As I was watching my favorite new sport — snowboard cross — last night from the Vancouver Olympics, I was reminded of my one and only visit to British Columbia. It was a 1995 stop in Radium Hot Springs, near the Alberta border, to play a single round of golf.
My buddy Greg and I were paired with a local couple for the round and had a pleasant enough experience that we joined them for the 19th hole in the clubhouse. Soon we discovered that the husband was not all that fond of Americans.
“About 90 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border,” he said (maybe not verbatim, it was 15 years ago!). “So we get a lot of American influences. We know about the U.S. We watch Seinfeld. We know where Nebraska is. And you don’t know anything about us.”
Instead of trying to name all the provinces, I accepted that we had been collectively more insular than we should.
Now there is an effort to shed that provincial nature within the education reform movement and no organization makes it as clear as the Asia Society, which has been included in Indiana’s application for Race to the Top funding.
Last week, at the American Association of School Administrators’ National Conference on Education in Phoenix, Ariz., Dr. Anthony Jackson of the Asia Society took the opportunity to define why global competence is critical for success in the U.S.
On the AASA website, Jeff Thomas wrote of Dr. Jackson’s speech:
For students to be successful, said Jackson, their learning depends on four pillars: (1) investigate the world; (2) recognize perspectives; (3) communicate ideas; and (4) take action. Jackson believes students become much more engaged when they see they have the power to change their world and that even the most disadvantaged students have “the right to compete and collaborate on a global stage.”
As a way to measure student success, the ISSN schools are developing a Graduate Portfolio System that will require students to demonstrate global competence and college readiness. Jackson believes that these multiple measures are the direction education is headed with initiatives such as Race to the Top. The shift is toward broader knowledge and deeper thinking, similar to models in Finland and Singapore.
Thomas wrote that Dr. Jackson concluded his remarks by offering, “When curriculum is exciting to students, they can make a difference.”
And it is hard to find an argument in that.
(Hat tip to Dr. Karen Jackson Gould for sending the story along)
Noted philosopher
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