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By Kevin J. MacDonald
With the Internet, satellite television and accessible international travel, the world just keeps getting smaller.
Indiana University South Bend is making the transition by the addition this semester of a workshop in global education, directed by Jacob Kolker, deputy director of the Russian Center for Global Education at Ryazan (Russia) Pedagogical State University.
"People are starting to realize that the cliché, 'it's a small world,' is not just a cliché anymore," said John McEneaney, IUSB education professor. McEneaney, who authored the grant that brought Kolker to IUSB as a Fulbright Scholar, met Kolker, also head of Ryazan's Department of English, when he spent a semester at Ryazan State studying early reading instruction in Russian schools.
"It's about time that somebody proposed something like this," said Michelle Gloss, an IUSB senior studying the sociology of education. "Our educational system has needed a change because of the way the world has changed. People can't afford to be unaware that what they do affects others."
"You can't teach if you don't have a view of the future, or a perspective," Kolker said.
| "Global education should be regarded as kind of an umbrella in that it covers the most progressive and innovative trends in education." |
The basis of global education was created out of the theories of Robert Hanvey, author of A Sustainable Global Perspective. Hanvey called for "responsible citizenship," Kolker said, which extends from the family unit to the community, local and global.
Kolker plans to cover the philosophy and basic models of global education as well as its strategic basis. "We can think of global education as a kind of approach that uses integration as a tool to make education more economical," he said. "And we need it to establish interdisciplinary ties" to create new disciplines "that are devised to enable the student to view the world holistically."
"One of the major elements of counseling is developmental counseling," said Chuck Rebeck, an elementary-school guidance counselor enrolled in the workshop. "It's where a counselor goes into the classroom and teaches self-understanding study skills.You have to understand another person's point of view and this class will help me to better understand other people's perspectives."
Kolker's workshop is teaching students how to implement a globally conscious curriculum to educators, he said, and how to evaluate global issues that affect people and help them make decisions based upon their skill sets. Kolker feels it is vital that people have a sound understanding of global issues and how they affect society, because it is evident that what we experience and do influences people worldwide.
"If we do not start teaching about the future now," he said. "We won't succeed."