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Mind the Gap Educating the Globalized Student Jason Johnson [email protected]

“Professional Pages” is a book review column featuring in-depth reviews.

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t began, as it usually does, with a quiet buzz on various e-mail lists. Then came the conversations with friends and questions from my head of school. It culminated in early May 2006 with several teachers coming to see me after attending a presentation by Alan November titled “Global Survival Skills: Teaching Our Kids to Compete and Cooperate in a Global Economy.” In 2006 it seems that globalization has fully transitioned from an issue dimly perceived— something disaffected youth protest in front of the World Bank—to an inevitability that educators must find a way to teach to. But despite the tacit acceptance of globalization, there are few guideposts for educators on how to actually go about preparing students to compete in a global economy. Teachers are asking what curricular changes need to be made. Librarians want to know what books to order and what Web sites to

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recommend. Administrators want to know what national agenda is being prepared to address the problem. Two recent books appear to be shaping the debate. While neither book purports to be a guide for educators, the resonance they have had with my technology peers, teaching colleagues, and friends interested in education indicates that both books have implications for education. However, these books offer conflicting visions of the current and future state of competition in the global economy. And it may be that the question of how schools should go about producing a student who can compete for the best jobs in the global economy is a question that is too rooted in the past, and stems from an understandably conceited notion regarding the permanence of educational institutions.

The first of these books, in both publication date and prevalence, is Thomas Friedman’s (2005) The World Is Flat. Friedman argues that we have just entered a period he calls Globalization 3.0, where the world is becoming “flat,” a term he doesn’t explicitly define but roughly appears to equate with the notion that distance—and to some degree culture—are no longer economic barriers. Therefore hiring migrates seamlessly across borders, seeking the highest level of skill at the lowest cost. Globalization 1.0 began with the voyage of Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the Americas; the dynamics of globalism were primarily driven by nations. Globalization 2.0 roughly coincided with the Industrial Revolution, when corporations became the catalysts for globalism. Today’s Globalization 3.0 is fundamentally different, as the dynamic force for globalism has become the individual. He summarizes this thesis by stating, “Individuals must, and can, now ask, ‘Where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?’” (10). Friedman concludes his first section by asserting that ten flatteners (primarily advances in technology and improved communications infrastructure) have interacted with social, economic, and political forces at significant times during this century (a triple convergence) to propel Globalization 3.0. The first convergence was the appearance and growth of these technologies during the 1990s, which reached a critical mass or tipping point in 2000. It was at this time that these technologies changed from leading edge or niche products

to necessary or ubiquitous parts of society and the economy. The second convergence is characterized by the rapid changes in business practices, in particular sourcing, workflow, and the speedy adoption of technology. Lastly, these flattening technologies and changes have empowered three billion people in India, China, and former communist countries, enabling their immediate participation in the global economy. This triple convergence is the actual foundation of Friedman’s thesis, although his constant emphasis on flattening tends to mask this thesis. The second section, “America and the Flat World,” actually begins this book’s major thesis. Friedman passionately argues the merits of free trade and the need for stability in financial markets and points to a quiet crisis in the United States’ educational system. He claims that the United States produces too few scientists and engineers; our students are not nearly as ambitious as individuals in China or India; and our educational system, with its emphasis on creativity over rote learning, is not properly equipping students to compete for jobs with students from other countries. His bold solutions include calling for political leadership to shape a national agenda around meeting the challenge of globalization as well as specific reforms in health care, retirement funds, and unemployment to provide American businesses with a global advantage. He calls for all Americans, as social activists, to insist—through the power of the purse—on environmentally and socially responsible business practices from multinational corporations.

And he gently chastises parents for their sense of entitlement on their children’s behalf and asks that they spend more time building ambition and a work ethic that supports that ambition. In the end, Friedman admits that he has exaggerated his thesis, a literary artifice as a wakeup call. While the world is not yet entirely flat (the flatness of India or China still represents a tiny, fragile elite), we will have to work to the demands of the flat world or perish. Friedman’s book strikes an old, often repeated chord of gaps. There was the Cold War’s missile gap of Friedman’s formative years, which pushed Americans to reexamine math and science education. I remember growing up with the 1980s trade gap with Japan, where we were pushed to pursue careers in math and science as a matter of national pride. Friedman’s globalization gap is the new call for American students to put their

The gap argument and the call for greater parental involvement appeals to educators and politicians who are looking for sound bites and quick fix to educational problems. shoulder to the wheel and pursue careers in math and science (which he believes have obvious benefits to the United States economy) rather than degrees in other unnamed, and presumably less economically useful, fields. The gap argument and the call for greater parental involvement Volume 35, No. 2 | November/December 2006 69

appeal to educators and politicians who are looking for sound bites and quick fixes to educational problems. Appealing as they are, Friedman’s arguments may be flawed. For example, a study released by Duke University in December 2005 calls into question one of Friedman’s fundamental assumptions. It found that the United States produced more undergraduate engineers than India last year and remains competitive in the global marketplace. Although Friedman occasionally offers statistics to support his arguments, they are often selectively reported. For example, while his statistics on the doubling of international students at Yale from 1985 to 2003 are interesting, he does not provide numbers for the overall growth of the Yale student population or investigate whether this is a general trend in all top schools. Instead, he bolsters his argument by yet

The esthetics argument appeals to educators and business people who value creativity to the exclusion of analysis, believing that synthesis and meeting the emotional needs of an audience, or those that use our products, are the twenty-first-century skills. another pithy quote from Bill Gates. By waving the timeworn gap flag, Friedman feeds into our national uncertainties post-9/11, and the solutions he offers for education

are cribbed from the 1960s. Those educators looking for answers supported by research or innovative thinking will need to look elsewhere. Enter another popularizer—Daniel Pink. In A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Pink (2006) examines some of the same sources as Friedman, but draws a different conclusion. Instead of flattener, Pink distills the threat to the equally catchy terms, “Asia, Abundance, and Automation,” which he then uses as the title for his second chapter. These do not bear detailed examination (Pink devotes only eighteen pages to them) except to note that his focus is almost entirely on Asia as a threat to the economic future of workers in the United States. His discussion reminds me of the “Asian hordes” fear mongering in World War II propaganda and the subsequent stereotyping of Asians as having superior numbers, meticulous craftsmanship, and disciplined drive, but lacking creativity. But unlike Friedman’s argument that the emphasis on creativity in education is detrimental, Pink proposes a paradigm shift. Pink believes that his triple convergence of Asia, abundance, and automation are pushing the United States into a new age he titles the “Conceptual Age” (49). The paradigm shift will relegate “leftbrain directed” skills of logic and efficiency to second- and thirdworld economies, or to automated solutions in first-world countries. Our economies will focus on highconcept, high-touch production. In short, “We must perform work that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper, that computers can’t do faster, and that satisfies the aesthetic,

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emotional, and spiritual demands of a prosperous time” (61). In many ways Pink’s approach could be described as neo-Bauhaus; a new take on the influential design school of the 1930. He identifies six “senses,” or aptitudes, that will become the valued currency of this new conceptual age: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. Pink does an admirable job of distilling an array of materials from different disciplines (architecture, film, software design) into a coherent whole that offers anyone interested in applying more design to their product with a readymade reading list and cheat sheet. Rather than arguing that developing more scientists, engineers, and physicists is the answer, his thesis is that individuals in any profession must be able to place the design layer over their functional achievements. Michael Graves could build the safest, most energy-efficient and functional buildings in the world, but Pink believes that Graves’s success is rooted in his ability to layer the esthetic onto the functional to generate an emotional response in everything from his Alexander House to the toilet brush he designed for Target. The esthetics argument appeals to educators and business people who value creativity to the exclusion of analysis, believing that synthesis and meeting the emotional needs of an audience, or those that use our products, are the twenty-first-century skills. Newsweek is proudly quoted on the cover of Pink’s book as saying, “For soon-to-be liberal art graduates, it makes an encouraging graduation gift.” Pink’s book also is an encouraging gift to educators who regard as unfounded Friedman’s

criticism of American education’s overemphasis on creativity. But in the end Pink’s message of hope seems like asking a child to bet the future on being selected in the NBA draft. Despite the success of Michael Graves, it is likely that very few can or will attain the level of name recognition and design success that prompts a company such as Target to produce millions of products in their name. And while Pink’s analysis allows for a spectrum of success (not everyone will be a super-designer), he ignores fundamental left-brain activities that provide the foundation for economic success in design, such as copyright. Considering the tenuous adherence to copyright nationally— the RIAA has filed more than seven thousand lawsuits against infringers since 2003 (Gross 2004)—and internationally—the Business Software Alliance estimates that 75 percent of the software in Argentina is pirated (Second Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study 2005)—it seems that the basis for Pink’s economy has some weaknesses. Even Thomas Friedman, whose livelihood largely depends on respect for copyright, fell afoul of the law with the artwork for the original cover of The World Is Flat being improperly licensed (Aster 2005). Add to that the growing number of vehicles for copyright-free products and open source content (including open source soft drinks such as OpenCola) and it seems that the Conceptual Age is at least off to a rocky start. If Friedman and Pink can start from the same premise and reach nearly contradictory conclusions, what other resources can educators turn to when trying to understand globalization and its implications

for curriculum? Perhaps the answer lies less with what educators should be doing with students, and more with what they have to offer those students. There is a trend that both authors give very little attention to—the growth and accessibility of content. Most educational institutions have yet to think about how to define themselves in an age of increasingly free and available content. The basic structures of current education were created by Plato in the form of academies that distinguished themselves from past modes by having a consistent curriculum, regular meetings, and a fixed location. For thousands of years, educational institutions have followed the process of a master identifying relevant content; developing that content as curriculum; transmitting that content to students; and then assessing a student’s ability to master that content. Increasingly we are also explicitly working to develop the higher-order thinking skills necessary for students to produce their own content or product (analysis and synthesis). But the essential feature of this traditional model is that the majority of a student’s time in class is spent receiving content.

automated assessment to the point where a nine-year-old Pakistani girl name Arfa Karim Randhawa was

Educational institutions should be more concerned with how they will remain relevant to the global student than with how they will prepare the student for globalization. able to become a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (Bishop 2005). Already hundreds of institutions use software such as Turnitin to try to stem the tide of plagiarism enabled by the easy reuse of freely available content from such sources as the Internet. And while law schools do a brisk business, even though you are not required to attend to pass the bar, the proliferation of

So what will academic institutions do as content becomes increasingly available, declines in cost, and everyone from interested amateurs to professionals contributes curriculum and unfettered content? Further, what will they do as their role in the assessment of procedural knowledge and factual information becomes mechanized and requires little or no mastery of the subject? Already corporate training and assessment models function primarily on self-study and Volume 35, No. 2 | November/December 2006 71

substantial, prepackaged, self-study models and products threaten institutions where the gateway is not a degree, but passing a test administered by professional bodies or the government. Even degree programs see mounting pressure on the horizon trickling down from the online universities and up from the materials produced to educate the more than one million (as of 2003) home schooled children in the United States (Princiotta, Bielick, and Chapman 2004). Educational institutions should be more concerned with how they will remain relevant to the global student than with how they will prepare the student for globalization. On the surface, that may appear to be a distinction without a difference, but

it seems that children such as Arfa Karim Randhawa would disagree. Jason Johnson is the Director of Technology at the Lowell School, a progressive preprimary–sixth grade independent school in Washington, D.C. Prior to Lowell, he served as a senior project manager in a variety of technology efforts in public and private institutions, including NASA, MCI, and Trinity College. For the past five years he has run a one-to-one laptop program for fourth through sixth graders at Lowell school and supported faculty, staff, and students in an effort to evolve the efficiency, transparency, and quality of the institution through technology. This column is edited by Associate Editor Carolyn Karis, [email protected].

Works Cited Astor, Dave. 2005. “Copyright Suit Filed Over Thomas Friedman Book Cover.” Editor & Publisher, Nov. 29. www. editorandpublisher.com/eandp/article_ brief/eandp/1/1001572379> (accessed 21 June 2006). Bishop, Todd. 2005. “In Smarts, She’s a Perfect 10.” Seattlepi.com, July 14. (accessed 21 June 2006). Friedman, Thomas. 2005. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Gross, Grant. 2004. “RIAA Files New Lawsuits.” PCWorld.com, Nov.19. (accessed 21 June 2006). Pink, Daniel. 2006. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead Trade. Princiotta, Dan, Stacey Bielick, and Chris Chapman. 2004. “1.1 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2003.” National Center for Education Statistics. (accessed 21 June 2006). Second Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study. 2005. Washington, D.C.: Business Software Alliance. Available at (accessed 21 June 2006).

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