Globalization in Teaching as Sustainability

Robert P. Yagelski (2005) defined sustainability as globalization in his article, “Stasis and Change: English Education and the Crisis of Sustainability,” in English Education. Yagelski notes that schooling is our major influence on understanding the world, and it's the major cultural influence that we share as Americans. "He also discusses three important things that English educators should know: (1) The crisis of sustainability that is arising from globalization is likely to define their collective existence in the coming century; (2) Formal schooling is not changing; and (3) They already know the most important things they need to know about language and literacy." http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ761617

Globalization can be a largely positive thing—technology, communication, and trade spreading quickly throughout the world. Of course, problems in one country are felt in others even more than in the past. Yagelski’s article was before the current Arab Spring that was spurred by social media, such as Facebook and other Internet sites.

Globalization can refer to our global warming problems too; hurricanes and tornadoes seem more common these days, and we’ve had the hottest, driest summer in memory here in Texas. We’ve heard about hole in the ozone over Antarctica and melting ice caps and upset polar bears in the Arctic.

Maybe we can provide a stage where students can discover a new interest concerning other countries. My interest in citizen journalism through writing a couple of widely-read articles for Oh My News led me to read about South Korea and their wonderful rise as a capitalist democracy.

Returning to Yagelski, English can be a transformative discipline through focusing on two issues: "community" and "literacy." "These questions assume that English instruction is part of a wider project of possibility, that it is both an academic discipline and a crucial component of the larger social, economic, and political structures within which people live and work." http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ761617

To conclude, globalization has ramifications for a wide variety of disciplines, such as English, Political Science, the earth sciences, and certainly the citizen journalism world.