The final essay on the theme of higher education's role in redefining prosperity was written some time ago (the end of January to be exact) by Ms. Caitlin Campbell, but I wanted to share it because of the message she has for us.
Next up, I will be posting some student essays about the impact of nature.
Innovating our Education to Innovate
Last Tuesday, I watched Obama’s State of the Union address as I worked out in the Moravian College’s South Campus fitness center. I found myself bopping along on the treadmill, nodding and smiling—I’ll admit, sometimes I’m more enchanted by our president than what he says. But when he addressed education I was listening carefully. My mom has been teaching New Jersey middle schoolers for as long as I can remember. After Moravian, a career in education probably awaits over the horizon for me too. When Obama spoke, with his index and pointer finger glued to his thumb, about leaving behind “No Child Left Behind” for a better plan, I actually pumped my fist. “Educate to Innovate,” he called it. I liked the sound of it. Then he went on describing how we should charge up our curriculums with science, math, and engineering. I went to a science and math high school, I was still with him on the plan.
But eventually he shifted topics and I left the fitness center to watch the rest of the address in my room. Even as he moved on, I kept thinking about “Educate to Innovate”. I thought “Innovative Education to Innovate” would promise more than a different version of the same. When I later read Jeremy Rifkin’s “Empathetic Education,” I didn’t pump my fist in excitement, but I was nodding, smiling, and highlighting the whole way. The United States will only regain our edge when we make our students well versed in the issues confronting our global community. We can give our next generation the tools to fuse molecules or build new infrastructure, but unless they understand the context and implications of their work, we’ll have prepared a fleet of workers to build dead-end bridges.
I think middle school and high school are the places to develop the basic skills a global citizen needs, including recognition of what Rifkin calls our “global family” and a “shared biosphere”, and Colleges and Universities should be the place where these basic skills are honed and the student develops her career in the global community. Institutions of higher learning should no doubt continue to educate on global issues, but I don’t think values like empathy can be easily instilled or even called up in a college student who has never cared before. Before colleges can do their best to inform and inspire, we need to get our future college students on track. When “Generation Me” —as social researcher Sara Konrath calls the current group of “self-centered, narcissistic” college students— grow up and start families, we might have a new generation of “Me-Me-Me!” entering our school system.
But of course an education revolution won’t happen over night, so what can our colleges and universities do right now? The best way to promote solutions to our global challenges is to inform, take Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Jungle for example. But whose responsibility is it to inform? Professors can do wonders by enlightening students, and certainly colleges should promote global literacy in their classrooms. But once outside of the classroom, some of the best teachers can be college students themselves. And united, these young people can be an incredible force as the were in the COP15 discussions. Thus, I think colleges and universities should help students to not only connect with the material, but also connect with one another. As Paul Hawken said in his Commencement Address to University of Portland’s Class of 2009, humanity is already, “reconstituting the world,” and it is “the largest movement the world has ever seen.” Enlighten American students to see the global issues and show them that we are part of a global community. Give them these tools and help them find one another. I’ll bet the result will be incredible.
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Rifkin's opinion piece on Empathic Education can be found at
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