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Centre for the study of Education in an International Context (CEIC)

INTERCOM ARCHIVE

These are two books about expatriate children and their problems, especially on repatriation. I recommend both of them to all International Schools, but for very different reasons. The contrast in approaches - and intended uses - is itself an illustration of culture-specific attitudes and is every bit as illuminating as the texts. In the American Social Psychology idiom, the returning expatriate has been dubbed 'Global Nomad' or 'Third Culture Kid', and their feeling of separation from supposed brethren which they experience on coming home is notoriously traumatic. To a European, raised in a crowded continent with sovereign states a car drive away, plurality is not so strange, but Americans' ancestors left the Old World, with its divisions and inequalities, for a better land where all would be united and equal. The aim of a study of TCKs is the remediation of the child's pain, and more recently the interpretation of the child's experience as gain. This thread runs through both books but the modes of analysis are worlds apart.

Pollock, who is a minister of religion and former missionary as well as an academic, is an honoured consultant in the American expatriate field whose diary is booked four years ahead. Van Reken likewise is a respected practitioner and consultant. The world-wide audience which has heard them over 20 years has been waiting for this book. They have delighted in Pollock's charismatic presentations at which he reassures TCKs that feeling like strangers when they go home is normal and that, though they are imperfect Americans, they are perfectly normal TCKs. This is a textbook of self-help, written for counsellors, therapists, sponsoring organisations and expatriates. The approach is phenomenological, with chapters headed 'Benefits and challenges', 'Practical skills' and 'Unresolved grief'. Its references are almost entirely anecdotal, rarely academic, because its authority derives democratically from popular recognition by the subjects themselves and America is even less receptive to intellectualism than Britain. It is designed for use not as a source of theory but for practice, to make unhappy people feel better. It should be in the library of every International School, as a stand-by for those who identify with it and because it sensitively and thoroughly shows others how repatriated Americans see themselves.

The second book is also about expatriates whose national identity is seen as damaged by expatriation, but it reflects
Japanese concepts of national identity and British educational institutions. Assembled carefully by a team based in the Linguistics department at Reading University, it naturally features language-acquisition and bilingualism prominently, but brings academic, professional and lay analyses to bear. The 25 integrated contributions, often very brief, reflect upon one another, which sharpens the contrast between Japanese and British world-views. The pragmatic British seek ways of improving the integration of children in their schools, notably through English language development, but the Japanese characteristically react to problems with implicit accommodations rather than explicit solutions. Their sophisticated social culture, which they see as a lifelong project, is the resource to which they turn. Typically, the sufferer takes responsibility, just as in Japanese conversation communication is the responsibility of the listener, not the speaker.
The final product is a compendium of valuable experience and wise advice, which nevertheless needs to be sensitively
employed. Academic chapters have references indicating routes towards deeper understanding of these and other cultures; it is not so much a handbook of solutions as a case study which stimulates reflection and the development of better practice. And even for schools with no Japanese students it is a reminder that working responsibly with other cultures involves more than nominal respect: one must accept that for other cultures, we are the strangers.

CEIC Department of Education, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY · www.bath.ac.uk/ceic
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