Preparing Future Leaders:

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Preparing Future Leaders

• How Education Can Confront Global Challenges

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High Noon 20 global problems 20 years to solve
them by Jean-Francois Rischard
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20 Global Problems.

• What are they?

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20 GLOBAL PROBLEMS, 20 YEARS TO SOLVE THEM
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Causes?

• 2 global areas are producing massive change and
  increased complexity on this planet and are
  running ahead of our ability to manage them
• population increase and
• the new economy
• 3-9 billion people from 1960 2055 95 years
  less than 3 generations
• Global GDP from 6 trillion to 140 trillion

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Ecological footprint overshootthe next 50 year
in perspective

• 1960 3 billion 6 trillion .5 planets
• easily sustainable
• 2005 6 billion 40 trillion 1.25 planets
• already operating on Credit
• 2055 9 billion 140 trillion 2.25 planets
• this will not work!
• on current trends our children will inherit
  disaster and hardship
• Ill be 85, daughters will be 52/49, with
  teenage-ish children

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Why this growth is a problem

• 5 growth ratetoo fastputs the planet into
  overdrive
• These 2 forces produce more change and complexity
  than we are able to handleexponentialcreating
  too much change and complexity that it
  overwhelms the human institutions
• hierarchies that move slowly creating a
  governance gapDog years vs bureaucratic /turtle
  years clash between forces.

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Dog years

• Illustration1 actual year 7 years of change in
  population growth and economic change conversely
  it takes 7 years to create 1 year of political
  changethe purveyors of policy change lag sorely
  behind the forces of global change
• Our governments cant keep up due to the nature
  of our global government systems Nation States
  (territorial with short election cycles.)

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The exception

• Of all the current global concerns, most
  solutions have resulted in failure.
• Exceptionthe hole in the ozone layer. The
  culprit was easy to identify (6 industries) and
  then change the technology for a quick and
  efficient solution.
• Four observations regarding current problems
• They all have solutions
• Not that costly 1 trillion a year of a 40
  trillion global gdp just 3
• We have less than 20 years to act
• Yet, none of them is being solved

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My Point!?

• The worlds urgent need for a new approach to
  global problem solvingcrucial role of education
  in fixing them as education transcends
  boundaries.
• AP is taking a leadership role in developing a
  curricula that leans towards global awareness.

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It begins with us

• 5-18 year olds
• They need a working Knowledge of how the world
  changing and why.
• Action what can be done to solve them and why
  arent they being solved and what can I do?
• Mindset how can I be first a global citizen,
  second a national citizen, 3rd a local citizen.
• Very different from the American Way of life.

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Related text

• Martin ReesOUR FINAL HOUR
• The bottom line of this message is that the
  source of humanity's biggest threat is not
  Capitalism, or Communism, or Fundamentalism, or
  Atheism, but rather from the hubris of any and
  every human individual or group willing to place
  their convictions and commitments before those of
  any and all others.

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William Sheridan on Our Final Hour

• Humans have grown so smart and so smug that they
  seem to be able to rationalize why they would
  rather be "dead instead" of any of the
  ideological alternatives, no matter what the
  cost.

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William Sheridan on Our Final Hour

• Humanity's surplus of technical ingenuity has
  lead to weapons of mass destruction, genetically
  modified organisms, drug-resistant diseases,
  declining environmental resilience, "bio" or
  "cyber" errorism or terrorism, and conditions of
  increasing inequality (income disparity, digital
  divide, ethnic prejudice, gender discrimination).
  Humanity's deficit of moral sensibility leads
  most of those on the beneficiary side of such
  inequalities to shrug and blame such conditions
  on the global market, the culture of poverty,
  genetic differences, or environmental scarcities,
  but NEVER themselves!

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William Sheridan on Our Final Hour

• Who is to blame? Almost all of humanity! Everyone
  who does not live their life so that there is a
  convergence between their own, their group's, and
  humanity's interests, is undermining the
  conditions of their own sustainability. If we
  persist in such destructive behavior we are
  jeopardizing our own existence and that of the
  entire biosphere.

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Most important tests?

• If global problems are what our students and
  children are going to face, what sort of
  essential questions pertaining to global issues
  should an 18 year old be able to talk about?
• What classes lend themselves to these issues?

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How this relates to AP

• AP history and social sciences 2007
• 1,001,963 39 of all AP exams (39)
• Of these one million test
• US History 33
• Human Geography 5
• Environmental Sci. 3
• Comparative Gov. 1

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What are you prepared to do?-- the untouchables

• Small but deliberate steps in and out of the
  classroom
• Non-fiction will have a global focus
• Student writing will address global concerns
• Encourage students seeking mentoring projects to
  examine the possibility of attacking a global
  problem
• Challenge friends, colleagues, students to read
  High Noon with me

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Other Possibilities

• Global issues network (GIN)
• www.EARCOS.org has materials online
• An addition to Model UN an extension where the
  objective moves beyond modeling and the practice
  it provides to real innovation and working
  together in the real world to change the world.
• Perhaps send a delegation to the GIN conference
  2009 in Washington DC

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Even more ideas

• Grow the Freshmen Service project to an ongoing
  program that a student can develop into a Senior
  Service project.
• Freshmen year serve Lexington (find a need-
  food bank)
• Sophomore year serve Kentucky (lobby gov. for
  more food for low income families)
• Junior year serve America (lobby congress)
• Senior year serve The World (raise money and
  awareness for the worlds starving children)

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Just a thought--