Global Education of Core Importance

It was stated in this particular article that we are living in a time where global education is a huge topic, especially in the United States but not only here but around the world. But, this article particularly focuses on schools in Maine. It was stated that the schools there think of social studies and geography classes as second rank classes and they view learning other language as a “frill”.  There is this thing known as The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills and it redefines core subjects so that it includes geography and world languages. The organization suggests that students can learn from and work with individuals who are from diverse cultures collaboratively. There also needs to be a way that students understand other nations and cultures.

                There is not enough opportunity for children under high school to learn in this way, therefore when they reach high school they know very little about the world that is outside of their own.  It was mentioned that around the world in other countries students are bilingual and sometimes trilingual but here in the United States students are happy if they can say “hello” in another language.

It was also stated in the article that students do not even know where to locate certain continents on the map. It said that students are unable to point out or identify continents like Africa or Asia without having to make a great effort and some are not even able to identify individual countries. Students here are lacking “cross-cultural competence”. The article says that by the time students reach high school they already have this way of thinking that says that the outside world is not important. This leaves people to think that our graduates are not prepared or equipped to be successful or handle the twenty-first century. An author by the name of Yong Zhao, talks about cross-cultural competence in his book, Catching Up or Leading the Way. In his book he stresses that we need to be able to live in and move across different cultures easily. Schools should set their standards in which they will teach students in a global perspective. In other countries language courses are considered a core subject which means that they are on the same level as math, science and so forth.  I think that the overall message and point of this article is to emphasis the importance of global education and being culturally competent.

 http://rethinkingeducation.bangordailynews.com/2013/04/06/home/global-education-a-core-theme/  

Jennifer Aiken 

4/11/2013 8:55pm