The Context for a Global Education

As the third millennium opens, young children are faced with a world of unsettling dichotomy and looming contrasts.  News reports broadcasted worldwide inform young children daily that rapid growth in globalization, news of starving children in India, war victims in the Middle East, AIDS victims in Africa, displaced children in North America, terrorist attacks looming across the planet, the threat of a global pandemic, and the degradation of rainforests worldwide, threaten the planet, the future of their own lives, and the lives of their children. 

An image of an ailing, fearful, and fragile planet, plagued with greed, war, & injustice, is slowly overshadowing its magnificent beauty, richness of diversity, and the peaceful and moral fibers of humankind.  This looming sense of worldwide sorrow and suffering contribute to the increasing numbers of young children who are falling into “the despair of hopelessness and appear to be apathetic in their response to the future” (Ashford, 1995).

At the same time that we face crisis in population growth, resource depletion, environmental destruction and new civil wars of horrendous brutality, many young people express cynicism, helplessness, and despair that anyone can influence the course of events even on a local scale. (Ashford, 1995)

Moreover, a materialistic-consumerist and “all about me”-centered culture is spreading across the westernized world, desensitizing young children from the beauty and struggles of society, and promoting a life of unprecedented privilege and abundance. 

For many, the desire to consume and acquire more on the one hand, and the guilt-ridden push to conserve and preserve on the other, is creating an “uncomfortable space” of confusion, guilt, and desire.  As Burtynsky states, “many of us are in an uncomfortable spot of not wanting to give up what we have but realizing that we are creating problems that run deep … it’s not a simple right or wrong… it needs a whole new way of thinking”. 

The irony is that the ‘haves’ of many western societies, who appear to have everything, are oftentimes those who lack the awareness of a purpose worth living for.  Even our young children are haunted by an inner emptiness; an “existential vacuum” that manifests itself primarily in the state of student boredom, and student feelings of depression, aggression, and addiction” (Frankl, 1984).