Stanford e-Japan made my days in high school much richer. I attended the fall session of the course last year, and I am currently in the third and final year of high school.

For me, Stanford e-Japan was a “gate” to learn and understand the United States. I am truly glad that I had been able to listen to lectures offered by leading scholars in the United States. One of the most valuable parts of the course was that each topic contained views from the U.S. side. For example, in the class about World War II, we learned how the atomic bombing was taught in schools in the United States, and I was surprised to know that it illustrates more aspects of the bombing than Japan does.

Through learning about the U.S.–Japan relationship from the perspective of the United States, I gained many new thoughts about Japan as well. In particular, when I read about the role of the Japan–U.S. Security Alliance, I realized that many countries in Asia and their historical legacies continue to impact U.S.–Japan relations, making the alliance a very complicated topic. In addition, I learned the benefits and responsibilities of the alliance for the United States, in addition to those for Japan. During that module, I understood that it is crucial to see things from the side of both countries. 

Discussions with students from many different backgrounds was another great feature of Stanford e-Japan. I was often inspired by the views of my classmates that are based on their unique experiences. For instance, in a discussion about gender issues and equality, some students shared their own stories about finding inequality in their schools, and others brought research and data that countries around the world are introducing to solve the problem. In virtual classes, I was often stimulated by the questions posed by other brilliant students.

Through the classes, Stanford e-Japan gave me the “bridge” to connect the United States and Japan. Now, I think we will have to keep and strengthen the relationship. In the future, I would like to be a person who works globally. Stanford e-Japan underscored the importance of keeping a peaceful relationship, and the importance of understanding each other.

Finally, I would like to thank Stanford e-Japan Instructor Meiko Kotani, the lecturers, and the Yanai Tadashi Foundation who supported this amazing program.

Applications opened last week for the China Scholars Program (CSP), Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), and Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) on Japan—three intensive online courses offered by SPICE, Stanford University, to high school students across the United States. All three applications can now be viewed at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/. Interested students must submit their completed application (including an essay and letter of recommendation) by the deadlines listed below.

Spring 2021 Online Course Application Deadlines

China Scholars Program: October 16, 2020
Sejong Korea Scholars Program: October 16, 2020
Reischauer Scholars Program: October 16, 2020

All three online courses are currently accepting applications for the Spring 2021 term, which will begin in February and run through June. Designed as college-level introductions to East Asia, these academically rigorous courses present high school students the unique opportunity to engage in a guided study of China, Korea, or Japan directly with leading scholars, former diplomats, and other experts from Stanford and beyond. High school students with a strong interest in East Asia and/or international relations are especially encouraged to apply.

“U.S. relations with East Asia is prominently featured in the news daily,” says Naomi Funahashi, instructor of the Reischauer Scholars Program. “SPICE is incredibly fortunate to have Stanford faculty conducting cutting-edge research on Korea, Japan, and China who are willing to help our students interpret key historical events and understand contemporary topics related to security, trade, and politics.”

Rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the United States are eligible to apply to any of the three programs. Students who are interested in more than one program can apply to two or three and rank their preferences on their applications; those who are accepted into multiple programs will be invited to enroll in their highest-preference course.

For more information on a specific course, please refer to its individual webpage at chinascholars.org, sejongscholars.org, or reischauerscholars.org.

The RSP, SKSP, and CSP are SPICE’s online courses for high school students. In addition, we offer online courses for high school students in Japan (Stanford e-Japan) and China (Stanford e-China). To be notified when the next application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Amidst the hectic year known as 2020, I started and finished SPICE’s Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an online program offered through Stanford for high school students interested in Korea. The program was challenging but also rewarding; I honestly loved every moment of it.

My interest in Korea began when I was in elementary school. Growing up in Queens, New York, a New York City borough with a diverse population, Korean culture was introduced to me in the form of food. Although some may think all Asian food is the same, as a Chinese American, I know how vastly different Korean food can be from Chinese food. My Korean American classmates would bring in Korean foods for lunch—kimchi, gimbap, galbi—and because I had never seen it before, I’d always want to know how it tasted. Luckily for me, Queens had a sizable ethnic Korean population and with that came great Korean restaurants. I was a frequent visitor to these tasty restaurants. Through this, I became interested in learning more about Korea, but outside of food, a few videos I had watched, and some information from my classmates, I didn’t know much, if anything at all, about Korea.

Heading into the SKSP, I was worried I didn’t know as much as my classmates. When I started the SKSP, all of my worries subsided. You didn’t need a strong background on Korea or in Korean. I was told that the most important thing to have is a genuine interest or curiosity about the topic, which was something I did have. I also have to say that my classmates were some of the most motivated students I’ve ever met.

And during our biweekly meetings, we would attend lectures with experts on Korea and professionals who worked with Korea. Something interesting I learned from a lecture was that the “BBC Dad” Professor Robert Kelly is a political analyst on Korean affairs, which I don’t find to be a coincidence; instead, learning the fact that Professor Kelly is an expert on Korea shows how widespread and important the study of Korea today is.

We explored a bit of pre-nineteenth century Korean history and then explored more on religions in Korea, colonial Korea, the division of Korea and the Korean War, post-war Korea, the divergence of North and South Korea, and trends in South Korean culture including bits about chaebols and the Hallyu wave. I found a particular interest in the Korean diaspora in Japan, which I learned about when learning about Korea in its colonial period. And because the SKSP has a research component, I wrote my paper on that and enjoyed my time so much because it was a topic I genuinely wanted to learn more about. After completing my paper, I was led to Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko, a historical fiction about a Korean family in Japan, and found myself so invested because I had some background knowledge.

Starting the course before the pandemic and completing it during the pandemic was interesting, to say the least. When the coronavirus situation took a turn for the worse, my high school courses scrambled to finish the year, but the SKSP went on normally, and I was able to invest more time into learning about Korea. I have to give props to the course instructor, Dr. HyoJung Jang, and the program coordinator Jonas Edman for keeping the course running smoothly through a worldwide crisis and helping us students with any questions and issues we had.

I participated in the SKSP as a senior in high school, and having taken it right before college has been incredible. This course has helped develop my self-driven learning skills, which I believe will be unimaginably beneficial for me as I head off to begin my first year of college. The SKSP is a college-level course that teaches in the same way college courses are taught, and right now, I find that my experience with the SKSP has prepared me for my college classes that I have only recently started.

The SKSP has furthered my interest in international relations, which I hope to major in at the University of Pennsylvania where I am a freshman this fall. I am definitely looking forward to furthering my knowledge of Korea and hope I am able to visit one day after traveling is safe once again. For me, as someone who came into the SKSP with a curiosity and left with even more, I can’t wait to continue on my path of learning. For those interested in the SKSP, I say go for it. It has changed not only how much I know about the world, but also how I perceive it. I hope SPICE continues to offer this terrific opportunity and students take this opportunity, so they can make a difference in the world.

As schools across the U.S. began to close due to COVID-19 in mid-March, I was in the unique position of transitioning into online classes while already having had some experience taking fully online classes. The year before, I had completed SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), an intensive online course focusing on Japanese culture, history, and U.S.–Japan relations; participating in the Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an equivalent program, I thought, would be a similar experience.

Yet, being part of the SKSP in the midst of a pandemic framed the way I participated in and learned from the class. As the course went on, we began each Virtual Classroom with a brief discussion on COVID-19, talking amongst ourselves how we were personally doing, and how Korea was handling it as compared to the U.S. We were encouraged to read local news in Korea to learn about COVID-19, and we brought our learnings to each discussion with renewed vigor. There’s a strange and harrowing feeling you get when analyzing the course of a virus in your home country and across the Pacific—an implicit understanding that this isn’t just a research text to pore over, but an unprecedented moment in history we’re living through. 

But back to the beginning. After participating in the RSP, I realized how essential it is to analyze stories from all facets.

RSP first introduced me to the concept that “history is told from the winner’s perspective,” and SKSP gave me the opportunity to delve deeply into that. I became intrigued with how history is taught and wanted to understand the “other” sides of stories I learned about in my textbooks. Weeks later, when we learned about the Japanese exploitation of Korean comfort women during World War II, I knew that learning about these issues from one side would simply not be enough to fully comprehend parts of history such as these. The way I learn history directly impacts how I view society and the relationships between groups of people.

Hence, each of the modules helped me craft a multifaceted perspective of Korea and U.S.–Korea relations. The lessons and lectures allowed me to understand and re-interpret modern and historical issues in a global context. From Shamanism’s evolving role in Korean society, to Japanese colonial rule in Korea, to the social impacts of the Miracle on the Han River, to class and socioeconomic strata in Korean education systems, I dove into a plethora of topics through readings, lectures, and class discussions. As a high school student, I never believed I would have the honor of learning from distinguished scholars and experts, but SKSP introduced me to a variety of academics with clear passions for Korean history and culture. My learning extended beyond lectures: in discussion boards, I learned from my classmates, who shared their diverse perspectives and experiences and fostered an inclusive and challenging learning environment. We were given the chance to analyze material on our own through readings and assignments, but it was in these virtual interactions with my peers that I discovered the most. The open and constructive group that Dr. Jang and Mr. Edman facilitated was one where we could respectfully engage with one another on any topic while acknowledging at the end of the day the friendships and bonds we’d made. Thus, I paired my self-led education from SPICE with that of my public schooling and constructed a greater comprehensive understanding of the world.  

However, it was the Korean War and North Korea units that I believe played the greatest role in not only my intellectual development, but also my personal and political growth. These two units coalesced in my final research paper project, in which I wrote about the critical role of student activism in South Korean democratization. During my research and readings, I analyzed how the March First Movement set the stage for South Korean protest culture and democratization. I recognized that of the two factions of activists post March First, I might have been in the more radical faction, the one that ended up becoming North Korea. This realization, combined with the readings and lectures from the North Korea unit, completely changed my view of geopolitics in Korea. I learned about the U.S.’s role in the Korean War, and subsequently the Western portrayal of North Korea as a rogue, renegade state. I wondered, how much are we to speak about propaganda when students like me are taught lessons that shield Western imperialism with saviorism and American exceptionalism?

SKSP is not simply a fleeting online course with a broad overview of Korea, but an unparalleled opportunity to uncover Korea on an academic level few other high school students have. I hadn’t expected to undergo a personal and political reckoning within myself, but it is because of this growth that I am beyond grateful for SKSP, Dr. Jang and Mr. Edman’s instruction and advising, and all of my peers’ questions and discussions. Since then, I haven’t ceased to continue kindling my interest in Korean history and politics, questioning previously held beliefs, and broadening my worldview. And it is especially during a time like this—a global movement of Black Lives Matter, a local movement to change my high school’s Indigenous emblem, and everything in between, all within the context of a pandemic—that it is so crucial for me to critically analyze what I’ve been taught, and to keep learning as much as I can. In SKSP, I’ve developed the skills necessary to do so. It’s the “other sides” of stories, namely non-Western and non-white, that I am committed to studying, since understanding the nuances of the past can help guide us into a more equitable future.

Next fall, I begin at Stanford, hopefully on campus—it feels like coming full circle, having the privilege to attend college in an institution that first allowed me to foster a genuine love for learning. Now, while many of my friends begin their college careers, I have chosen to take a gap year with the U.S. Department of State’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), a rigorous and competitive academic scholarship to study a critical language abroad. As of August, the in-country program has been pushed back to 2021 due to COVID-19, but I hope to find myself in Seoul in a few months. With everything ahead of me, I know SKSP is only the beginning, as I hope to continue bridging my education to the world.

I grew up with STEM as my backbone, my crutch. My parents met in engineering school, and the childhood they gifted me with was one filled with opportunities to get my hands dirty. The identity I built for myself was defined by asking questions about snail slime, aphids on roses, simply everything about the “hows” and “whys” of the biological world around me. And not once did I think to steer my gaze elsewhere in hopes of enriching my worldview. To an elementary school Mallika, understanding science and science alone would gift me the tools to solve the world’s greatest problems.

So, of course, it confused me to see my dad, an equity analyst focused on the semiconductor and green tech industries, travel so often to Japan, China, and Korea. Hands filled with stuffed animal pandas wearing qi paos, he would talk on and on about East Asia’s incomparable ability to merge the old with the new: cities at the forefront of tech innovation were sparkled with architecture and customs from lineages spanning thousands of years. My dad sold the intrigue. Not in an orientalist way, rather through a deep appreciation of recognizing the past in an effort to rebrand the future. I just had to get my peek.

I started learning Japanese in fourth grade, Chinese in seventh, and was in love with the languages. They were logical, pictographic, and simply scientific. But the classes were one-dimensional, one-epochical almost, if that’s even a word. What they were able to capture in unraveling the past did nothing in describing the translation to the future. I wanted to get a grasp of contemporary issues to eventually find ways to apply this newfound information to my STEM pursuits.

Fast forward a few years, a semester of SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program under my belt, I loved my experience with the SPICE program so much that I had to return for a second program. Naturally, I applied to SPICE’s China Scholars Program (CSP) my junior year of high school, and compounded with classes like AP U.S. History and Honors Chinese, my worldview felt interconnected. Everything I was studying added to an accumulated web of information, weaving connections between economics, public policy, technology, and culture. I wrote my final paper on how bureaucracy, educational equity, and green technology could help China establish itself as the (not a) global superpower, and it had quite honestly been my first exploration in drawing conclusions between seemingly disparate fields. For someone who had conducted many science research projects in the past, CSP and its instructor, Dr. Tanya Lee, challenged and stretched me in ways I never thought possible.

At MIT, we’re taught the merits of collaboration through group-based projects and exceedingly difficult problem sets. However, I often doubt the translatability of this approach in the real world. Students of similar academic backgrounds collaborate on similar projects with similar solutions. The web of information synthesized by students of different majors is undeniably extremely useful in developing real-world solutions. Completing CSP through a STEM lens was a unique way of doing just that. I met students from Virginia all the way to Hong Kong who were passionate about everything under the sun. The variation in perspectives livened discussion boards, and I could almost liken the completed responses to a mosaic: each student had their unique piece to offer, such that the image created was one of heightened clarity. Since then, I’ve taken classes on Chinese, on economics, and even on how to stage revolutions, all as a result of understanding the merits of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural exploration. And who knows, I might even minor in Chinese to pay homage to the language that shaped my worldview.

The sports world has been dramatically affected by COVID-19. Not only has there been a significant decline of events for the spectator—both in person and on television—but the impact on the participants themselves has also been unprecedented. Due to social gathering restrictions, organized youth sports have been almost completely shuttered. High schools and colleges have been cancelling their practices and competitive seasons. The PAC-12 recently postponed its football season. The pandemic has also had a dramatic effect on sports at the highest level. Only fairly recently have there been abbreviated attempts to reinstitute professional sports seasons such as Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Even the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo were postponed to 2021.

SPICE is helping to develop the CoviDB Speaker Series, a TeachAids initiative which provides free online videos to educate the general public about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. For episode 4 of the CoviDB Speaker Series, TeachAids Founder and CEO Dr. Piya Sorcar decided to provide a glimpse into how the pandemic has impacted the lives of two of the world’s greatest athletes. Sorcar enlisted the support of Emmy Award-winning sportscaster Ted Robinson to interview three-time Olympic diver and gold medalist Laura Wilkinson and five-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer and Stanford student Katie Ledecky.

The interview can be viewed here. Robinson drew out insightful perspectives from Ledecky and Wilkinson concerning the uncertainty that they lived with while awaiting the decision about whether the 2020 Olympics would be held, and also their feelings once the decision to postpone the Olympics was made. Wilkinson reflected, “What was frustrating at first, turned out to be really special” as she reflected upon things like spending extra time with her family, including four children. Ledecky added that being able to focus more on her studies at Stanford University definitely helped to create a little more balance in her life. In response to Robinson’s question about maintaining the discipline to train in light of the postponement, Ledecky responded

During a segment of the interview that focused on advice for youth, Ledecky noted, “The work that you put in doesn’t go away… It is always in the bank… At some point in the future, you are going to be able to compete again, have those opportunities to let that work show.” Wilkinson added, “When you want something, it doesn’t matter what people say about you or what they think of you. If you think you want to do this, if this is your goal, you have to go after it because you’re capable of more than you probably think you are. And other people’s opinions do not need to define you or what you’re capable of doing. You define that.”

For each of the first four episodes in the CoviDB Speaker Series, SPICE has developed a teacher’s guide to encourage the showing of the episodes in U.S. classrooms at the secondary school level. Each of the guides includes (1) a summary of the questions that were asked by the interviewer, including terms and definitions, (2) guiding questions for small-group work, and (3) debriefing activities. In the area of debriefing activities, writing prompts such as the following for episode 4 are offered to students.

• Laura and Katie commented on how their lives have been disrupted since the pandemic. Write a diary entry about how your life has been disrupted. What has been especially challenging? What lessons have you learned from the experience?
• Write about a time when you were disappointed with the cancellation of something. How did you cope with it? Did you learn something positive from the experience? Have you ever been in limbo about whether an event was going to happen or not? How did this make you feel?

Other suggested debriefing activities involve the designing of an artistic image, writing of a poem, or writing lyrics to a song that captures the significance of quotes from the interview such the following:

• Laura: The sun is a great healer in a lot of ways, both emotionally and physically.
• Katie: The Olympics is … an opportunity for the world to come together.
• Laura: I think that it [COVID-19] has reminded us of how connected we are as a world and how we all need to be doing our individual parts to combat this.
• Ted: I have been around athletes in team sports who at some point have said that they kept playing because they wanted their kids to see them.

As TeachAids and SPICE think about their work with youth, two statements from the interview were especially poignant to the staffs. Ledecky noted, “This is history [the time of COVID-19] but you don’t have to be afraid of it. Fear is really a mindset… so if you do everything that you can do, there is no point in worrying beyond that because worrying does not help you at all. It is not going to change anything. Do what you can control. Worry about the things that you can control and things that you cannot control, you have to let those go.” Wilkinson stated, “This [challenging time] could be that gift to you. This could be that opportunity to rise to a whole new level. Don’t look at this and be sad and upset. Look at this as an opportunity of how you can get ahead.” Though the statements were intended as advice for youth, in fact, the statements seem relevant today to all of us.

The CoviDB Speaker Series is a TeachAids initiative that is co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, the University of California San Francisco’s Institute for Global Health Sciences, and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE).

In July 2020 the Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) published a Policy Insight, Providing Information to Students and Parents to Improve Learning Outcomes, that looks at the learning gains that can be achieved through overcoming information asymmetries. This briefing is especially useful given our current climate where many schools remain closed and learning has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic; it is a time when information dissemination and parental engagement is even more important than ever.

In this article, REAP’s five cited publications help shape the discourse around learning barriers children face globally. REAP studies that contributed to this Policy Insight include REAP’s work on anemia in school children and the analysis of drop-out rates in middle- and high-school students in rural China. However, like REAP’s approach, the Policy Insight highlights the need to address multiple barriers to improve learning outcomes across the world.

J-PAL Policy Insight Summary

Many children struggle to master basic skills despite a rise in school enrollment around the world. For instance, India’s 2018 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found that only about half of all grade 5 students in rural India could read a grade 2 text [3]. Assessments showed similar results in many other countries [28]. Programs providing information—about parents’ roles in education, school quality, students’ academic levels, students’ health problems, financial aid, and wage returns to education—attempt to address this lack of learning by making relevant information more available to parents and students.

Results from 23 randomized evaluations from low-, middle-, and high-income countries show that overcoming a gap in knowledge about education often increases parental engagement, student effort, or both, leading to improved learning outcomes. Almost all of the programs in this insight led to an increase in parental involvement or student motivation, which led to small to medium increases in learning. However, disseminating information has not improved learning levels when key health, financial, or structural barriers persist that information alone cannot overcome or when the information is discouraging, rather than encouraging, to students.

Because information-based interventions are typically very low cost and have been effective in many contexts, policymakers interested in increasing learning outcomes should consider if there are gaps in parent or student knowledge that they can overcome. 

Read the full Policy Insight here.