Last year, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 marked its 40th anniversary. In SPICE’s newest Scholars Corner video offering, “The Iranian Revolution,” Professor Abbas Milani discusses Iran and the Iranian Revolution, noting the influence of Iran regionally and in the United States, the significance and impact of the Iranian Revolution, and the Iranian Revolution’s causes and effects. He also emphasizes the fight for democracy throughout Iran’s history of revolutions and today.

In his lecture, Dr. Milani addresses several questions, including why Americans should be interested in Iran and the Iranian Revolution in the first place. Dr. Milani reflects, “I think we should learn about Iran, and we should teach about Iran because Iran is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. It was one of the earliest empires… If that’s not enough, Iran has been an absolutely essential part of the Middle East for the last century. Virtually everything that has happened in Iran has prefigured the developments in the region.” He continues by noting that “In the Cold War period, Iran was one of the staunchest allies of the United States. And since 1979, Iran has been one of the staunchest foes of the United States. So historically we need to understand Iran, and essentially we need to understand Iran if we are to understand what is happening in the Middle East and what has happened in the Middle East in the last 40 years.”

This video lecture was designed for high school and community college levels and is recommended for courses in world history, political science, and world affairs. An accompanying teacher’s guide includes activities that draw upon the content and perspectives from Dr. Milani’s lecture. The organizing questions that students are encouraged to consider are:

• What is a revolution?
• What were the successes and failures of the Iranian Revolution?
• How did the Iranian Revolution impact or contribute to events in the Middle East, the United States, and the world?
• How is the Iranian Revolution similar and different from other revolutions?
• What are some of the challenges of writing about a historical event like the Iranian Revolution?

Lastly, SPICE recommends that teachers and students examine the resources available at the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, which is directed by Dr. Milani. Also, SPICE encourages teachers and student to visit SPICE’s Scholars Corner webpage, which features many other videos of scholars affiliated with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) discussing contemporary issues and research in their fields of expertise.

During this time of intense public debate on immigration, SPICE has partnered with PBS and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) to encourage teachers to share the American Experience film, The Chinese Exclusion Act, with students. Teachers should be advised that the film contains language that some viewers may find objectionable, so we advise that they preview the film before deciding whether or not to use it with their students. The Chinese Exclusion Act was directed by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu and a description of the film from PBS follows:

Examine the origin, history, and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become U.S. citizens. The first in a long line of acts targeting the Chinese for exclusion, it remained in force for more than 60 years.

Despite its passage 138 years ago and its repeal in 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act has been referenced in numerous recent articles that have focused on rising anti-Asian sentiment—including violence against Asian Americans—during the coronavirus pandemic. The Chinese Exclusion Act as well as the internment of Japanese Americans have been referenced as examples of federal acts directed at Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in U.S. history. Given these recent references, the film can provide students with an overview of the Chinese Exclusion Act as they try to better understand the news. CAAM Executive Director Stephen Gong feels that many of the lessons from the film are relevant to the United States today. He stated, “We are thrilled to have partnered with Curriculum Specialist Waka Brown and the SPICE program at Stanford on the Teacher’s Guide to The Chinese Exclusion Act. This standards-compliant and comprehensive guide will help ensure that the important lessons of the Exclusion Act will become a regular part of secondary curriculum for generations to come.”

In order to help teachers use the film in their classrooms, SPICE partnered with CAAM to develop a teacher’s guide for the film. PBS LearningMedia recently posted the teacher’s guide for teacher use. Both the film and teacher’s guide are offered at no charge.

SPICE Curriculum Specialist Waka Brown, who wrote the teacher’s guide, noted that the guide is designed to meet certain national history, social studies, geography, and common core standards for high school. Brown also feels that the film is ideal for courses at the collegiate level in areas like ethnic studies, U.S. history, Asian studies, law, and political science. Brown decided to focus the activities in the guide around the following essential questions.

• What factors led to increased immigration from China to the United States?
• How did the Chinese adapt to life in the United States that sometimes included hostility directed at them?
• How did Chinese immigration to the United States intensify ethnic and cultural conflict and complicate the forging of a national identity?
• What role did new laws and the federal judiciary play in instituting racial inequality and in disfranchising various racial groups such as the Chinese?
• What factors led to immigration restrictions of the Chinese and ultimately exclusion?
• What arguments and methods did Chinese in the United States use to acquire equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution?
• How have ideals and institutions of freedom, equality, justice, and citizenship in the United States changed over time and from one community to another?

This may be an opportune time to have students consider these questions not only in the context of the Chinese American experience in the 19th century and today, but also to have students discuss the relevance of the questions to other groups who have immigrated to the United States and continue to do so today.

SPICE would like to express its appreciation to Adrian Arima and Monica Yeung Arima for funding the development of the teacher’s guide.

To stay informed of SPICE-related news, join our email list and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This webinar was made possible through the Freeman Foundation’s support of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA), a multi-year initiative to encourage and facilitate teaching and learning about East Asia in elementary and secondary schools nationwide. SPICE’s Jonas Edman and Naomi Funahashi coordinate SPICE’s NCTA seminars and webinars.

While walking along the hallways of the Ethnic Studies Department with Professor Khatharya Um at U.C. Berkeley on December 3, 2019, I shared some remembrances of my first quarter at U.C. Berkeley in fall 1972. I had enrolled in two courses in the Ethnic Studies Department that quarter: one focused on the Asian American experience with Patrick Hayashi and Colin Watanabe and the other focused on diverse perspectives on U.S. history with Professor Ronald Takaki. Most of the Asian American students in these classes were of Chinese and Japanese descent with a few of Korean, Indian, and Filipino descent. Through these classes, I was introduced for the first time in my life to Asian American literature like No-No Boy (1957) and America Is in the Heart (1948). I had enrolled at U.C. Berkeley less than three years after the establishment of the Ethnic Studies Department (1969) and during the anti-Vietnam War protests.

According to its website, the Ethnic Studies Department emerged from student and community members’ demands for scholarly programs that focused on the “understudied histories and situations of African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos, and Native Americans.” This year marks the 50th year since its establishment; 2019 also marks the 44th anniversary since the fall of Saigon (1975).

I was at the Ethnic Studies Department on December 3, 2019 because my colleague, Naomi Funahashi, had organized a SPICE webinar, “Culturally and Experientially Responsive Pedagogy: Teaching to Diverse Asian and Asian American Students,” that featured Professor Um. Approximately 30 educators from many states and also Pakistan and Japan participated. During her talk, Um pointed out that the resettlement of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia began with the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and continued through the early 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. She noted that unlike economically motivated migration from other parts of Asia, immigration to the United States from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia was largely due to flight from war, authoritarianism, and genocide. Largely as a result of these waves of immigration to the United States, the Asian American student population in U.S. schools and universities like U.C. Berkeley has become increasingly diverse.

To help meet the educational needs of this increasingly diverse population, Um argued for the importance of culturally and experientially responsive pedagogy. She explained that “culturally and experientially responsive pedagogy is a student-centered approach to teaching in which the students’ experiences and cultural strengths are identified, validated, and used to empower students, enrich and promote learning.” Like many other communities, Asian and Asian American students represent a wide spectrum of ethnicities, languages, histories, generations, cultures, and religions. She acknowledged that “Providing culturally and experientially responsive instruction to these students can be daunting… and schools are faced with both opportunities and challenges in providing instruction that is rich and meaningful. Diverse student populations offer valuable opportunities for classroom and community enrichment.”

Um interspersed some statistical information in order to show the significance and some characteristics of the Asian American population.

• Largely as a result of ongoing migration, Asians are among the fastest growing populations in the United States.
• The Asian American population has grown by 72% between 2000 and 2015.
• Currently, the population is approximately 20.4 million.
• The diversity among and within Asian American communities has increased with new immigration.
• 59% of the U.S. Asian population was born in another country.

Um encouraged the educators in the United States to keep these statistics in mind and noted that “Effective learning depends on more than just the curriculum. It is about creating a space where students can feel safe, empowered, valued, and feel that they belong… It begins with knowing your students or at least knowing how to know… and it rests on knowing what to do with what you know.” The words, “knowing how to know,” brought back memories of a question—“What does epistemology mean to you?”—that Takaki raised to students in his first class lecture at U.C. Berkeley in fall 1972. After acknowledging a student’s answer, he replied that epistemology focuses on the question, “How do you know that you know what you know?,” and this has stayed with me since and continues to shape my work at SPICE.

While in Um’s office, I noticed some books on her shelf that I once read back in the 1970s—literature that was “culturally relevant” to me. But what most stood out for me was a copy of Um’s book, From the Land of Shadows: War, Revolution and the Making of the Cambodian Diaspora. Other than America Is the Heart by Filipino American Carlos Buloson, there was no other Southeast Asian American-focused literature that we were assigned during fall quarter 1972. Um is the first Cambodian American woman to receive a PhD. I left campus thinking of how fortunate I was to have scholars like Hayashi, Watanabe, and Takaki who taught and empowered me, and also how fortunate Southeast Asian American students and others are today to have scholars like Um concerned about their education and advancement.

Following the webinar, Funahashi reflected, “I not only received overwhelmingly positive feedback about Professor Um’s lecture from participants, but I too gained a greater awareness of the growing diversity in our schools that is also reflected in my online class, the Reischauer Scholars Program. After listening to Professor Um’s thoughts on culturally and experientially responsive pedagogy, a big take-away for me was the importance of a teacher’s capacity for empathy as one works with students from very diverse backgrounds.”

To stay informed of SPICE-related news, join our email list and follow SPICE on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Related articles, videos, and curriculum:

• Rylan Sekiguchi Receives Buchanan Prize for His Work on Cambodia
• My Cambodia
• My Cambodian America
• SPICE in Vietnam
• Legacies of the Vietnam War

“Let’s bring all the planes down”—Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta’s words to ground all U.S. planes on 9/11—elicited a moment of riveted silence in the audience of educators attending the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference in Austin, Texas, as they listened to Secretary Mineta’s keynote address on November 23, 2019. Upon hearing those words, many were transported back to a time when most people probably remember exactly where and what they were doing at the time that they heard of the events unfolding on September 11, 2001. However, most of their current students were not alive in 2001 and Mineta underscored the importance of teaching them about the lessons of 9/11 so that it is never forgotten.

During his address, Secretary Mineta highlighted the importance of conference themes such as informed action and decision making as he reflected upon lessons from his life, and the important role that teachers have in shaping critical attitudes of their students. In a touching moment, he shared his experience as a 10-year-old boy in 1942 who was forced from his home in San Jose, California, and incarcerated with his family in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, the location of one of the 10 major incarceration camps for people of Japanese descent during World War II. He vividly recalled his cherished baseball bat being confiscated by the Military Police as it was deemed a weapon. Mineta also shared how his experience during World War II informed one of President George W. Bush’s comments immediately following 9/11, that is, “We know what happened to Norm Mineta in the 1940s, and we’re not going to let that happen again.” A son of immigrants from Japan, Norman Mineta became the first Asian American mayor of a major city (San Jose, California). This led to a distinguished 20-year career in Congress and the first Asian American Cabinet member, having served two U.S. Presidents, a Democrat (Bill Clinton) and Republican (George W. Bush).

As Secretary Mineta spoke, one could sense that he never forgot his roots or the shame and humiliation that he and his family felt during World War II; as a congressman, he led the way for an apology from the U.S. government and redress for Japanese Americans who were interned. As U.S. Secretary of Transportation during and after 9/11, he made critical decisions that would ensure that what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II did not happen to any other group based on ethnicity or religion. His burning desire for all people to be treated equally is at the heart of a film, Norman Mineta and His Legacy: An American Story, that was co-produced by Dianne Fukami and Debra Nakatomi, who were also in the audience. The film premiered on PBS earlier this year.

Following Secretary Mineta’s keynote to an audience of hundreds who gave him a standing ovation, SPICE’s Rylan Sekiguchi and Jonas Edman led a more intimate discussion with Secretary Mineta and 70 educators that also included an overview of a SPICE-produced web-based curriculum unit that is titled, “What Does It Mean to Be American?” As its main author, Sekiguchi explained that the curriculum unit consists of six lessons with readings, videos, and assignments to examine key themes from Secretary Mineta’s life and career: immigration, civil liberties & equity, civic engagement, justice & reconciliation, leadership, and U.S.–Japan relations.

Sekiguchi also noted that the curriculum meets national standards for history, social studies, civics and government courses, and topics are brought to life and connected to students’ own lives through primary source documents, interactive classroom activities, and custom-created video vignettes (produced by Fukami) showcasing a diverse range of American voices—from high school youth to former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Each lesson provides a different lens through which students can examine the curriculum’s central question: What does it mean to be an American? The curriculum unit will be released in spring 2020.

Sekiguchi’s overview was followed by a discussion between Mineta and the 70 educators that was moderated by Edman. Questions from the audience ranged from Mineta’s legendary lifelong friendship with Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming to issues concerning immigrant families today. Many of the questions and Secretary Mineta’s responses touched upon the political divisiveness in U.S. society today and prompted educators to think of ways to use “What Does It Mean to Be An American?” and Norman Mineta and His Legacy: An American Story in their classrooms. Compliments from the audience like “this was the best session of the conference” and “this was the best workshop I’ve been to” could be heard following the session.

During their work with Secretary Mineta, Sekiguchi, Fukami, and Nakatomi were especially touched when they heard why Secretary Norman Mineta wears an American flag on his lapel. Mineta has noted, “When you’re in close quarters… people will sort of give you the once over. And so, I always wear this [flag pin]. It’s something you feel when you’re doing things. Am I really being fully accepted as an American citizen? I want to make sure everyone knows I am one.”

Question & Answer session with Secretary Norman Mineta with Jonas Edman moderating

Related articles:

• Secretary Norman Mineta and SPICE’s Rylan Sekiguchi Speak at the Ronald Reagan Library
• Secretary Norman Mineta and SPICE’s Rylan Sekiguchi Highlight National Council of History Education Conference in Washington, DC
• Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Interviewed for the Mineta Legacy Project

Last week, 23 educators from across North America gathered at Stanford University for the 2019 East Asia Summer Institute for High School Teachers, a teacher professional development seminar offered by SPICE in partnership with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. Over three days of rich content lectures, discussion, and experiential learning, institute participants deepened their background knowledge on Asia and began to rethink and revamp their curriculum plans for the coming school year.

This year’s participants came from as far away as Concord, New Hampshire and Vancouver, Canada, although most attendees were high school teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area. They represented a wide range of teaching subjects, from history and language arts to statistics and genocide studies, but all sought to strengthen their teaching through a clearer, more nuanced understanding of Asia, U.S.–Asia relations, and the Asian American experience—the three main areas explored in this year’s summer institute.

Participant Hellie Mateo poses with a book she made by hand using traditional Japanese book-binding methods.

The institute’s guest speakers came from similarly diverse backgrounds, being scholars, artists, authors, and Stanford University professors with expertise on a specific aspect of Asia, U.S.–Asia relations, or the Asian American experience. Interwoven between their captivating content lectures were classroom-focused lesson demonstrations, hands-on activities, and pedagogy discussions facilitated by SPICE curriculum designers. “We make sure we balance subject-matter content with practical application in all of our teacher professional development seminars,” notes SPICE Director Dr. Gary Mukai. “That’s why we focus so much time and energy on pedagogy and lesson demonstrations. We want to help high school teachers translate their newfound knowledge directly into the classroom.”

To that end, summer institute participants each receive several free books, films, and SPICE lesson plans to help them bring Asia alive for their students. They also receive a stipend and become eligible for three optional units of credit from Stanford Continuing Studies.

“Being in the Bay Area—and particularly at Stanford University—we have access to such incredible experts on these subjects,” says institute coordinator and facilitator Naomi Funahashi. “Our job is to connect those experts with teachers in a way that supports teacher needs. That’s our goal for this summer institute.”

Although the high school teachers have now returned home from Stanford campus, their work is not done. They will now use the content they learned at the summer institute to create original lesson plans to incorporate into their own practice. When they reconvene for a final online session in late July / early August, they will share their lesson plans with each other, and each teacher will walk away with 22 brand new lesson plans designed by their colleagues. “We can’t wait to see what kinds of innovative lessons our teachers will come up with!” says Funahashi. “And we can’t wait to see how they incorporate these new lessons into their plans for the next school year.”

To view photos from the summer institute and read a more comprehensive recap what happened, please see the SPICE Facebook page.

Related articles:

• Application open for 2019 Summer Institute for High School Teachers
• The Freeman Foundation: Supporting the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia for 20 Years
• Institute highlights the teaching of Asia and the Asian-American experience

The following reflection is a guest post written by Stacy Shimanuki, SPICE student intern and a 2018 alum and honoree of the Reischauer Scholars Program. In the fall, she will be a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.

My passion for Japan extends deep into my very identity as Japanese American. I am ethnically half Japanese and half Chinese; my great grandfather was an immigrant from Japan and thus, I am yonsei or fourth-generation Japanese American on my paternal side. My Japanese American grandfather was born in Hawaii and survived the Pearl Harbor bombing on Oahu; he went on to help make history in the renowned U.S. 100th Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) as a Japanese language translator in Myanmar during World War II. I grew up visiting sites like the “Go For Broke” Monument in Los Angeles, the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center in San Francisco, and the Nisei Veterans Memorial Center on Maui. This family history and heritage are always with me, and frames my experience with Japan and with U.S.–Japan relations.

However, because my ancestors immigrated to the United States so long ago, my father and most in his generation cannot speak Japanese and know relatively little of the culture; most of my generation knows even less about Japan. Moreover, since I don’t often visit my Japanese American side of the family in Hawaii, I’m much more familiar with my Chinese cultural heritage and Chinese American relatives here in California, and even identified more as Chinese American when I was younger. Yet, my interest in Japan remained, rekindled by my academic experience with Japan, both through Japanese language studies in high school and SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), a rigorous and intellectually stimulating online course for high schoolers passionate about Japan and U.S.–Japan relations.

At my high school, beyond foreign language classes, the only international-related courses available were a semester of Global Studies freshman year, AP World History, and AP Human Geography—all three of which I took. However, despite fulfilling the core standards and even being excellent classes, none of them offered an intensive focus on a specific region, much less a single country. Through the RSP, as a mere high school senior I was granted the opportunity to explore a myriad of fascinating topics at a high academic level, such as: conflicts over the historical legacies of Japanese aggression in East Asia during World War II, the aging population and its impact on social perspective, the influence of traditional Buddhist and Shinto thought on a society normally considered extremely secular, the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble and recent recovery, and a variety of other issues. 

Moreover, almost no high school class teaches material the way the RSP does. Instead of relying on textbooks and handouts, we learned from more engaging sources: biographies and memoirs, academic journal excerpts, news articles, and lectures and discussions with professionals and expert scholars. Our various speakers such as former Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, a practicing Buddhist monk, a Japanese American internee, a Foreign Service Officer in Japan, and professors from both Japanese and American top-tier universities shared valuable knowledge, moving personal stories, and professional expertise and advice. The students also learned from each other; my classmates, selected for the RSP not only for their interest in Japan but also for their diverse perspectives and critical thinking and communication skills, contributed to thought-provoking and interdisciplinary discussion forums.

Additionally, the basic structure of the RSP—self-driven online learning—lent the freedom to truly learn for the sake of learning and the pursuit of knowledge. It was perhaps the first time I gave my all to studying merely because I was fascinated; at times it didn’t even feel like studying, just reading about and further researching aspects that struck me with interest, puzzlement, and excitement. Certain topics also struck a personal chord; for example, studying Japanese American internment prompted me to reflect on my own family’s struggles during the war both as internees and in the MIS. This in turn sparked me to individually research a longtime curiosity I had always wondered about but never looked into before—that is, the existence or not of World War II Japanese American spies for Japan. The topics that compelled me to individually dive deeper naturally sprouted into my final research project, connected under the theme of language, another area I love and credit with my original attraction to Japanese studies.

Student honorees of the 2018 Reischauer Scholars Program with Consul General Tomochika Uyama and RSP Instructor Naomi Funahashi.

That is the beauty of the RSP: the opportunity to discover Japan on a scholarly level rarely found otherwise, self-driven but supported by a dedicated instructor, fascinating speakers, and diverse and enthusiastic fellow students. For self-motivated students wanting to learn about Japan, to discover a love for learning, and to expand their perspective and worldview, the RSP is an absolute gold mine.

For me, it was also the stepping stone and foundation for a path of global discovery, scholarship, and service. The summer after the RSP, I received a scholarship to study abroad in Kyoto for a month, attending a private language school in the mornings and exploring the city in the afternoons. As my first time in Japan, I not only fell in love with the beautiful landscape—the endless sea of green mountains punctuated by bits of city or the brilliant fireworks display at Lake Biwako—but also the people, appreciating the friendly warmth of my host family and the kind earnestness of Japanese university students, whom I now consider close friends. This past year, I immersed myself in studying Mandarin at a high school in Beijing as a gap year through the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), following my aspiration of being trilingual in Japanese, Mandarin, and English. Currently, I am incredibly grateful to work with SPICE for the summer as an intern, connecting further with the people and projects that have had such an impact on my education. And this fall, I will enter the University of Pennsylvania in the dual degree Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. Focusing specifically on Japan and Japanese language, I will also study abroad for a semester at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. From my birth and family background, to my academic experiences including the RSP and my aspirations of East Asian expertise and contributing to diplomatic friendship across the Pacific, my journey is inextricably tied with Japan and her people.

For more information on the Reischauer Scholars Program, visit reischauerscholars.org. To be notified when the next RSP application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The Reischauer Scholars Program is one of several online courses for high school students offered by SPICE, Stanford University, including the China Scholars Program, the Sejong Scholars Program (on Korea), Stanford e-China, and Stanford e-Japan.

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This year, the Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP) concluded its sixth year with its largest cohort of 22 students from across the United States. The SKSP is an intensive online course offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) at Stanford University for exceptional U.S. high school students who want to engage in an in-depth study of Korea, exploring its history, religion, culture, and relationship with the United States. Students who successfully complete the course earn credit from the Stanford Continuing Studies Program and a Certificate of Completion from SPICE, Stanford University.

Each year from March to June, students in the SKSP online course carry out rigorous coursework that consists of weekly readings, online lectures, assignments, discussion posts, and “virtual classroom” video conferencing sessions, where students engage in live discussion with each other and a guest speaker who is an expert-scholar on the topic of the week. As their culminating final project, students write independent research papers which are printed in journal format at the conclusion of the course.

The SKSP online course offers a unique opportunity for high school students to study Korea and U.S.–Korean relations in a college-level-type course that draws on the wealth of expertise and scholarship on Korean Studies at Stanford University. Top scholars, experts, and former diplomats at Stanford University as well as other universities in the United States provide thematically organized online lectures. The themes for each week include traditional Korean culture, religion, colonial history, the Korean War, post-war recovery, North Korea, modern South Korean society and its educational system, and Korea’s transnationalism. In addition to the recorded online lectures, the guest speakers for the weekly virtual classroom sessions engage in discussions with students and provide answers to their questions.

The co-instructors for the course, as well as guest speakers, often note the quality and maturity of students’ thoughtful insights and questions. Co-instructor HyoJung Jang has noted that “the talented and engaged high school students who participate in the SKSP online course bring their intellectual curiosity, critical thinking skills, and enthusiasm for learning about Korea and its popular culture. On top of their full academic load at their respective high schools across the country, these students go above and beyond to commit to SKSP’s demanding coursework and participate fully in the course as Korea scholars-in-training.”

“Over the past four months, our students have formed a community where they actively engage in intellectual discussions with each other—exchanging their ideas, thoughts, reflections, experiences, and perspectives on various topics,” commented co-instructor Jonas Edman. “For instance, some students contributed their own interpretations and explanations for the stark difference between the Taiwanese colonial experience and memory of Japanese rule and that of Korea. When discussing the issue of ‘comfort women’ during Japanese colonial rule in Korea, one student shared a personal story about his great-great-grandmother’s similarly painful experience under foreign rule in Eastern Europe and powerfully advocated for the importance of justice. Other students shared about their assessments of the roles of the U.S. and South Korean leaders—in addition to the roles played by North Korea, China, and Russia—on the outbreak of the Korean War and its aftermath.”

Alongside their academic engagement with each other, students have also bonded over their shared interests in Korean food and popular culture, namely “K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies.” Some students chose to write their final research papers on analyzing Korean popular culture. Other discussions on the modern Korean education system have even incorporated students’ personal observations of the education issues portrayed in a popular Korean drama. These interests are encouraged, as students are urged to creatively explore the topics most interesting to them for their final research paper.

One of the strengths of the SKSP online course is that it encourages high school students to consider different perspectives on various issues, think critically about those different perspectives, and develop their own informed opinions. Reflecting on her participation in the course, Chloee Robison, a high school student from Indiana, said, “SKSP was a unique opportunity to explore my interest in Korean history. Even though I am not of Korean heritage, I felt deeply connected to the course material, and I found the lectures to be quite informative and engaging. Coming from a region that is largely homogeneous, hearing the perspectives of diverse-minded students opened my eyes to issues and ideas that I would have otherwise been blind to. I am so grateful to everyone involved in the course, and I would recommend it to all students who wish to challenge themselves and expand their knowledge of Korean history and culture.” Chloee’s research project on Korea’s March First Movement earned first place in Indiana’s National History Day competition.

The popularity and demand for Stanford’s SKSP online course on Korea grows each year. Interested high school students are encouraged to apply early for the program. The application period is between late August and early October each year for enrollment in the online course the following year. The online application can be found on the SPICE website at sejongscholars.org.

To be notified when the next Sejong Korean Scholars Program application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The Sejong Korean Scholars Program is one of several online courses for high school students offered by SPICE, Stanford University, including the China Scholars Program, the Reischauer Scholars Program (on Japan), and the Stanford e-Japan Program.

Related article:

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