"EDUCATING THE GLOBAL VILLAGE" (L.A. SWINIARSKI, ET AL.)   Term Paper ID:26999 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Reviews work on educational needs of children in increasingly diverse world of radical economic & demographic shifts.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Reviews work on educational needs of children in increasingly diverse world of radical economic & demographic shifts. Paper Introduction: Educating the Global Village's most striking feature is that it seeks, in a systematic way, to anticipate and plan for the consequences to the social structure of the significant demographic shifts that have occurred in the US over the last 25 years. The structure of American population has shifted toward what has been termed a society reflecting diversity -- of race, culture, language, and so on -- and this book appears to have been conceived as an analysis of, and suggestions for, meeting the emerging society's educational and career needs. There is a dual focus of narrative: on the emerging diversity generation in this country and on the fact that this generation will be living in a global society also marked by geopolitical, nation-state, cultural, and other categories of diversity, as well as a diverse set of priorities and capabilities. The authors argue that the main Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The major strength of the book,then, is that it can be interpreted as an exercise in alerting educationalprofessionals and policy makers to the potential difficulties of andopportunities for helping to shape the structure of the increasinglydiverse American community in constructive ways. To this end, the authors urge active involvementand cooperation of families, teachers, and policy planners. The authors arguethat the main need the emerging generations, in particular the youngestchildren, will have is for education and training that are suited to thetask of facilitating their ability to cope with the vicissitudes of futureexperience in the context of the global village. It is at this point that the manner in which the book relates to theprospective workers in the future multicultural American workforce becomesrelevant. 19 ) of young children's education is expected to foster asense of cross-cultural community that extends not only across the nationbut also across the world. Citing the multiple educational and political modelsaround the world -- none of which by itself answers all prospective needsand learning styles of all children in all cultures -- the text argues forinclusive, multicultural, and multi-modal instructional strategies, whichare meant to enable learning opportunities at a variety of socioeconomicand culture-specific levels. And of course it is better to solvepossible vocational difficulties before they reach the workplace -- yearsbefore, in the classroom, if possible. However appropriate they may be, the goals ofmulticulturalism are fraught with social, cultural, economic, political,and educational difficulties, and it would be naive to pretend that thosedifficulties do not have more weight than desired benefits. Awareness of this transformation is meant toinform development of inclusive rather than Eurocentric curricula on onehand, and "child centered and respectful of the child's family values,cultural background, and individual learning styles, needs, and challenges"(p. What this comes down to is that the authors appear to be giving theirteaching readership a "heads-up" regarding issues that are likely to emergein the educational environment as the current demographic transformation ofthe US becomes increasingly entrenched and increasingly manifest in theculture more generally. Theevidence of the real-world culture, which the authors do refer to from timeto time in the text, is that great resistance to these ideals is likely,perhaps from policy makers and curriculum developers who retain anattachment to white middle class traditions and values, but possibly alsofrom culture-specific groups targeted by the reform advocacy articulated inthe book. A. The ethos of openness andinclusiveness that drives the alert positions the book and the authors asforward looking and concerned to head off the potential for division andstrife before they cause problems for everyone. But it is simplistic to declare thatif everyone is conscious and respectful of everyone else's culture thingswill work out just fine. Educating the Global Village's most striking feature is that it seeks,in a systematic way, to anticipate and plan for the consequences to thesocial structure of the significant demographic shifts that have occurredin the US over the last 25 years. The relationship of this how-to book of education-policy advocacy toworkforce development can be inferred from the key chapter titled"Multicultural America." This chapter explains that the host of immigrantsand refugees that arrived in the US in the last quarter of the century havetransformed the country's ethnic and cultural makeup. The relevance for working teachers whose diverse-population students will make up the community-population workers isundoubtedly that they are likely to be on the front lines of suchdifficulties in the coming years. The de facto culturalpluralism has not necessarily been accompanied by universal, pluralisticaccess to the benefits traditionally associated with the white middleclass. In the area ofvocational training, this may be especially crucial to the degreesocioeconomic competition between and among workplace colleagues may existright along beside the fact that the enterprise they work for willundoubtedly desire them to function cooperatively and at a high moralelevel. 92) criticism of so-called ethno-national models of instruction that expose children to cultures outsidetheir own; such criticisms focus on the potential for balkanizing ratherthan uniting communities. 155ff) as regards access to strongcurriculum, learning technologies, and publicly funded assistance inlanguage-skills development, facilities for physically or mentally disabledstudents, and so on. Throughout, the particular focus is on "multicultural America" (p.77ff), which has been transformed by patterns of immigration and enterprisedevelopment in recent decades. Accordingly, the more (andearlier) they can learn about cultures that are "other" than themselves,the more likely they are to have productive work experiences. (1999). Thus by the time the entire population of children nowbeing educated reaches working age, by no means will all children have beenequally well prepared for employment. 132). 161) -- such as racism, discrimination, interculturalrespect, balkanizing emotions and priorities -- have not been identified ineducation, it is by no means certain that the workplace will prove to be anideal venue for resolving those problems. What is at issue in schools today may well be atissue in the workplace tomorrow, and if "possible solutions to pressingproblems" (p. On the other hand, this variety ofcultures will inevitably be mixing together as they compete for jobs orbecome workplace colleagues. Now part of this mix will occur perhaps inpublic schools but certainly in the myriad venues of the labor market, atall levels of management and line staffing. World-citizenship and mutual citizen regard are of course morallydesirable civic goals. A., Breitborde, M. Theimplication is that schools have a vital role to play not only in providingadequate instruction in technical areas but also in socializing the futureworkforce in a context of community and cooperative effort. There is a dual focus of narrative:on the emerging diversity generation in this country and on the fact thatthis generation will be living in a global society also marked bygeopolitical, nation-state, cultural, and other categories of diversity, aswell as a diverse set of priorities and capabilities. Also providedis an extensive contact list of diversity and other public-service advocacyorganizations, located in virtually every state. Educatingthe global village: Including the young child in the world. Further to this point, given the privileging of diversity in thisvolume at the educational level, it is difficult to see how a communitarianethos will have served the workplace if the notion of community iscollapsed into the notion of multiple communities in the classroom. Upper SaddleRiver, New Jersey: Merrill/Prentice-Hall. The structure of American population hasshifted toward what has been termed a society reflecting diversity -- ofrace, culture, language, and so on -- and this book appears to have beenconceived as an analysis of, and suggestions for, meeting the emergingsociety's educational and career needs. Educating the Global Village suffers from the fact that suchobjectives of global education as healing, social advocacy, worldcitizenship, admirable as they are, remain ideals and not facts. For example, there is wide disparity between affluent and deprivedgroups and geographical areas (p. Beginning from the premise that multinational organizations and high-tech communications have shrunk the world in material ways and fosteredincreasingly complex educational needs, the authors describe principles ofglobal education for young children, then connect those principles to bothchildren's-rights advocacy and the principles of and need for an ethos ofworld citizenship. References Swiniarski, L. Their answer is to teach respectful, anti-biassocial skills and values, and the implication is that these values andskills can serve them once they enter the labor force. The authors acknowledge (p. To put it another way, the American curriculum of the globalvillage is envisioned as responding to a range of culture-specific cuesembodied in emerging student populations rather than as a vehicle shapingthe populations to conform to the cues of the dominant culture. L., & Murphy, J. This "widervision" (p. 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