Education

(Jeff Fantich)

Asia Society Texas Center’s education department focuses on five audiences: families, students, educators, adults, and communities. Through a balanced programming schedule, including school programs, family events, outreach activities, teacher workshops, and summer camps, education at the Texas Center fosters a community prepared to thrive in the twenty-first century.

Education lies at the heart of Asia Society’s mission

John D. Rockefeller 3rd founded Asia Society in 1956 in New York to teach Americans about Asia and to prepare Asians and Americans for a shared future. In 1979, visionary Houstonians led by former First Lady Barbara Bush and former Ambassador Roy M. Huffington, recognizing the need to strengthen the state’s ties with Asia, created Asia Society Texas Center. Its mission: to increase knowledge, encourage creative expression, and generate new ideas across the fields of arts and culture, policy and business, and education.

Why learn about Asia?

  • We live in what many call the “Asian Century,” a phrase originating at a 1985 U.S. Senate hearing and repeated at a 1988 meeting between leaders Deng Xiaoping of China and Rajiv Gandhi of India.
  • More than 2.8 billion people speak an Asian language. The number of people who speak Mandarin Chinese as a first language is greater than the entire population of the United States.
  • Since the 1980s, the U.S. has traded more goods across the Pacific Ocean than the Atlantic.
  • Asia is home to three of the world’s 10 largest economies: China, Japan, and India.
  • The largest religions in the world — notably Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Judaism — all have origins in Asia.
  • Asia is more closely connected to the U.S. across a broad spectrum of areas including business and global trade, arts and entertainment, research and science, education, cuisine, historical impact of Asian immigrants, sports, and technology.

 

Education and outreach programs at Asia Society Texas Center are made possible through generous funding from Karen Chang and the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation. Additional support provided by Friends of Asia Society.

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