‘Well-Rounded’ in 2002

For five years in the late 1980s, 11 Orange County elementary and secondary schools participated in an effort to integrate knowledge of world affairs into the curriculum. Coordinated by a privately funded grant based at Chapman University, the project was designed to support and enhance basic skills and curricular subjects by linking them, when appropriate, to current events and issues. The teachers themselves decided whether they wanted to participate and what they wanted to work on.

Loosely defined as the study of problems and issues that cut across national boundaries, the global education movement in the United States dates from the 1970s, when a number of major foundations and the National Endowment for the Humanities began to fund the development of programs and instructional materials. By the mid-’80’s, global education projects were underway in 27 states. In 1987, the National Governors Assn. released “Educating Americans for Tomorrow’s World,” a report endorsing the movement.

By the late ‘80s, the legislature had allocated state funding for the California International Studies Program, a network of centers to train teachers interested in working some global units into their teaching. During the ‘90s, it became more difficult to find funding for global education, but the need for it grew more and more obvious. Since Sept. 11, it has become starkly evident that Americans need to know much more about the world than they do: A renewal of commitment to global education is in order.

California’s curriculum standards are highly compatible with such an effort, at every grade level and in every subject area. The high school science standards require that students “investigate a science-based societal issue by researching the literature, analyzing data, and communicating the findings. Examples of issues include irradiation of food, cloning of animals--choice of energy sources, and land and water use decisions.” Such topics have local, national and global implications, and all three should be examined.

The third-grade Language Arts standards include the following: “Comprehend the basic plots of classic fairy tales, myths, folk tales, legends, and fables from around the world.” In middle-school social studies, the state standards require that students be able to “detect the different historical points of view on historical events and determine the context in which the historical statements were made (the questions asked, sources used, author’s perspectives).” There is an opportunity here for teachers to use primary sources to show that an event may be seen differently by different people, for a variety of reasons.

Once you start thinking about ways to link the traditional curriculum to the study of topics that connect the United States to the world, the ideas just keep on coming.

The Chapman project was designed to provide one model of how global education might be done: Other projects all over the nation chose other ways. One of the strengths of this curriculum movement has been its flexibility, with a grass-roots effort in each community. No single definition has ever emerged, nor should it.

Most educators who have become involved are committed to the general goals of broadening students’ horizons, including helping them to see world issues from a variety of perspectives; building critical thinking skills; and better preparing our young people for productive lives in a nation that belongs to an increasingly interdependent world community. Exactly how these goals are addressed in any school or district, however, is a matter for local choice.

The Chapman project ended officially in 1989, but global education in the project schools did not end. In 1996 we returned for a follow-up study and were pleased to find that not only were most of the original project teachers still including global topics and skills in their curriculum, but also that many teachers who had originally chosen not to participate had subsequently begun, on their own or with other teachers, to add some “globalized” units. More than one told us that international events since the project ended--such as the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the increasingly ob- vious connectedness of the glo- bal marketplace--had convinced them that global awareness was fast becoming a basic skill that their students would need just as much as they needed reading, writing, math and science.

Hardly anyone today would argue that we are not living in a global age. Since World War II, there has been an inexorable movement toward regional and international cooperation and the integration of international economic, political, environmental, technological and cultural systems. That is the world our children and grandchildren will live in, and it is the world for which we must prepare them. Schools in other countries are moving in this direction, and if we fail to do so, we’ll be putting our youngsters at a disadvantage.