Mark's Learning Log

Certainly one of the more challenging speakers at the recent World Convention of Principals was Kishore Mahbubani. For those not familiar with Kishore or his work, and I was one of them, he is currently a Professor in Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and has published 3 significant books as as well as a string of articles.

His latest book “The New Asian Hemisphere” challenges certainly some of my Western thinking.

In a recent interview by Forbes on the book he talks about the multiple forces in Asia [China, India, Japan and the more recently Korea and Vietnam] as the economic tigers that will shape the new world. He talked about the power and influence of Western economic nations diminishing – although he acknowledges that America is still a powerful economy.

He challenges us when he says that 88% of the world population live outside Western Countries and they see the world a little differently. He continues to challenge those in the West to give up some their dominance of the global institutions – World Bank or UN Security Council so that the transition to a multi civilisation dominance can emerge without tensions or conflicts.

At the convention he talked about a number of great paradoxes – two of which were:

1. The globalisation of western education has led to the end of western domination
2. Successful societies have open minds and that the western minds which have opened the minds of the rest of the world are now becoming closed.

The context of western domination over the past 200 years he reasoned emerged during the industrial revolution. Prior to that for almost 1800 years the dominate cultures he asserted were in the Asian and Middle East areas with China and India at the forefront.

The first paradox he then expanded upon by saying that the western education systems have modernised the world  by encouraging critical and creative thinking and focusing on Science and Technology. He described it as an education that lights the fire in our own  minds as opposed systems that poured facts into minds [wrote learning methods which still apparently prevail in some parts of China] like trying to fill a bucket. The paradox is that Asian countries are now importing the principles of western education into their public education systems or exporting students to western schools and universities. Once the major Asian forces had embedded western education into their countries they, with their resources and workforce will again re-emerge as the dominate forces once again.  

The other paradox he spoke about was that at the same Asian countries became more open minded through western education the west was adopting their former position which might be considered closed minded. He use the invasion of Iraq as an example of closed minded western intellectuals not looking at the poor results that history shows about invading armies. This intellectual arrogance lead to cultural arrogance.

Kishore then made 2 suggestions to cope with these paradoxes:

1. Continue to globalise western education for with it comes modernisation. As modernisation enters the Islamic worlds they will become more middle class and conservative. This Islamic conservatism will dissapate the current fear of Islam held by many western countries. He used the example of Japan to demonstrate how modernisation changed the Japanese culture.
2. Inject more non western elements into the curriculum so that we can begin to understand different cultures. He quoted how there were 1,000,000  teachers of French and only 40,000 teachers of Mandarin in the USA. He talked about this globalisation challenge e.g. financial crisis or climate change where no one country by themselves can resolve the issues.

He used a great analogue of 192 countries that might have seen as separate boats at one time and with the planet shrinking thanks to globalisation and we now need to think of the 192 countries as cabins on the same boat without a captain and no-one looking after the ship.

In his summary he talked about the principle that all humans are equal and deserving of the same opportunities to develop their capacity. He quotes an example of “untouchable” in Indian being shunned in schools getting a PH.D and is now a chief economist for a major bank in India. He talked about China lifting 400 million people out of poverty in the last 50 years as they opened up to the world.

He talked about one of the significant challenges was to raise the wage for over a billion people around the world from $1 to $2 a day which would make a dramatic change in their lives. The other challenge was for the top 1 billion people to sacrifice some of their life style e.g. via a greater tax on oil so that green energy sources can be funded. 

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR US HERE IN THE WESTERN WORLD AND FOR ME IN MELBOURNE ??

Readers of my blog will know that we have started to teach Mandarin as a language other than English at Elsternwick Primary. We are starting to develop Asian Perspectives across our Inquiry focused units although it will take a little time to mean more than just learning to cook Asian food in a healthy eating unit- although this is a good start.

What this is starting to do is challenge my thinking on “global classrooms and their connections to non western countries” and our mutual responsibilities to contribute to resolving some of the world problems on poverty and climate change.

I’d be interested in hearing other perspectives on these ideas.