Current Concerns

Penney Clark
A Global Perspective: What Does it Take?

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Everywhere we look there are signs of planetary stress. It is easy to drive students to despair at the state of their world. How well I remember the nuclear bomb drills which I had to participate in as an elementary-aged child during the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s, when the USSR and the United States came to the brink of war. We had to line up silently on the blacktop beside the school building, be counted, and then run home as quickly as humanly possible, all the while, imagining air raid sirens blaring in our ears. I also vividly recall the recurring nightmare, precipitated by the drills, which continued for years. Today it is not the explosive destruction of nuclear war that is at the forefront of students' minds. It is the insidious effects of environmental degradation. They read about oil spills, depletion of fish stocks, and global warming. They worry about the quality of their drinking water, the pesticides on the fruit they eat, and the toxins in the air they breathe. They are aware of the very real environmental threats to the quality of their lives today and in the future.

Global educators such as David Selby (1995) in Great Britain, Robert Hanvey (1976) in the United States, and Roland Case (1999) in Canada, have suggested frameworks for global education. They have in common a view that a global perspective is much more than simply knowledge about different cultures and how Earth's systems operate. Knowledge, while useful, cannot on its own, produce positive, caring relationships with the animate and inanimate world. While there are many important elements in a global perspective, including knowledge, I see three as key. These are hope, an ethic of caring, and an orientation toward the future.

Children do not need us to immobilize them with despair. What they need to thrive is hope. In order to promote hope, we can provide opportunities to examine some of the positive initiatives currently being undertaken to improve the global environment. For instance, the automobile is the single greatest contributor to gases related to global warming. They can discuss and weigh transportation choices such as mass transit, car pooling, biking, and walking. They can investigate new options being developed by the automobile industry, such as the so-called hybrid cars, which combine an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. It is predicted that soon it will be possible to drive from Vancouver to Winnipeg on one tank of gas, using one of these vehicles. Canada is at the forefront in hydrogen fuel cell technology research. Within fifteen years, this could be the main source of energy for vehicles. The depletion of our forests is a grave concern on the west coast of British Columbia. However, there is a place for hope in the technology that has increased the economic value of once worthless species and that has developed ways to use parts of trees that once went up in smoke in beehive burners. Bark and sawdust, for instance, once considered useless for building purposes, are used in new composite wood products. Students need to investigate examples like these in order to see that new avenues are being explored and positive initiatives are taking place.

A second key element is an ethic of care. If students do not learn to care, the rest is for naught. Educator Nel Noddings (1992) describes care as encompassing caring for self, for people close to you, for people one has never met, for non-human life, for the human-made environment, and for ideas. However, Noddings is not advocating a diffuse, caring without an element of reason. She says that it can be easy to take the side that is generally perceived as good. While it is satisfying to join a group that works to protect trees, for instance, one must consider as many aspects of the forestry industry and its effects as possible. It is important to take into consideration such factors as the need for lumber for construction purposes, employment, preservation of families and communities, as well as protection of old growth forests, animal habitats, and recreational needs. All of these need to be considered in order to make a truly caring judgment about what one should do. Nodding's example reminded me of an anecdote told by a logger. He described walking into a local elementary school for a coach's meeting, only to encounter walls lined with student posters depicting "barren landscapes dotted with stumps" (Warren, 1997). He was shocked and somewhat hurt. He wondered whether the teacher had taken the time to acquaint students with the purposes and benefits of the lumber industry, as well as its negative consequences, or simply indoctrinated them with her own attitudes.

A third important element of a global perspective is a future orientation. There is a limited amount of time available for social studies instruction during the school day. We spend a lot of this time studying the past and some of it examining the present. We leave scant time for consideration of the future. And yet, the past, the present, and the future exist in a dynamic relationship. Our interpretations of the past are reflections of how we view our world today. How we see the future is based on our past and our present. Selby (1995, pp. 5--6) likens this limited investment in the future to "a speeding driver on a highway who keeps a fraction of an eye on the road ahead but most of her attention on the rear mirror as she watches out for the flashing light of any approaching police car." We need to recognize that much of global education will be important to students only if they are willing to look ahead to what may be. They should be helped to imagine how yesterday's and today's actions will effect tomorrow's world. Then they can make their choices, as we all have to do.

References

Case, Roland. (1999)." Global Education: It's Largely a Matter of Perspective." In
The Canadian Anthology of Social Studies, ed. R. Case and P. Clark, 75-82. Vancouver: BC: Pacific Educational Press.
Hanvey, Robert. (1976). An Attainable Global Perspective. New York: Global Perspectives in Education.
Noddings, Nel. (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. New York: Teacher's College Press.
Selby, David. (1995). "Education for the Global Age: What is Involved?" In Thinking Globally About Social Studies Education, ed. Robert Fowler and Ian Wright, Vancouver: Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia.
Warren, K. (1997). Social Action: At What Cost? Unpublished paper, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.