Universal Eco-Educational Advising (A book review for Simon Anholdt’s The Good Country Equation turned into op-ed editorial)

Tim Murphey, Visiting Professor, Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education (RILAE), Kanda University of International Studies, Japan

Murphey, T. (2021). Universal Eco-Educational advising (A book review for Simon Anholdt’s The Good Country Equation turned into op-ed editorial). Relay Journal, 4(2), 116-120. https://doi.org/10.37237/relay/040207

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Abstract

In part 1 of this paper, I start with a book review of Simon Anholt’s The Good Country Equation in which he outlines some of the ways that he proposes we can change the world and still survive our own folies. I also describe his Aha! moment in which he realized that a country’s popularity was really based on how much good they did for their neighbors. In part 2, I briefly reflect on how the advising course that I am taking seems to echo personal, psychological, and community ecologies that also need to be respected and developed in humanistic educational environments. I am using ecologies and partnering here in broad senses of perpetual well-being or well-becoming. In other words, we hope they are continually on-going along with our learning. 

Part 1: Book Review

Simon Anholt’s The Good Country Equation (2020) is a page burner and I was amazed at what a great advisor he has been to so many leaders in the world (56 countries), readers of his books, and in his TED-talks. His job 30 years ago started out as a country-branding specialist, i.e. to make countries more attractive globally so they would get more tourism and sell more products abroad. I am glad as an advisor-in-training that he kept on thinking and learning, and his job taught him how he wanted to change his clients, their goals, and the world’s.

Over the first 15 years of his work, Anholt shifted his priorities and understanding from the countries “selling well” (mostly through advertising) to realizing that what really made countries have good reputations were their contributions to humanity as a whole and their generosity to the rest of the planet; doing so made others see them as “good countries” and made them very attractive. With this Aha! moment in mind, he shifted from advertising to asking country leaders, “How can you best help the rest of the world?” His advising involved getting leaders of countries to see what he called a “dual mandate”. The dual mandate recognizes the necessity to take care of oneself, but also the need to take care of the world without which one cannot live. In other words, country leaders are, of course, responsible for their countries’ domestic well-being, but they also had to realize that they were in a world of countries and that others were also affected by them (which of course has become even clearer with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic). This is the real globalism we need, and the opposite of self-centered nationalism. 

Throughout the book, Anholdt recommends multiple ways that countries can indeed help neighboring countries: 

A key component of the Good Country Equation is the discovery that nothing improves a country’s prosperity more than a powerful and positive national image, and nothing improves a country’s image more than working internationally and contributing to the international community, tackling the “grand challenges” in partnership with other nations and organizations. (p. 228)

While he supports the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, for countries and their ability to reduce their carbon footprints, most countries are not at all responding ecologically, and he gives three reasons: 

First, every one of these [ecological] problems is a shared problem, a problem that does not respect borders, a problem that demonstrably cannot be solved by individuals, corporations, governments, or multilateral institutions on their own. 

The second fact is that all of them have been caused by human beings, and if people are the problem, then people are likely to be the solution. 

The third fact is that very few of these problems are capable of being resolved in less than a generation. Most of them have matured slowly over generations of ordinarily careless or selfish behavior, and their impact gradually compounded through the repetition and amplification of common errors: rampant capitalism, runaway globalization, unsustainable growth, inadequate custodianship of the earth’s resources, a pathological tendency to pursue competition at the expense of cooperation and collaboration, gaps in the rules of law, and so forth. 

(pp. 229-230)

While being a good advisor to world leaders, Anholt is also a creative thinker about how to handle our problems, with such ideas as a Good Generation being a good vaccine, and the boomerang rule in governments: 

The Good Generation would be a first-aid kit for the world, a set of educational principles, virtues, or values that target every global challenge at its root: the way we bring up our children. Metaphorically speaking, these are educational “vaccines,” which for example might include reducing prejudice and intolerance by teaching children cultural anthropology at a young age (I know this one works because I tried it on my own children)… (p. 231)

An example of a more modest Good Country initiative is that one I call the boomerang rule, in which a country (or, preferably, a group of countries) simply declares that every policy, law, or project passed by its parliament must in the future be screened for international as well as domestic impact. 

The minimum requirement of the boomerang rule is that no initiative is passed unless it is assessed as doing no harm to people or the environment anywhere outside the country in question. Whether it’s increasing nurses’ pay or building a new concert hall, limiting pesticide use or lowering the voting age. (p. 235, my bolding)

Thus, he looks toward educators’ potential to train a “Good Generation” to actually be the world’s vaccine that could stop global warming. The boomerang rule is something that every country should shout out and do as soon as possible, for what is not good for our neighboring countries in the end is not good for us. 

One thread of philosophy and anthropology that would add strength to Anholt’s arguments is Eisler’s descriptions of the domineering vs. partnership systems for families, lovers, education, business, governing, and nations (Eisler & Fry, 2019) which she has described in her many books over the last 35 years. Domineering in any of these areas is destructive and we need partnering to increase our know-how and can-do to survive on the planet. 

Part 2: Finding Connections in Advising

I also just finished the first wave of my Learning Advisor Education course, offered by the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education (RILAE). The course is offered to educators who wish to learn how to advise students in their studies so they can be more successful and joyful in their studies. It was a joy to interact with educators from all over the world (Japan, New Zealand, Thailand, and Turkey) and engage in intentional reflective dialogue (Kato & Mynard 2016) on advising. 

While learning to advise for improving language learning with our advisees was the main goal, the philosophy of doing so through a kind of shared humanistic partnership was repeatedly described and encouraged in numerous strategies, values, and philosophical moments during the course. If I were to describe it in a more inclusive way, I would propose that it is a Universal Ecological Educational Advising (UEEA) course, which means that while we of course include language as one of our main foci, it is by no means the only one. When advising, our main focus is of course on the student who is presently in front of us, but parallel concerns should be on the ecological (in terms of health and community) and educational well-being of that student with regard to the connections (people, ideas, etc.) available to her in her life, asking “How can we all be better supporters of our lives on earth?” Or in the words of Eisler and Fry (2019), how can we “nurture our humanity” such that we also participate in our earth’s well-being? I’m looking forward to partnering more with those who seek a better future through intentional reflective dialogue in ecological communities concerned with the saving of our earth and our communities.

Conclusions

I am seeing The Good Country Equation and even the life of Anholt as an advisor to world leaders (especially his Aha! moment when he realized that he needed to teach world leaders to care about their neighbors in other countries more) as a crucial message to everyone who thrives to save our world and improve it. All this is emphasized in the advisors’ course, said succinctly, “It is not about you!” It is about the advisee, and crucially, how they are experiencing their world (and their neighbor’s world, in line with Anholt’s concern). Relationship-based advising is crucially attuning yourself to the needs of others and helping them be their best selves while at the same time letting them know they are not alone, and that you are willing to partner with them and commit yourself to their well-becoming. 

Notes on the contributor

Tim Murphey (MA University of Florida, PhD Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland), Kanda University semi-retired professor in the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education (RILAE), part time at Wayo Women’s University Graduate School of Human Ecology, juggles while skiing and makes lots of mistakes in order to increase his opera-tunes-it-teas for learning. He is presently researching-learning about connections between Eisler’s partnership education, Vygotskian socio-cultural-theory, Watson-Gegeo socialization, Mynard advisor-training, and Aaker & Bagdonas’s serious humor. His 2021 book Voicing Learning with Candlin & Mynard and his Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom (2003 with Dornyei) illustrate much of his present research.

References

Anholt, S. (2020). The good country equation: How we can repair the world in one generation. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Eisler, R., & Fry, D. P. (2019). Nurturing our humanity: How domination and partnership shape our brains, lives, and future. Oxford University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190935726.001.0001 

Kato, S., & Mynard, J. (2016). Reflective dialogue: Advising in language learning. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315739649