The Five Minds of Globalisation and Education
The Five Minds of Globalisation and Education
“One of the most powerful human instincts is the need to belong. Our membership of families, of organisations and of societies shapes our identity. It defines who we are and, to a large extent, it determines who we shall become”.
These were the opening words of a wonderful one hour lecture that I attended last Thursday evening at nearby Renaissance College. The speaker was Professor George Walker, former Director-General of the International Baccalaureate Organisation. The theme of the lecture was “Educating the Global Citizen”, and it was particularly pertinent given that this weekend our 2nd Year students are returning to campus from all around the world to start their new academic year.
In his usual brilliant and eloquent fashion, Professor Walker drew from a huge range of historical, literary, philosophical and educational works to challenge his listeners to the realities of globalisation. Interestingly and challengingly, he observed that international schools are themselves very significant and active products and agents of globalisation.
I was particularly impressed with Professor Walker’s comment that the realities of globalisation demand that we understand others on their own terms. He quoted from Howard Gardner’s latest book, “Five Minds for the Future” (2007), saying that unless we learn to operate using five very different minds, we shall be at the mercy of forces that we can’t understand, let alone control. Given the nature of Gardner’s earlier books, four of his five minds are not surprising - the disciplined, synthesising, creating and ethical minds. But his fifth is unexpected - the RESPECTFUL mind - and on this subject, Professor Walker read from Gardner’s new book:
“... I must try to understand other persons on their own terms, make an imaginative leap when necessary to convey my trust in them, and try so far as possible to make common cause with them and to be worthy of their trust. This stance does not mean that I ignore my own beliefs, nor that I necessarily accept or pardon all that I encounter... But I am obliged to make the effort, and not merely to assume that what I had once believed on the basis of scattered impressions is necessarily true. Such humility may, in turn, engender positive responses in others.”
At another point his lecture, Professor Walker quoted from Professor Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, saying that for young people growing up in this latest phase of globalisation, “cognitive flexibility and agility will win the day” This is because “Globalization decisively unmakes the coherence that the modernist project of the 19th and 20th century nation-state promised to deliver - the neat fit between territory, language and identity... Managing difference is becoming one of the greatest challenges to multicultural countries”. Furthermore, “Globalisation engenders complexity. Throughout the world, it is generating more intricate demographic profiles, economic realities, political processes, technology and media, cultural facts and artefacts and identities”. In summary, Professor Walker quoted Thomas Friedman’s best-selling book “The Earth is Flat”, noting that “jobs are going to go where the best educated work force is with the most competitive infrastructure and environment for creativity and supportive government” - and this will not be the United States!
For those of us who have been entrusted with the huge privilege of forming the next generation of leaders from all parts of the world through international education (or, as I would prefer to orient it, “global education”), these realities pose huge challenges. Professor Walker identified four basic tenets of international education - cultural understanding, our common humanity, diversity and shared values, and from this list, he concluded that greater recognition and research is needed into the big unknown realm of truly understanding culturally different modes of thought.
Professor Walker concluded his address with a quote from Victor Hugo that an IB colleague first saw pinned to the wall of an African IB school in Togo:
“One day, we hope, the world will be civilised. All points of this human abode will be enlightened and then the magnificent dream of intelligent life will have been achieved: to have as one’s homeland the World, and as one’s nation, Humanity”.
The full text of Professor George Walker’s address can be downloaded through the Renaissance College website at http://www.renaissance.edu.hk/announcement.php?aid=94 I am grateful to the Principal of Renaissance College, Mr Peter Kenny, for his kind invitation to attend this lecture.
Sunday, 19 August 2007
A powerful symbol of globalisation - this Tuareg man uses a cell phone to negotiate the purchase of a camel in a remote part of the Sahara Desert, near Timbuktu in Mali. I took this photograph with his permission in January 2004.