As the World Gets Smaller, Our Education Must Get Bigger

Global education.  It seems like everyone is tossing around this phrase today.  You see it in the media, you hear it among educators, and it is a common topic among business leaders who want to see the workforce in America grow and develop to compete internationally.  On many levels, it seems like a no brainer.  We want to educate our students and we want them to compete globally, but a true global education is much, much more than this.         

While speaking with university students over the past couple of weeks, I have focused primarily on the importance of global education for our students.  I shared the benefits of my study abroad experience at the University of Glasgow with students at Elizabeth City State University.  I shared the three P’s that a successful study abroad experience, like mine in Glasgow, should have: new people, cultural places, and a passion for learning.  I also gave speeches on global education at East Carolina University and Western Carolina University.  While on their campuses, I focused on my personal view of a global education as one that not only teaches students more about other cultures, but also includes important twenty-first century skills that promote collaboration and communication across divergent backgrounds, creativity in problem solving, and effectively integrates technology as a means to learn more and not just an intended outcome.  I’ve also had the opportunity to witness some creative technology and collaboration at Chase High School in Rutherford County with their one to one initiative.

Seeing college students who are excited about global education and high school students who are working on developing their global education skills makes me optimistic about the future of education in North Carolina and in the United States.  Yet, evidence shows us that we will still have a long way to go before we are fully preparing our students for a well-rounded global education.  If you look at the most recent reports from the World Savvy Global Competence Survey below, it is clear that many United States citizens ages 18-24 could not correctly identify important information that not only shows an understanding of the world, but also shows a basic understanding of some of the major issues the United States faces today.  Upon first glance, some of these questions may seem challenging, but in reality, if our students are well prepared, they should know the answers.  For instance, shouldn’t US students know the elected leader of our biggest ally, the United Kingdom, and who our biggest trading partner is?  If we want students to be prepared to work in an increasingly global world, shouldn’t they at least know, even if they cannot speak it, that Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language?  Furthermore, shouldn’t we know where the countries that house many of our troops are located on a map, especially the location of Afghanistan, the only country where 63,000 soldiers are still deployed in a combat zone?

When these same students were polled, they overwhelmingly, 80% of them, believe that the world is becoming more global in nature, yet only 12% of them felt prepared by their education to understand global issues.  Sixty percent of them, more than half, believe that they would be better prepared for the world if they understood global issues better.  Students who discuss world events in their classes are more likely to vote, to volunteer, and to seek information about world events.  I would like to see this impact even higher.  Think about the number of people who vote and do not have a strong understanding of the world and how our actions impact the bigger picture.  You cannot solve the world’s problems if you do not understand the world’s problems.  You cannot help make the world and our country a safer, better, and more sustaining place if you do not understand what needs to change in the world—both outside your front door and across the boundaries that exist between countries.  

 

 

All of this means that we are no longer preparing for a global tomorrow, we are in a global today.  We have to teach our students how to interact compassionately and sympathetically with others, we have to teach them how to collaborate, and we have to teach them how to work toward a common goal to address the major problems that they will face.  As our world becomes smaller, we must make our education focus much bigger.  To do this, we must make our lessons relevant to our students.  Some tangible ways to do this is to have our students write patents, hypothesize, test, and publish findings by speaking to political leaders and addressing businesses.  Many STEM schools are doing just this by focusing their curriculum around the Fourteen World Challenges established by the National Academy of Engineering (see my post on STEM education here).  Students engage in lessons that strive to offer solutions to the major challenges our world faces, including clean water shortages and food sustainability, the energy crisis, urbanization, healthcare, personalized learning, and security issues with cyberspace.  The opportunities for instruction and problem solving are limitless, and by focusing on real issues, students are invested in making the world a better place. 

These opportunities also exist beyond just math and science classes.  We can integrate these same problem solving ideas in our liberal arts classes as well.  We can have students read more international literature and informational documents like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.  Students can examine issues in other countries and view speeches given by inspiring survivors of tragedy like Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, or Malala, the young girl who stood up to the Taliban in order to protect the educational rights of all, especially women.  We can give students opportunities to debate major world topics (in English or in their second language), to create advertisements and multimedia projects, to write letters to the editor, to blog about world issues, to create podcasts, to design animation, to film videos, and to find ways to engage in global conversation, even with students in another country.  With the advancement of technology, Google Hangout and Skype, opportunities like these are rapidly becoming more available, and we need to take advantage of these opportunities in order to educate the next generation of thinkers and workers, but more importantly, innovators and problem solvers.

Educators, communities, and business leaders must lead the charge as we shift our pedagogy to a more global focus.  We need to keep moving forward, keep progressing, and keep seeking new answers to problems that face our world.  With shared cultural experiences, knowledge of technological innovations, and a desire to help students grow, we can ensure that global education in the United States stops being called “global education” and simply becomes what we expect education to look like, period.