Educating for Globalism

Over the last few months, I've been reading a host of authors on how they see education reforms in this age of globalism. Almost unanimously, they say a few things:

1. Teach young people to be more aware of current affairs.
2. Let them participate in more discussions.
3. Give them opportunities to examine the key forces that drive the world.
4. Make them politically aware.
5. Allow them to be politically active.
6. Help them discover complex modes of thinking and doing.
7. Prepare them for a world with far fewer fixed jobs and far more independent opportunities.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

But what I see is that it really reduces to three very old points. What education is all about, as Howard Gardner used to point out before he got sucked into the jargon-making apparatus, is:

1. Teaching people how to figure out what is true.
2. Teaching people how to figure out what is right.
3. Giving them opportunities to decide for themselves what is fitting and beautiful (since you can't really teach that).

Truth, goodness, beauty. That's the main thing in terms of content. In the world of today, everything is a lot more accessible. There is an increasing information burden, and the effort required to turn this into knowledge is immense. But it is the same kind of effort as it always has been: the effort to decide what is true, what is the right thing to do given what is true, and how to make the best of what we have.

Young people today will be as politically engaged or disengaged as they want to be. They will know as much as they want. They will discuss things with you if they want. You can guide them as any other generation has been guided, but young people are young people and the kind of guidance required will not change much. Technology and the high information density of the converging world are about the only differences now.

One last word from even further back in time: how do we know what is good? A fellow named Micah once said, "He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" Whether you believe in God or not, the principles of justice, mercy and humility are certainly key signposts on the road of human existence—whether global or local, in the wide world or in the streets where we live.