Updates

You've not heard from me for awhile. The last you heard, I had been reading on literature on patriotic education in other parts of the world. Surprisingly, there turns out to be quite a bit of stuff from England. But what else have I been up to?

I have been writing my research proposal! Hence, beyond writing my literature review, I also worked on my methodology. I need to do that because of the budgeting. This is the really realistic aspect of research that those higher up will have to deal with. How long the research can last and how deep it can go depends on how much resources I can find to sustain it... If I do not have much time and money (needed to buy software, use programmes, employ part-time staff, transport to schools, overseas conferences...), I might have to keep it reasonably scaled. Perhaps, after I get my Ph.D, I can then again write more proposals to explore other areas and samples.

Yes, I am happy to now learn about the practicalities of being a researcher. So many decisions to make with regards to methodology. And... I am being adventurous, I want to try something new! It's called Q-methodology. I am happy that my adviser is open to learning this! It's a quantitative procedure to examine subjectivity!

I think I am attracted to this method because my adviser, through another professor, Keith Barton, first introduced me to something called "elicitation techniques". They are like little tasks you ask a participant to do before and while you interview them, to help them articulate their thoughts and to see visibly outside their mind their thoughts. They act as helpful prompts and guides during interviews to elicit rich data.

Yes... So the Q-Methodology is like a serious way of eliciting viewpoints! I am actually not very confident about mastering quantitative techniques. But you know what? I'm going to give it my best shot! To become trained and skilled in this methodology! Yes, what is a Ph.D without some challenges? :)

Venturing into new grounds

I thought of giving a bit of an update where I am at now in my study of patriotism and its education. Last year, I received some biting criticisms about the work I have been doing. (That is why I love peer review. They dare to say it in your face.) And it made me realized I know very little about patriotism in Europe or other places besides the USA, China and Hong Kong. It made me realized, I really have to brush up on my historical knowledge and be willing to learn more about countries that I knew very little about.

In particular, I am interested in Germany and Japan, because of the major role they played in WW2 as the aggressor, and how 'patriotism' would mean something very different to them compared to other countries, due to historical reasons. I am also reading up more about patriotism in Russia and post-Soviet countries. This one is hard for me. As I was never a history student, so I don't even know who is Stalin. I have found reading academic papers on citizenship education in these countries difficult, because I lacked contextual knowledge. (Maybe I should really made a trip to Japan and visit a museum. This way of learning works for me. Being there in the country and sensing the place.)

So this is what I have been doing lately, I have put aside the USA, China and Hong Kong works, because they really skew how you think about patriotic education and the world. The American and Chinese governments are very pro-patriotism and its inculcation in schools. They can afford to. They are big countries, and powerful, and their people have a lot to be proud of. They are powerful enough to provide their people with a generally good standard of living and they have not been invaded in a big way like the other smaller and weaker states. Hong Kong also seems like it simply wants to be different from China and more like America, in the sense of wanting to be far from communism/socialism, and near to liberalism. So these three units of study are very well aligned.

But... There are countries that do not believe in patriotism in citizens. My friend told me that Spain is one of them. There's no need at all to link citizenship with patriotism. I can be a good and loyal citizen, without any emotional attachment to my country. So yes, now I am interested in these other countries. I want to see if I can form another framework of patriotism. It means I have to broaden my search of literature. Some of these works are hidden you know, in books, that are published by European publishers which I have never heard of before. So yes, that's what I have been doing. I have been reading up more about patriotism and its education in countries that are quieter about patriotism.

I believe there are probably such hidden works about patriotism in other Southeast Asian countries, like the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand... But yes... How do I find them? I would love to know more about these countries as well...

Reason VS Feeling

"The history of our culture is often experienced as a battle between reason and feeling, rationality and irrationality, logic and impulse. Because intuitive first order thinking is indissolubly mixed up with feeling, irrationality, and impulse, we end up in an adversarial situation where disciplined critical thinking and uncensored creative thinking face each other uneasily from entrenched positions. It seems as though logic and reason have just barely and only recently won the battle to be our standard for thinking, and therefore advocates of reason and logic tend to criticize all relaxations of critical vigilance. Similarly, champions of creative first order thinking sometimes feel they must criticize critical thinking, if only to win some legitimacy for themselves. But this is an unfortunate historical and developmental accident. If we would see clearly the truth about thinking and writing we would see that the situation is not either/or, it's both/and: the more first order thinking, the more second order thinking, and vice versa. It's a matter of learning to work on opposites one at a time in a spirit of mutual reinforcement rather than in a spirit of fearful combat." (pp. 30-31)

Peter Elbow in Re-thinking Reason: New Perspectives in Critical Thinking by Kerry S. Walters

Reflections on Reading the Proof for APJE

I write now to capture the immediate and most honest reactions.

I was appalled by my writing style in the first half of the paper, where I synthesized literature. I finally understood what one reviewer meant when he said, "I know what this and that guy think, but what do YOU think?" I realized in the flurry of quotation marks and my concern with rightly attributing everything to someone, I lost my voice. My friends who read my draft gave me similar feedback that the style was really bad. I was too deep into that process and too cluttered in my mind at that point to have made stylistic changes. So yes, that is evidence of amateurish writing. It is very amateurish indeed.

But when I got to the second part of the article where I am less concerned with citation and attribution, but could use my own words with ease, I wrote well. I wrote clear. I heard Shuyi's voice. I know it's my voice when I use "cute" words. I am not a very good English speaker or someone with a lot of vocabulary, so I use "cute" words to express my emotions. I love it. I can recognize Shuyi's voice. It's cute. :) And I felt I rightly highlighted the teachers' teaching style, while protecting them, by saying how sensitive they were and when they were critical, it was only out of love for the country. These two are my favourite teachers. I really think they are the most awesome teachers I've ever met.

So there you go. I have some work to do, to figure out all the Author's Queries (AQ) and how to input into the paper these corrections. Let's see how it goes now.

Academic Humility

Our fears are reflected in our writing. When we are afraid and we put up a defense to protect ourselves, we do things like overly hedge ourselves, pre-empting others' possible attacks or attack others to distract them from our weaknesses. It shows up in my writing, very visibly. Have you read someone's work and you did not like it, and did not know why? Perhaps, like me, they were defensive, and not truly open and inquiring, nor accepting and respecting of the intelligences of others. Even in my normal conversations, my parents have pointed out this defensive style of arguing that I have as well.

I've started reading a book by Andrew Bernstein (2010) called The Myth of Stress and at the chapter on conflict resolution, I received a powerful lesson on academic humility (or for real life, just humility). Academia is basically an arena and contest of ideas by different scholars. So foundational to academia, then, is how scholars behave towards one another, not only face-to-face but in how we write about their work. Do we put them down and not see the relevance of others' work to our own? Have we forgotten that the reason we have written something in that field was inspired by works of these pioneer scholars? What audacity to attack without respect what our predecessors have said and found!

The following are quotations from Bernstein (2010)'s book that spoke to my scholarly heart, though he had not intended it to.

This is the root of all strife and conflict in academia. A lesson that if we all muster, will lead to much more peace, and more respect for individuals and academic freedom:

Even if you think you're right, you can learn to respect the intelligence behind their position.

For this one, it helps us understand why scholars hold on so tightly to their beliefs, and why they reject ours. They are living in a context and system that reinforces what they believe, just like we are living in a different context and system that reinforces our own.

In reality, they should not see it my way at this time because people they trust are reinforcing their views.

In reality, they should not see it my way at this time because instead of listening to their side and having a calm exchange of perspectives, I've polarized our relationship by attacking or withdrawing, and this makes their seeing things my way at this time almost impossible, even if I am right.

Yes, the issue is not whether you are right or wrong. We cannot all be right, and all the time be right, sometimes we will be wrong. We can position our arguments firmly and strongly, without doing it in a manner that pushes others away. Think about it. Do you know how to lose?

Even if you are right, this kind of behavior pushes people away from seeing your point of view and tends to make them adhere to their own perspectives even more strongly.

Conflict takes place when one party thinks the other party's opinion isn't just different - it's wrong.

Knowing how to lose doesn't mean that you want to lose going forward. It means that when you do lose, you can recover quickly. Everyone loses sometime, but those who don't know how to lose will continue to dig themselves in deeper and drag others down with them. Those who do know how to lose, on the other hand, are able to quickly see their mistake and take full responsibility for this, making things easier for themselves and others.

Learning how to lose takes some practice, but it leads to great gains in the bigger picture.

I truly believe if I carry this attitude into my writing, my writing will be more respected by experts of the field (my reviewers) and be of much more use to readers. It's not about who's right and who's wrong. I'm just highlighting a case in Singapore when things are different from how others have said things had worked out in Hong Kong or the USA. I don't have to say they are wrong and I am right. We can both be right or wrong in the bigger scheme of things. My idea and findings supplement what others have found. Yes, it doesn't negate their work, it supplements their work and give the existing literature a more rounded feel, when previously it was more squarish.

Bernstein, A. (2010). The Myth of Stress: Where Stress Really Comes From and How to Live a Happier and Healthier Life. Atria Books. (I read the kindle version.)

Information Overload and Management

I have so much books and printed journal articles. Recently, I have been on a personal campaign to tidy up my room, using Marie Kondo (2014)'s "The life-changing magic of tidying up".

I saw this, and I thought it made sense to us, academics or scholars. I've seen the principle in other books as well, but since I have it ready here:

"Recently, I have noticed that having fewer books actually increases the impact of the information I read. I recognize necessary information much more easily. Many of my clients, particularly those who have disposed of a substantial number of books and papers, have also mentioned this. For books, timing is everything. The moment you first encounter a particular book is the right time to read it. To avoid missing that moment, I recommend that you keep your collection small."

Some scholars similarly recommend immediately reading something that catches your eye, instead of storing it to be read in a future date, which usually does not happen. :)

Kondo, M. (2014). The life-changing magic of tidying up: The Japanese art of decluttering and organizing. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press

Languages and access to literature

I had a nightmare last night. My nightmares are always reflective of my anxieties during the daytime. So what happened was that I was asked to purchase a book from this publisher or company, whatever you call it, http://waxmann.com/. And it was mainly in German and for many of these companies, they do not deduct your credit card money immediately, but it seems like someone will work on it some time later after you purchased something. So, I was worried I was scammed, and this is not a real company.

I woke up in the middle of the night to access the website again. And to my relief, it looked credible. It's just that it favours publications in German, so perhaps they were reaching out to a German audience and we English-speakers, hear very little about these publishers. And just to try my luck, I search on their website "patriotism", hoping to find some useful resources.

And I found one article that was related to my topic! It's called "Russian Concepts of Patriotism and their Reflection in the Education System Today" by James Muckle: http://www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2012/3312/pdf/TC_1_2003_muckl_D_A.pdf

Wow, you know, I have been searching for articles and books for so long, and these wonderful pieces of work always seem to escape me, and I still stumble upon them. They're not on the search engines or google scholar. It's wonderful that this Englishman, an expert on Russia, has written on Russia. It's wonderful to me, because it's much easier to read such pieces compared to translations of works from other languages. Translations always seem rather convoluted in their language and it's effortful for me to read them. But with this writer, I feel that I can touch the soul of the Russians. It's different from reading something written from the Russian perspective. For this article, I could sense the writer's fascination and love for Russia.

Okay, why this post? We have often hear of the need to pick up another language to access resources on our research interests only available in those languages. I agree. I feel that, particularly my topic on patriotism, many of the works out there I have no access to, particularly the works I need to give me a holistic picture of patriotism in the world. I mainly read things from the American or English-speaking people's perspective and it's very different from the other ways of experiencing patriotism from the non-American and non-English speaking people's perspective.

But language has never been a strength for me. Maybe I'm not tenacious enough. I've struggled with basic Japanese and French. I think I have had some success with sign language though. ;) If I were to really pick up another language... Which language should I pick up?