New Research on Challenges in a Globalized World

Education Key to Meeting Challenges; Need for Focus on Pre-collegiate Skills and Immigrant Socialization

The off-shoring of white-collar jobs, international terrorism, a worldwide AIDS epidemic, global warming, and mass immigration — globalization defines our era. Yet our nation's schools aren't keeping pace. According to new research reported today at a conference on globalization and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, elementary and secondary education in the United States must be significantly transformed to meet the intense new challenges of an increasingly globalized world. Distinguished scholars and journalists attended the conference, co-hosted by the Nieman Foundation, HGSE, and the Ross Institute, to discuss the findings of a forthcoming collection of essays, Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium (University of California Press in association with the Ross Institute, April 2004). The book includes new research and insights on these issues from an array of leading scholars from Harvard and MIT, and is edited by Thomas Professor Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozcoand HGSE doctoral student Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard.

"Because of globalization, a disaster in Kabul becomes a disaster in New York City. We need to broaden our conceptual framework beyond traditional local issues in education — the global/local relationship, or 'glocal,' is a more appropriate point of reference in most of the global cities in the world," said Suárez-Orozco, who is a scholar-in-residence at the Ross Institute.

Globalization on new comparative data and interdisciplinary materials examining the complex psychological, cultural, and historical implications of globalization for today's youth. Taking into consideration broad, economic, technological, and demographic changes, the contributors — all leading social scientists in their fields — suggest that these global transformations will require youth to develop new skills, sensibilities, and habits of mind that are far ahead of what most educational systems can now deliver.

Key Findings

• Economics, technology, global media, and culture are critical aspects in developing sustainable curriculum to build the higher-order cognitive skills, cultural sensibilities and solid thinking skills that will allow the world's youth to engage the global challenges they will face in an ever-changing world. The authors argue that primary education is now insufficient for robust and sustained economic development.
• New data suggest that education is a vital factor in determining health and economic well-being. A strong pre-collegiate foundation equipping youth with the cognitive skills necessary to adapt to the changes brought about by globalization will lead to healthier populations, more engaged and critical citizens, and stronger economies.
  • Each year of schooling in developing countries is thought to raise individuals' earning power, which is closely linked to productivity, by about 10 percent.
  • According to the United Nations, 76 developing countries have enough schools to educate all primary school-age children, but only one-third (27) keep their pupils for the duration of the course, and, some countries have seen declines in completion rates.
• While literacy rates are improving, there are wide gender disparities in all areas outside of Europe, Central Asia, and Latin America.
• East Asia, a development success story, has far more literate men than women.
• Alternately, in many advanced post-industrial democracies, girls are outperforming boys in a variety of academic indicators.

Educating and helping to integrate growing numbers of immigrant youth are globalization's principal challenge in nearly all advanced post-industrial societies.

• New data suggest that in the advanced post-industrial democracies, immigrant girls are demonstrating greater academic achievement than immigrant boys.
• Education is increasingly called to play a greater role in both imparting the skills and sensibilities the new arrivals will need to succeed,and in facilitating how long-term residents adapt to new demographic and cultural realities.

"While globalization has created a great deal of debate in economic, policy, and grassroots circles, many aspects of the phenomenon remain unexplored. Education is at the heart of this continent of the unknown. Today's conference and the upcoming publication globalization critical steps towards understanding how this phenomenon is affecting children and youth, both in and out of schools," noted Courtney Ross-Holst, founder of the Ross Institute and advocate of research for educational change.

About the Book

Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium is published by University of California Press and the Ross Institute, and will be available in April 2004. The book is 290 pages and retails for $50.00 US for cloth and $19.95 US for paperback.

Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco is co-editor of Latinos: Remaking America (California, 2002) and the six-volume Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the New Immigration (2001); he is co-author of Children of Immigration (2001). Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and co-editor of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the New Immigration (2001).

About the Contributors

• Antonio Battro was Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard University (2002-03), and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
• David E. Bloom is Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at Harvard University.
• John H. Coatsworth is Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University.
• Howard Gardner is John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• Henry Jenkins is Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of Humanities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Sunania Maira is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California at Davis.
• Courtney Ross-Holst is founder and chair of the Ross Institute in New York.
• Carola Suárez-Orozcois co-director of the Harvard Immigration Projects at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and scholar-in-residence at the Ross Institute.
• Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• James L. Watson is John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society at Harvard University.

About the Ross Institute

The Ross Institute is a not-for-profit research organization dedicated to exploring and applying innovation in pre-collegiate education and building links between pre-collegiate and higher education. The institute focuses in particular on the implications for education of globalization and other fundamental changes in culture and technology. Founded in 1996, the institute brings together leading scholars, educators and policymakers to incubate new ideas and be a catalyst for educational change.

About the Nieman Foundation

The Nieman Foundation administers the nation's oldest midcareer fellowship program for journalists. Each year 12 American and 12 international journalists come to Harvard University for a year of academic study. Since 1938, more than 1,000 American and international journalists have studied at Harvard as part of the fellowship program. In addition to the fellowships and publishing the quarterly magazine Nieman Reports, the Nieman Foundation is also the home of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism and the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project to encourage reporters and editors to monitor and hold accountable those who exert power in all aspects of public life.