A breath of new hope is blowing across the globe -- from Australia to America, from Canada to China, from Africa to Europe. It is the Millennial Generation, those young people -- 78 million in the United States alone -- born between 1985 and 2000 who define themselves by the social commitment and technological savvy that unite them worldwide.
Their optimism and hope for the future are propelling political causes; their distrust of a corporate world motivated by greed promises to change business as we know it; and their commitment to technology and service can transform society for the greater good. They believe in a better future. They believe the world needs to change, but more importantly, they believe the world can be changed, and they want to be part of it. They have the talent and the enthusiasm and the energy. All they need is the education and the opportunity.
Education and opportunity are now meeting head on in a new initiative led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, uniting global universities and the United Nations. The United Nations and its charter represent humanity's most ambitious attempt to unite across borders to secure peace, promote social progress and confront global problems. But to fulfill the promise of the United Nations, we need to make the United Nations more than a conference table of diverse opinion -- it must enlist the help of educational institutions that can inform and empower the Millennial Generation with global perspectives and global skills.
This is the fundamental goal of the Academic Impact, an initiative that attempts to forge a common purpose between the world's institutions of higher education and the United Nations. When he first unveiled the initiative in an address at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations must continue to open its doors to new partners and "the academic community is surely at the top of that list... we hope to build stronger ties with institutions of higher learning, and we hope to benefit from your ideas and scholarship."
The Academic Impact, which was formally launched on Nov. 18 and 19, encourages schools and universities to endorse 10 principles that deal with human rights, sustainability, conflict resolution and literacy. These are causes with deep meaning for Millennials, and they are central to the UN's mission. The 10 principles represent a commitment to education's role in advancing human rights, world citizenship, and intercultural dialogue and understanding.
Why is the Academic Impact initiative so important to the future of the world? With increasing globalization, finances flow freely across continents as do goods, services and ideas. Unfortunately, so do the major problems facing humanity, such as terrorism, pandemic diseases, economic crises and environmental calamities. They all cross national borders with impunity, never stopping at passport control.
Quite simply, globalization has outpaced our ability to comprehend what is happening, and education must set the new cadence. Schools and universities must introduce more international lessons, language programs, study-aboard opportunities, cross-cultural dialogues and international students.
Our students are ready for a global education. The pollster John Zogby has described this age group as "First Globals," and he concludes they are "the most outward-looking and accepting generation in American history" who bring a "consistently global perspective to everything... More than any generation, they see themselves as citizens of the planet, not of any nation in particular."
They have crossed the gateway to the global century. Through the Internet and social networking, they interact with people everywhere. They are tolerant and appreciate differences, and they want to build bridges across the diversity of world ideas, people, cultures and nations.
But while America's "First Globals" are excited about the world, more than 90 percent say that high schools have not prepared them to understand international issues. The problem starts in elementary schools, where there is less and less room for social studies, and continues through college, where commitments to global studies are often woefully lacking.
Global awareness has to be supported by global education -- an education that prepares the Millennial Generation to be true world citizens who understand the interconnected nature of our planet and who are willing and able to act on behalf of people everywhere. Digital technology in particular, which has become the hallmark of this generation, can help schools introduce different perspectives to students by connecting them with their peers all across the globe and promoting the pillars upon which the work of the United Nations is based -- the causes of peace, development and protection of human rights.
The world's academic institutions can help the United Nations move forward by inspiring what promises to be the "greatest generation" of the Third Millennium. That generation could well make the world a place we only dreamt it could be.
http://www.interculturaldialogueandeducation.org/2011/01/education-innovation-talents-conference.html
This fall saw the launch of a journal called Childhood Obesity.
My fave article in it? "Stop the Blame and Start the Action: Preventing Generation Z from Becoming XXL"
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/mali-pio090710.php
Throw it out. You'll stop having panic attacks within 6 months, I promise.
Right now, not off is some future time and place we..us..we are working our butts off on artificial intelligence so that computers can do everything that we do and one day will not even need us to program them…smart idea unh...
Then they, the computers will be thinking for themselves, and doing all the work, and they will not be eating food or using fossil fuels…This is exactly what the oligarchy or Kleptocracy has been wanting and waiting for…
However it is going to be pretty funny thought when those same computers decided that they do not need a Kleptocracy…
Emerging technology is fundamentally changing how efficiently and effectively the citizens of the world communicate and I have already seen how not just Millennials, but many who have adopted technologies and are experimenting with collaboration, the sharing of information, and content creation, are leveraging it to develop uses for providing and seeking education.
It happened when a communications network called the "World Wide Web (later referred to by "the Internet") began being used by the general population of the entire planet.
I suspect the John Zogby is trying to impress someone. Probably his own child and their friends. Or he is actually part of that most honored next generation that have all the hope locked up somewhere.
All that tolerant and appreciating differences was started by Generation X this country.
A large portion of the Millennials are growing up with fauxnews polluted minds thereby removing any real critical thought that might occur to them.
And they don't even realize it.
There is a difference between optimism and having claiming pie in the sky as ideals (that we are all aspiring to as well) as goals in progress.
But I find the total ignorance of recent social history the best reason to dismiss this article.
True racial tolerance and acceptance began with Generation X.
That is part of what the "X" is supposed to signify.
The first global generation? That little imaginary goal was completed in the early nineties it's early beginning can found in the fall of the Berlin Wall and a place called Tiananmen Square.
Funny you should pick Berlin Wall. The Millenials are a generation growing up in the EU without awareness of borders and are much more fluid in personal identity and acceptance of others than Gen X. I lived there at the time and while Gen Xers there and here express public acceptance of people differently than themselves only small pockets actually live it. cont...
Generation X as a label of a generation didn't take hold because of an obscure punk band from the the 1970's, the reason is because of a book titled "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" by Douglas Coupland published in 1991.
That you don't this simple reference means the rest of your comment on the subject is totally suspect.
I've seen on many occassions when millenial kids meet friends parents who are a same sex couple there's no reaction because so many families they encounter are non-traditional. This was not the case for my generation. They wouldn't react to single or cohabiting parent families but they would to same sex or even to inter-racial couple parents. I'm talking average american (Kansas, Virginia) not outliers (California, NYC, etc)
While I don't disagree with this statement -- can we at least have a majority of students that can minimally read and write, perform enough math to understand everyday economics and balance a checkbook, and make good decisions about what's affordable in life? Can they understand enough Civics to the point where they know as much about who runs the government as they know about American Idol? Can they get to a point that their job is take responsibility for their life and livelong learning and not expect a handout?
I really don't consider the UN to be any friend of US. I suppose this initiative might be the exception -- but to me this will likely mean once again that our wealth gets redistributed (whether in the form of money or knowledge) to other parts of the world who do not have our welfare in mind.
Is there a high school teacher anywhere that can explain to a student exactly what AIG and Goldman Sachs did to precipitate a global financial disaster in 2008? Is there anything more important for us to understand? Could a high school teacher even explain to a student what it means to say "home ownership is a rental with debt"? Is there some reason every single high school graduate shouldn't be able to do calculus? Speak several languages? Program an iPhone? Is there some reason a high school graduate shouldn't be able to explain what global climate disruption means, and predict what the climate of Europe will be like in one hundred years?
And yes, shouldn't a high school student understand how his government really works, complete with the every-4-years extravaganza that makes us think we have a say? And understand that the threat to their well-being doesn't come from the UN, illegal immigrants, welfare mothers, people of color, "insurgents," or the other political party.
I know why there's a difference and it's ok, but I wish more Americans were aware of and free to discuss the true educational costs our society is paying.
Standards based education with its accompanying testing hell is killing intellectual need amongst the millennial generation and their successors. With extended drilling in mathematics and English, there is no room left for intellectual stimulation. By the time they reach high school, most of my students are only interested in “will this be tested”, “will we be graded on this” and “when will I ever need this?” Their need to know is being killed by the return to “drill and kill”. John Dewey must be rolling in his grave.
We need to re-think the role of the teacher in education. With today's technology, groups of children are quite capable of teaching themselves and each other pretty much anything that interests them. That means to me that we need to ditch the textbooks and the worksheets. We need to make sure every child can read and write, and understands numbers, and then we need to figure out how to motivate, encourage, and challenge them as they educate themselves. Yes, we need subject specialists (it's a lucky child that wants to study mathematics and can be mentored by a mathematician), but they can be available online, right? So what exactly is the role of the teacher in kicking "emergent learning" into being?