Education in a Flattened World

The book The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman poses a lot of things to think about for the upcoming American generation. In his book, he emphasizes how technological forces are reshaping economies. It got me to thinking, how do his 10 flattener's, and his 3 convergences relate to the field of education?

For some time now, I've felt that our public school system is stuck in a deep rut. In fact, our society as a whole has not adopted the concept of what the world is becoming. To some extent we adopt the devices and conveniences of the flat world, but when confronted with the world wide developments I feel that most Americans prefer to either gripe or close their eyes.

For example, as we embrace the cheap prices at Walmart, we also mock the off shoring of call centers and manufacturing moving to China. Our schools would rather ban electronic devices for fears of cheating or distraction, rather than embrace the educational potential of these devices.

Although the human interaction of school is vital to student development, I can't help but feel the 32 student classroom and lecture followed by text book homework is hurting our education system. With information being so easy to mine, why are we still testing on meaningless facts, dates, and hundreds of abstract formulas and letting the concepts hopefully fit into the cracks left?

What do we tell our kids?

Something educators need to consider is that we are as much a part of the destiny of America as corporations. In a flat world, educators must "reach for a shovel and dig inside ourselves", we can't afford to build walls and try to protect old ways that make no sense. As time passes, what we teach is less important than how we teach it - what experiences we are bringing to our students. Friedman states that the small need to act big; it is every teachers job to be the 'value add' to our curriculum and teach our students to be the innovative thinkers that will propel them to success in the new America.