Teaching Outside the Lines: Education History for a World in Motion

Abstract

Lurking in the shadows of education history are networks of human interaction, transcultural encounters, forms of global connection, and dispersed sites of cultural teaching and learning that are barely visible in the master narratives of education history. This is no surprise really. Who would have thought a half-century ago that we would become witnesses and participants in an increasingly interconnected world, bound together by global systems of commerce, transnational structures of communication, tsunami-proportion migratory flows, and ever more complex and puzzling transcultural encounters? Who could have imagined that a rising generation of globally conscious, mobile, and empowered young people—the progeny of Marshall McLuhan, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg—could refashion social and cultural networks, produce novel communicative and linguistic forms, mobilize worldwide social movements, inspire political action, unravel regimes of governance, and shape the contours of cultural life worldwide? Who could have imagined that historians of education would need to situate education history in relationship to newly evolving educational contexts of dazzling and unprecedented diversities: where encounters between total strangers from around the globe are the stuff of daily life in schools; the contours of community life and bonds of affiliation are trans-local, poly-focal, and subject to negotiation; where time-honored habits of heart, mind, and association are multitudinous and deeply challenged; where the languages of instruction, communication, and daily discourse are continually shifting and fusing; where designations of insiders and outsiders are manifold and fluid? Who could have imagined that sites of teaching and learning could become geographically unbound, disentangled from life in face-to-face communities, and the traditional boundaries of nation-state and imperial empire?