One of my advisors during my semester abroad in Costa Rica said, "If everyone traveled, there would be no poverty in the world." Now, part of me feels like this is an oversimplification, but then a much larger part of me whole-heartedly supports this position- an excellent springboard into a discussion of this chapter. I think I get the characteristic from my mother, a forever-lover of travel and world culture, but I have always felt an urgency to discover anything outside of my own "four walls of reality." Whether that be a different part of my own city, a different state in my own country, or another part of the world, I feel drawn to discover people and places beyond what I already know. Overall, I recognize my personal benefit in my opportunities to make those discoveries; in which case I am so pleased to find the need for global literacy in today's students impressed so strongly by this author.
The need for expanding our "education's borders" should not be merely about catching up with the rest of the world's academic achievement, because I strongly believe one hand washes the other. We (as in the educators of America) cannot act as though education is a race to some finish, competing against the education of other countries; because today's world is becoming more and more about "us" working with "them" rather than the us trying to outdo them like our parents and grandparents (cough, space race, cough). If we actually focus outside of ourselves and examine how we fit into the much bigger, global Us, then our students will naturally grow to think about their global peers as partners with important skills to contribute.
So yes, obviously a teacher can't just snap and automatically make the students aware of and appreciate other parts of the world, but that's why the process takes all of us (America's educators again) working together from the beginning- studying language as early as possible, then world economy, science, culture, technology,personal travel, all while addressing history within a global context, etc. One teacher can't do it all alone, although I am certainly in support of global professional development.....traveling! In all seriousness, nothing can influence a student's empathy for the world better than the example of the teacher, and nothing can harbor more empathy in the teacher than actually experiencing the world herself. That enters into administration support- unless the teacher can manage to go by her own means! :)
I am not especially clear on what your book said about global literacy, but clearly it led you to think about education in that context, which is a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThank you!