Photo: The photo below is of Nakateete School in Uganda where I had the privilege of teaching short-term a couple of years ago. It is still near and dear to my heart. I'll post soon about the exciting details of my school raising money to put a water well at the school this year!
GLOBALLY INSPIRED ART AND GLOBALIZATION
Education will always be surrounded with timely events and issues. Curriculum choices, state and national standards and testing, the 21st century purpose of testing, budgeting and facilities, and student needs are relevant issues in education. For many years multiculturalism has also been an important focus of education. No longer on the distant horizon, however, globalization, a relatively new term, is here to stay and must be investigated.
Communities used to exist in the United States and in other countries where most of the people in that community looked alike and had similar cultural backgrounds and characteristics. One can almost definitively say those days are over for the planet Earth. Through technology, mankind has learned to travel and communicate with a speed that former generations would have never imagined. Quechua children who live high in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador stand outside their thatched grass hut with no electricity or plumbing, but talk on their parent’s cell phone and inquisitively view images of a world they have never seen. Simultaneously, some American children are busy playing games on their own cell phones, texting friends, and watching videos. I have witnessed both. I believe it is vital for INQUISITIVE American educators to begin teaching their students about more realistic aspects of the greater world, not just the geography and history of that world. I also believe it is vital for this education to start at the elementary level. If we care about our students’ futures I believe we, as educators, must prepare them for globalization. I feel there is a sense of urgency in this area as the world is changing rapidly.
Globalization refers to the interconnectedness of markets, communication, and human migrations. Technology has forever shrunk the world; at least as long as current and future technologies continue to exist. Borders and boundaries are no longer as fixed as they once were. Our students and their families are living in a complex, technologically advancing, ever changing, diverse, and interconnected world. Our students go to school in this world and they will one day work in the marketplace; quite possibly a global marketplace. A globally informed pedagogy is needed not only because the world is changing and for assimilation, but to keep our students competitive, to keep America competitive, and to keep education relevant in a changing world.
Students should be taught within the emerging globalized context. When students are engaged in concepts and cognitive processes involving critical inquiry and reflection, it will generate within the student the desire and ability to ask questions about relationships observed in society. Micro-level thinking must give way to macro-level thinking. American students must learn about the world before graduation and before it is their time to go out into it. When education is presented with a globalization framework, there are several positive results including more deeply engaged students in the process of critical inquiry, incorporating the use of information technology as a tool for learning, emphasizing higher order thinking skills, offering a more cross-disciplinary and holistic view of practices, developing ethical leadership, and being inclusive of the growing diversity in society.
Additionally, if teachers reexamine developmental theory and merge it with globalization concepts, students will be the benefactors. Jean Piaget, one of the most prominent child development psychologists of all times, conducted all of his research before the Internet existed during the first half of the 20th century. Piaget’s research concluded that children between the ages of 7-11 are in the concrete operational phase of development. He proposed that their thought processing was concrete and focused on the actual and factual aspects of subjects and topics. He believed abstract thinking, which allows students to think about the why and how and what for, came at an older age. Therein lies the current quandary. The Internet isn’t just reshaping the speed of communication and information; in some ways, it might be reshaping our future by redefining what we know about ourselves. It might be requiring students to think abstractly sooner as they travel the Internet community.
Today’s young students have access to a wide variety of images and information via the Internet before they have the cognitive development to understand what they see. One could say that children are being forced into abstract thinking before they have developed the proper and normal sequence for that broader type of thinking. This must be a serious concern for educators and parents and viable options for teaching students about the greater world must be creatively explored. Schools must be pro-active in not just monitoring Internet use, but in deciphering it.
Globally inspired curriculum units have the ability to stir new knowledge in the minds of young students while promoting student growth that will transfer into all areas of their academic and personal life. This kind of teaching constructs bridges to their future in the global marketplace. Innovative units, such as The Crazy, Colorful Colorwheel Project that I have developed, partner school students in differing countries through art and technology. The Cuban Heart Project that my students did before my trip to Cuba with the National Art Education Association was a simple project that taught my elementary students about developing nations and different types of governments. Globally inspired curriculum broadens our students sense of who they are and our world.
The local community will always be important, but educators must act locally while thinking globally. Margaret Mead, an American cultural anthropologist, believed “what distinguishes human groups one from another is not inborn; it is the way in which each has organized and perpetuated experience and the access each has had to other living traditions.” By teaching our students about the global community, we strengthen the local one.
