Mother Tongues

Personal stories may lie at the root of students’ academic choices, and this can be even more true at IFE’s Field Study and Internship Program where intellectual pursuits are not bounded by the walls of academe or even by those of academic departments. Two recent stories of students who found a calling in their mothers’ native language and culture:

In the introduction to his independent field research project on how WWII has been presented in French schoolbooks, Philip S. writes "When I was five years old I visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii with my Russian-born mother. At the end of the exhibit we watched a film entitled "The Second World War". I was both totally absorbed and confused by the battle scenes, first-hand accounts and long narration of the war in the Pacific accompanied by a short sequence on the war in Europe, and at the end I turned to my mother to ask ’who won the war?’. Furious at a presentation of WWII so given over to the role of the US, my mother responded, in a loud voice and to the great shock of the other visitors, ’the Soviet Union won the War!’". Working as an associate researcher at the History Center at Sciences Po in Paris, Philip was able to pursue his lifelong interest not only in the War but also in how perceptions and versions of the conflict vary from participating country to country. He concludes his paper entitled "Who Won the War?: Teaching history to young people", with the hope that one day France will be able to answer his title question uninfluenced either by amnesia or obsession, the two extremes which Philip discovered in his research as structuring the teaching of WWII over the last half century.

Frances K was born in New York City and raised in Lima by her Peruvian mother and American father. Transcultural and transnational education was not only her personal lot but has also become her intellectual passion, as an education and anthropology major focusing on intercultural education. Before enrolling in IFE’s Field Study program, Frances had experience working in education in indigenous communities in Mexico and Peru and, during the school year, tutoring and providing support services to Mexican immigrant communities in the US. The Field Study program offered Frances the chance to gather both experience and research opportunities toward her goal of a senior thesis that will take an ethnographic approach to educational policy, by working with AFEV (a French not-for-profit organization that puts university student volunteers to work providing school support for a wide range of pupils). Here Frances was able to focus on the education of children of newly-arrived immigrants, writing a lengthy analysis of AFEV’s methods in this area based on both theory and field observation and interviews. The summer following her stint in Paris found Frances back in Peru, in Cusco, working among the Quechua-speaking population and conducting research for her thesis on educating the children of Latin America’s indigenous populations, and continuing to build expertise on this vital question.

Is Everything Culture?

For some years IFE has included in its preparatory curriculum some instruction on the role of the State in culture and the importance of cultural policy in French society. Part of culture is memory, and this year France remembers that fifty years ago the newly formed Fifth Republic of France instituted a Ministry of Culture, etablishing in modern administrative form the art-supporting role the State has played in France since the Rennaissance. The writer André Malraux served as the first Minister, defining the Ministry’s role as "making accessible to the greatest number of citizens the great cultural achievements of mankind and particularly those of France, ensuring a broad dissemination of French cultural heritage and encouraging the creation of art and of artistic sensibilities". Under President Mitterand’s flamboyant Minister of Culture Jack Lang, in the 1980’s, official recognition and support shifted to include pop culture, world culture, and just about everything, as in Lang’s favorite dictum: "Everything is culture". (Wags would say that Lang’s ambition was to be Minister of Everything.)

In Paris to chair a 50-year birthday seminar organized by the Ministry, Israeli historian and francophile Eli Barnavi took issue with this statement in an interview in Le Monde: "if everything is culture then nothing is culture and there is no need for a Ministry of Culture", and indeed there is talk in government circles of doing away with this ministry. But Barnavi also disagrees with Time Magazine that French cultural influence is in decline because of State support for culture, arguing instead for a reinforced State role but along Malrauxist lines, "culture cultivée", and Malraux’ forgotten program of culture as education. "Cultural diversity is a fact not a value", says Barnavi, who has some experience with diversity as advisor to the Museum of Europe in Brussels, where the attempt to portray a European civilization across a mosaic of cultures is, according to Barnavi, proving to be difficult. "We’re still a long way off." Back at IFE, the Field Study program not only teaches its student-interns the role of the State in a living French culture, but also places art historians and culture specialists along the front lines of public and philanthropic support for contemporary art as well as the art market: The Cartier Foundation, the Pompidou Center, the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery, and others. In fact, the instructor of cultural policy at IFE, Jérôme Poggi, is the founder of an art gallery and an agency ("Objet de Production") that looks for commissions for contemporary artists.

Twenty Years Out

With an ardent belief in the theories of Christopher Columbus, IFE is certain that IFE alums have not fallen off the edge of the world, but rather that they are somewhere on its round and wonderful surface... but where? Doing what? As increasing numbers of post-dot-e-d-u email addresses are identified, a wealth of fascinating detail emerges : Rotary or Fulbright scholarships awarded to study urban poverty in the Maghreb, AIDS prevention in India,...; continued graduate studies in France...; international marriages leading to career and family in Denmark, France, England,...; museum curators at the Whitney, the Cartier Foundation and others, French teachers in NYC, English teachers in Ankara or Seoul, law professors, a banker in Ecuador, an ACLU regional executive director, a mid-level manager in WDC spending her free time setting up virtual international exchanges between high schools, a program officer for an NGO getting medical supplies into Haiti, a reporter back in France after a journalism internship with IFE, and many others. Tenured posts, executive positions, some of the information arrives to the sound of the beating wings of time; in fact the first full year of operation was 1990, almost twenty years ago! To mark this occasion and to motivate the continued effort to contact lost alumni, IFE hopes to mount some sort of virtual reunion, or at least a detailed profile on-line, of the 12 students who enrolled in the Spring session 1990 and the 14 Fall session students of that year. IFE + 20 years = ?? ... Answers hopefully in upcoming issues of this Letter.