Introducing "Fukuda's Chalkboard" - Life Experience as Education?
  Lynne Fukuda

My schooling was never anything near normal. I never went to normal school or what everyone would call traditional school with a curriculum for any length of time. It is not uncommon now to meet home-schooled children or hear of how home-schooled children participate with traditionally schooled children, but in my time, people would look at me strangely if I were not in school.

As an adult, I realize how fortunate I was to have such a wanderlusting parent. As an educator, I realize even more how valuable life experiences in different cultures and exposure to museums, music, and historical places can be to a child and even to an adult. I feel grateful that I was able to live abroad for stretches of time and feel more tolerant and enlightened when I meet people of different cultures. When I entered college, I felt at last, at home. I was free in college to express my creative passions.   full text

Editors' Note:
  Phil Brocato

Fukuda's Chalkboard

The contemporary world is made up of nation-states. We may marvel at the number of nation-states with their delegates, their flags, their athletes or diplomats and their national anthems backed by armies and navies celebrating the same themes -- those of pride and strength, and unity and loyalty to the motherland.

Nationalism has become one of the most tenacious ideological bonds binding human beings together into separate political communities. There is no doubt that its value may vary, its particular content may change, but fundamentally the nationalist feeling is described in terms of a shared feeling of togetherness that defines the "we" against the "they." Nations are invariably defined in terms of a community and in terms of the loyalty of its citizens to the community.   full text

Student Essay:
  Michele Hayes

Student Essay:
  Debbie Cox

Student Essay:
  Dean Campbell

Essay:
  Caleb Zia &
  Linda Serra Hagedorn

Transfer of Asian-Pacific Students in Community Colleges
  James Nishimoto

The characteristics of urban Asian Pacific-Islander students attending one of the colleges in the Los Angeles Community College District who aspire to transfer to a four-year institutions are studied. This study is a secondary analysis of the first year cross-sectional data collected for the three year longitudinal study, Transfer and Retention of Urban Community Colleges (TRUCCS) Project conducted by Linda S. Hagedorn, Ph.D., University of Southern California beginning in the Fall 2000 under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Research, Grant # (R305T000154).  full text

Soapbox:
  Naomi Lederer