Halloween, and a snow day already—yes, two months before winter officially starts. About 2,000,000 east-coast customers have no electricity; countless trees broke because they hadn’t lost their leaves yet. It’s Monday, and trick-or-treating has been moved to Saturday in many towns. Halloween is a lot of fun, and is being celebrated in more and more countries. But when you think about it, it’s a pretty frivolous holiday.
In contrast, many people in the world can’t even come close to affording such extravagances. A high school student who had done a service learning project abroad had a very astute observation: people who live on $1-$2 a day and don’t have education CAN’T solve their problems on their own.
Amy Smith knows that truth from experience. Her team takes good science to developing countries and helps people use the resources around them to improve their lives. She also has some wonderful insights on how to help individuals rise out of poverty.
Population growth is related to factors such as health, food, water, energy, poverty, education, employment, and housing, and how we handle them. These are global issues, so we must work on them together.
Part of doing global work well is the ability to understand people in different cultures. The best way to do that is to live abroad and learn the local language.
The world’s population has been growing exponentially, and today, we hit 7 billion.
The last point in the video embedded in the article below is particularly poignant. For about the same amount of money we spend on Halloween, we could make great strides in controlling population growth, which is key to the other issues.
…Wednesday when I left for school. But Thursday it rose during my commute: opposite a nearly full moon, a magnificent orange orb emerged from the fabulous purplish fog, which later burned off and morphed into a muggy, 80°F (26°C) day. Luckily, the teacher who shares my classroom brought some large fans (most rooms at school aren’t air-conditioned). Then rain washed away the humidity, leaving a distinct fall crispness in Friday morning’s 45°F (7°C) fresh air. Soon, it’ll be dark when I leave for school, and dark when I leave for home as well.
Why is it that school starts at 7 in the morning? Most jobs don’t, since by and large, we don’t work in factories any more — and that’s what our current education system was built to prepare us for:
Students and teachers have to get up at 5:30. When I worked in business, I only had to muster that seemingly middle-of-the-night fight-or-flight adrenaline when I had to catch a plane, or wake up in a new time zone. Now, I at least have an espresso before I leave home.
A local student presented research on teenagers and not only the number of hours of sleep they need but also how well they function based on the time of day they wake up. As a result, the school committee made the start time for the high school a half hour later. To do so, they combined the middle school and high school bus routes.
But I teach out of town, so I guess I’ll be “enjoying those sunrises” during my commute for a couple more weeks until it’s still dark when I arrive at school. Then, I’ll be reminded of my trip to Iceland in January.
Summary of this post: Digital, linguistic, and cross-cultural skills are required for jobs in the global economy; what jobs are actually like in global business, and suggestions for schools.
Americans need computer literacy, foreign language, and cross-cultural communication skills. Badly.
Compared to most other countries, the U.S. has a much higher percentage of monolinguals. According to this article, 66% of the world’s children are bilingual, but only 6.3% of U.S. residents are: CNN: Some facts about the world\’s 6,800 tongues. Another article says it’s difficult to determine the numbers of polyglots globally, and that the number of speakers of other languages is increasing in the U.S., though we’re still way behind: How America Can Get Her Bilingual Groove Back.
Multilingualism and an understanding of globalization aren’t “nice to have” skills any more. Just about anything you can think of in the developed world (and the developing world is advancing quickly) is connected globally, and so education must be. But by and large, education is barely reacting to globalization. We must instead be pro-active.
What today’s employers need
Sales teams who know what time it is in Vancouver, Geneva, and Bangalore. If a client in Tokyo wants to meet online on Friday morning, that’s Thursday evening for the salesperson in Boston. Or a European client may want to visit during a specific week number.
Marketing communicators and course developers who understand that in Copenhagen, close of business is at 15:00 (3:00 P.M.), or that print shops in Stockholm may be closed on Saturdays. Therefore, the team in New York must deliver the documents (A4-sized PDFs, of course) to be printed locally in Scandinavia, taking the time difference into account. For long documents, it’s less expensive to print there than to ship; it’s also quicker and less complicated than getting the documents through customs (that is, if the documents need printing; so many are web-based docs, online help, etc.).
Staff who expect their email inboxes to be full when they arrive in the morning (from colleagues, suppliers, and clients around the world), can recognize and correct linguistic and cultural faux pas before delivering materials to customers, and can communicate well with all these constituencies.
Accountants and purchasing agents who handle pricing and expense reports in foreign currencies every day.
Product designers and writers who understand the behaviors and values of people in target markets. Including globalization starting from the design phase is more efficient than trying to fix a mess later, when budgets dwindle and faux pas may have to remain, with reputation at stake.
Software engineers who write code that supports internationalization (allows translation to occur). For example, you must avoid producing runtime error messages by combining parts of sentences, or translations will be impossible or wrong (subject-verb or noun-adjective agreements; words in the wrong order, etc.).
Administrators and executives who enable processes, policies, and methods of communication, and impart a vision to allow a school, organization, or company to function smoothly worldwide.
Local service providers such as teachers, trainers, lawyers, firefighters, doctors, customer service representatives, store clerks, plumbers, and architects who understand the needs of non-native speakers of English in the U.S.
Meteorologists, epidemiologists, urban planners, healthcare professionals and researchers, philanthropists, environmental scientists, green designers, and financial analysts who must understand global trends and work with other specialists worldwide to solve global problems.
Travelers (athletes, business people, military personnel, chefs, musicians, actors, etc.) who are comfortable working in any environment.
Managers, political leaders, and diplomats who understand the subtleties of other cultures, or at least what types of cultural differences may exist. Experience living abroad is a huge advantage.
Computers, IM, mobile phones and other Internet devices have virtually replaced paper. Last year, my company moved into a new building. They put a few books in the built-in bookshelves, just for decoration, but got rid of the rest because the staff now uses online resources instead.
Without technology, you can’t even land a job interview. Last month, while I was on vacation (staying with my in-laws, who are over 80 and don’t have Internet), I went to coffee shop with Wi-Fi to search for jobs on the Internet and send email. I received calls on my cell phone requesting interviews while I was at the beach, the zoo, and my in-laws’ house.
What about tomorrow’s jobs?
Students need a good skill base and the ability to adapt to the ever-quickening pace of change. Business leaders say they need workers with soft skills. See Tony Wagner’s book, The Global Achievement Gap , Daniel Pink’s books, A Whole New Mind and Drive, and Kim Cofino’s presentation on going-global.wikispaces.com. Experience living abroad particularly hones 21st-century skills such as these:
Adaptability, flexibility, thinking out-of-the-box, synthesis of ideas from different sources.
Trying new ways of doing things without being afraid of making mistakes.
Scott McLeod’s TEDx Talk analyzes the global employment landscape:
Meantime, there are practical things we can do.
In the classroom
Are your kids learning this, using these systems, especially by connecting with people across the globe?
Dates and times. Time zones, start of the week on a different day, a week may be counted as 8 days, etc. Many countries use 4/12 for December 4 and 17:00 instead of 5:00 P.M.). See what-time-is-it-where-you-are.
Holidays. Language exercises often prompt students to practice dates by using U.S.-centric images such as Christmas trees (not representative of all Americans, either) or fireworks for July 4th. Holidays vary by country, not language. Why not teach the holidays of target countries?
Cross-cultural communications skills (face-to-face, presentations, email, formal writing…) including listening and observation skills, to understand the needs of people from different cultures.
You can do interdisciplinary projects using foreign language, social studies, and science skills, for example. Use Skype, GoToMeeting, ePals, it’s learning, or these free resources for teachers:
A Peace Corps volunteer can come speak in your classroom. Or you can connect students with kids abroad who are working with a Peace Corps volunteer. There’s a lot more here!
Teachers can choose from existing projects. Students at schools in several countries work together to solve a common problem (keeping water clean, etc.) together. The organization’s motto is: “Learning with the world, not just about it…”
Preparing teachers and administrators
To understand globalization and the use of technology, find a way to connect with the global business community:
Use Professional Development time or a summer job opportunity to shadow or work in a global business.
Talk with business leaders about what employees must understand and be able to do now and in the future. Connecting via Internet lets you talk with people in multiple locations simultaneously.
Ask parents whether their employers would support such corporate citizenship initiatives.
Also use some PD time to connect with other schools, to share examples of what works, and help each other resolve problems.
When I studied at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1981-82, I realized that the French system of education (and likely that of other countries) expected a lot more of students compared to the American system. Here’s what it was like:
We had to read a lot. The syllabus and list of books (17th–20th century French literature in its original form, without notes in English for foreign students) was distributed at the first class.
Major classes were lectures, given in beautiful, 17th-century lecture halls. There was no textbook, just the novels and plays we had to read and the notes you took during class and a 50-page booklet of notes and course guidelines written by the professor (in French, of course). We wrote long papers, usually literary themes.
All classes and books were entirely in French. I studied French Literature and Business French / Translation along with other foreign students (from Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Greece, Poland…).
In smaller, more hands-on classes, we wrote analyses and opinions with supporting arguments, not reiteration. I noticed that students from other countries understood the teacher’s explanations of grammar, but Americans didn’t. The other students had a better grammatical base in their first language.
There were no discipline issues. Teachers were respected, and students worked hard.
We did dictations: the grammar teacher read a paragraph, and we wrote it down (the whole thing, not fill-in-the-blank). Typically, it was a difficult passage, of which students had no prior knowledge, and it always included complex grammatical constructions. For example, Proust was famous for writing very long paragraphs. You’d have to understand that the pronoun (a preceding direct object) on the second page referred to a noun on the first page, so you had to make the past participle’s ending feminine plural.
The grading system was tough. Percentages were not used. Dictations, for example, were worth 20 points. Passing was 10 points, but it was difficult to earn. Teachers subtracted one point for spelling and two points for grammar errors (for example, agreement with the preceding direct object). A missing accent was a spelling error. The first time, most of us got negative grades (below zero). Teachers expected us to earn around 12 points. No one got 20. If you got a 16 or 18, it was amazing. I never heard of any grades being adjusted (scaled, or using a bell curve.)
For written exams, I received an invitation to the examination center. I took the train to a place outside of Paris, had to prove my identity, and could bring a few pencils with me. My teachers were not there. You couldn’t ask questions. The exams were distributed and you had three hours to write your all-essay answers.
In addition, there were oral exams. Each student had an appointment with the teacher, who picked a question out of a hat. Then you had a few minutes to answer it.
In that type of system, you have to be self-disciplined (I brought my reading with me on the train, to the laundromat, etc.). You couldn’t hide. The French school provided no help outside of class. Back then, there were no computers or Internet to look up things. We went to the library, which had beautiful architecture.
Luckily for me, UMass/Boston had provided two professors in Paris to help us get used to the culture and find our way around. We were all expected to be on our own academically, though. Most of us studied at the Sorbonne, but some were at the Institut Brittanique or the Institut Catholique. The profs did offer a couple of extra classes, though. I took the theatre class; we went to the theatre once a week and had a class the next day to discuss the performance and write about it.
The professors and all 28 UMass students met once a month. It was rather like getting together with family or friends. We found a way to celebrate Thanksgiving. The value of the dollar was good relative to the French Franc, so the whole group was also able to go to museums and take some weekend trips to places like Verdun and the castles of the Loire. Yes, those trips were enjoyable, but they also gave us the opportunity to see places first-hand; in the U.S., we don’t have such historic places, so these were truly different experiences. One of the UMass profs was a history professor, who said we couldn’t really understand the character of the French people without going to Verdun.
I was a very serious student. I decided that the best way for me to learn French was to not only study a lot but speak the language as much as possible. So I had asked for a living situation without Americans; I shared an apartment with women from Iran, Japan, and France. I didn’t speak Farsi or Japanese, so we always spoke French.
That was my Junior Year Abroad when I was in college. But since I had an advanced level of French upon arrival in Paris, the courses I took and practice I got outside of class helped me achieve near-native fluency in French.
From talking with other people, it seems that high school in France was pretty similar to that, at the time. From what I understand, sports and music were not part of school, but some students enjoyed those activities separately.
As a college student, I was on my own. However, based on studying abroad and experience with classmates, students, and parents from other cultures, my sense is that a culture’s perception of education and parents’ support and expectations of their children are key to educational success.
My return to Boston
I finished my degree in 1983, the year the Reagan administration came out with the A Nation at Risk report.
Basically, our education system was not doing enough compared to other developed nations. (The report’s findings correspond to my experience, but that doesn’t mean that doing what everyone else does is the best solution.)
I began teaching French, and knew I was very well prepared in French language and culture. I was happy to add interesting activities like music, cooking, conversation, personal photos of France, and games to the curriculum. But that was my own choice. None of the schools I taught in asked me to do more than the curriculum required: mostly teaching grammar and vocabulary.
It’s debatable whether that was sufficient when the U.S. was a fairly separate and self-sufficient economy. But today, with the global economy, I don’t think so. There’s a lot more I can do now, too, especially with technology.
It seems our culture is still not committed to education. Your school may be very good within your State or even the U.S. But how does it compare to other schools in developed nations? Does it make sense to make such comparisons? Why or why not?
Pop Quiz!
Please write down what you think the U.S.’s current rank is, relative to other countries, in these subject areas:
It used to be easier to tell where someone was from. People immigrated and stayed in the new place, or traveled for brief periods and then went home. But more and more often, people live for extended periods in other places, and even move again to someplace else. Multiracial people are common, and clothing has moved toward a more universal style. Often, the best way to tell where people are from is by listening to them speak, though some really fluent people manage to appear to be native speakers of multiple languages.
In the 1980s, before this sort of migration was very common, I met a young woman who personifies this for me. She had long, red hair and freckles. I believe her father was German and her mother, American. She learned German and English at home, and her American English was excellent. But her native tongue was Portuguese; she grew up in Brazil.
There’s a new category for this type of people: third culture kids. They are typically born into a family from Country A, but do most of their growing up in Country B.
The video below is 40 minutes long, and I find it fascinating. It explains why we ought to understand other cultures and languages: skills such as flexibility, problem-solving, and cross-cultural communication are 21st-century skills. Click Presentation (on the left). The part about third culture kids is at 14:30–30:00.
The parent organization in my town showed this film to parents; school administrators attended and answered questions. Thankfully, in my town, people can have such conversations and remain civil.
The film focused on students who were highly stressed because of pressure from school and parents to get the best grades and state-mandated test results, do lots of extra-curricular activities, then get into the best colleges, then get a high-paying job and a big house. Parents are concerned that it will be more difficult for their kids to be successful than it is for them (this may be related to the global economy or indications that schools in many other countries outperform U.S. schools). But students interviewed in the film thought that anything else meant failure, which for some, was unbearable, even to the point of hospitalization or suicide. Some kids feel that they themselves were not valued if they could not achieve those expectations.
As one parent at the meeting pointed out, if a kid is in school 7 hours a day, then has 3 hours of extra-curricular activities, then 5 hours of homework, and an hour for dinner, they don’t have enough time to sleep (that leaves 8 hours). A doctor in the film said kids need 10-11 hours a night, I believe. As the film points out, kids with such over-scheduled lives don’t have any downtime—time for family, friends, or figuring out who they are.
Isn’t a few hours a week of extra-curricular activities enough? Of course, it depends on the kid. For some kids, those activities are what they care about most, what they’re best at, and doing them provides energy and happiness. But some people feel compelled to do a superhuman amount of extra-curricular activities just to impress the best colleges. Is that over-commitment fun or stressful? Some parents felt relieved when a school principal in my town said there are so many colleges that would be a good fit for each student.
One of the film’s main arguments was that there is way too much homework, which ends up being counterproductive and unhealthy. Overwhelming the students doesn’t help them learn. Another principal in my town said there was no evidence that homework at the elementary level made any difference; he plans to discuss with the community whether to eliminate homework at his school.
If during class, students understood the concepts they’re supposed to practice by doing homework, wouldn’t homework take less time? What environments and practices work well, effectively produce learning, and make students happy?
American culture often equates success with high salaries and materialism. We’ve seen some awful examples of greed, cutting corners, and cheating in business and government. The film includes statistics showing that cheating is rampant in schools. Maybe it’s a way to cope, but maybe our culture somewhat condones cheating. So, to change these pressures on students (and teachers and parents, for that matter), we must fundamentally change not only education but also our culture. Discussing is a great way to start, I think.
Here are a few resources that are related to themes in the film. Enjoy.
Sir Ken Robinson, author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, says it’s OK to not go to college, depending what your ambitions are.
In Outliers: The Story of Success, author Malcolm Gladwell lists the colleges attended by Nobel laureates. Yes, MIT and Harvard are on those lists but so are a lot of “good” colleges. So, you don’t have to go to a top college to succeed, even at the highest level. Gladwell’s research shows that to get really good at something, you need to have the freedom and opportunity to do it a lot.
Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is based on a lot of research, showing that best results come from having the autonomy to pursue one’s passion, and persevere:
Isn’t the U.S. built on the freedom of the pursuit of happiness? The film questions whether schools should dictate what happens outside of school time.
With everything our educational system requires kids to do, they don’t have much autonomy. To look at a school that’s on the other extreme of the spectrum, the Sudbury Valley School gives kids nearly complete freedom. I’m sure some of you will find it too unstructured, but I figure we can at least look for good ideas to use in other contexts.
The book I’m reading right now, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, explains how autonomy and innovation are related. Johnson says that systems in nature or in human social structures are most innovative/adaptive when they flow like liquids (gases are too unstable, but too many rules make things too inflexible, like solids) and have many opportunities for connections (he says more connections are possible in cities than in rural areas).
Race to Nowhere brings up lots of important points, and I’m glad people are taking it seriously and are working together to improve education. But I doubt that all students experience school-related stress to this extent. And I think kids ought to have increasing levels of responsibilities to be ready for adulthood. I’m also concerned about educational issues that weren’t covered in the film. But the film and this post are long enough.
I think we can fix the cultural aspects of education if large numbers of people work together and discuss this. However, other cultures may have very different values and approaches to similar issues; that’s another place we can get ideas.
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these, then each of us will have two ideas.—George Bernard Shaw, http://quotes4all.net
A year ago, we received daily reports about the effects of the horrible earthquake… not the ones in Christchurch or Sendai, but in Port-au-Prince. And then there was the eruption of the volcano in Iceland, which disrupted aviation for a good month. Some of my students who had gone to Europe on a school trip or with their families had experienced flight delays.
But back in the classroom, many of my students of French didn’t seem to understand why they should study a language, and weren’t connecting the dots about how the global economy worked or affected them. So I made a list of some news stories of the day, such as these (but very short and in basic French):
Whitney Houston and John Cleese had to re-route their travel (taking a ferry, taxi, etc.) to make it to their respective performances in various European countries. Airlines lost $200M a day.
Weddings in NYC lacked flowers because planes couldn’t leave the Netherlands, Switzerland ran low on asparagus from the U.S. and fish from Vietnam, vegetable and flower growers in Kenya couldn’t ship their products to Europe (leaving thousands of employees without work), and Italian mozzarella makers couldn’t deliver their product, either (lost $14M/day).
A car factory in Tokyo had to shut down temporarily because it didn’t receive parts from Ireland.
A runner who was supposed to participate in the Boston Marathon was stuck in Brussels.
And perhaps scariest of all stories: organ transplants in Germany depended less on the greatest medical need and more on whether organs could be delivered to potential recipients by car.
(News sources are at the end of the post.)
I asked students to write a brief reaction to this. Some understood that the disruption not only posed an inconvenience to vacation travelers, but that the global economy affects just about any type of job. I hope the exercise opened a few eyes.
But are we doing enough to prepare students for the real world? Many of my students seemed absolutely convinced that they could spend their entire lives in their quaint hometown without being affected by the global economy. They had looked at me in total disbelief when I opined that they’d instead be competing for jobs with everyone else in the world, even if they never left town.
So I was very pleased to read about Avenues: The World School. It’s a new type of school, with a plan for global competency.
Yes, it’s a global school: the first branch will be in New York City, and about 20 others in Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Paris, etc., all connected by technology and curriculum.
Have you ever heard of a school with a research and development team? Innovative, interdisciplinary courses such as demography and environmental sustainability will be offered.
Fluency in—not just study of—at least one foreign language is required; this learning starts in the Avenues preschool. There are options for students to study abroad for up to 15 months before graduating from high school.
The school’s leaders have been holding meetings for interested parents for a couple of months, and nearly every meeting is filled to capacity.
Our schools must prepare students for the present and the future!
Today, all types of news and information from any country affects the others. At work, we interact domestically and remotely with many foreign-born colleagues and suppliers, are ourselves asked to travel or live abroad for work, and perhaps most importantly, customers are located anywhere on the planet. Global companies often hire managers who have lived abroad and have the cross-cultural business skills to understand the interpersonal environment and develop target markets.
How can we design, market, sell, and deliver products and services for global markets if we don’t understand those markets?
A teacher named Dave organized a summer exchange program. My mother saw the ad in the paper, and we hosted a 17-year-old French girl for a month during the summer when I was 15. The next year, the exchange program said anyone in my family who’d had 2 years of French could go stay with a French family. My parents didn’t have money, so I took my $500 (pretty much emptied my savings account—in those days, I earned money doing odd jobs, people didn’t give money for birthdays), and it paid for my trip, including air fare and insurance. A chaperone accompanied us at airports and on the flights and was available in France if we needed help.
I loved staying with the French family. I watched my French host mother cook fabulous meals every day (learned to make some ), saw places the parents or two of their sons (a bit older than me) took me in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and learned the language all the while. That experience changed my life. When I got back to the States, I realized at an even deeper level how different things were in Europe and how interesting that was to me. I decided to major in French in college.
Following my sophomore year in college, I took a year off school to work full-time so I could save enough to study in France for my junior year. There is nothing like living abroad!!! It taught me more than any other life experience except maybe parenthood. Maybe. During that year, I visited my French family.
After college, I became a French teacher. Dave gave me my first teaching job! It was only part-time, but it was a start. Later, I became a French technical translator, and even later, co-developed an innovative system for preparing technical writing for translation.
I visited my French family a couple more times, when I could. I knew that my French host parents had been born in Belgium. I learned that they had left Belgium during WWII and walked about 400 km (250 miles) to Dijon. My French host father joined the French Résistance. After the war, they raised a family. It turns out that I was just one of the many people they had hosted from many countries—any country. He said, “Making friends is better than war.”
I kept in touch with my French family. I named my first child after my French host mother, who had taught me so much just by being herself, and was then fighting cancer. The first, glossy photos of my baby arrived in my French host father’s hands one afternoon; his wife had passed away that very morning. This sort of continuation helped him.
I speak only French to my kids, since their births, and my husband speaks English to them. They’re bilingual. My French host father was so touched by that, and to have the pleasure of meeting my daughter twice. We had French-speaking au pairs (a sort of exchange student who does child care for a year) when my kids were little. One of them has kids of her own now, in France, and speaks English to them!
Two years ago, I bought a bigger house and wanted to make sure people had my new address, so I sent letters to many people I hadn’t kept in touch with. I sent one to Dave, thanking him for getting me started. The exchange program made such a difference in my life. His wife wrote back that he had passed away (at a relatively young age, of cancer), but would have been happy to know how much of a difference he had made.
My favorite: the Donate Funds page of redcross.org. You can select where your donation goes, including Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami, North Africa and Middle East unrest, etc.
There’s an old joke, commonly known among linguists:
What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?—Bilingual.
3 languages?—Trilingual.
Only 1 language?—American.
School taught me a lot about western civilization and local history, but not much about the rest of the world, as if the U.S. were an island that existed independently. (Lucky for me, college and exchange programs filled multicultural gaps.) Over the years, I often got the impression that the prevailing American culture assumed that people didn’t need to know much about the rest of the world.
But in the past couple of decades, I think that’s changing. Here’s a fantastic video (only 6 minutes) in which Alisa Miller shows that Americans want to know what’s going on in the world, but that what big media provides is less than evenhanded and more focused on sensationalist stories:
But that was 2008. Where are we now? Understanding history, current events, languages and cultures, and the global economy all seem interconnected, and I think we should know something about all of these. What are experts saying?
At the annual ACTFL (American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages) convention in Boston (November, 2010), Richard Haass gave the keynote speech, “Languages as a Gateway to Global Communities.” Dr. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, was director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State and principal advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and has been involved in policy planning on behalf of the U.S. in many countries.
Dr. Haass spoke of the importance of studying languages as a factor in U.S. security. Our country, he explained, had lacked speakers of specific languages when conflicts erupted in various regions the world. He says the U.S. didn’t understand the situation in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. “There is no substitute for localism, even in a global world; language is essential,” he said.
He pointed out that in the 20th century, the focus of geopolitical unrest (two world wars and the cold war) was between the greatest economic and military powers: Europe, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Japan. But globalization has created a rapid increase in economic development in Asia, and the U.S. now holds a relatively smaller piece of the economic pie. He says, “This is neither good nor bad, it just is.”
Because of globalization, he says, the “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” rule no longer applies. In other words, problems in distant countries used to stay within those countries. But now, small, weak countries are often the source of political unrest that affects the entire world. Therefore, he thinks Americans should study a variety of languages, making expertise constantly available in any language. He sees more risk for geopolitical unrest in the Middle East than elsewhere, so he encourages Americans to choose a language from that region. The potential geopolitical danger, he says, is akin to geological fault lines, for example:
Sunni vs. Shi’a groups
Israeli vs. Arab groups
Iran’s, Iraq’s, or Turkey’s relationship with the rest of the region
Dr. Haass predicts that budgets for education (state universities and K-12) will be adversely affected by the U.S. deficit. This isn’t good, since education develops our economic capital. The deficit is currently at an unsustainable rate of 10% of the GDP, and represents our greatest national security issue, he says, and that we must fix it.
I agree: we must make education a priority, but why learn just 1 foreign language? In most developed countries, people study 2 or 3, in addition to their first language.
Dr. Haass was right: smaller and less economically developed countries are making the news a lot these days! People want freedom from tyranny, freedom of speech, and jobs. Clearly, the direction those countries take affects the security of the U.S. and the world.
In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman analyzes the situation in Arab countries. People are economically and culturally frustrated: they miss the dignified place they once had in the world. Since global supply chains make political entities less likely to cause unrest, places that lack substantial implantation in the global economy are the most volatile. He also warns that if political unrest breaks the global supply chain, the results could be catastrophic.
The global economy is having a huge effect, and the Internet and availability of inexpensive devices accelerate the rate of change. Glenn Reynolds’s book, An Army of Davids, describes this phenomenon so well. Now, you don’t have to work for big media to publish and influence people. You can just take your mobile phone, video camera, and laptop, capture what’s going on anywhere, and publish it to everywhere. Newspapers are failing as more and more people are getting news online. In recent months, we’ve seen the extraordinary influence of ordinary people using phones, social networks, and blogs, organizing change and delivering that information to everyone.
This pace of change seems exponential and is likely to spread. If we don’t know enough about the world yet, we had better learn. Fast.
Today is Groundhog Day. Have you seen the movie “Groundhog Day,” starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell? The French title is “Un jour sans fin” — ” A Never-ending Day.”
Here in New England, we seem to be living through The Never-ending Snow Day right now — 5 snow days since New Year’s. (How fitting: a snowstorm also played a central role in the film.) But I wondered whether the term “snow day” was universally understood or is a geographically or culturally based concept, and thought about how understanding cultural sensitivity will become more important in education.
In my experience teaching writers to prepare their writing for the translation process, students were able to learn and apply most of the concepts very well, but the biggest challenge was in the area of cultural differences. People who were multilingual and had lived abroad were far better at recognizing and handling cultural differences in their writing than people who did not have that knowledge and experience.
I believe that multilingual, multicultural people will increasingly be in demand in the global economy. Already, many people work on global teams, have supply chains that cross multiple countries, and clients around the globe. Even small businesses that put up a website are now global.
The world is going to continue getting more and more interdependent. Companies are more and more likely to be global from the start, and to be successful, they need globally savvy people. This needs to be part of one’s education for non-fungible types of work. Fungibility determines whether your job can be automated or done more inexpensively someplace else.
So let’s look at the film as an example of cultural differences. In Québec, the film title is “Le Jour de la Marmotte,” — “The Day of the Groundhog,” virtually the same as the original title. Maybe you guessed that the French title is so different because Groundhog Day isn’t celebrated in France, though I learned that similar traditions exist in some regions of Europe, with different animals:
Actually, the two pages have slightly different information. The English page mentions that the tradition came from Germany. The French page lists a few of the traditional animals for similar events in other areas, such as Ireland, Lorraine (a French region which is of course near Germany), and Limousin (a region in south central France).
If you compare the two pages, you’ll see that the holiday is explained in the French version. But there are more differences. These two pages are very similar to one another, and I would guess that one was translated from the other and adapted for the local culture — but don’t assume that’s always true.
I won’t bore you by listing every difference, but here are a few:
More emphasis on the actors on the English page vs. the director on the French page (this was predictable)
The main character “drives into a quarry” vs. “il jette sa voiture du haut d’une falaise” (literally “throws his car from the top of a cliff”). Maybe quarries in the U.S. have cliffs and in other countries, not necessarily?
Some sections are different. The “Legacy” section and “Commentaire” have some overlap, and some completely different material. For example, the English page provides the linguistic use of the term “Groundhog day” in a military context and the French page explains the Nietzschean philosophy in the film. Perhaps the differences reflect what is more relevant, interesting, or valued in each culture.
The English page has, under See also, a link called “Time loop as a plot device.” The French page has a section called “Œuvres similaires et influences” (Influences and Similar Works). The French page lists a couple of books and a few American TV shows with episodes specifically referencing this film. The English time loops page includes several types of time loops in various media (TV, literature, music videos, etc.).
Today, my husband and I ate at a Chinese restaurant. Here are our fortunes.
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
Paulo Freire would certainly agree with that. He was a Brazilian educator who taught impoverished peasants to improve their lives by learning to read, learning the concepts associated with their situations, and empowering them to change those situations rather than accept and proliferate them. In my opinion, his work is very valuable for the oppressed, but also has much broader applications. To me, it’s very similar to user-centered design, and could be used to teach most anything.
Facing History and Ourselves would also agree with that fortune. This organization, founded in the Boston area, shows students the realities of history on a personal level, then asks them to act on their beliefs.
Matt Damon learned a lot from FHO when he was in middle school:
At the end of the interview, he underlines the importance of being able to look at things from the perspective of others. I agree! User-centered design and knowing a foreign language would help, but living abroad provides the most depth in that area. Why not do all 3?
I think the basic idea of that fortune is that we ought to be able to do something with what we learn, but not just political action. Education must be useful.
“A smile is nearly always inspired by another smile.”
Many teachers who are passionate about the subjects they teach inspire their students. And some say that since the advent of fun educational shows on TV, kids expect school to be “entertaining,” though that seems to be a tall order. But is it impossible for education to be enjoyable? Not for enjoyment’s sake, really, but for learning. Wouldn’t it be easier for teachers and students to be excited about something if it were both interesting and effective?
I’ve heard that the things you remember best are the experiences that were highly emotional. (A Wikipedia article substantiates this, if you’re curious: Emotion_and_memory.)
So, what emotion is associated with memorization? How do students feel when they aren’t able to master the content, but the teacher has to move on to the next unit?
Do kids feel that what they’re being taught is relevant? As teachers or parents, how often do we hear the questions “Is it going to be on the test?” and “Why do I have to know this?”
The last one is an especially big, but important question, and we need to address it much better than we have so far, though some educators are making great progress in this area.
One thing that students often feel lacks relevance in schools is the relative absence of technology. They often have computers, MP3 players, cell phones, game consoles, and other devices, but invariably aren’t allowed to use them in school. Many of their parents use very sophisticated and useful technologies at work. I know a teacher who increased the enrollment in her school’s French classes tenfold by understanding that students want to use technology at school and that the native speakers of Spanish in her area want to learn French.
Karl Fisch (a teacher who created the Did You Know videos, along with Scott McLeod) came up with the idea of flipping, now known as the Fisch flip. The gist is that the teacher makes a video of the normal lecture, and the students watch it at home. They can replay sections to understand concepts better. Then the teacher can provide individualized instruction during class. I found that part similar to Freire’s idea, that the teacher’s role is to facilitate the student’s learning, and empower the student.
It seems that the Fisch flip came after Salman Kahn made videos to help his younger cousins learn, and teachers (apparently Fisch and others) saw additional benefits that technology provides. Kahn explains very well, here:
How do you think we can make education more relevant and useful?
I’m a parent, a teacher, and business person. I’m not blaming anyone for the problems of education, but with budget cuts, state-mandated testing, technology, and globalization, education will soon change dramatically. If you care about that, let’s discuss how we can help re-design it.
First, what is education?
If we think of education as if it’s a house we’re going to build, we can say what it usually has, and build that: a kitchen, dining room, bathrooms (or toilets or water closets, depending where you’re from), bedrooms, a family room, and sometimes other spaces.
Let’s determine what is essential, and what we can omit or transform. It’s the same process when there are budget cuts or any change occurs. Somebody makes those decisions—usually government officials, who may or may not be experts in education and may or may not be of your opinion.
What if we didn’t build a dining room? An apartment without one is OK, you say, but the “American dream” house has a dining room; that’s the way things are done. Fine, but people don’t really use them, so at our house, we turned it into a music room.
To reform or transform education, I suggest we think of its new form as if it’s a house that will be designed, then built. Let’s discuss design ideas. Later, when you voice your opinion to decision-makers, you’ll be prepared with reasons for your opinions.
What is the purpose of education?
Who is it for? Is education for kids? All kids? Must it take place in a school?
Just as homes are supposed to be for the occupants, not the builder, education ought to be for students. So why is the garage sometimes the most prominent feature of a house? It’s easier or cheaper to build that way? Does the design imply that substantial value is placed on cars? Should values be distributed differently?
So, what is education for? If we don’t pay attention to that, our garage will not only diminish the aesthetic value of the house, it gets in the way of other things we need: more windows, for example. And are people with good aesthetic skills noticing other design opportunities that could help others?
I’m trying to be careful when to use the word education and when to use the word school or schooling. Schooling takes place in a school, but must an education take place there? Can an education take place at home, online, or after high school and college are completed? What does it mean if someone is educated?
“Easier to design or build that way” was the reason software was difficult to use before usability—or more specifically, user-centered design—came along. And I’m trying to use words like people-centered. User-centered design (in this case, student-centered or learner-centered design) will help us focus.
Though there are other goals, let’s start with a short list that most people can agree on: education is to prepare people for college (for most sorts of work, college is necessary in today’s job market, though the trades may become more important), work, and life. But how do we know whether schools are achieving these goals?
College
Following up on the effectiveness of particular managers (teachers and administrators), business units (schools), methods, etc. is rather common in business, but is rare in education. But Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, asked university students and professors whether high school had prepared students for college. Students had found extra-curricular activities the most “engaging” part of high school; academically, the modus operandi was memorization (doesn’t sound engaging), then forgetting. Both students and professors said that students weren’t prepared: they couldn’t write well, analyze, research, manage time… the list goes on.
In the U.S., the quality of education varies greatly, depending mainly on how wealthy a particular town is (that may not be true in other countries). However, Wagner’s work focused on the best schools. Not only that, but college is changing quickly and may be significantly different by the time elementary and middle school students get there.
Work
I’ve been working in business for the past two decades. To prepare for my return to education, I’ve been reading a lot, taught in a public school for a month, and have been communicating with teachers in many other schools as I took several graduate courses, and attended teaching conferences and workshops. The lack of technology in some schools would never be acceptable in business! Technologies vary from school to school; common problems include the lack of equipment, software, and teacher training in technology, and no Internet access in classrooms or blocked Internet sites that would be useful for teachers and students.
With all the budget and policy constraints, it is indeed challenging to run a school or teach these days. Many schools seem to have been compelled to design the most support into state-tested subjects (well documented in Wagner’s book), and these changes have resulted in some unfortunate effects. Some teachers of the other (non-state-tested) subjects have twice as many students as I had in the 1980s, and struggle to meet their needs. In business, we must do more with less, but we have technology to boost productivity.
Parents and kids often say that those other subjects and activities (art, the school musical, sports, etc.) mean the most to kids. Personally, playing music and singing is not only a passion of mine, but learning it has helped me master new sounds when learning foreign languages, and be comfortable on stage, presenting to a large audience—skills that have been useful to me in business.
Experts also agree. Dan Pink (author of A Whole New Mind) and Sir Ken Robinson (author of The Element) document the need for students to study the arts / right-brained subjects to not only be happy and excel at something but to be able to earn a good living in the global economy.
Life
In his book, An Army of Davids, Glenn Reynolds predicts that people will live much longer lives, and require re-education (lifelong learning). So maybe education isn’t just for kids. The Division of Employment and Training in Massachusetts offers re-training for the unemployed. In my experience, professional development webinars have become an essential part of business.
Meantime, some edublogs are discussing the relevance of what’s taught in schools:
And here’s an anecdote from my family. My son is studying density, mass, and volume in science class. Thinking I could help by providing him a hands-on way to understand science, I got out my U.S. and European measuring cups yesterday, and asked him to compare them and figure out why they were different. (The U.S. model measures everything by volume: cups. The European model measures everything in grams, so there is a different scale for Flour, Sugar, Rice, etc.) But he got frustrated and said “Just tell me the answer!,” so I dropped it. Today, after thinking I had needed to learn something about the motivation required for actual learning, I gave him three choices:
I tell him the answer.
Next time we serve crêpes for dinner (I make them a couple of times a year for special occasions), he does the measuring.
I won’t bring it up again; he can learn it when he wants.
He chose Door #2. I thought that might work! He loves crêpes, even more than pizza. Motivation is so important!
The way many schools are reacting to state-mandated testing seems like the carrot-and-stick model. If we could figure out how to motivate all the kids, they would learn more. However, each kid is an individual, so within a traditional classroom with one teacher and 30 kids, it is difficult to achieve, especially in the digital age.
(P.S. I just made crêpes again; as soon as I brought out the measuring cups, my son understood the difference.)
“Chance favors the connected mind.” —Steven Johnson
This blog is about the upcoming convergence of technology and globalization with education. The blog’s purposes are:
To inform, provide resources, answer questions.
To let people from different constituencies (teachers, students, parents, educational technology designers, and others who are interested in education) voice opinions, and avoid having any one group make all the decisions that affect so many people.
To let blog participants share ideas and work together on complex problems that no one person can solve. Sometimes I—or you!—have a hunch, an idea, but it’s not quite ready for prime time. Maybe it needs development, data, complementary information, evidence from experience, or just someone else’s hunch to make it whole.
When you call someone’s cell phone, you ask, “Where are you?”
Well, I don’t just call my boss’s cell phone. I text him. Why? Because I don’t know what time zone he’s in today. He might be in a meeting, having dinner with clients, or asleep. Call a business person at the office? OK, but they travel a lot. It’s now common to have your mobile phone number (yes, your personal cell phone) in your email signature and on your business card, so people can reach you anytime, no matter where you are.
But while it doesn’t take long to show students that the world has time zones, few schools teach students to use them, to gain real understanding. If you ask kids what time it is in Paris or Mumbai, do they know?
Don’t get me wrong; I think teachers are smart, creative people (after all, I am one: blush . But education’s infrastructure, controlled by government mandates, still tends to focus on teachers maintaining depth in each separate subject area being taught, and on testing rather than learning. Some (not enough!) effort is being put into including technology, but by and large, schools are disconnected from the type of work currently being done in today’s real world, let alone the one students will inherit by the time they finish college. (Tony Wagner’s book, The Global Achievement Gap, documents this disparity.)
I had to learn about time zones the hard way. Knowing what a time zone is and what to do because of it are two different things. After I left teaching in schools, I started working in a French company in 1989, and my French boss noticed that I needed to work harder on understanding the importance of time zones. Technically, the office opened at 8:30 in the morning. But if I didn’t take the initiative to come in early, ahead of my boss, to pick up all the faxes that were on the floor (because France is 6 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast), read and digest them, there was no way I could apprise him of the hottest issues that were already developing in Europe that day. He was way too busy for me not to help with this. Indeed, I was deemed insufficient in this area, and was re-assigned within the company. It was a good lesson for me to learn. I guess they gave me a second chance because of my French language skills.
My teachers and bosses often compliment me for taking initiatives. But you can’t figure out what initiatives to take unless you can connect the dots. And I had lived in France. Twice. But I was only in one time zone at a time, and other than the trips in one direction or another, or the rare phone call home, I didn’t really have to be concerned with time zones. Not until I worked for that French company, which constantly communicated across two time zones, that is. Today, it is a daily necessity in business.
When I began teaching via the Internet in a business environment in 2002, my students were located on the East Coast of the U.S. and in the U.K. I had to deliver training across two time zones, with a 5-hour time difference. And the number of time zones across which I teach grows every year. I’ve used the Internet to deliver customer and internal training and make sales presentations to students, co-workers, and clients in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Estonia, Israel, Germany, Australia, Singapore, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Malaysia, Ireland, Switzerland, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Hong Kong, and Japan.
Sometimes I have to divide the class into several groups because of time zones. A current customer of mine wants on-site training in Europe, and for students in other European countries, the U.S., and Asia to connect to it using the Internet. The students in the U.S. and Asia are 12 hours apart, so probably one of those groups will require separate training.
The Earth’s rotation is not going to change . You have to be flexible. Sometimes I’m meeting or teaching until 11:00 in the evening because it’s the next morning in Asia. Once, there was only one student in India so he had to attend a class at 5:30 in his morning to interact with his co-workers in the U.S. At a few professional conferences, I met a manager who works in California and much of his staff works in India. He meets with his India-based team in the middle of his night every day.
Another facet of the effect of time zones on business is how work gets done. If I am working on a project for Europe, I have to send my work by the end of the day here so they’ll have it first thing in their morning. If I’m collaborating with people on the U.S. West Coast, I know I can work on the project for 3 more hours before it’s the end of their workday (called COB: close of business). People in multiple time zones can work together around the clock on projects.
OK, you’re probably thinking “That’s ridiculous; there’s no way any of this will work in schools.” True, with limited hours and the crazy schedules many schools have, it is more challenging in schools than at home or in business, but you have to find a mutually convenient time to meet. That’s the whole point.
Ideas for teachers, parents, and kids
Put a world map of time zones or a set of clocks for different cities in your classroom.
Links
http://www.timeanddate.com/ (My favorite!) Under Time Zone Calculators, click on Meeting Planner to find a time that works.
Kim Cofino, a teacher in international schools for the past decade, is a leader in using technology for things like time zones and other globally focused projects:
Nasa video re: time zones (though I think it covers some material too quickly):
How the international date line works:
Probably most effective—and fun
Connect students to students in a faraway location. It could be another time zone where the same language is spoken. But a foreign language or social studies class could connect to a place they are studying. Kids are very curious about kids their age that live someplace else.
You could use Skype, email, or ePals, for example. Let me know if you’re using these or other programs, and what you think of them.
Usability is why we have smart phones instead of kludgy brick-like gizmos. Usability specialists are people who design the coolest products, that are simple to use, and everyone loves. Think iPod, IM, Wii, FB. Wanna see some cool stuff?
Usability means studying the PEOPLE who are going to use a product, THEN designing the right product for them. It means figuring out how to hide all the complicated stuff so it’s easy for people to just USE the product.
Usability is about observing real problems and creating innovative solutions. Yes, it is most often associated with high-tech products, but usability can also help create low-tech products (IDEO designed the Swiffer, for example: http://www.ideo.com/work/swiffer-carpetflick?work/featured/swiffer) or services. For example, Patrick Whitney’s team designed a way to deliver water to slums in India that lack plumbing (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4143/is_200410/ai_n9468895/pg_3/?tag=content;col1). Previously, water was delivered by truck, but Whitney’s team had it delivered by motorcycle to get through spaces where trucks couldn’t fit.
So, why does education need usability?
Anything that needs improvement needs usability. Right now, the world is trying to improve many aspects of education, which is a gigantic task, given the complexity and infrastructure changes that will, in my opinion, need to go along with the transformation. Some aspects being talked about are:
- How should we integrate technology into lessons? What should take place in a physical classroom, what should be digital but at school, what should be online?
- Are government-mandated tests effective? If not, how should we measure improvement in knowledge and skills?
- How do we learn? Do different learning styles exist? If so, is it a small number of styles, or an infinite number?
Here are some companies that are working toward such goals.
- This company offers online courses, which are useful for communities that don’t have enough students to offer A.P. classes, or students that need to finish the courses required for graduation:
Everyone knows that whatever is published on the Internet is available to virtually everyone, everywhere, all the time. And we communicate in many ways: via phone, text, webcam, social networks, instant messaging, etc. We do that already, and it’s easy. But what would we have to learn–through school or some other experience that we can’t get at home–to be able to fully participate in the global economy?
Ah, global shmobal, who cares? Let’s just keep doing the same things we’ve been doing; we’ll be able to get jobs. Why worry, right?
No. So sorry. I disagree. Your job security will depend on fungibility:
You may disagree with some of that, or find it shocking, but I hope you will continue to think about it. (Yes, I know the last video I put up was also produced by Scott McLeod. They are the best videos to go with the topics of these first posts. Scott McLeod has a fantastic blog for school administrators: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/).
In other words, you have to be irreplaceable. Or you’d have to do a type of job that can ONLY be done at your location. If your job can be done far away for way less money, or if it can be automated, it will be. Dan Pink explores this topic in a lot of depth in his book, “A Whole New Mind.” Recommended reading! Here’s a video giving a really quick synopsis:
(For more depth, there’s another video with Oprah interviewing him, but it’s 30 minutes long.) He says you have to master some type of subtlety and add value to the competitive. From my 20 years of experience in business, I agree. Things have changed a lot over those years. But not so much in education.
When I was a teacher in the 1980s, the educational technology of the day gave me a daily gift of purple stains on my blazer sleeves–from those mimeograph machines. Remember them? OK, for those of you who weren’t there:
This was a low-tech printer of sorts. You’d use a ballpoint pen and press hard on a special paper to make a master. Then you’d put the master on the machine’s drum, and turn the crank, which would feed one sheet of paper at a time to press against the master and thus get printed. The copies would get lighter and lighter as the master wore out, and you’d have to make a new one. You could, of course, use a typewriter (something I assume students have seen in movies, at least) to make a master. And when I passed out my freshly mimeo’d worksheets, my students invariably sniffed them to “enjoy” that “mimeo smell.” Ugh.
Then I had my first experience with a computer. No, not at the school where I taught! Though it was a very affluent town, there were only TWO computers in the entire school. They were in the library, and only students could use them. There were NO computers for teachers or any of the staff.
I first used a computer at home. I shared an apartment with a couple from Taiwan. They were graduate students in computer science and let me make worksheets on their computer. Yes, of course it was one of those clunky things you’d only see in a museum now, with those orange letters on the black screen. But it was new then. I could correct mistakes before printing a master (before, I could only scratch them out), print another when it wore out, and even improve it for next time. This was a miracle.
So I decided to work in high-tech and got a job in a French company with an office in the Boston area. At work, I had a similar clunky computer, just for me. EVERYONE did.
That was 1989. This is 2010. The mimeograph machines are gone, but schools are unfortunately still way, way behind business. Overhead projectors are still used in many schools. I haven’t seen transparencies used in business since the early 1990s. Schools have some computers now, but they are usually in a lab, where students have occasional access. Paper, pencil, printed books and chalkboards or whiteboards are still the primary technologies used for instruction in classrooms; technology, by and large, isn’t integrated into lessons. Students use computers more at home than they do at school.
By contrast, in business, computers are used for practically everything. Back in the 1990s, I learned on the job how to use sophisticated software programs to write and translate technical writing (instructions for using software, installing computer parts, etc.). The books were saved onto a tar tape, someone from the printer’s came to pick them up, and brought us the published books. Then when CDs came out, we put our books on them, and our people in tech support raved: “No more broken arms!” (These were very large books, up to 1800 pages.) We started using email at work, but had to use ftp to send large files.
In the last decade, individual offices disappeared as cube farms sprouted. We now use Intranets, instant messaging, shared servers, and workflow software. Everyone uses their cell phones for any personal communication. Phones are still used to communicate with customers, mostly during meetings held via Internet, so customers can see the meeting organizer’s computer screen. Almost all communication and work are done through computers. You might write on a sticky note if you don’t put that bit of information in your computer, phone, or web app instead, but in business, people use actual paper a lot less than they used to.
I don’t think it’s very important for educators to know what tar tape or ftp is, but suffice it to say that business kept up with changes in technology and for whatever reasons (lack of funding or training? beliefs–of whom? too much infrastructure to change?), education did not. Teachers work very hard at meeting all the demands that are put on them, and technology will be one more that they’ll have to adapt to, but they can’t do it without changes to the infrastructure.
And though I’m interested in languages and went out of my way to find a company where I could enjoy using the French language on a daily basis, the 1980s and 1990s were also when many large companies figured out that they could no longer make enough money in the domestic market, so they went global. Now, even tiny businesses are global, as soon as they put up a website and accept PayPal.
So, my answer is that you have to use technology to do just about everything and be able to communicate well with people from other cultures. I’ll elaborate on these themes in other posts.
Still don’t believe me that the global economy has arrived? I’ll provide more examples in future posts. For now, go to this ad for jobs (from the company that makes WordPress) and scroll down to How to Apply:
They don’t care where you live. You can work remotely. They just want the world’s best at particular jobs.
The next time you look at your workplace or someone else’s, observe: is the computer right in front of the seat, or to the side of the table? In other words, is it used for most of their work, or just occasionally?
Governments in many countries are trying to reform education. They are requiring schools to make lots of changes, prepare students for exams, and be accountable. Though teachers grow tired of the requirements that seem to change every year (the méthode du jour), I have to give governments credit for at least recognizing that we need to do better, and trying something new when a strategy doesn’t work. Most teachers I know work very hard, and for much less money than they could earn in other industries, and now they have to add these requirements. Schools are working very hard to implement these plans. Are these methods the ones that will help students the most?
So, what is the purpose of education, anyway?
- To produce good results on government-mandated exams? Teachers try to teach students to think, but many schools create expectations of one “right” answer per question. Does the huge test-prep industry exist because memorizing the “right” answers for standardized tests doesn’t interest students?
- To be well-rounded (understand a set of core subject areas)? Since schools are often evaluated based on the results of government-mandated tests, many schools put nearly all their efforts into the few subjects that are tested, and all the other subjects are cut or reduced to the point that they don’t matter. (This is well documented in Tony Wagner’s book, The Global Achievement Gap. )
- To learn what you need to know in life? (Or is that the role of parents?)
- To prepare for university studies and work (get a good job)? What type of work?
- To understand one’s country of birth and be responsible citizens? From working in a company with offices in 60 cities worldwide, I’m convinced this goal should be broader.
- Other goals?
This video spurs discussion among educators, and is often shared with parents, but I think it’s important and that everyone should watch it:
What do you think?
The type of work I’ve been doing for the last 8 years didn’t exist until 15 years after I finished my university studies. When I was in high school, very few people were able to use a computer; they were enormous contraptions that used punch cards (OK, I’m showing my age) and had no graphical interface. I learned about technology and how to use computers on the job, a little at a time, over many years, from DOS and UNIX (you had to type the right command or the computer would insult you!) to Windows and Mac (MUCH more friendly!). Actually, I had a French OS/2 system and a dumb terminal interface at one point.
I loved the learning I did in high school and college; I was lucky that at my high school I could select many of my courses. But the thing that prepared me best for almost every job I’ve had was living abroad. Well, I majored in languages, so I chose to live abroad because of my major—but I chose my major because of my first experience living abroad.
Think about things YOU do at work and whether methods currently used in schools prepare students for the future (or even the present). What should be changed? What advantages has the industry you work in had that schools haven’t?
This blog is for teachers, parents, students (at least 13 years old), usability specialists, and everyone who’s interested in improving the learning process.
We’re living in an interesting time: education must integrate technology and become global. (I’ll explain why I think so, and you can see whether you agree.) To do this best, I think we need to work together. Let’s share ideas!
Types of topics I want to focus on:
- How will we prepare students for the future?
- How does learning work?
- What motivates students (or not!)?
- How does education compare to other industries?
- Digital communication is the medium of literacy of our time
- What’s the difference between “adding” and “integrating” technology?
- Education doesn’t need reform, it needs a transformation
- What is education like, globally?
- “You can just speak English, right? Everyone speaks English.” (No, and not really.)
- Africa is the new Asia
- What can ESL, foreign language, and reading teachers learn from each other?
- What is usability? What do teaching ESL and usability have in common?
- What can usability specialists learn from teachers?
- What will education look like in the future? How can we ensure it’ll make sense?
- What great things are classroom teachers doing that can and should be made digital?
- Teachers are creative! How can we create technology-based solutions?
I’ll list resources such as videos and books to provide more depth on some ideas.
), saw places the parents or two of their sons (a bit older than me) took me in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and learned the language all the while. That experience changed my life. When I got back to the States, I realized at an even deeper level how different things were in Europe and how interesting that was to me. I decided to major in French in college.
. But education’s infrastructure, controlled by government mandates, still tends to focus on teachers maintaining depth in each separate subject area being taught, and on testing rather than learning. Some (not enough!) effort is being put into including technology, but by and large, schools are disconnected from the type of work currently being done in today’s real world, let alone the one students will inherit by the time they finish college. (Tony Wagner’s book, The Global Achievement Gap, documents this disparity.)
