Preparing Students for Life in a Global Context

Karissa Bell

Listen to Rudy Crew speak about the state of public education in this country, and it’s easy to become discouraged.

In Sunday’s special feature, “Globalization: Connecting Classrooms and Communities,” Crew and fellow presenter Manuel Rivera offered a dramatic and sobering perspective of the nation’s public education system.

“We are watching the demise of public education,” Crew said in his opening remarks. “We are watching public education be dismantled.”

America’s students are unacceptably behind their international cohorts, and because of this disparity, they will inevitably become victims of the global economy later in life, the presenters stressed.

“We don’t have our priorities straight in this country,” said Rivera. “We need bold action, we need structural changes, and we need changes in how we value programming.”

But few educators accurately understand the gravity of the changes that need to be made and how to implement them, said Crew. “This is not a pedagogical issue that we’re up against; it is way past that. This is an economic issue. The Wall Street thinkers are going to have as much to say about what happens in public education as anyone in this room.”

One of the major failings of public education, Crew said, is that kids are not being adequately prepared for life after school. The presenters showed statistics comparing the math and science standards in the United States against those of Asian countries like China and Taiwan. Technology is evolving so quickly that some of the biggest industries and jobs that will be available to today’s children are not yet fully developed or even created. But, largely, those jobs will be science and technology related, subjects where students are woefully behind compared with other countries.

“People are not preparing their children for service and life . . . in a global context,” he said. “If the schooling does not provide them with that, they fundamentally are very prone for permanent location as a member of the underclass.”

But Crew urged educators to see the opportunities and potential before them rather than just the negativity. The most important thing educators could do, he stressed, was to initiate the difficult conversations that need to be had.

“There are enormous opportunities for us to step up and be leaders; there are enormous possibilities for us to build a whole new conversation about, What does it take to be a professional teacher? What does it take for us to be a leader?, and What does it take for us to be a parent?” Crew said. “And if we don’t have that conversation, then shame on us.”