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Catching Up--Or Leading the Way?

Catching Up--Or Leading the Way?

For the United States to retain its comptetive edge in the global economy, should we emulate the strengths of rising world powers' education practices or capitalize on America's own track record? Are the common prescriptions for education reform the right ones? Dr. Yong Zhao shares  insightful perspectives and humorous examples. (01:09:00)
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Robert Siegel | 06:09:10 04:42pm
It was a pleasure to listen to Yong Zhao and understand his perspective on the educational system in the USA. It was a great complement to his book Catching Up or Leading the Way. The concept of "tolerance" being an outstanding characteristic of lasting empires was intriguing. I would suggest that perhaps tolerance can only go so far as we continue our path toward becoming a world civilization. Even taking the term into entrepreneurship as he suggests, it still does not speak to a more cooperative, collaborative approach to learning that I feel is required if we are to contribute to an ever-advancing civilization on this planet. I once heard a prominent African American business-man coin a phrase that has stayed with me. He speaks of "leveraging" our diversity. I believe that true learning is optimized via the synergy of understanding (and not through the quantity of knowledge that has been amassed). I believe that we still have the potential of becoming "The Possible Human" as Caine and Caine discuss in their book Education on the Edge of Possibility. This "possible human" might be considered actually what being human is all about, something more than simply a consumer. I hope to dialog more with Zhao (as I have already exchanged emails with him) on a new social science curriculum for the 21st Century. I have a blog on this within the ASCD Edge professional exchange. Thank you for providing this recording.I would like to get his PPT of the presentation to further research his theories Robert Siegel

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