Kids Are Our Future

From technical view, the global world is also becoming a digital world. Technology skill is one of the keys to succeed. In traditional class, basically, a teacher is talking; the students are listening and then they doing homework. Now students are expected to be much more involved. In U.S there are many schools, classes instead of using chalkboards, they use interactive whiteboards. Wireless handheld responders also are used for students to quickly answer questions. Computer software, Palms, iPods and blogs are used as assistant tools as well.

Although the digital divide exists due to geographic, economic, educational, and social conditions, most people in the world use Internet, which provides a rich environment for knowledge sharing. Significant innovation in technologies of the ubiquitous network, including RFID, sensor network, and mobile communications, provides a global world with open source, open content, open courseware, and open standards.

All these help parents and children to learn how to leverage technology and online resources to provide structured experiences deepen our understanding of the world
We certainly realize that facing the global economic challenges, we need educate children to have a deep vein of creativity, which enables them to keep generating innovative products and services.

Because the global world has multi-dimensions, multi-disciplinary skills are required. Businesses are looking for the next generation equipped with both IT and business expertise, called “T-shaped” skills by money.cnn.com. Business skills are represented by the horizontal line of the “T,” and technical skills are represented by the vertical line.

We need tell our children that top prospects need understand the dynamics of the globally integrated enterprise, working with across geographically distributed teams, and using open source technologies to address global world business challenges. We also need educate our children using multi-disciplinary approach which covers technology, relationship, culture and economics, in order to help our children succeed in the global society.

By Lustig and Koester (2003), culture is defined as “a learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, and norms, which affect the behaviors of a relatively large group of people.” Therefore, culture goes far beyond the food and clothing of ones’ native country.

Culture undoubtedly is complex. In the global society, we need to understand the common elements are of people from race, e.g. politeness, friendliness, kindness, fairness, respect and empathy. Even people from the same race have differences e.g. different tastes in food, clothes, music. It is the fact that every single person is unique that makes the world such an interesting place and everybody has something positive to contribute to the world, no matter how small that thing may be, that makes a new culture despite of heritage. It’s not where or what we’ve come from but how we choose to act and interact that makes a difference.

Living in a global society with so much cultural mixing, we are called upon to work with team with very different ethnicities and beliefs. We must understand important ways in which cultures differ and how this affects the ways in which people behave. We should help children to gain further understanding of inter-cultural communication, culture, and cultural difference through the study of specific geographical regions and topics of global interest.

In the global society, we need to educate a generation that will accept difference and value a global culture separate from national identity, to explore differences as well as similarities in thinking and understanding. Global teams succeed because they see their cultural differences as assets, not liabilities. We should welcome the cultural immersion, which is effective in promoting self-awareness and cultural empathy and reducing racism. By communicating, we can develop healthy relationships, and then build trust, as a result to share cultural experiences, which shape our worldviews.

We need intentional listen to what others say. People usually learn a lot when they listen well without trying to argue or defend, by respecting for others, as well as our self-respect will grow. The other suggestion is to learn more about the different cultures around us and this will help children to understand and accept others more easily. Please refer “Whoever You Are” by Mem Fox, which is a great book about cultural differences.