Educators Must Acknowledge Globalization
The readings for this week gave words to the unease or struggles I have
been feeling toward the current educational system. Globalization and
education, the two must go hand in hand for our students to be prepared for their
future. But, what do our students need and how do we, as educators, prepare
them for this far different future than we can even imagine? Because of modern
technologies, our world is shrinking or flattening, it is a world that is
interconnected at many levels.
Throughout history, humans have had to change as technology expanded
and changed; but as Mark Milliron (2007) points out in his article, Transcendence
and Globalization: Our Education and Workforce Development Challenge, it
seems that the globalizations that took place in the fifteenth century (trade) and
the nineteenth century (industrialization) were easier for us to accept than the
globalization that is taking place today. Our current education system is “stuck”
in a spiral of teaching to the test, so that we can test the students to know what to
teach. This seems to have led to students who memorize rudimentary facts that
they then regurgitate through a Standardized, multiple choice test, never once
being allowed to use their creativity or critical thinking skills to explore an idea.
My struggle is that in the district where I teach, we are limited as to how to teach
Math, Reading, English and Writing skills. Our students’ successes (and
subsequently the teachers’) are then based on the yearly Standardized Test
scores. As Daniel Pink (2005, 2006) points out: “Our broader culture tends to
prize L-Directed Thinking more highly than its counterpart.”, we are having our
students use only the analytical left side of their brains, instead of teaching them
to be problem solvers. But to teach our future leaders to be problem solvers we
must change the status quo of education as it is today, to a system that allows
critical thinking and creativity in the youngest of classrooms. This is a change
that has to be supported by the very people who have put into place the current
system in use.
My personal struggle is how to make the needed change happen while
working within a “Program Improvement”, L-Directed system. How do I
incorporate project based learning and the skills that my students gain from just
such teaching practices into my fairly rigid curriculum? How do I get
administrators and political leaders to hear the “cry from the trenches” that we
are doing an injustice to our students by not allowing them to use both sides of
their brains, the analytical and the creative, so that we can keep up with the
flattening, globalize world around us?
References:
Pink, Daniel (2005, 2006). A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will
Rule the Future, Right Brain Rising (pp. 7-27). Penguin Group: New York,
New York.
Hytten, Kathy & Bettez, Silvia. (2008). Teaching Globalization Issues to
Education Students: What’s the Point? Equity and Excellence in
Education, 4(12), 168-181. 2008 /s1066-5684 print / 1547 – 3457 online
Milliron, Mark David, (2007). Transcendence and Globalization: Our
Education and Workforce Development Challenge, New Directions for
Community Colleges, 138, 31-38. doi:10.1002/cc.279
Spring, Joel (2008). Research on Globalization and Education Review of
Educational Research, 78(2), 330 - 363. doi:10.3102/0034654308317846