The mission of school is to develop a sense of truth, of what is good and beautiful. And this occurs through a rich path made up of many ingredients. This is why there are so many subjects – because development is the results of different elements that act together and stimulate intelligence, knowledge, the emotions, the body, and so on. If something is true, it is good and beautiful; if it is beautiful; it is good and true; if it is good, it is true and it is beautiful. And together, these elements enable us to grow and help us to love life, even when we are not well, even in the midst of many problems. True education enables us to love life and opens us to the fullness of life.
Pope Francis (2014) Address with Italian school teachers, parents, educators, and pupils. https://bit.ly/3sKM9AD
All human societies face the common task of transferring a range of skills, values, and sensibilities to the next generation. Societies organize formal institutions to nurture in the next generation the qualities to carry forth the work of culture. Over the last century schooling outside the home has emerged globally as the most important societal institution for the education of the next generation. Basic primary education in schools is today a normative ideal the world over. More children are attending schools than ever before.
There is a lot of good news: “Enrolment of children in primary education is at present nearly universal. The gender gap has narrowed, and in some regions, girls tend to perform better in school than boys and progress in a more timely manner” (United Nations, 2015).[1]
Education is freedom and is “far and away the single most empowering investment for individuals. It is for that reason that the world has long regarded education as a basic human right. Yet we have not yet achieved universal education” (Sachs, 2022).[2] Quality education is the Camino Real for sustainable development, health, and a driver of wellness (Bloom and Ferranna, 2022).[3] “Seen as part of the global commons, knowledge, learning and education represent humanity’s greatest renewable resource for responding to challenges and inventing alternatives” (Giannini, 2022).[4] Ample evidence suggests that education – almost any form that nurtures and supports basic literacy – generates powerful virtuous cycles (LeVine at al., 2011).[5] Researchers have established that an education is perhaps a child’s strongest barrier against poverty, especially for girls. Educated girls will have healthier children. They are better paid in the workplace, better able to protect themselves against HIV-AIDS, and more able to participate in decision-making at all levels (United Nations, 2015).
In this Chapter, I first introduce some relevant data on the state of education around the world and the factors that continue to impede progress including the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, I examine the broad features of a conceptual model framing education in the current era of globalization with a focus on the promise and peril of new information, communication and media technologies in education. Finally, I offer a reflection on the new challenges and new opportunities in education today.
Education Now
The global progress in the school attendance of children and youth is a laudable achievement. Yet the work ahead is significant: “Enrollment does not translate directly into education, and education does not translate directly into good education, which is often the real catalyst for engaged citizenship, emotional awareness and human sensitivity, and a tolerance of the other, along with enhanced potential for working collaboratively, productively, and innovatively” (Bloom and Ferranna, 2022).[6] Furthermore, millions of children are out of school and illiteracy remains rampant: 781 million adults over the age of 15 remain illiterate – and women make up well over half of those who are illiterate (United Nations, 2015).[7]
The first challenge moving forward is quality education for all. Prior to the pandemic approximately 260 million children and youth were not enrolled in schools — including approximately 60 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age https://bit.ly/3dei7Po. For those who are attending schools, the little education – especially in the form of literacy, will be vital but perhaps not enough to thrive to their full potential – see https://bit.ly/2t3X7mQ.[8] Too many children in low and lower middle- income countries are falling further and further behind their peers in the wealthy nations. According to Research by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings “at the current pace of change, it could take approximately 100 years for those furthest behind to catch up to the learning levels of those for whom the education system is working well” https://brook.gs/3mnGkIm.[9]
The second challenge facing schools is unfolding at a vital link between the wealthy countries in the Northern Hemisphere and the global South. Schools are struggling to properly educate growing numbers of immigrant and refugee youth arriving in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and elsewhere; many immigrant and refugee youngsters are marginalized as racially, ethnically, religiously, and linguistically marked minority groups (Banks, Suárez-Orozco, Ben-Peretz, 2016).[10] The marginalization of immigrant and refugee youth is increasing and their social belonging is thwarted.[11]
Third, the curiosity leading to Newton’s “great ocean of truth”[12] withers in too many schools. In both high and middle-income countries, the predominant phenomenology of experience for too many youths in school is the antonym of curiosity: it is boredom and disengagement.[13]
Education faces new challenges in a world more globally interconnected and more unequal. For many youths growing up in low- and lower middle-income countries, poverty is the other pandemic extracting a heavy toll on children and youth. Hunger and malnutrition – even as progress is made – continue to cripple millions. “A total of 842 million are estimated to be suffering from chronic hunger, regularly not getting enough food to conduct an active life”.[14] School readiness is a distant mirage for millions of children.>[15]
Children are the most visible victims of undernutrition. It is estimated that undernutrition – including stunting, wasting, deficiencies of vitamin A and zinc, and fetal growth restriction (when a baby does not grow to its normal weight before birth) – is a cause of 3.1 million child deaths annually or 45 percent of all child deaths in 2011 (UNICEF, World Health Organization [WHO], & The World Bank, 2018).[16] Undernutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria (World Hunger, 2018).[17]
Twenty percent of all children around the world are undernourished. And most of them are suffering from long-term malnourishment that has serious health implications that will keep them from reaching their full potential. Malnutrition causes stunting – when the body fails to fully develop physically and mentally – and increases a child’s risk of death and lifelong illness. A child who is chronically hungry cannot grow or learn to their full ability. In short, it steals away their future (Mercy Corps, 2020).[18] The consequences on for learning are chilling, “different poverty indicators are associated with lower cognitive and academic performance during several stages of development. Psychological and neural evidence generated in recent years suggests the need to review the interpretations of these associations in the sense of deficit, and to consider the occurrence of adaptive processes instead” (Lipina, 2022).[19]
Extreme poverty deprives millions of children of the basic resources for life: clean water, proper nutrition, safe shelter, and the proper supervision required for survival and positive human development (Ibid). In low-income countries, “almost five million children under the age of five die of malnutrition-related causes every year” (FAO, 2021).[20] Furthermore, “Severe acute malnutrition affects nearly 20 million preschool-age children, mostly from Africa and South-East Asia” and “162 million children are stunted; 99 million are underweight and 51 million are wasted due to acute malnutrition” (Ibid.).[21]
Poverty, war and terror, disease, structural racism, unchecked climate change, the “globalization of indifference”, an extreme form of which is modern child slavery, thwart the opportunities for healthy development and wilt the flourishing of millions of children. Indeed, they represent the most significant undertow towards meeting the UN millennial development goals of reaching universal basic education.[22]
The COVID-19 Catastrophe
For millions of children, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a long-lasting catastrophic emergency robbing them of the daily attending-school-rituals with all that entails: learning opportunities, socializing with other children, seeking supports from teachers, physical education, accessing health care and nutrition, and the various other scaffolds needed for developmentally appropriate socio-emotional, cognitive, and meta-cognitive growth.
The pandemic stunned education systems with geologic force: by early 2020 approximately 1.5 billion students were no longer attending in person school as school closings became mandatory in some 160 countries (see Giannini, 2022).[23] And as millions of children would eventually continue their learning remotely via new information, communication and media technologies, UNICEF data suggest that “for at least 463 million children whose schools closed due to COVID-19, there was no such thing as ‘remote learning’” (Ibid.).[24] Millions lacking access to electricity, technology, and internet access could not engage in online learning.
During COVID over 830 million students did not have access to a computer at home. In many low-and-lower middle-income countries, school closures put children on the streets. “Families are desperate for money. Children are an easy source of cheap labor”.[25] Because of the pandemic, “An additional 100 million children could fall below the minimum proficiency level in reading ... Lost learning is being counted in months and taking a rising toll on the mental health of students. Progress made towards narrowing gender gaps in education over past decades could be reversed, with girls at increased risk of exposure of early marriage and drop out” (Giannini, 2022).[26]
The cumulative loss of learning is staggering. By the first quarter of 2021, more than 160 million children “around the world have missed school for nearly a year due to COVID-19 restrictions” (UNICEF, 2021). Fourteen countries “worldwide have remained largely closed since March 2020 to February 2021” (Ibid.). Two-thirds of those countries are in Latin America and the Caribbean (Ibid.).[27] Bloom and Ferranna summarize COVID’s impact on education as of this writing, “School closures and difficulties in implementing effective remote learning generally reduce the pleasure of learning, hinder children’s socialization opportunities, degrade the emotional and mental health of students, and increase the risk of domestic violence and abuse In addition, school closures disrupt immunization and other health services that are often provided at school and prevent many children from accessing the only nutritious meal of their day. School closures also exert considerable pressures on parents, who have to balance childcare, home schooling, and work duties” (Bloom and Ferranna, 2022).[28]
The pandemic has intensified already obscene levels of inequality in opportunities to learn. Bridgit Barron notes, “Although unequal access to information technologies had been documented well before the COVID-19 pandemic, dramatic school closures have brought a significant digital divide into sharp relief and exposed the ongoing cost of inequities, as teachers across the world scrambled to continue the education of millions of children. Radio, television, and the internet were deployed in an attempt to connect schools and homes. Learners in rural areas, citizens from less affluent countries, families who have less wealth, and female students were the least likely to have access to any of these forms of remote learning” (Barron, 2022).[29]
Indeed COVID-19 laid bare for the world the deepening inequalities in opportunities to learn that flow from country-of-origin, race, ethnicity and immigration background. COVID sent another 100 million human beings into extreme poverty – intensifying extreme poverty and reversing years of progress (see World Bank, 2021).[30]
Education in the Global Era
Globalization defines our era. Broadly conceived, it is “what happens when the movement of people, goods, or ideas among countries and regions accelerates” (Coatsworth, 2004, p. 38).[31] The three “M’s” of globalization give shape to its most current iteration: (1) Markets (their integration and disintegration); (2) Media, the information, communication and social media technologies that de-territorialize labor, put a premium on knowledge intensive work, and stimulate new longings and belongings, as well as hatreds and divisions; and (3) Migration, the mass movement of people on a planetary scale. While globalization is neither new nor exceptional, the rate and the depth of global change is novel. Globalization – new economies, new media technologies and new demographies – represents the most significant challenge to school systems since the origins of mass public education.
Global technological change is creating new challenges but also new opportunities. Routine manual and cognitive tasks will continue to be hallowed out by automation. It is also true that dramatically increased automation, robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Assisted Design will require workers with new skills to complement and further refine productive work. As some categories of work become anachronistic, new kinds of work shall come to life. The returns to education will continue to accrue disproportionately to highly skilled workers but dignified low skill work is far from disappearing. Indeed “the digital era has catalyzed labor market polarization – that is the simultaneous growth of high-education, high-wage and low-education/low-wage jobs at the expense of middle-skill jobs” (see, The Work of the Future, MIT, 2020) https://bit.ly/3wZw634.
[D]igital automation tends to displace middle-skill workers performing routine codifiable tasks, such as sales; office and administrative support; and production, craft and repair occupations. Figure 5 shows that in 1970, these middle-skill occupations accounted for more than a third (38 percent) of employment. By 2016, this share had fallen to less than one-quarter (23 percent) of employment. To be clear, this decline is not due solely to digitalization, as international trade added substantially to the displacement of middle-skill production and operative jobs during the 2000s.
Ironically, digitalization has had the smallest impact on the tasks of workers in low-paid manual and service jobs. Those positions demand physical dexterity, visual recognition, face-to-face communications, and situational adaptability. Such abilities remain largely out of reach of current hardware and software but are readily accomplished by adults with moderate levels of education.
As middle-skill occupations have declined, manual and service occupations have become an increasingly central job category for those with high school or lower education.
Thus, unlike the era of equitable growth that preceded it, the digital era has catalyzed labor market polarization – that is the simultaneous growth of high-education, high-wage and low-education, low-wage jobs at the expense of middle-skill jobs. This lopsided growth has concentrated labor market rewards among the most skilled and highly-educated workers while devaluing much of the non-specialized work that remains.
This imbalance contributes to the vast divergence of earnings between college- and non-college-educated workers in recent decades (The Work of the Future, 2020, p. 22) https://bit.ly/3wZw634).
There is a rapidly expanding internationalization of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Local economies are ever more integrated into complex webs of global relations. First, new global networks of production, fueled by increasing levels of international trade, foreign direct investment, migrant remittances, and capital flows – now approximately a trillion dollars each day – set the pace for socioeconomic life in every continent of earth. Second, production is increasingly deterritorialized by new media technologies as growing categories of work can be done – within clear limits[32] – nearly anywhere on earth. As Levy and Murnane argued over a decade ago (2007)[33] tasks that are rule-based and easily broken down into constituent units are easily outsourced: data for a tax company based in Boston are entered and synthesized in Bangalore, X-rays for a hospital in Brussels are read and analyzed in Buenos Aires – at a fraction of the cost. New communication networks, especially high-speed, low-cost connections and the digitization of data, are putting a premium on knowledge-intensive work.
Furthermore, global supply chains – “the vast network of factories, warehouses, and shipping conduits through which products flow” are changing the shape and place of work the world over” (See. Posner, 2019).[34] Over the past three decades the insertion of China, India, and the Russian Federations into the global system of production and distribution has added well over a billion workers to the worldwide labor force. As a result, today there are some half a billion educated Indians, Chinese, and Russians competing for jobs with graduates from universities in the Western world.
Global patterns of mobile capital and mobile production, are stimulating and accelerating internal and international labor migration. International migration has grown rapidly since the turn of the millennium (See Suárez-Orozco 2022).[35]
Education & Changing Media Technologies in the Age of Global Inequality
Across the globe digital technologies and new media platforms are transforming the ways we work, communicate, learn, worship and play. The place of new media in education is at once complex and paradoxical. The promise new media technologies afford to reach and engage children who currently have little or no opportunities to learn has been lauded the world over.
Children in faraway places with little infrastructure can learn to read via new creative apps. As a recent UNICEF report states, “if leveraged in the right way and universally accessible, digital technology can be a game changer for children being left behind – whether because of poverty, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, displacement or geographic isolation – connecting them to a world of opportunity and providing them with the skills they need to succeed in a digital world”.[36] The 2019 XPrize competition embodied one such endeavor.[37] With strong new media literacies in place, new technologies can be tools for what Pope Francis calls a “humane globalization”, fostering curiosity, engagement, and fraternity.
But new media in education also intensify educational inequities[38] and are creating new concerns in a number of basic educational domains, seriatim, (1) its long-term impacts on reading,[39] (2) socio-emotional learning,[40] (3) cyber bullying and (3) concerns that the new media undermine empathy (Ibid.), (4) give children and youth to access of inappropriate materials, and (5) can be lethally effective new tools for exploitation and trafficking of children and youth. The purposely designed addictive features found in new media platforms open another area of deep concern. So do the raise of online hatred and intolerance.
Qua education, Bridgit Barron, the Stanford scholar of education and technology, has noted “Although concerns about data privacy, access to inappropriate content, and increased potential for exploitation are raised, the [UNICEF] report also highlights the significant equity challenge reflected by growing evidence of differential use by children and youth with more and financial assets, digital skills, access to devices, or the quality and stability of their Internet connections that can help them use the technology in empowered ways. Over a third of youth worldwide do not have Internet access and most of these young people are in developing countries” (See Barron, 2022).[41]
The COVID-19 pandemic renewed expectations that new media would be deployed to effectively continue the education of children via remote teaching and learning. While there are excellent examples of good educational work during COVID conducted via the new technologies,[42] the evidence is mixed,
The COVID-19 pandemic saw schools the world over turn to digital technologies for continuing schooling millions of children. This rapid innovation has led to great enthusiasm about the potential for networked tools to provide more children with low-cost access to learning opportunities that might help minimize existing educational inequities. Ambitious initiatives to provide inexpensive computing power to those most in need have distributed networked laptops to children in remote villages and urban centers, in the hope that provision of access to content and modern tools would fuel learning. Although these experiments have yielded important insights, they largely failed to lead to significant transformation in educational practice (Gomez et al., 2022).[43]
Research suggest that schools vary widely in how well they envision the purposes of using technology, prepare their teachers, and provide the infrastructure for sustaining working tools and these uses correlate with affluence (Barron, 2022).[44] “A great deal of technology use also takes place outside school. Families leverage their own background knowledge, traditional literacy skills, values, and connections to knowledgeable social networks as they incorporate technology into their family routines in ways that might support children’s learning and social development. Significant gaps in preparation to leverage technology to connect homes and schools, unequal access to the Internet and devices, and differential teacher and parent knowledge have limited our capacity to sustain learning in a time of crisis” (Ibid.).[45]
Other scholars have noted that new media are failing to connect with the very students they would benefit the most – those from underserved communities. Gomez et al.,[46] provide two vivid examples,
Consider, for example, Sesame Street, one of the earliest innovations designed to bolster disadvantaged children’s literacy development. While generally hailed as a success, the innovation did not reach those for whom it was originally intended. Although middle and upper-middle-class families used Sesame Street extensively, it was underused by disadvantaged children, and families… Another example is Khan Academy, a well-conceived innovation that seeks to extend access to high-quality instructional materials. As an educational website with thousands of videos and other resources, Khan Academy allows anyone interested, as its tagline puts it, to “learn almost anything – for free”. Khan Academy holds the promise of revolutionary power for some of the world’s most disadvantaged students… While a study of the use of Khan Academy (see Murphy et al., 2014)[47] reports positive reception by teachers and students, it also reports significant variation across sites. In addition, data suggest that a majority of teachers believed that Khan Academy would be most useful for their most advanced students, and not the disadvantaged populations they were hoping to serve. For example, only 25% of teachers reported that Khan Academy resources would be effective with students who lag most behind their age group in mathematics. Perhaps, more often than we would naively expect, innovations like Sesame Street and Khan Academy, which are designed to assist those most in need, often experience underuse or potentially detrimental use (Gomez et al., 2022).[48]
Following Pope Francis’ radical call for an education global compact https://bit.ly/2UDedci, schools need to articulate a systematic approach to education consciously tailored for a new era of global solidarity and convivencia.[49] Solidarity and disrupting inequalities must be explicit priorities for education. Schools need to foreground education’s foundations in the virtues,[50] ethics,[51] morals,[52] civics[53] on the sense of purpose[54] and on bold humanistic ideals.[55] Schools the world over are endeavoring to develop innovations in student-centered, hands-on learning to nurture the new competencies and sensibilities better aligned to 21st Century economies and societies.[56]
In the 4th Industrial Revolution problem solving, articulating arguments and deploying verifiable facts or artifacts to substantiate and communicate it, learning to synthesize, learning to learn,[57] thinking about thinking (metacognition), and working and networking with others from different backgrounds will be favored in the opportunity structure. Students must also be prepared to work ethically with peers who are likely to be from different national, linguistic, religious, and racial backgrounds.[58] Fluency in multiple languages and intercultural skills to live, learn, and communicate with colleagues, peers, friends and neighbors, often from different countries will have a premium.[59]
Yet the ethos in most schools today is anachronistic to the new realities animating the world of children and youth. Precious few schools today are organized to nurture the mind and heart needed to engage in an ever more interconnected, miniaturized and fragile world. Too many school systems continue to teach sclerotic facts and struggle to cope with the increasing ambiguity, complexity, and linguistic, religious, and ethnic diversity that defines the reality of cities large and small around the world. The work of education in the twenty-first century will be to nurture and stimulate cognitive skills, interpersonal and cultural sensibilities of children and youth whose lives will be engaged in local contexts and yet will be suffused with larger transnational realities. We must redouble efforts to create, assess, and expand new models of education that are better synchronized with the economies and societies of today. The effervescence over the promise of new media technologies and platforms in education has been tempered. While there are significant opportunities, the challenges we outlined in this paper must be addressed.
Summary and Reflections
In this Chapter, first we examined some relevant data on education the world over. We established that significant progress continues to be made in terms of access to schooling the world over. But we must do better: today approximately 260 million children and youth are not enrolled in primary and secondary schools. Second, we examined the new normal: everywhere more is asked of education. It is the Camino Real for development and a driver of wellness. Third, we examined extreme poverty and marginalization as the grave undertow threatening to drawn millions of children. Millions of children lack the basic resources for life. To disrupt these obscene inequalities massive global investments in sustainable development – clean water, infrastructure, roads, new schools – need to be prioritized.[60] Institutions need to be set and strengthened to create and nourish new teacher preparation programs, public health programs, and community-based programs for adult literacy. New technologies – when carefully calibrated with proven curricula and supported teachers – can create new virtuous cycles even in remote corners of earth.
Fourth, we examined the catastrophic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and youth in schools. COVID showed the world the deepening inequalities of opportunities to learn that flow from country-of-origin, race, ethnicity and immigration background. COVID sent another 100 million human beings into poverty – intensifying extreme poverty and reversing years of progress. Fifth, we outlined the broad features of a conceptual model framing education in the current era of globalization. We examined the three “M’s” of globalization: (1) Markets (their integration and disintegration); (2) Media, the information, communication and social media technologies; and (3) Migration, the mass movement of labor on a planetary scale.
Sixth, we argued that the forces giving the 4th industrial revolution its kinetic momentum, inter alia, automation, robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Assisted Design will create demand for new skills to complement the technological advances in the work place. We outlined the nature of the new skills. The claims that the current version on the ongoing technological revolution augurs the end of work seem premature at best, alarmist at worst. So, schools will continue to search for better synchronicity with the changing nature of human work.
But the idea that schooling should factory belt delivering workers ready and relevant to today’s systems of production and distribution is vulgar and misses the nature of what schools do best.[61] Schooling as we now understanding it – first imagined by the Greeks – must endeavor to educate “the whole child for the whole world”.[62] Education must serve children and youth for “doing” and “living” well – the flourishing Aristotelian ideal of eudemonia. Education must also be to prepare youth for an ethical life of civic engagement, belonging, and participatory and transformative citizenship. And today more than ever schools must give children and youth all the tools – from sciences, the social sciences, the humanities and from ethics – to emerge as champions fighting unchecked climate change and environmental dystopia, the existential threat of our times.[63]
Education is more important than ever before in human history and we now have a much fuller understanding of the causal pathways by which education generates better health, a more engaged citizenry, and patterns of status mobility.[64] A strong corpus of sociological, demographic, economic, and psychological research has mapped the effects of education – measured most often by years of schooling on individual socio-economic mobility (human capital), social cohesion (social capital), and health and wellbeing (see Bloom and Ferranna, 2022).[65] The preponderance of evidence, for some time now, is hardly surprising: quality schooling tends to generate powerful virtuous cycles. Perhaps the most exciting of these findings is the general nexus between schooling, literacy, and health outcomes throughout the world.[66]
Above all schools at their best make children love life and embrace its fullness. I return to the teachings of the Holy Father Pope Francis:
The mission of school is to develop a sense of truth, of what is good and beautiful. And this occurs through a rich path made up of many ingredients. This is why there are so many subjects – because development is the results of different elements that act together and stimulate intelligence, knowledge, the emotions, the body, and so on. If something is true, it is good and beautiful; if it is beautiful; it is good and true; if it is good, it is true and it is beautiful. And together, these elements enable us to grow and help us to love life, even when we are not well, even in the midst of many problems. True education enables us to love life and opens us to the fullness of life”. Pope Francis Address with Italian school teachers, parents, educators, pupils and other workers, May 10, 2014
References and Notes
[1] United Nations. “The World’s Women 2015”. United Nations, United Nations, 2015. https://bit.ly/38579sd
[2] Sachs, Jeffrey. “Education and Inequality”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[3] Quoted in Bloom, David E. and Ferranna, Maddalena. “Education, Health, and Demography”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[4] Giannini, Stefania. “UNESCO and The Futures of Education”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[5] LeVine, R.A., LeVine, S., Schnell-Anzola, B., Rowe, M.L., & Dexter, E. (2011). Literacy and mothering: How women’s schooling changes the lives of the world’s children. Oxford University Press.
[6] Bloom et al., “Education, Health, and Demography”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[7] United Nations, “The World’s Women 2015”. https://bit.ly/37ZYV4I
[8] Roser, Max, and Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban. “Literacy”. Our World in Data. OurWorldInData.org, August 13, 2016. https://ourworldindata.org/literacy
[9] See, Rebecca Winthrop and Lauren Ziegler. “No learner left behind: Embracing the leapfrog mindset to achieve the SDGs”. Brookings, Wednesday, September 25, 2019. https://brook.gs/2Wbn71l
[10] Banks, James A., Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, and Miriam Ben-Peretz, eds. Global migration, diversity, and civic education: Improving policy and practice. Teachers College Press, 2016. https://bit.ly/3kfo2WN
[11] In Europe, the failure to properly educate the children of Muslim immigrants became clear as the results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study sent shockwaves as countries such as Germany confronted their poor records in educating their neediest pupils – those originating in refugee and immigrant-headed homes. See, Süssmuth, Rita. “On the need for teaching intercultural skills”. Learning in the global era: International perspectives on globalization and education (2007): 195-290. https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS. See also Crul 2019 https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS. In the United States, the enduring racial achievement gap, as well as the very uneven educational trajectories of the children of Latin American, Caribbean, and some Asian immigrants – now the fastest growing sector of the U.S. child population – augurs trouble ahead as the new economy is increasingly unforgiving of those without the skills and credentials required for functioning in the knowledge-intensive sector of the opportunity structure, and as a high-school diploma has yielded steadily diminishing returns (see, for example, Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova 2007) https://bit.ly/2WeoxrO. The results of these general trends are painfully obvious in multiple measurable ways: from the high dropout rates among immigrant, ethnic, and racial minorities in many wealthy countries, to stark differences in achievement patterns between native and racialized minorities . See for example Hugonnier, Bernard. “Globalization and education”, in Learning in the global era: International perspectives on globalization and education (2007): 137-157 https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS; Wikan, Unni. “Rethinking Honor in Regard to Human Rights” in Learning in the global era: International perspectives on globalization and education (2007) https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS
[12] Sir Isaac Newton’s words echo through the ages: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”. https://bit.ly/3gTfXGS
[13] Suárez-Orozco, Carola, and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. Transformations: Immigration, family life, and achievement motivation among Latino adolescents. Stanford University Press, 1995.
[14] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “Hunger-Facts”. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2021. http://www.fao.org/zhc/hunger-facts/en/
[15] Head Start of the US Department of and Human Services defines school readiness as, “… foundational across early childhood systems and programs. It means children are ready for school, families are ready to support their children’s learning, and schools are ready for children. Head Start views school readiness as children possessing the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for success in school and for later learning and life. Physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development are all essential ingredients of school readiness. Managers, teaching staff, caregivers, family advocates, and families can learn more about creating enriching and supportive learning environments for young children ages birth to 5”. https://bit.ly/3B2yDeI
[16] World Health Organization. UNICEF-WHO low birthweight estimates: levels and trends. https://uni.cf/3sDM5mo
[17] World Hunger Education Service. “World Hunger, Poverty Facts, Statistics 2018”. World Hunger News. World Hunger Education Service, November 29, 2018. https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/
[18] Mercy Corps. “The Facts: What You Need to Know about Global Hunger”. Mercy Corps, August 4, 2020. https://www.mercycorps.org/blog/quick-facts-global-hunger
[19] Lipina, Sebastian. “Child Poverty and Cognition: Developmental and Educational Implications”, in Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[20] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Hunger-Facts: “Maternal and child undernutrition contributes to 45 percent of deaths in children under five. As a consequence, life expectancy at birth in low-income countries is on average two decades less than in high-income countries. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “Latest Issue: SOFI 2020”. FAO. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2021. http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/
[21] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “Hunger-Facts”. http://www.fao.org/zhc/hunger-facts/en/
[22] United Nations. “United Nations Millennium Development Goals”. United Nations. United Nations, n.d.. https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/education.shtml
[23] Giannini, Stefania. “UNESCO and The Futures of Education”, in Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[24] UNICEF. “UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore’s Remarks at a Press Conference on New Updated Guidance on School-Related Public Health Measures in the Context of COVID-19”. UNICEF, June 17, 2021. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-executive-director-henrietta-fores-remarks-press-conference-new-updated
[25] Gettleman, Jeffrey, and Suhasini Raj. “As Covid-19 Closes Schools, the World’s Children Go to Work”. The New York Times. The New York Times, September 27, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/world/asia/covid-19-india-children-school-education-labor.html
[26] Giannini, Stefania. “UNESCO and The Futures of Education”, in Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[27] UNICEF. “COVID-19: Schools for More than 168 Million Children Globally Have Been Completely Closed for Almost a Full Year, Says UNICEF”. UNICEF, June 3, 2021. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/schools-more-168-million-children-globally-have-been-completely-closed
[28] Bloom, David E. and Ferranna, Maddalena. “Education, Health, and Demography”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[29]Barron, Brigid. “Education & Technology for Equity in Learning Opportunities”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[30] World Bank estimates that “Global extreme poverty is expected to rise in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years as the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic compounds the forces of conflict and climate change, which were already slowing poverty reduction progress… The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction. See “COVID-19 to Add as Many as 150 Million Extreme Poor by 2021” https://bit.ly/3kdU1GX
[31] Coatsworth, John H. “Globalization, growth, and welfare in history”. In Globalization: Culture and education in the new millennium 38 (2004): 55. https://bit.ly/3miWFxX
[32] Casselman, Ben. “The White-Collar Job Apocalypse That Didn’t Happen”. The New York Times. The New York Times, September 27, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/business/economy/jobs-offshoring.html?searchResultPosition=1
[33] Levy, Frank, and Richard Murnane. “How computerized work and globalization shape human skill demands”. Learning in the global era: International perspectives on globalization and education (2007): 158-174. https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS
[34] Posner, Miriam, Jill Lepore, and Jeffrey Marlow. “The Software That Shapes Workers’ Lives”. The New Yorker, 2019. https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-software-that-shapes-workers-lives
[35] Suárez-Orozco, Carola. “Countering Cascading Xenophobia: Educational Settings at the Frontline”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[36] UNICEF. “Children in a Digital World – UNICEF”. UNICEF Division of Communication, 2017. https://www.unicef.org/media/48601/file
[37] The 2019 XPrize awarded by Elon Musk – disclosure, I served in the Board of Advisors of the 2019 Education XPrize – was awarded to KitKit School out of South Korea and the U.S., and onebillion, operating in Kenya and the U.K. Xprize set its 2019 award to support the development of scalable services that could enable children to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills within 15 months. The tests required each competing platform to be field-tested in Swahili, reaching nearly 3,000 children in 170 villages across Tanzania. Kitkit School, with a team from Berkeley, Calif. and Seoul, developed a program with a game-based core and flexible learning architecture to help kids learn independently, while onebillion merged numeracy content with literacy material to provide directed learning and activities alongside monitoring to personalize responses to children’s needs. Shieber, Jonathan. “Xprize Names Two Grand Prize Winners in $15 Million Global Learning Challenge”. TechCrunch. TechCrunch, May 16, 2019. https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/15/xprize-names-two-grand-prize-winners-in-15-million-global-learning-challenge/
[38] See “Children in a Digital World – UNICEF, 2017”. https://uni.cf/3khSwaT
[39] Wolf, Maryanne. “The Future of Literacy in a Digital Culture: Reconciling the Promise and Perils in our ‘Hinge Moment’”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[40] Katzir, Tami. “The Feeling of Reading in a Changing World: From Neurons to Narratives”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[41] Barron. “Education & Technology for Equity in Learning Opportunities”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[42] Reimers, Fernando M., Uche Amaechi, Alysha Banerji, and Margaret Wang. “Can universities and schools learn together? Connecting research, teaching and outreach to sustain educational opportunity during a pandemic”. An educational calamity (2021): 3.
[43] Gomez, Louis M., Biag, Manuelito, and Imig, David G. “Improvement Science: The Social Glue that Helps Helpers Help?”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[44] Barron. “Education & Technology for Equity in Learning Opportunities”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[45] Barron. “Education & Technology for Equity in Learning Opportunities”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[46] Gomez, Louis M., Biag, Manuelito, and Imig, David G. “Improvement Science: The Social Glue that Helps Helpers Help?”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[47] Murphy, Robert, Larry Gallagher, Andrew E. Krumm, Jessica Mislevy, and Amy Hafter. “Research on the Use of Khan Academy in Schools”. Menlo Park: SRI International. 2014. https://www.sri.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/khan-academy-implementation-report-2014-04-15.pdf
[48] Gomez, et al. “Improvement Science: The Social Glue that Helps Helpers Help?”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[49] Exemplary models abound, see, inter alia, Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo M., and Carolyn Sattin,“Educating the Whole Child for the Whole World: The Ross School Model and Education for the Global Era”. New York University Press, October 6, 2010. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/educating-the-whole-child-for-the-whole-world-marcelo-suarez-orozco/1100311595?A=9780814741405
[50] Gardner, Howard. “On Educating the Three Virtues: A Hegelian Approach”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[51] Hosle, Vittorio. “Ethics in Education and Education of Ethics”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[52] Zamagni, Stefano. “Education as a Moral Responsibility”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[53] Rogers, John. “Educating for Democracy in Contentious Times”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[54] Damon, William, and Colby, Anne “Education and the Life of Purpose”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[55] Giannini, Stefania. “UNESCO and The Futures of Education”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[56] Winthrop, Rebecca, and Lauren Ziegler. “No Learner Left behind: Embracing the Leapfrog Mindset to Achieve the SDGs”. Brookings. Brookings, September 25, 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2019/09/25/no-learner-left-behind-embracing-the-leapfrog-mindset-to-achieve-the-sdgs/?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=77405249
[57] “Going to school means opening your mind and heart to reality in all its richness and various dimensions. If one learns how to learn – this is the secret, learning to learn – this will stay with you forever”. Pope Francis, “Humanity, Ethics Must Be at Center of AI Technology, Pope Says”. Catholic News Service, February 28, 2020. https://www.catholicnews.com/humanity-ethics-must-be-at-center-of-ai-technology-pope-says/
[58] Gardner, Howard, and Veronica Boix Mansilla. “1. From Teaching Globalization To Nurturing Global Consciousness”. In Learning in the global era, pp. 47-66. University of California Press, 2007. https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS
[59] Michikyan, Minas, and Carola Suárez-Orozco. “Adolescent media and social media use: implications for development”. (2016): 411-414.
[60] Suárez-Orozco, Carola. “Countering Cascading Xenophobia: Educational Settings at the Frontline”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[61] The world is facing multiple crises – pandemics, environmental and climate change catastrophes, racism and xenophobia, growing inequality and extreme poverty. Stefania Giannini (2022) argues, we have “an education crisis that mirrors a wider global crisis, one that is social, moral and environmental”. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva Tired-old claims, silver bullets, and magical thinking will no longer do. Nor will averting our gaze to growing inequities in education. Schools, the world over, must endeavor to educate the whole child for the whole world. “Through a humanistic and holistic vision of education and development, which cannot simply be framed in terms of economic growth, learners need the knowledge and the values to live meaningful and purposeful lives in harmony with others and the planet” (Giannini, 2022). https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva Schools need to be laboratories reclaiming the shared ethical principles of reciprocity, solidarity, equity, inclusion, and fighting all forms of discrimination.
[62] Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. and Sattin, Carolyn, “Learning in the Global Era”. https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS
[63] Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and V. Ramanathan, opinion contributors. “Climate Change: Students, Finally, Are on Fire”. The Hill. The Hill, September 26, 2019. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/463304-climate-change-students-finally-are-on-fire
[64] Suarez-Orozco and Sattin, Carolyn. “Learning in the global era”. https://bit.ly/3mo8tyS
[65] Bloom and Ferranna, 2022, “Education, Health, and Demography”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva
[66] Bloom and Ferranna, 2022, “Education, Health, and Demography”. In Education: The Global Compact In A Time Of Crisis. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://bit.ly/3j7Rpva