Dr. William Gaudelli’s op-ed article on Global Education was published today in Maplewood, New Jersey’s local newspaper. Dr. Gaudelli serves on the South Orange Maplewood School District Board of Education.
Dr. Gaudelli writes, “I have the good fortune of speaking about global education with educators, scholars and policymakers around the world as part of my work. What is most remarkable is that no matter where I go, the global is always somewhere else. Global, this loose signifier of our time, is too often used as a means of deflecting the real problems that are close to home. Local concerns are often viewed dismissively as too parochial to concern the globally-minded. When visiting a school in Jordan, I observed two students who rendered a map of the Middle East and blacked out Israel from the map. When I queried the Minister of Education about this glaring misrepresentation, he explained that this was too sensitive an issue to raise in schools. I point to this example to illustrate the tension yet there are so many other examples. Such an approach teaches students to think about their lives in an alienating manner, to encourage them to fix their gaze on others problems rather than to see the difficulties of their own community against the wider backdrop of the world.”
To read the full article, click here.
