Globalization, Inequality & Education

What is the relationship between globalization, income inequality and public education in the US? It would seem that students at NBHS (or at least a portion of them) believe that public education is a punitive measure of government, imposed on some by courts and on others by their parents. Still others believe that education is not either a public good or a global good. Keeping the issue of teenage angst aside, has our society failed to stress the importance of an education? Do students in a high unemployment, high dropout, high drug use, gang connected city like New Bedford feel that public school is their punishment? Providing a global scope to NBHS students can improve the situation, but only at the point of saturation. One teacher's message or one parent's plea does not seem to have the pervasive effect of promoting a paradigm shift in the way students view school. The Singapore Study demonstrates that if NBHS felt that it had to compete in a global environment to survive economically, improvement in education would be fairly easy to measure. From my experience, NBHS students do not feel this way. They also do not feel that education provides them with the tools that they need to be successful by their measurement of success. Economic power sustains social status. Perhaps that is why some students in my classes work 20-30 hours a week and begin their homework at 10PM. Of course, not all of these beliefs are supported by all students. The attitudes that I am describing here are those of my college-level students, not the AP students. If globalization increases income inequality (something not discussed at great length in Tom Freidman's book) then the disparity in achievement scores would tend to reflect that fact rather than refute it. Can we compare Newton and New Bedford fairly? Are we disengenuous when we tell students at NBHS that education is a form of economic empowerment in a globalized world? Put this way, the results of improved standard for academic achievement define our government's ability to punish the effects of globalization, not the failures of public education in particular. Or is that scenario wrong? Jonoathan Kozol does not believe so. His books, Savage Inequalities and The Shame of the Nation, demonstrate the differences of education between schools of different tax base (and income level) and those redivided by racially segregated districts in urban areas. Income inequality affects public education on many different levels. It affects the amount offered for teacher salaries, the percentage of dependence on state aid for cities and towns for education, the ability of a school district to fund long term (technological) resource development plans, the number of special services offered, the quality of food eaten in school lunch rooms, etc.What we want is for students to believe what we believe: globalization is a reality, whether we love it or not. Because of this, it seems a series of events has occurred. Corporate America is threatened in its geopolitical position because of lower expectations of public school students. No Child Left Behind is a government reaction to this problem, demanding higher forms of accountability on all levels. Income inequality creates complex challenges for public education, and the causes of income inequality, often obscured by parochial vision, lead us back to the effects of globalization. So is it (globalization) an opportunity or a challenge or both?

Perspective and Reality

Why are so many people afraid of teenagers? For some, they represent anarchy, rebellion, freedom from authority, wild creativity and a dangerous abandonment of ‘common sense’. I don’t see it. Of course, my point of view is one from the classroom. Contrary to what a lot of friends think, teaching isn’t a burden in the slightest, if it comes with a new perspective. Today I shared lunch with a student who has been helping a parent overcome a really bad heart attack by working numerous jobs to pay the family’s bills. I saw students using art to express the ideas of slavery and freedom. I talked to a student who dreams of studying and teaching music for a living. It was a good day. It was empowering to see, listen and share. Maybe there’s more for the world to understand about how the teenage brain works. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with wanting to change the world.

The Forgotten Fire

Today, newspapers reported that an authorized Air Force flight transported six active nuclear missiles in a B52 bomber across the Midwestern states from the north to the south. The journey covered hundreds of miles and reminded Americans, it seems, that we have a really large number of nuclear warheads still active and ready to launch in the United States. How many Americans remember the Cold War fears of being attacked by the Soviet Union? The threat of mutually assured destruction hung over everyone then. Is it still the same today? There haven’t been many movies, books or songs that brought to light the danger and death that a nuclear blast would bring. When I was 13, I saw The Day After and was completely frightened. That movie, as hokey as it was, was all too real. Instead of focusing on the drama of actually launching nuclear missiles, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, this movie solely focused on a Russian retaliatory strike on our silos outside Lawrence, Kansas. It terrorized people so much that ABC set up nation-wide psychological help for people suffering from nuclear psychosis after watching the film. After the many accidents that could have started a nuclear war, I would think that the US military would maintain their low profile on our nuclear arsenal, but apparently too many people found out about the recent B52 flight to cover it up. Our worst case scenario would be the terrorist acquisition of a nuclear weapon. With so many loose nukes in the world, it is definitely a possibility. We know that Al Qaeda has plans to either build or obtain nuclear weapons. That scenario can’t be allowed to happen. But the US also maintains the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Look at countries like North Korea or Iran who have built and are trying to begin their own nuclear program. Having a nuke is a guarantee against being attacked. It’s also a big bargaining chip to getting other things, as North Korea has known, and as the Soviets and Cubans learned in the Cuban Missile Crisis – the closest the world has ever come to all out nuclear war. Who should have them and who shouldn’t? In one of my comic books, one of the main characters takes all of the world’s nuclear weapons and buries them two miles down in the Arctic Ocean. To prevent countries from building more, he leaves just one nuke in every single country, even the ones who didn’t have them before. If that country uses it, they lose their only weapon and face retaliation from the rest. It’s an impossible dream, but someday the world will have to come face-to-face with this monster. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb, figured this out almost instantly after the bomb was used and then mass produced. He feared the total danger that would come with total power that nuclear weapons possessed. That fear still exists, whether the media chooses to report it, whether the military chooses to flaunt it and whether average people choose to acknowledge it.