The following is a tentative, "bare bones" description of our "Citizen-to-Citizen" foreign policy telecommunications project that is scheduled to begin on February l, l997 and conclude in mid-June (the time frame of one semester). My senior American Foreign Policy course at the Bronx High School of Science is composed of twenty-five enthusiastic students who are anxious to touch base with concerned citizens in the United States and in the following countries (tentative list subject to accessibility of respondents and/or availability of Internet and Web access):

M

Mexico	Israel	Japan	Czech Republic	Kenya
Brazil	Egypt	South Korea	Russia	South Africa
Cuba	Iran	North Korea

We hope to poll a diverse group of citizens, reflecting a variety of age groupings, genders, educational backgrounds and cultures. The only requirement for participants is that each share our interest in the following general question:

WHAT SHOULD BE THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE 21st CENTURY REGARDING YOUR COUNTRY?

Here is how we plan on setting up this project.


• Committees of five students each will be formed. Each committee will be responsible for polling citizens in countries located in one of the five regional categories listed above and for polling Americans as indicated in number 3 below.
  
  
• Each committtee will gather information and data on the officially stated U.S. foreign policy (current and projected) for the countries that they will poll in their reigion.
  
  
• The class (meeting as a committee as a whole) will develop a questionnaire featuring open close-ended questions ( a total of ten questions). The aim of the questionnaire will be to elicit from a diverse sampling of Americans attitudes regarding U.S. foreign policy towards selected countries.We will aim for a total of l,000 respondents, 200 from each committee.
  
  
• The class (meeting as a committee as a whole) will develop a second questionnaire featuring open and close-ended questions ( a total of ten questions). The aim of the second questionnaire would be to elicit attitudes regarding present and future U.S. foreign policy from citizens in selected countries.
  
  
• Once developed, the second questionnaire will be distributed to individuals and groups in a specific country who have expressed an interest in participating in our telecommunications poll. We intend to locate participants by broadcasting an appeal via listservs and by searching Web sites which are grassroots-oriented. Wherever needed and possible, the questionnaire will be written in the native language of the recipients. (This questionnaire can be distributed by E-mail or by S-mail.) We will aim for a minimum of 200 respondents from each country being surveyed.
  
  
• The responses to both questionnaires will be collected and analyzed by the students. We will be especially interested in discovering gaps between what Americans think is an appropriate foreign policy towards a particular country and what citizens in that country think is appropriate. We will also be interested in discerning gaps between what American foreign policy decision makers see as an appropriate foreign policy preference and what citizens of the country affected view as the proper U.S. policy.
  
  
• The results of our global electronic poll will be displayed in text and graphics and posted on our student-created and managed "American Foreign Policy Homepage." ( www.forpol.bxscience.edu ) This page will contain the following features:
  • graphical links to foreign policy-related resources on the Web
  • an overview of our project
  • frequently asked questions about our project
  • help
  • the text of the project's summary and analyses
  • selected graphical displays from the project
  • statistics related to the countries surveyed
  • link to foreign policy on-line chat to cover breaking events in selected regions and countries
  • foreign policy-related documents (speeches, policy statements etc.) through FTP
  • feedback
  
  
  
• Sometime in late May or early June we will organize an event where citizens who participated in our poll can interact (e.g. as in an international town hall meeting) with one or more foreign policy decision- makers in our country. This will take the form of a worldwide real-time Internet chat.
  
  
• We will send our summary and analyses to our respondents and to foreign policy decision-makers here and across the globe.

If you know of any schools, citizen groups and any other non-governmental parties in the countries listed above who would like to make their views known on how the U.S. should deal with their country in the 21st century, please let them know about us and us about them. Any words of advice and suggestions would be greatly appreciated as we begin our ambitious plan to bring people around the world together in dialogue on this very important issue.

PEACE

Dr. Mel Maskin, Teacher
Bronx High School of Science
75 West 205th Street
Bronx, N.Y. 10468

(718) 295-0200


E-MAIL: maskin@martnet.com

URL: dr.maskin.net

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