In May 2008, the Wall Street Journal recently identified and ranked the rise of a new breed of business gurus. Their core ideas, if “synergized” into two sentences, might look something like this:

With the flattening of the world at a steroid driven pace (Thomas Friedman #2), business management strategies have become dated (Gary Hamel #1) because you can innovate without emigrating and snap judgments and first impressions can offer us a much better means of making sense of the world (Malcolm Gladwell#4). Because gathering, managing, and using information are essential determinants in success (Bill Gates #3), human cognitive competence is better described in terms of a set of abilities, talents or mental skills called intelligences (Howard Gardner #5).

These thinkers are being called the “new gurus” because they have been able to observe, analyze, and explain changes around the world and how people are responding to those changes. More specifically, three of the five thinkers listed above developed their insights in other fields and then applied them to the business world. No matter what metrics we use to describe and measure changes in the world or how we choose to apply them, it is becoming increasingly clear that knowing more about the world and knowing how to know more about the world is critical in a world where it is possible to know more than we have ever known about the world. And this may be the likely reason why the work of Howard Gardner is so highly regarded in the world of education today. Dr. Gardner, a professor of psychology and education at Harvard, is best known for his theory of “multiple intelligences” which has had a profound impact on how we think about students.

In some of his more recent work, Gardner has noted the profound absence of a discussion of the future in American education, especially as we discuss global education. In line with this comment, many scholars and writers now cite global demographic shifts that are expected to soon occur as a part of their work. With the world changing so rapidly, education takes center stage in the conversation about our ability to navigate the tidal shifts in global dynamics.

As a logical response to such shifts, Dr. Gardner is now focused on “five minds” that he believes are vital to the future of students in the “new world.” These five minds are:
1) disciplined—trained to mastery in at least one area; understands the schema of a subject area
2) synthesizing—able to usefully organize ever-growing amounts of information
3) creating—seeks to ask good questions, new questions, and “make new mistakes”
4) respectful—beyond mere tolerance of diversity (Gardner argues tolerance is a low bar)
5) ethical—conceptualizes the importance of moving beyond self-interest in our sense of being

If these five minds are, in fact, vital to our future success, educators must also consider the type of knowledge that will help cultivate these minds. Both the motivational and transformational knowledge that will help us cultivate stronger “minds” are abundantly found in global education and considerations of the future. In turn, the reciprocal effect of the five minds is the production of stronger global education and a more confident future. This effect should be a pillar in the argument for global education and should serve as the basis of curricular reform as we prepare young people to think and live in a more global context. This is vital because transnational living conditions are becoming the norm in everyday life; and depending on your reference points, this transformation is occurring either slowly or rapidly. Westernization and Americanization are realigning into something new that people understand (and misunderstand) now as “globalization.”

Martin Skelton of Fieldwork Education suggested that we (educators, parents, and students) need to be pushed out of our comfort zones into a “crisis of engagement” in order to be more effectively prepared for our roles in the world that is becoming. At the concluding session, a few people discussed “cosmopolitanism” as a tool to help people mediate this “crisis.” In Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Kwame Appiah notes the encounters between different peoples in history have been countered by cosmopolitanism which mediates our human “obligations to others” with the value we place on “particular human lives” or individuality. Skeptical of simplistic ethical maxims, Appiah argues that cosmopolitanism is the name not “of the solution but of the challenge” as we again find ourselves in a state of heightened global interaction. If being pushed into discomfort allows us to recognize our cosmopolitanism, then another pillar of global education should be the immersion of students into “crises of engagement.”

The field of global education is still relatively new but its momentum is growing quickly. Independent schools and teachers are particularly well positioned to assume some responsibility in the shaping of a third millennium curriculum with a global context. As the conversations continue, schools will certainly employ the good ideas of experts like Howard Gardner and focus on pushing students outside of their comfort zones to help them become stronger, more dynamic thinkers and citizens. At the same time, we will continue to teach the age-old thinking skills and character that have always anchored a good education for our students but in a global context. The transnational nature of so many issues today make this a powerful, engaging, and intriguing time in history. It is also a time when we move into the great promise of the future with the hope of consciously participating in global culture, even when it is within our own borders.