Greetings from Asia where Loomis Chaffee is on an 11-day admissions and alumni relations tour of Seoul, Korea; Bangkok, Thailand; and Hong Kong, China. It has been a wonderful tour as we have seen record turn-outs of prospective students in each of the cities we have visited, and we have reconnected with alumni and parents. The trip has encouraged me to reflect on exactly what it is that we mean when we say in our mission statement that we want to educate our students to be global citizens.
It is an obvious truism today to say that our students will graduate into a world that is global — certainly in terms of the economy, but also culturally. It is likely that they will be working with people from around the world. What happens in one part of the world often has ramifications here in the United States. But to think globally is not simply to be able to appreciate the fact that there is a world out there — It is also to appreciate that people from other parts of the world and from other cultural traditions think about things in different ways. They have a much different framework.
So if our students are going to be able to live and work effectively in this sort of environment and if they are going to be successful and creative problem solvers, they have to have some appreciation for these different ways of knowing and thinking. They have to be willing to look at problems and issues from different angles. I was talking to one of our Vietnamese students before I left. We have 10 students from Vietnam on campus right now. This particular student was originally from North Vietnam, although his family had moved to the south and he was in our U.S. History course. Well, imagine what the discussion about the Vietnam War is going to be like with this young man in the class compared to what it might be if there are no international, let alone Vietnamese, students in the class. Now, we might well disagree with his interpretation of the war — but whether we do or we don’t, it certainly makes for a richer educational environment to have that child in that class.
About 8 percent of our students are international students. They come from 20 different countries. Our first student from Asia was from Thailand, and he came in the late 1960s. Today we have close to 50 students from Asia including students from Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, and China. I am proud to say that Loomis provides a wonderful learning environment for these students. They gain immensely from their education at Loomis. It has been very affirming to hear stories from parents on this trip about just how important Loomis has been to them.
International students also contribute significantly to the educational and living environment at the school — not only in history but also in English and science and religion and philosophy and on and on. They come to our school with different perspectives and experiences. It is one of the real benefits of being a boarding school and being able to enroll such students.
We, of course, have a language requirement, and we teach Latin, French, Spanish, and Chinese. Our enrollments in all of these languages are very strong. This will be our last year of teaching German, however, as so few students want to take that language, and next year we are working to add Arabic to the languages we teach. We are also looking to expand our study abroad programs. It’s not enough to teach languages or the histories and cultures of other parts of the world. We need to find ways in which our students can experience those cultures.
