Global Villages

In one of our readings for our CI501 class, we read about global villages. The concept of a global village is a reference to a world-wide community of people who have come together through the capabilities of technology. The tone of the article we read was fairly negative about global villages, giving examples of it destroying cultures. However, I disagree with this. I think global villages are a good thing in that they allow people from all over the world to come together and learn about and from each other. Sure there can be miscommunications and other problems, but you can have those same sorts of issues in face-to-face groups as well. Someday, if translation capabilities improve, people from the United States could more easily converse with people from other countries. We should welcome and embrace these new capabilities.

Global villages affect K-12 classrooms in various ways. Global villages can be organized around certain websites, message boards, or Wikis. Kids may be exposed to ideas these global villages believe in which may conflict with cultural beliefs they have. Global villages can also be of great help in some ways. If there is a community of experts on a certain subject matter, allowing kids to converse with these experts can lead to more in-depth research into the subject. Participating in a global village requires good, clear communication and exposing kids to this can be a good thing.

My job as a software engineer has forced me to interact with people all over the world. I have worked with labs in Mexico, India, China, and other parts of the world. At times this has been challenging due to the time zone differences, cultural differences, and maybe more importantly language differences. However, these communications have provided me with new experiences and new ideas that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Exposing our K-12 students to individuals across the United States and world will give them a chance to grow as well.

Moral Philosophy and Teacher's Role

Our class recently read chapter 1.2 in a book by Louis Pojman. The chapter was titled “What is Moral Philosophy?”. This chapter lists five purposes for morality:

1. To keep society from falling apart.
2. To ameliorate human suffering.
3. To promote human flourishing.
4. To resolve conflicts of interest in just and orderly ways.
5. To assign praise and blame, reward, and punishment, and guilt. (Pojman, 1995)

I agree with these to some extent, but think Pojman’s description of the problems without morality are a bit extreme. I do think society would fall apart without some sense of morality. Morals contribute to the making of laws, which provide a framework upon which individuals can live their lives. I think today there is a wide range in the amounts of morality that people have. Some people are very moral and some are not. I think it will always be that way. It’s sort of like the checks and balances system we have in government. Moral people are needed to balance the immoral.

When applied to education, what is the teacher’s role? Youth learn and grow a great deal from parents/role models. Ideally, parents, religion, and society as a whole, would contribute to instilling the morals and values in youth. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be good enough these days. There are too many kids these days that grow up in households lacking in model moral behavior. Teachers need to help reinforce and instill some common moral values. If we didn’t have some expectations for student behavior, instruction would be disrupted and ineffective. I think it’s especially important to put an emphasis on instilling these moral values in the earlier grades. As kids start getting to the middle school ages, they start becoming more set in their moral values.

Reference:

Pojman, L (1995). What is Moral Philosophy?, Technology and values (pp. 11-23).