really works. 

Private Higher Education.

This blog I dedicated to my thesis topic connected to the private higher education, somehow explain the reason for students to  choose private institutions.

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The beginning of the private higher education started from the burning issue of mass higher education (Teixeira, Rocha, Biscaia&Cardoso, 2013). The large student population desired to be educated and at the same time education expansion was in diversification of the educational programs (Teixeira et al., 2013). It increased “policy interest in the development of diverse types of training” (Teixeira et al., 2013, p.4955). The public and private institutions compete with each other for the best educational programs offered to the students (Teixeira et al., 2013). This means that the private higher education gives more freedom in choosing specialization, the public universities have standard programs.

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The scholars raised the question of the quality offered by the private institutions because the main goal of private universities is a profit (Hensley, Galilee-Belfer&Lee, 2013). However, the private universities perform the duties of the public universities, allocating students that are not suited to the admissions of public ones. No matter of the fact that private institutions rely on tuition fee, they meet the demands of the market and students’ interest too (Teixeira et al., 2013, p.4950). The empirical research done by Teixeira et al. (2013) demonstrated that the programs offered by private universities are more specialized than in public and “more responsive to shifts in the demand” (Teixeira et al., 2013, p. 4957).

In the Kazakhstani context, the private higher education has doubtful reputation. The citizens of Kazakhstan enroll in private institutions in order to get a diploma (diploma mill), and most of the universities are “demand absorbing” (Levy, 2011, p.389). They have “lack of academic status” (Levy, 2011, p. 389).

References

Hensley, B., Galilee-Belfer, M., & Lee, J. J. (2013). What is the greater good? The discourse on

public and private roles of higher education in the new economy. Journal of Higher

Education Policy and Management, 35(5), 553-567.

Levy, D. C. (2011). Public policy for private higher education: A global analysis.Journal of

Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 13(4), 383-396.

Teixeira, P., Rocha, V., Biscaia, R., & Cardoso, M. F. (2013). Competition and diversification in

public and private higher education. Applied Economics,45(35), 4949-4958.

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Turnitin detecting system

The education at the Nazarbaeyv University (NU) is really difficult, and the students of NU will agree with me. The most terrible part is the APA format in writing, the style of citing avoiding plagiarism case. The software program used by the university to check our papers for originality is Turnitin.

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Turnitin is the best “tool to teach students what plagiarism is” (Heckler, Rice&Bryan, 2014, p.233). And it is true, because it has SafeAssingment and Web world database service, where can be saved all your previous papers submitted earlier, in a result you cannot cheat from early written essays. “Turnitin was the most advanced for detecting semi-automatic forms of plagiarism, and SafeAssingnment was best for detecting Web plagiarism”(Heckler, Rice&Bryan, 2014, p.232). The Turnition detection program makes happy the professors around the world by facilitating with the help of the following services: “GradeMark, PeerMark, iThenticate and Originality check” (Heckler, Rice&Bryan, 2014, p.233). The services help you to check the originality of the paper by percentages, allow to write some comments on paper, the same feedback can be given by an anonymous student. The iThenticate service is mostly for the scholars who desire to have the excellent paper to publish, shows the originality of the research writing.

There are 32 languages in the Turnition detection program, so it is applicable to other languages, not only English language. The universities, especially some departments of foreign languages will be satisfied with the opportunities offered by Turnitin.

In my opinion, this is a great system to use in the educational system to avoid plagiarism. I think it can be applicable to the Kazakhstani educational system, by adding some modernizations, like adding Kazakh language to Turnitin languages.

 Heckler, N. C., Rice, M., & Hobson Bryan, C. (2013). Turnitin systems: A deterrent to

plagiarism in college classrooms. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 45(3), 229-248.

The advantages and peculiarities of collaborative/co-operative learning strategy.

  

Retrieved from: http://www.dougwoods.co.uk/curation/ailink/2979/learning 

Education strategy is one of the indicators of the success in the classroom. Century to century variety of strategies has been developed and improved in order to meet needs of each one every learner in the classroom. This post is  devoted to one of the education strategies; collaborative/ co-operative.

To begin with definition of key words, collaboration/ cooperation is the process of working together to accomplish common, shared goals. During cooperative- collaborative activity individuals search for the results that are beneficial to all members of the group.  (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2006). Next, learning, which is the process by which students get new knowledge and a process by which they keep that knowledge taken through the educational process. And finally, collaborative/ co-operative learning is the one of the education strategy, which aims to engage group of students in learning process (Johnson, Johnson & Smith, 2006). 

In OECD report Slavin cite that “there was a time when it was taken for granted that quiet class was a learning class, when participants walked down the hall excepting to be able to hear a pin drop” (p.163). However, time has changed and role of collaborative/ co-operative learning strategy has been widened and prioritized. Additionally, Slavin (2010) argues that collaborative/ co-operative learning is the process of learning of 21^st century. He supports active engagement to the learning and shares the idea that in aggressive world of technology teachers have to compete with all sorts of technology such as television, Internet, and computer games. Jolliffe (2015) asserts similar idea that collaborative/ co-operative learning is a tool to take into consideration diverse the needs of each and every student. In this sense, it is obvious that nowadays teaching and learning process has become more active and it is almost unrealistic to archive lesson objectives without active participation of teachers and students.  Interestingly, Phuong-Mai (2005), in her research argues that not all types of collaborative/ co- operative learning strategies can be successfully implemented in any countries. For instance, the Asian countries with Confucian heritage culture (CHC), which includes China, Vietnam, Singapore, Korea and Japan. The reason is common characteristics of a collectivist society in named countries. Moreover, those counties due to the peculiarities of the culture, and consequently rules within the society can fail in implementation of western- based educational strategies. In her research Phuong-Mai, describes a case when during the co- operative learning activity boys and girls were reluctant to mix up, or when students wanted to make a group only with friends. 

As the foregoing has demonstrated, active pedagogy process is demand of the time that can develop successful outcomes. However, such "innovative" techniques should be at the same time culturally appropriate in certain countries or adapted accordingly to location.

References:

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A. (2006). Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom. Retrieved from  June 10, 2015 http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/prod/groups/ohr/@pub/@ohr/documents/asset/ohr_89185.pdf

Jolliffe W.  (2015).   Bridging the gap: teachers cooperating together to implement cooperative learning.   International Journal  of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education.  43(1), 70-82.

Phuong-Mai, N. Terlouw, C. Pilot, A. (2005). Cooperative learning vs Confucian heritage collectivism: confrontation to reveal some cultural conflicts and mismatch. Online Springer-Verlag 403-419.  Retrived from June 10, 2015

http://www.academia.edu/1836934/Asia_Europe_Journal_Cooperative_learning_vs_Confucian_heritage_culture_s_collectivism_confrontation_to_reveal_some_cultural_conflicts_and_mismatch

Slavin, R. E. (2010). Co-operative learning: what makes group work work? In H. Dumont, D. Istance, & F. Benavides (Eds.), The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice (pp. 161–178). Paris: OECD Retrieved from June 10, 2015 

http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/the-nature-of learning_9789264086487-en#page163  

Stereotypes in education. Part 2. Technicians versus humanitarians (технари vs гуманитарии).

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“Humanitarians, do not get mad at the joke technicians! 

They are people just like you, but a little smarter!”

It is thought that technicians are smarter than humanitarians. There are a lot of jokes and videos, where technicians humiliate humanitarians and show hatred towards them. This video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5DPKck0wtE would be a very clear demonstration of the reality, but I guess, from technician’s point of view.

But where do all these come from?

Nowadays there is a tendency to place students into classes of different directions, usually there are two of them called something like “technical” - natural science like mathematics, physics, chemistry etc. and “humanitarian”, including history, literature, languages and others. This might be one of the roots.

Another aspect is of hemisphere; it is believed that your inclination to any of the directions mentioned above depends on whether you are left or right hemisphered. This means, that people with well developed left brain are more logical, can easily work out mathematical tasks, count and numerate things quickly etc. and right brain people are considered to be more creative, they are close to art, poetry, singing, writing etc. And of course there also exceptions, when people do not take any position and stay between these hemispheres; these people can have strong features from each side.

And what about gender peculiarities? Why there are too many boys studying at one institutions and too many girls in others? For example, simply our school, you know the proportion of girls to boys. Maybe you have noticed how girls and boys study at school, mostly girls are excellent students; but then how come that boys become directors and get well-paid jobs?

Another conversation on this topic I witnessed recently a technician was joking sarcastically: “Humanitarians are bla-bla-bla… Check out our essence! Who creates all these innovations and makes our life easier?” To conclude, I think everything is balanced anyway, people should not say that some people are more important or smarter than others. All of these are just stereotypes.

Challenges of blogging

In this post, I would like to tell about the challenges I experienced in writing for the blog in comparison with academic writing and I will compare my experience with the results of the survey about blogging experience conducted among my groupmates. Overall, my earlier attitude towards blogging can be described as rather negative – mostly unfriendly and cautious. Although some of my friends are successful bloggers, well read and supported in their writing exercises by readers as well as their families and friends, it was hard for me to understand how any blogger can freely reveal his or her thoughts in public. According to the survey, conducted in our class, about one third of my groupmates would support me in that sharing your thoughts via blogging is not as easy as it seems. Therefore, when blogging was announced as our major writing activity to do this semester, I was happy, because I knew, this would be a challenge for me.

Blogging really turned out to be challenging. The first challenge for me was choosing a topic. In my opinion, for a standard academic writing it is easier, because your instructor or supervisor is your main targeted audience and in this case, the most important point is to choose a topic you know well to be able to demonstrate the full knowledge in the field. However, choosing a topic for a blog post, the most important point is writing about an interesting or highly relevant issue, because main peculiarity of blogging is freedom of readers to choose what they read. In addition, the main purpose of writing for the blog is to attract as many readers as possible. According to the survey, over 50% of my groupmates find it difficult to choose topics for blog posts. It is not a surprising number for me, because there are especial requirements to the topic for the blog post: blogger writes for audience which chooses whether to read the post or not, so the topic must be worth reading.

Another challenge for me was a writing style. By trying to blog, I learnt that good writing  can be very different in style. What is appropriate for academic writing may seem clumsy in a blog post and vice versa. In addition, our exercise was to do blogging on education-related topics, so we could not be too informal. In my opinion, blogging is a good writing practice, because you develop sense of words and phrases, suitable for various range of topics.

And the last challenge for any blogger is comments. After I published my post about women in education, I got comment from one of the coursemates I know, which showed that she did not fully understand some phrase in the blog, and after her comment, I edited this phrase to be clearer. However, the main thing I learnt was that when you engage in blogging, you must be ready for negative comments, because there must be people whose life positions are different from yours. However, I am eager to receive feedback, and so are just below 50% of my groupmates. The secret motivation of the blogger here is the willingness to get his or her work appreciated. Of course, the blogger must be ready for criticism, and that is why the other half of my group did not find getting feedback from peers as attractive.

Despite these challenges, blogging was a good exercise and a good development tool. With the help of this exercise, I learnt that it is possible write interesting things without necessarily revealing your intimate feelings. In this activity, we wrote about education, and that was really interesting and useful. Now, since I have overcome these challenges writing for a blog as a classroom activity, I will definitely practice some blogging outside classroom.

References:

Montgomery, D. P. (2015a). [Blogging and Academic Writing]. Unpublished raw data. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/PX8wv7