Analysis of the Influences of the Children's International Summer Villages on Their Participants

Abstract

This is a study of the influence of the Children's International Summer Village's(C.I.S.V.)eleven-yer old international camp on its participants. Japanese participants to the C.I.S.Vcamps in 1988-1991 were surveyed with open-and closed-ended questionnaires.Fred Emery's four types of systems environment, and several cross-cultural communications literature were reviewed. Since this was the trial period of this international standardized C.I.S.V.survey in Japan, hypothesis-generation, rather than hypothesis-testing was the aim of this study. Raised hypotheses for the post-camp survey, compared to the pre-camp survey are: 1.C.I.S.V.participants become less abstract and more concrete in evaluating their abilities to understand people from other countries.2.C.I.S.V. participans will be more eager to work as a group. 3a.In a C.I.S.V.camp, Japanese participants will find that they do not communicate with foreigners as much as they wished beforehand. 3b.Hence, Japanese participants place more emphasjs on learning foreign languages than before. 4.For questions concerning international understanding, participants will be more likely to agree with each other after the camp than before, hence, their replies will show a smaller standard deviation. 5.Japanese education places more emphasis on answering multiple-choice questions for college entrance examinations than on developing critical thinking and general education in international affairs.Hence, for questions requiring knowledge of major international issues such as human rights, eclogy, and international relations, the Japanese participants tend to have a larger percentage of "Don't know"replies than the international average of this survey.