Is International News Important?
What international news stories are you following? I ask because the NY Times ran a story yesterday that said that only 10% of newspaper editors in the US think that foreign news is “very essential.”
I suppose my perspective is a little unusualy. After all, I’ve lived outside the U.S. and traveled pretty widely: Stuttgart, Singapore, Barcelona, Bangkok, Canberra, Kathmandu and a few places in between. Four continents and over half the world’s time zones.
Education is faced today with a trend toward globalization. It’s not that we want our education system to necessarily look like everyone else’s. We don’t have to copy China, Germany or Japan. But in many economic sectors, our students will have to eventually compete with people from those countries. And at the very least, our kids need to know that the rest of the world exists…
One of the goals of the 21st Century Learning Initiative is to be sure that the basic elements of our education system prepare kids for a future in which globalization is inescapable. The truth of the matter is, the world isn’t all that big a place anymore.
Five stories I’m following at the moment:
- The election crisis in Zimbabwe
- Darfur
- Politics in Nepal, where the monarchy has been abolished after 340 years the Communists rebels are in charge.
- A border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia that has some implications for tourism at Angkor Wat
- The recent capture of Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic who’s been hiding for 11 years after being charged with war crimes.
image by rachael fogarty
That’s not to say I don’t keep track of the obvious: the upcoming Olympics, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. But our kids need to be aware of the world. And for that to happen, we have to be aware of it ourselves.
