Random Comments on Education

This piece was written for publication in The Gardner News.

It is written by Pam Blair, Academic Dean of The Winchendon School

I have included it in my blog with the permission of Pam Blair, who happens to be my wife.


Maybe you’ve viewed the You Tube site “Shift Happens.” If not, I recommend taking a look. More than four and a half million Americans have checked that eight-minute video. It presents a series of statements that describe the world we live in and envisions likely scenarios for the future. They bear serious consideration.
Watching the video, as nerve-jangling music plays in the background, we learn that the top 25% of students in China outnumber the total population of North America. In other words, to quote the text, “They have more honor students than we have students.” We find that China will soon have more English speakers than any other country in the world. We learn that the population of China is expanding at four times the rate of our own, while India’s grows five times faster than ours.
Speaking of population, the video announces that if My Space, with 106,000,000 registered users, were a nation, it would be the eleventh largest in the world. But computer users aren’t interested only in the personal and social. They make 27 billion searches on Google every month.
These facts lead us to ponder what the future will be like, but other statements from the video more directly impact my area of interest: education. For example, consider this:
Former Secretary of Education Richard Riley predicts that the top ten jobs in 2010 don’t exist today. He claims, “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist --- using technologies that haven’t been invented --- in order to solve problems that don’t yet exist.” Today, knowledge is doubling every two years.
How do facts like these affect the education that we provide to our students today? How exactly do we tackle such a challenge? How will we equip young people for a future so uncertain? How can we teach our students to be ready for the ten to fourteen jobs that they’ll have --- before they reach the age of 38?
Some skills we consider essential now are likely to be needed even in the unpredictable years to come. Young people will always need to express their thoughts clearly, both in writing and orally. Therefore, we focus on building competence in those areas. We design courses that teach students to develop their ability to craft clear and meaningful sentences, paragraphs, and essays that effectively communicate ideas. We provide opportunities for them to voice their ideas aloud. Math, important now and undoubtedly in the future as well, demands logical and disciplined thought processes. Math study prepares our students for lives that will certainly require increased mathematical competency.
Still, while not easy to accomplish, the elements of education I describe seem quite traditional and suggest nothing new to equip students for the unknown demands of the future. This is where the ability to think critically comes in.
Supporting success in both language and math studies is the ability to think critically, to explore and assess ideas, to evaluate, to predict, to interpret, to apply. Teaching these skills requires careful planning and design from teachers. It demands intentional approaches that provide chances to do more with information than memorizing and mechanically answering questions that demand no independent mental manipulation. This kind of higher-level thinking is hard work, so teachers must be creative in inspiring their students to participate willingly in tasks that foster it.
These elements are requisite in education for any age. However, we can no longer teach these skills as if we exist in a neatly contained American world. The burgeoning nations on the Asian continent, the emerging, if beleaguered, nations of Africa, and our neighbors to the south will all share with us the question mark that is the future. We are all aware that our world is shrinking, aware that as Donne claimed in the 17th century, “No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” We are more interconnected with our counterparts around the world than ever before, so we must devise courses that require young people to direct their thinking skills to the issues that face humankind on an international scale.
At the Winchendon School, we maximize the benefits of a student body comprised of students from 14 states and 21 foreign countries; we consider issues that impact the lands we represent. Students explore attitudes and opinions, similarities and differences. They communicate with their friends, teammates, and dorm mates, who just happen to be citizens of the world. They work together in groups to learn about and impact issues like the loss of limbs from abandoned land mines in Angola, improperly disposed plastic bottles washing into the Pacific, and comparative governments, to name a few. Next fall, we will begin a study of the world, continent by continent. We believe that familiarity with other cultures, political systems, religions, and thought patterns different from our own is essential for young people who will need to interact with the people who practice them.
Most schools, however, are far more homogenous than ours. Their students live across the street or across town from one another. How can they address the ever-demanding need to think beyond our borders? Educators must consider additions to curriculum that encourage mental odysseys to other parts of the world. They themselves must lead the way by deep and broad exploration of many aspects of other nations. How many schools teach courses on the Middle East? Africa? Asia? And if those courses are offered, how many students avail themselves of these electives? Maybe it’s time for these courses to move to a core course designation that would say to young people: This information is central to your life. Knowledge of this subject is crucial enough that every student must study it.
Educators must also take the initiative to read about other lands and both inspire and require their students to do likewise. Three Cups of Tea transports its readers to tiny villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan where education is forbidden for girls. A Long Way Gone traces the bloody career of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun communicates the fury and fear of white Zimbabweans as Mugabe’s forces eject them from their homes and fertile farms, leaving a wake of untilled soil and a collapsing economic system. The Colors of the Mountain carries the reader not only to a different country, China, but to a different time, the Cultural Revolution, to witness the greatly altered youth and education of a boy of formerly privileged parents.
These titles are but a few of the compelling narratives that sweep us into lives far different from our own. Such reading explodes our orderly world views and makes us stare at stark evil and the intense determination of the human spirit. As we turn the pages, we enter the lives of people like ourselves who exist against unfamiliar landscapes, and we learn that ours is but one take on human existence. Reading these stories is a pleasure, not a chore, and students should be introduced to them.
All schools must find their own way to open the door to the tangled, messy, interconnected world that surrounds us. But open the door they must, for this new world will not wait. We must provide educational experiences that will propel our students from the familiar to the unknown, or this new world will leave them behind.