Education for Global Perspectives

The nations of the world are increasingly interdependent in a political, economic, and environmental sense. American education for over 100 years has been isolationist in its content, centered around the concerns of a growing nation. Now it must teach global perspectives suitable for citizens of what is increasingly a worldwide and culturally diverse community. Three kinds of instruction need to be incorporated into present curricula to achieve this goal: (1) skills—the ability to think in terms of systems rather than isolated events, and in interdisciplinary and generalist (as well as specialist) terms; (2); knowledge of other nations and cultures; and (3) cross-cultural awareness, enabling Americans to put themselves imaginatively in the place of persons with other values and interests. The present status of such education is uneven. Some organizations, both national and international, provide material designed to aid all three kinds of instruction at the elementary and secondary level, but at the higher education level cut-backs in funding in the United States jeopardize valuable programs of research and training. The greatest hope that education for global perspectives will emerge comes from the long tradition in education of transnational institutions and international intellectual cultures.