The improvement of international education in U.S. schools cries out for strong national leadership. Ms. Kagan and Ms. Stewart, guest editors of this special section, make the case that helping students become globally competent citizens is crucial the future prosperity and security of the United States, and they discuss strategies for making this happen. THROUGHOUT this special section, as in of the documents used in its preparation, the call for a greater focus on international education (IE) is sounded loudly. The contributors this section have used the terms international education and international studies refer the intentional preparation of American students -- prekindergarten through college -- be citizens, workers, and leaders in the interconnected world of the 21st century. Given that the nation's political and economic leaders have voiced concerns that we are not preparing our students succeed in a globalized world and that we have a system of universal K-12 public education in which some schools have adopted some excellent and diverse IE models, one might think that IE is a brainer! It is not. In contemporary America, IE is the coveted jewel of a limited number of forward-looking academics, practitioners, and advocates. According Robert Scott, president of Adelphi University, IE has been the subject of many calls, but little with global illiteracy the result.1 Many reports and commissions have noted the problem, including the Perkins Commission on Languages and International Studies in the 1970s; the Carter Administration's Simon Commission, which called for significantly greater attention foreign languages; reports from the American Council on Education in the 1980s calling for the internationalization of higher education; and reports from the Asia Society and the National Geographic Society in 2001 and 2002 respectively. Both the Clinton Administration and the current Bush Administration have supported an emphasis on IE. In 2002, at the first States Institute on International Education in the Schools, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige declared that to meet our goal leave no child behind, we must shift our focus from current practice and encourage programs that introduce our students international studies earlier in their education, starting in kindergarten. To be sure, the press for international education is not entirely new, with some of the clarion calls being backed by action, especially in higher education. For 50 years the federal government has supported, primarily for national security purposes, the development of area studies, international studies, and language centers produce scholars and experts in major world regions. Moreover, in the past 15 years, higher education institutions have been trying internationalize their curriculum, encourage students study abroad, and promote the international exchange of faculty.2 Although K-12 education lags behind higher education, some states have added language their social studies standards that encourages teaching about world regions, history, geography, or religions. Despite these advances, so far there has been little change in K-12 classrooms or in the general state of American students' knowledge of the world. Why have American schools been so inward looking? One can speculate on possible reasons for this tendency -- geography, economy, history, ideology. Compared European countries, the United States is a huge continental landmass, isolated by two enormous oceans. Its large domestic market has meant that international trade was, until recently, a relatively small part of the economy. New immigrants, fleeing repression at home, often wanted forget where they had come from, which corresponded well with the mission of U.S. schools create a new nation by Americanizing these immigrants. Two world wars fueled Americans' sense of isolationism and contributed intense suspicion of those who spoke languages other than English. …
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May 1, 2007
Mary W Kudless + 1
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