Immanentize the Eschaton

His post is full of platitudes, generalizations, jargon, and not much else.  Let’s examine his so-called thoughts: 

He begins by stating “Our high school has a focus on global education as evidenced by the globe centered on our school crest.”  Really?  The evidence of “global education” at Cuthbertson is the fact that the school’s crest has a globe?  He can’t cite exchange programs, immersive language courses, international business courses, or other instructional efforts? 

He then makes some noises concerning the BRIC countries, and talks about how things were when he was in high school.  He states that competition from foreigners wasn’t a real concern.   But now: 

“Our students have to be very aware of all of the players in our interconnected world. Their peers around the globe directly compete with them for lucrative positions that are geographically indifferent as long as the employee has the necessary skills and a reliable connection to the Internet. They compete for limited spots in the freshmen classes of the best universities. Competition is the first “C.” for our students to be successful they must be fully prepared to compete against their international counterparts.”

I have no real beef with this, other that to say that Mr. Jackson is way off base if he thinks this is a new phenomenon.  He and I are about the same age; in fact, he may be a bit younger than me.  When I went to college, there were students and professors from India, Taiwan, Korea, Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and many other countries.  To say that students now have to compete against students from around the globe shows that he and UCPS haven’t been paying attention over the past thirty years.

His next point is:

“Our students must be able to collaborate with others regardless of cultural differences. As businesses recruit talent around the world, our students must be able to demonstrate an ability to work on multicultural teams. Collaboration is an equally important “C.”"

This is really an empty platitude, and he doesn’t say what he is doing at CHS to make this happen.

And just for the record, there’s no such thing as a “multicultural team”.  There are teams of people from different culture, who ought to be working toward the same goal.  I’ve worked on team with Indians, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Russians, Ukranians, Israelis, and so on.  At no time did I think I needed to understand or have an in-depth knowledge of the various cultures to work successfully.  What I DID need to do was to treat each team member with respect and dignity.

His third “C” is:

“…Communication. Students need to be able to communicate using 21st century tools, leveraging social media and Web 2.0 tools to share their messages in a variety of mediums. An understanding of the power of a well-crafted message between a skilled sender and receiver will allow them to become a vital cog in industries that span the globe, yet depend on well-timed communication between teammates to keep the work going forward.”