What is your context?

In March I visited the Red Cross Nordic United WorldCollege.  RCN-UWC is an international boarding school with students aged 16-20 from over seventy different countries.  When I was there, the school was celebrating Las Americas, during which Americans, from Canada to Argentina, share aspects of their culture.  

As I wandered through the afternoon bazaar, where I tried Paraguayan sweet bread and learned U.S. history trivia, a young man stopped me.  “Are you…why…how did…I heard someone was here interviewing….” he trailed off.

 

“What is your context?” he finally asked decisively. 

Overlapping with my visit were job interviews for a Swedish literature teaching position.  On my first day on campus, a blonde woman had been spotted with members of the faculty.  She was rumored to be very pretty.   I am not blonde, which, no doubt, was the source of the young man’s confusion.  He had struggled with the question, but he probably had no inkling of the tailspin he had induced as I tried to think of an answer.

            What is my context? 

I’ve written elsewhere on the meaning of context to historians.  Generally, we give two definitions to the term.  We use the first definition to describe our process.  By weaving together our sources – letters, diaries, watch chains, declassified government documents, ship manifests – we create a world for our readers so that they see the times we are describing from the inside.

            What is my context?

I hastened to explain to the young man that I was a graduate of the United World Colleges myself.  I attended the sister school in the United States.  Both schools are parts of a global consortium – there are fourteen schools in all today – that seek to foster international peace, understanding, and sustainability through education.  UWC was far and away the best educational experience of my entire life, and I was in a state of excited delight virtually every minute of my time RCN-UWC.

The schools were founded by Kurt Hahn, a German educational experimenter who was also instrumental in the founding of Outward Bound.  Along with Lord Mountbatten and others, Hahn founded the first UWC in Wales in 1962.  The school and its descendents encourage outdoor exploration and experiential adventures – like Las Americas.  All follow the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which requires service activities and other involvement in the community. 

Most UWCs are located in remote and stunning natural locations.  RCN-UWC, near the tiny town of Flekke in fjord country, is no exception.  

When I mentioned it to one teacher in Oslo, she said that she would love to bring students from her own school there, but she added: “It’s easier to take them to London.”  UWC-USA is located in Montezuma, New Mexico, a town so small that even many New Mexicans do not know it.  The isolation and surrounding beauty in both places make for inviting environments to explore with newfound friends.  

I have long thought that the UWC movement would make an excellent environmental history topic.  Hahn’s story alone – he was expelled from Germany when he spoke openly against Hitler and the Nazis; he decried many of modern life’s traits, from easy distraction to sedentary indoor life; and he influenced multiple educational movements – invites an environmental history inquiry.

  

I shared virtually none of this when I gave my answer.  I said: “I went to the UWC in the U.S. almost 25 years ago.”   

The second definition of context is more like the setting for a play.  To contextualize is to set the stage for the events that we are describing.  To “take something out of context” when reading literature is to misunderstand the meaning of the text itself.  To “take something out of context” when describing history is to engage in anachronism.  It is to misunderstand the time itself.

What is my context?

Having covered how I knew about the school, I still hadn’t explained to the young man just what I was doing there.  So I hastened to add a quick description of Norway’s Fulbright Roving Scholar program.  Like the UWCs, the Fulbright program was an educational response to the fractures of World War II.  By fostering scholarly exchange the program sought and seeks to foster international understanding as well.  But only Norway has the Roving Scholar program that this year has taken me and two other Rovers across Norway -- from Kristiansand to Svaalbard – to visit secondary schools.  I was suffused with nostalgia during my visit to RCN-UWC, but I couldn’t avoid thinking about the school as a school, just like I’ve done on other campuses in Norway.  I kept saying that I felt like I was 17 and 42 at the same time.

Nor could I quite turn off my historian’s mind or, at least, the guilty feeling that I should keep my critical faculties about me.  “There is no perfect time and place.” I tell my students firmly.  “Things haven’t just gotten worse and worse.  Things don’t just get better and better.”  I found it hard to observe this injunction at RCN-UWC.  Students seemed to come from a greater variety of economic backgrounds than my classmates and I did a quarter century ago.  The student body included a larger number of refugees, and there was more attention refugees’ status globally (Not least because IB now includes a geography course).  And it was hard to believe that I had ever had such energy.  After classes concluded on Thursday, students headed to their activities, and, as far as I could tell, pretty much taught themselves for another three hours.  This was before practice for the Las Americas show and dinner and homework.  Some students travel regularly to Bergen – over a two-hour journey -- to study Mandarin as a third or fourth language. 

I did notice that there was less outdoor activity than at my school back in the day.  UWC-USA has a search and rescue team.  Many of the other UWCs have similar service activities that take their students outside, but RCN-UWC does not (The school does have a Red Cross rehabilitation center at which many of the students volunteer).  Although the campus has ready access to Norway’s well-maintained trail network, one avid hiker told me that most students do not head out to the hills often.  And there was much conversation about the food.  Norway’s northern climate, the school’s remote location, and, I imagine, the hunger of two hundred teenagers, makes for a cafeteria budget challenge, especially when balancing the dietary needs of representatives of dozens of cultures and political positions.  Variety and vegetarian options were slim.  That said, the day rooms smelled just like they did in my day.  Food may have globalized, but the smell of noodles, stir fry, and cinnamon toast appears to have remained a constant.  “Each historical moment is unique!” I tell my students back at SLU.  But maybe some things are universal. (Below: shoe dryers and dorm art)

I did not make this young man, perhaps interested in Swedish literature, listen to my entire reverie.  Rather, I said something like my standard: “I’m here as part of a scholarly exchange program called Fulbright that takes me to secondary schools all over Norway.”

As I struggled to be just a bit more critical in the days during and following my visit, I mentioned my challenge to a variety of teachers and students.   They brought my attention back to a few issues.  As the UWC movement persists, there is the danger that it will merely reproduce itself, rather than grow and change.  A number of students asked if my son would attend UWC, and though I answered that the decision was his, it will be hard not to hide my enthusiasm for the UWC movement as he grows older.  How many other potential “legacy” students are out there?  And is UWC best for them or for folks for whom the experience will be brand new?  Students from socially conservative communities often struggle when they return home, and their reverse culture shock can restrict their opportunities as much as their education broadened it. 

I had heard such criticisms when I was a student, but the reservation that caused me the greatest doubt was new: carbon footprint.  I’ve visited around thirty towns and cities this year, most by plane, and that doesn’t count family holiday trips to Rome and Paris or a guest lecture in Budapest.  One convocation at one UWC probably repeats that experience at least a hundredfold.  Can the globe sustain it? 

 “Of course!" I would have proclaimed when I was a UWC student.  We still need international peace and understanding.  Whatever challenges the world faces, we will solve them!  The world needs UWC! 

Now, my body sore from a day sitting on a plane and my voice hoarse from a day of teaching, I feel less confident.  Do I need this kind of travel?  Does the world? My context has changed and the world’s has too.   And yet I came back from RCN-UWC glowing.  For days, I couldn’t stop telling people about the school.  Alongside all I’ve learned from my Fulbright Fellowship, it’s impossible to look away from UWC’s value.  Education is the most comprehensive and direct route to international understanding.  UWC students may now chatter with their families on laptops instead of hovering near the pay phone in the hall, but we still need human connection to grow and learn.  I write in a different world context than when I was a student, but the world still needs UWC.