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WINTER
2002
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Letters to the Editor Global Education You invited your readership
to write to you and I am taking advantage of your invitation. To begin
with, I am bewildered as to how a state with a population of ca. 608,000
and a moderately small university is going to educate a global society,
or for that matter modestly participate in the issue(s). Moreover, when
I read the Vermont Alumni magazine and there are pictures and snapshots
of university students talking about Vermont farmers growing hemp, both
situations i.e., the president’s remarks and the “one Question”
commentary, are quite myopic and not sensitive to their own culture or
cultures that surround them. In fact, about 60+ miles north, you have
one of the world’s riches cultures, Quebeçois, that in my
opinion directly impacts on the quality of life for many Vermonters that
appears to be completely ignored by the university community. I ask: How many students
at UVM can speak, read and write Française or understand Canadian
French dialect? Having recently retired
from a university life at one of the world’s largest university communities
and watching the University of Vermont struggle with its identity is unfortunate.
In my tenure at Ohio State University I have worked with or am still working
with representatives from China in the medical profession. I dare say
they are no worse or no better than the individuals I have worked with
in the past that are from many of the other global societies. They are
engaged in intellectual pursuits to create a better quality of life for
themselves and their families. It seems the university community in Vermont
would be a bit more diverse community if it focused on, or participated
in, some small measure in the rich diverse life that exists around them
rather than be involved in creating an atmosphere for which their expectations
and rewards may not be realized. My education at UVM
in the 50s stood me quite well in my chosen profession and I didn’t
need those issues I am reading about in the Vermont Quarterly. I seriously
doubt that the Vermont Quarterly and its inroads into the Chinese culture
and growing hemp in Vermont will create a more diverse culture in the
state of Vermont. George E. Milo ’58,
’61 |