Neither developed nor developing nations have begun to prepare young people for the demands of the global economy; nor does schooling anywhere adequately respond to the massive migration of families whose home languages, cultures, and social structures differ from those in the new host nation. Besides providing vivid and rigorous accounts of the shifting population patterns, employment markets, and cultural and political change, this fascinating book presents promising educational innovations that put student engagement and the global context for learning at the center. No other book so effectively joins emerging research on cognition and learning with the political and economic challenges of globalization.
Martha Minow, Harvard Law School, and co-editor of Engaging Cultural Differences
Learning in the Global Era is a masterful book. Each of the essays, exquisitely arranged and coordinated by the editor, is a memorable example of rigorous interdisciplinary analysis and insight into emerging global issues. The range of concerns--from nurturing a global consciousness and appreciating the simultaneous cultural patterns that children develop in global cities, often through their own migration, to the effects of gender-specific dilemmas in global classrooms-makes this book a compendium for more than understanding a world which challenges many traditional assumptions. But reading it does more; it makes us mindful of the difficulty and also of the necessary creativity involved in learning and teaching today. I am grateful for its lessons and the readers will be, too.
Doris Sommer, Harvard University
Globalization is transforming entire economies and cultures, but schools and schooling have not kept pace. Marcelo Suárez Orozco has assembled a set of thoughtful and incisive essays by international experts that show how globalization makes it imperative to rethink and reform the education of children in every part of the planet. Educating citizens in the advanced countries to understand global society and cultural differences, increasing access to education in the developing world while teaching new skills, finding ways to help immigrants adapt and succeed in their new surroundings--all these essential tasks are addressed in this important book.
John H. Coatsworth, Columbia University
How should this generation of youth, the largest ever in human history, be educated? How do we make sure all youth have access to quality education? What cognitive skills, interpersonal sensibilities, and ethical norms should be nourished in youth to live and thrive in our global world? Learning in the Global Era addresses these and other questions with both scholarly rigor and humane concern. It brings together leading international scholars-- including anthropologists, cognitive scientists, economists, education scholars, linguists, neuroscientists, and psychologists with extensive research experience in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, to examine the education of youth for the 21st Century. It is a work that breaks new ground by locating learning and youth engagement in the ever more complex economic, social, and cultural realities that define the world's global cities.
Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, and High Commissioner for Human Rights
