American Students And Teachers Abroad

Until the early twentieth century, teachers went abroad with assumptions of their own superiority. But by the mid-twentieth century, they became far more self-questioning about their social assumptions, their educational theories, and the complexity of their role in a foreign society. Drawing on extensive archives of teachers' letters and accounts, Zimmerman's narrative explores the teachers' shifting attitudes about their country and themselves, in a world that was more unexpected than they could have imagined.

Focuses on North Americans who go to China and Europe, but also discusses attitudes and issues relevant to all of the international community; notes the recent flourishing of international education and developments in educational structures and practice, and takes up the historical development of, and recent changes in, university education in China.

Teaching, summer seminars.

Salzman captures post-cultural revolution China through his adventures as a young American English teacher in China and his shifu-tudi (master-student) relationship with China's foremost martial arts teacher.