How Americans Think About the World

As Pew Research Center surveys have documented, the United States’ global reputation has shifted dramatically over the past two decades, often improving or declining depending on who is in the White House and the foreign policies they pursue. At the same time, many other factors have continued to shape how people see the U.S., including its vast cultural reach, its economic model and its divisive politics. A survey of 17 advanced economies highlights the complexity of America’s international image. People in other publics find much to admire about the U.S., but they see many problems as well. Americans, for their part, also see both strengths and weaknesses in their society.

Scholars of social movements offer important advice for those who would attempt to catapult international education onto the nation’s policy agenda: 

“There is no such thing as a social problem, until enough people, with enough power in the society, agree that there is. Social problems are produced by public opinion, not by particular social conditions, undesirable or otherwise.” 

Taken in this light, the fact that student knowledge of the world is demonstrably inadequate or that fewer than 40,000 American students study Chinese is unlikely to result in a widespread call for education reform. And, despite the fact that policy leaders in government and business have publicly expressed their concern about “educational isolationism,” elite opinion in itself is insufficient to propel the changes that are necessary to transform the curriculum. That will depend on the reactions of constituents and of influential individuals who must weigh international education against other priorities. The challenge for those who would advance internationalizing the American curriculum as an important public goal lies in helping opinion leaders engage citizens in the issue in a way that makes vivid the transformative power of the educational changes proposed. At the same time, educators and opinion leaders must anticipate and avoid unproductive habits of thinking that are likely to derail public understanding. 

The public has a lot on its mind just now, from jobs and health care to “failing” schools and terrorist threats. Without a clear and well-stated message about the importance and promise of international education, this issue is unlikely to attach itself to other public goals that Americans are eager to address. The findings reported here come from an admittedly small sample of research projects on international education conducted by the FrameWorks Institute. FrameWorks tested the factual knowledge of 20 average citizens in Colorado and Connecticut and conducted two focus groups in North Carolina. However, this body of work is amplified dramatically by FrameWorks’ multi-year investigation of American attitudes toward international issues in general  funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and others  which consisted of more than a dozen multi-method studies, including two large-scale surveys of public opinion. The following observations are based on work conducted by FrameWorks’ research partners, the think tanks Cultural Logic and Public Knowledge.