Learning: The Treasure Within

My initial thoughts after reading this: http://www.unesco.org/delors/delors_e.pdf

The Treasure Within

There is a lot to say about this piece of writing, it is hard to pick a focus.  First let me say that I really enjoyed Delors’ artistic prose, which at times read more like a traditional Taoist text than a commission’s report on education (references to “self-knowledge” and “inner meditation”). 

First I have to say how ALL of his major points and recommendations hit close to home.  When colleagues asked me about this course, I would shrug and say, “Well, it probably has more to do with my work in Haiti than my work here at the high school, but I am sure it will relate”.  I couldn’t have been more wrong!  As Delors walked through the commission’s principals, findings and recommendations I found myself relating everything to my context at Middlebury High School.  I had to remind mysef that this was a report on global education, and not a report just about Vermont.  The tensions, the need to inspire learning for life, and need to allow adolescents multiple pathways, the need for equity, the need for community involvement, the role of policy makers, the mass enrollment in and focus on higher education, and more. 

But if I have to choose one thing to focus on, it has to be the major wake up call to refocus on the bigger “global picture” of learning.  In my current context I tend to get so insular in my thinking: “I need to teach these students this grammar, this vocabulary” or maybe even, “I need to prepare these students for college”.  But my role and aim as an educator is truly so much bigger than that.  I need to prepare these students to be responsible and active citizens of a global community.  My aim shouldn’t (just) be to assign grades and prepare students for an AP test or college, but to INSPIRE a PASSION for learning for life.  Delors’ words about creating understanding between cultures and knowledge of the world’s cultures really struck a chord with me as a language teacher.  Indeed, our field of learning languages and cultures, too often overlooked as an “extra” in my society, plays an essential role in education for a better world or “necessary utopia” as Delors puts it.  This is, after all, why I got into language teaching in the first place.

To summarize, the take home point for me was to be more global in my thinking about my role as a secondary educator.  Comparative education as a larger field is helping me to rethink my basic aims as an educator in the larger context of an interconnected and interdependent 21^st Century global village.

#JHUglobaled