The perceived importance of a global experience in higher education is hard to underestimate. University presidents are known to boast of their “percentage,” or the proportion of undergraduates who study abroad. At least part of the rationale is a cosmopolitan one: an essential part of being acknowledged as educated derives in part from an appreciation of different cultures and development of worldliness. The expectation is that a global experience will stand out as an enduring memorial of an encounter with others. (...) These experiences are edified in resumes and narrated with veneration, further illuminating their cultural importance as coming-of-age rituals, particularly among a striding upper middle class... (shrink)

Global issues rarely suggest conversations about aesthetics, as they conjure thinking about massive problems such as global warming, famine, and war rather than beautiful thoughts such as grace, love, and compassion. Students may engage in study of global issues in any number of venues, perhaps through a world geography class, within world literature, or as part of a course in Earth science. They would likely be exposed to readings, Web sites, and videos about the nature and extent of problems. Teachers (...) might engage them in small and large group discussions of problems, and, ideally, there would be some consideration of what they might do as citizens. Such processes, their outcomes, and subsequent civic directions .. (shrink)

The reconstruction of philosophy, of education, and of social ideals and methods thus go hand in hand.In society today, we are inundated with reports on climate change, nuclear accidents, sectarian violence, terrorism, school shootings, police brutality, shrill mainstream politics, dire poverty, civil wars, and migration crises. As we observe their proliferation and escalation, it can feel as if we lack not only solutions to these social ills, but, even more fundamentally, ways to communicate about and make sense of their conditions (...) and consequences. Unfortunately, our failure to parse these events will not make them go away. To the contrary, their full impact will be endured for generations to come. As with other... (shrink)

This study sought to identify content on the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit in the 12 most commonly used high school and college-leveleconomics textbooks. Our systematic review of these sources leads to two key findings: (1) Textbooks are similar in how they represent fiscal policy yet treatthe federal budget, deficit, and debt differently across the sample, and (2) Textbooks treat the federal budget, budget deficit, and national debt as theoretical, without an examination of values and systemic electoral and (...) budgetary politics. These findings lead us to argue that curriculum is needed that will permit a careful examination of how everyday citizens can gain knowledge, acknowledge values, and work towards a reasoned and realitybased view of what is at stake with regard to these issues in the 21st Century. (shrink)