Guest Viewpoint: We need education for global leadership

There is an inexcusable gap between American students’ knowledge of other countries, cultures, and languages and the escalating importance of this knowledge to our nation’s economic prosperity and national security.

According to recent surveys published by the Asia Society and the National Geographic Society/Roper:

• American students’ knowledge of other nations is rudimentary. For example, 25 percent of college-bound high school students could not name the ocean between California and Asia. Eighty percent did not know that India is the world’s largest democracy.

• American teachers are not prepared. Most prospective teachers do not take any international courses. There are very low rates of teacher participation in study abroad programs.

• Language instruction in the United States does not reflect today’s realities. Less than half of American high school students study a foreign language. The vast majority take Spanish and only at the introductory level.

Meanwhile, fewer than 40,000 students study Chinese, a language spoken by 1.3 billion people and the language of the country with the world’s largest and fastest-growing market.

• American students do not compare favorably with those in other countries. American students are next to last in their knowledge of world geography and international affairs. We also lag in most comparisons of proficiency in math and scientific knowledge.

While troubling, many of these trends can be readily explained. In the past, for example, complex international transactions were the domain of diplomats and international policy and business experts.

Educators were remote from the international agenda, and American education, to the degree that it was international in scope, limited the international content to electives at the high school level and demonstration programs at the elementary and middle school levels.

Today, however, globalization is driving demand for an internationally competent work force. New national and human security challenges require greater proficiency in world languages, and increasing diversity in our nation’s classrooms and workplaces necessitates a greater understanding of other cultures.

The debate over outsourcing has led to a deep probing of how we will compete for good jobs in a “flat world” where talented young people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are also vying for a brighter future.

While most schools are behind the curve on their international content, some pioneering work is under way. For example, the Asia Society and the Goldman Sachs Foundation have introduced The Goldman Sachs Foundation Prizes for Excellence in International Education.

The purpose of the awards, which will be announced in early December, is to provide national recognition to the best of the growing number of innovative examples of international education for K-12 students and teachers and those who are working to expand implementation of these models.

The identified programs will provide important momentum to the growing field of international education in K-12 schools. More than 450 public, private, and charter schools and organizations in rural, suburban, and urban locales in almost every state have applied for $125,000 in prize money.

To help replicate and expand these innovative international learning programs in other school districts -- and states -- nationwide, an emerging knowledge base of “best practices” is documented in a forthcoming report, States Prepare for the Global Economy. 

Yet this is only a small start. Action is essential to scale up international education, and the speed of change in the world requires an immediate national leadership role.

There are at least four steps school boards, business leaders, and policymakers can take to ensure that our high school graduates will have the international knowledge and skills they will need in the 21st century:

(1) Teach critical foreign languages to 500,000 Americans.

Our military and intelligence agencies are woefully in need of more linguists and “culture experts,” particularly in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

As the Chinese markets expand rapidly over the next decade, it is essential that at least 5 percent of all students will take courses in Mandarin to ensure that we are prepared to effectively engage the world’s emerging superpower.

We must create an effective elementary-through-college pipeline in major world languages that draws on recent research findings to ensure effective instruction.

Studies have found that foreign language instruction should start in the elementary years, include immersion experiences, be reinforced over summer breaks, and draw from the untapped expertise of native speakers in many communities. Such instruction should be delivered by qualified teachers, be reinforced by cultural experiences, such as travel abroad, and supported by new technology.

(2) Train teachers in international subjects.

Teachers cannot teach what they do not know. During the Cold War and the Sputnik era, our nation made an admirable commitment to science and math education by creating the National Science Foundation. A similar national commitment is needed now to prepare teachers to promote international knowledge and skills.

(3) Create internationally themed high schools.

Many young people leave high school lacking either the academic preparation necessary for postsecondary education or the broad habits of mind and skills necessary for success in the workplace and in a diverse society. Current high school reform discussions focus wisely on the need to reduce dropout rates and increase achievement in basic subjects like reading and math. However, the content of the overall high school curriculum needs to be seriously upgraded and modernized.

Priorities should include:

• innovation grants to states and districts that integrate international content into high school graduation requirements;

• development of assessments of international knowledge and skills that compel teachers of all the major subjects to introduce more academic content about the world;

• incentives for small, more personalized schools of academic rigor, including early college experiences with an international bent; and

• the adaptation of existing technology initiatives, such as “virtual high schools,” to bring international knowledge and language skills to rural and under-resourced schools.

Tens of billions of dollars, public and private, have been invested in the last decade to wire schools, build Web resources, open the broadcast spectrum to new television channels, and provide high-quality media resources to families, schools, and communities.

But the impact on children’s and teachers’ knowledge of other regions, languages, and cultures has been negligible. Existing federal and state education and PBS funding in these areas is missing the mark and must be seriously overhauled. We should create a “Global Learning Media/Technology Fund,” with three purposes:

• to create and expand online and distance learning programs to deliver international content and language courses on a much wider scale.

• to encourage joint projects by child development specialists, country experts, and communications companies; and

• to establish as a funding priority for public broadcasting new programs designedto educate young Americans about the world.

To accelerate academic progress in the next decade, we must spur a sea change in our education system. We need to remain committed to educational equity for all students, more personalized instruction, and a serious emphasis on the quality of teaching.

But these reforms will fall short unless the content of learning is also modernized to advance students’ preparation for citizenship in a global age.