Viewpoint

James Madison

A country that knows Big Macs but not Hoosiers:
Leaving to learn

James Madison
Professor of History, IU Bloomington

The Sample Gates on the Bloomington campus are a long way from the gates of the Hiroshima University campus. An academic year as a Fulbright Professor showed me fascinating differences between IU and Hirodai. And yet, in the end, it was the similarities that were most striking, particularly the similarities between IU and Hiroshima students.

America's diversity in race and ethnicity fascinates both, for example: American students because this diversity is so much a part of their lives; Japanese students because it seems so different from what they know, so mysterious and even dangerous. On the other side, politics usually bores both Japanese and American students, with Japanese students perhaps even more ignorant and apathetic about their own nation's politics than American students.

I like to think that I taught Hiroshima University students some important things about the United States, teaching in many ways just as I do in Bloomington. But I am certain that I learned more than I taught and that my teaching at IU is now different.

In my introductory United States history course this semester, I seldom finish a class without making some mention of Japan. I've apologized to the students for this obsession, but I've also told them I'm convinced they can't understand America without seeing it in comparison to other places, even such seemingly different places as Japan. My senior seminar on World War II now has even more U.S.-Japanese connections. And I suspect that even in my Indiana history class next semester, Japanese things will pop out‹and not only the growth of that Toyota truck factory in southern Indiana cornfields.

Teaching at a foreign university for the second time in my life reminded me again of differences, including the many things we sometimes take for granted at IU: our fantastic library, the Teaching Resources Center, the array of international programs, such as overseas study and, yes, opportunities to spend a Fulbright year in Japan.

We all need to stand outside America, now more than ever, especially those of us who teach and study its mysterious culture. We need to think about it from a distance with people who know about Big Macs but not Hoosiers. It's the most important lesson I brought back to Bloomington, and one I tell IU students at every chance. Were I the university emperor, I say, I'd not sign their diplomas until they had left the U.S.

A country that knows Big Macs but not Hoosiers: Leaving to learn

A country that knows Big Macs but not Hoosiers:
Leaving to learn