Time Magazine Articles: Foreign Languages & Global Education

I finally was able to the recent Time Magazine article,”How to bring our schools out of the 20th century“, the educational blogosphere is buzzing about.
Here are some excerpts of the first article, that I feel are supporting foreign language education and are pointing out to the public in general what all of us foreign language teacher and global education advocates have known all along. I am planning on making copies for my school’s administration, just to emphasize that foreign language classes need to move out of the “resource” and “elective” section and be recognized as a core subject. I also feel that the article supports the decision of our private school to move towards a more global curriculum and it might come in handy when trying to defend that decision against more conservative parents or community at large.

Right now we’re aiming too low. Competency in reading and math–the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing–is the meager minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. Today’s economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. Here’s what they are:

Knowing more about the world. Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are “global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages”–not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.

Another quote…

This public elementary school has taken the idea of global education and run with it. All students take some classes in either Japanese or Spanish. Other subjects are taught in English, but the content has an international flavor. [...]

Before opening the school seven years ago, principal Karen Kodama surveyed 1,500 business leaders on which languages to teach (plans for Mandarin were dropped for lack of classroom space) and which skills and disciplines. “No. 1 was technology,” she recalls. Even first-graders at Stanford begin to use PowerPoint and Internet tools. “Exposure to world cultures was also an important trait cited by the executives,” says Kodama, so that instead of circling back to the Pilgrims and Indians every autumn, children at Stanford do social-studies units on Asia, Africa, Australia, Mexico and South America. Students actively apply the lessons in foreign language and culture by video-conferencing with sister schools in Japan, Africa and Mexico, by exchanging messages, gifts and joining in charity projects.

More…

“We try to build something we call international mindedness,” says Jeffrey Beard, director general of the International Baccalaureate Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. “These are students who can grasp issues across national borders. They have an understanding of nuances and complexity and a balanced approach to problem solving.“