My Account Wish List
Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.greenwood.com/catalog/C7694.aspx
All Greenwood Products
Making the World Like Us Education, Cultural Expansion, and the American Century
Liping Bu
ISBN: 0-275-97694-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97694-1
304 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 3/30/2003
List Price: $86.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Awards:
  • Academic Essentials-Education Academia September 2003
Description: This is the first systemic investigation of the various efforts to promote the expansion of American culture via major religious, social, political and governmental institutions. Christian missionaries, secular cultural elite, and the government have served as three major forces pushing American cultural values and political idealism abroad, although each has emphasized different elements of Americanism—Christian beliefs, individualism, democracy, and free enterprise—in championing American leadership. In the course of American ascendance as an international power and a superpower, education caught the imagination of different groups as the means to shape individual views and world outlook from the American perspective. Major philanthropic enterprises have likewise hoped to encourage positive sentiment toward American influence.

Education has served as the vehicle to train future world leaders who, acting as cultural agents of transmission, were expected to carry American values and ideas to their home countries. The exportation of American culture, however, encountered challenges as those future leaders experienced contradictions of the ideals they were taught to embrace in the daily life of American society. Moreover, different players emphasized different elements of Americanism in their educational endeavors. This study analyzes these challenges and the tensions inherent in the exportation of American cultural influence on a global level.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
    Introduction
    Before World War II
    Cultural Expansion: Missionary Thrust of an Ecumenical World
    Cultural Internationalism: Educational Exchange and Cultural Understanding for World Peace
    Liberal Visions in a Conservative Age: International House Movement
    Educational Assistance for World Progress: Teachers College, Columbia University
    After World War II
    Changes in Govenment Cultural Policy and the Realignment of Private Forces in Worldwide Educational Exchange
    Philanthropy in Cold War Cultural Diplomacy: The Ford Foundation and the New Profession of International Education
    Educational Exchange and National Interest: The Role of the State
    Selected Bibliography
    Index
About the Author: LIPING BU is Associate Professor of History at Alma College. She is co-editor of The Cultural Turn: Essays in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations.
LCC Class: 370
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2009 ABC-CLIO
130 Cremona Dr., Santa Barbara, CA 93117 805-968-1911