THIS SUMMER I learned that the world might as well be flat, because as far as the public education system is concerned, that's what we've been teaching our kids.
When I began to set up my camp classroom for this summer's course on the United Nations and current events, I was prepared to teach impressionable 12- and 13-year-olds a world of knowledge about foreign affairs, political posturing and why history has unfolded into this great imbalance that we call earth. I even developed a curriculum where my students would have the opportunity to work as model ambassadors, representing different parts of the world and discussing important issues like war, disease, famine and the environment.
Sure, I was uncertain that their pre-pubescent minds would be able to wrap fully around some of the more complex issues, but I was certain that by summer's end there would be some measure accomplished. I knew that if I played my cards just right, these kids would learn a bit more about what it means to be from a different culture, speak a different language and have divergent outlooks upon life. The hand I was dealt, however, was something that I wasn't so prepared for, and the very first day of classes was merely a sign of the mission I had to accomplish.
Almost immediately I could tell that the series of national flags arrayed around the room had little bearing on them and that the maps of the world were little more than a wash of colors and hues. Some of Washington, D.C.'s best and brightest students couldn't differentiate a map of the United States from a map of the world, make sense of the seven continents or distinguish the fact that colors on a map do not signify the colors of the actual landscape. Even a few of the camp counselors, themselves college-age students, couldn't identify whether or not Egypt was in Asia or Africa.
A conversation describing that flat maps are simply elongated models of our very round earth took me by surprise, and I had to stop and wonder, "Where did their real teachers go wrong?" I couldn't blame my students for their erroneous global judgments, but I couldn't proceed either by simply talking about other parts of the world when these boys and girls had little idea about our own nation.
Over the course of the summer, I was able to backtrack and help them make better sense of our globe, but surely no one summer -- and certainly no one man -- wouldbe enough to explain the history of the world and the sum of its parts. I asked my students, "Why don't you guys know about places outside of your neighborhood?" And the resounding response was that their school systems do not teach it to them.
More and more across the nation, the public education system has been pulling funding for essential skills subjects in children's development such as athletics, music, the arts and social studies due to an increase in favor of traditional subjects like math, reading and the sciences. With the inception of the No Child Left Behind Act, schools have been mandated that their students require competency in math and reading above all else; and with states like Virginia demanding that students pass the state Standards of Learning exams, subjects that do not remain on the testing radar become minimized and eventually phased out.
Although local school officials and state legislators recognize the fact that the holistic education of their students is compromised by these measures, there is little they can do when testing standards and tight fiscal budgets are becoming the norm in school systems nationwide.
They understand that our school systems' neglect of world history, government and global studies will have an increasingly negative effect on our children who will not be afforded the opportunity to learn more about the world outside their window. Students whose talents lie outside of the simple reading, writing and arithmetic standards of learning will not feel the true benefits of a public education. They won't develop a full concept of what it means to be from somewhere different, and above all, it will be the disadvantaged students who suffer the most in these harsh economic times where both good teachers and good textbooks may be hard to come by.
Although I enjoyed my summer and view my classroom experience as a success, I always wonder whether or not the classes my students go back to in September will focus on the greater world, its problems and possible solutions in the way I hope mine did. I worry whether these impressionable young men and women will begin to develop the notion that theirs is an ever-egocentric view of the world limited only by the scope of their understanding and their frame of reference back home in the District of Columbia. I wonder whether students elsewhere will surpass them because they had unlimited access to computers, maps, newspapers and educators who brought the world to them as if it were no bigger than their neighborhoods.
My only hope is that these students can see that there are opportunities the world over. They just have to look beyond their doorsteps, as well as their classrooms.
(Kazz Alexander Pinkard's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at kpinkard@cavalierdaily.com.)
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