Educating into a Flattening Society

As I was reading, I kept coming back to one of the questions from my first blog:
• If society is really “flattening” could schools “flatten” as well? Meaning, would the need for the four walls of a classroom be eliminated? Could you simply learn from an online teacher or sit in front of a screen with 500 other children and learn? If so – at what age would this begin? (To do this, children must be able to read and write right?)

To my dismay, Part 2: America and the Flat World, included a great amount of information about education and the role it plays in society today in relation to the flattening world. I think that I came across the beginning of my answer on page 375 when Friedman states; “We have not even begun to tap the potential of putting the lectures of great teachers on video. Why suffer trough bad teachers when a great teacher is just a flat screen away?” How have we as teachers been reduced to bad? What types of teachers are they speaking of and what grade levels does this include? The book goes on to explain that education can go on anywhere whether it’s in a book, on a screen or on an IPOD. Educators must understand that teaching can’t stop, it must continue anyplace, anywhere because the competition has gotten so strong that we must do anything to compete with the other countries in the world.

I came up with some more questions for others to think about in relation to changing education in relation to society flattening:
• How can we as educators bring our education up to a higher standard?
• We see that a sound education includes reading comprehension, writing, arithmetic, and basic science – but what about the arts that instill creativity? How do we include those as subjects in a sound education when we are faced with budget cuts and lack of funding?

As our society flattens, we see more and more jobs moving towards the technical field. Students from China and India are taking many of these jobs. The gap is narrowing and soon, we will not know the meaning of an “American job”, it will then be a “world job”.

As a culture, we are still producing some of the most creative scientists an engineers, but this is not enough. It is shown that the foundational knowledge needed in science and mathematics is of a higher standard in China or India, but in America, the creativity in higher education is of a higher standard. These creative outlets are teaching students to be independent thinkers and interpret ideas in new and creative ways. As educators, we need to learn how to broaden our education to a higher standard without loosing the pieces of the puzzle that instill this creative and original thinking. America needs to begin to once again become the competitor and learn how to dominate in the field of technology education.

To do this, educators need to learn how to make the science, math and technology disciplines interesting and fun. They need to be integrated into the curriculum at a young age. If students realize that the fundamentals are interesting and exciting to learn, we may have more math and science students than we do today. As I was reading I came across a conversation that Thomas Friedman had with Eric Stern on pages 337 and 338. Stern was stating that college freshman aren’t interested in basic chemistry classes because the “fundamentals” are boring to learn, but once you get to the advanced classes, this is when the fun begins to happen. From past experience, and being a science major as a college freshman that continued through my junior year, yes, I agree, the fundamentals are boring. But, I had good teachers who instilled the basic fundamentals within my high school education. This made sitting through basic math and science classes more bearable, I know that there was light at the end of the rainbow, that these classes would get better – and they did, I just realized that I needed career change☺. This conversation really stuck out for me, because I started relating it back to my past educational experiences. I hope that I can take what I have read and put it into practice. I want to be the kind of teacher that instills this fun and excitement into their children. Whether it is science, math, reading, writing, music or art, I would hope that I could integrate them into a curriculum that produces those independent and creative thinkers that Eric Stern talks about.

As educators, the education that we provide shapes the students we are teaching. We need to realize that from this education comes character building as well. Although we want to up our education in math and science to a higher standard by incorporating the arts into the curriculum, we need to teach our students the fundamentals of good character as well – who wants boring workers? As our society flattens and changes, we want innovators who are creative, energetic and passionate about the jobs that they complete, but this directly comes from the teachers that teach them. In looking back at the beginning of my blog – I know that we shouldn’t be reduced to “bad” teachers, so as educators we need to do everything in our power to disprove what was written. Education shouldn’t move towards a screen, then the character building in teaching becomes eliminated. How do we come to a compromise in a flattening society?

In closing, on page 376, Friedman quotes Bill Brody stating, “ We are in a global talent search, so anything we can do in America to get those top draft choices we should do, because one of them is going to be Babe Ruth, and why should we let him or her go somewhere else?”
But, lets do this without forgetting fundamentals and creativity, as educators, lets do this right – in a classroom as the “good” teachers we know we are!