James B. Hunt, Jr.
States Institute Opening Plenary

November 21, 2002 Washington, D.C. --
This is a very exciting moment for me. As I have worked to improve our schools in North Carolina and the nation over the past twenty plus years, I have worked on many different aspects of school improvement and am gratified to see the progress we are making. But I am convinced that in all of this work we have neglected a critical emerging issue, one that is a huge challenge facing our country as we look into the future: we have not taught our students about the more than 90% of the world that lies outside our borders.

So it is very gratifying to see so many leaders from 22 states gathered here today (and there are more that wanted to come) to figure out together how we are going to overcome this tremendous "international knowledge gap."

Let me tell you how I got into this:

Three years ago, the Asia Society asked me to co-chair the National Commission on Asia in the Schools. The Commission was charged with analyzing the growing importance of Asia, home to 60% of the world's population and most of the its fastest growing economies, and what American students know about this vast region of the world. The Commission was co-chaired by Chang-Lin Tien, the former Chancellor of Berkeley, and Charlotte Sanford Mason, a teacher from Newton North High School in Massachusetts. It included a distinguished group of scholars, business and education leaders.

Last year, we released our report, which concluded that young Americans are "dangerously uninformed about "international matters" and that this knowledge deficit is particularly glaring in the case of Asia. For example:

• Levels of student knowledge are rudimentary. For instance, 25% of college-bound high school students did not know the name of the ocean that separates the United States from Asia, and 80% of high school students did not know that India is the world's largest democracy.
• Of the top fifty U.S. colleges and universities, only a tiny number require any coursework in non-Western history for their intending history teachers.
• While one million students in the U.S. study French, a language spoken by 70 million people, fewer than 50,000 students study Chinese, a language spoken by more than one billion people.
• Over 90% of Americans agree that students should learn more about world cultures in the future. Nearly two-thirds believe that schools, teachers and textbooks are not doing enough now to educate our children about Asia, home to 60% of the world's population.

While the report focused on Asia, this sorry state probably holds true for most other parts of the world as well.Knowledge of other cultures, languages and of the global economy is not a luxury. It is critical to our future.

• Governors know this. Governors are economic developers. They care about jobs for their people. They spend much of their time on trade missions and much of that time is spent in Asia.
• Business Leaders know this. Today, it's not just the big multinational companies that engage in operations around the globe. Even Mom and Pop businesses sell to markets in other countries.
• The U.S. State and Defense Departments know this. They are alarmed by our failure to graduate enough students with expertise in foreign languages, cultures and international affairs to meet the needs for our intelligence and military to function effectively in many different cultures and regions of the world.
• Parents and grandparents know this. They understand that their children and grandchildren are growing up in a whole new world and we need to prepare them for work and citizenship in that new world.

Globalization is a fact. Every major problem we face ¾ from economic growth to the environment to public health to reducing poverty and inequality to improving national and homeland security will require more international knowledge and cooperation than ever before.

• Knowledge of other countries and an ability to work with people from other cultures is going to be needed by an increasing number of jobs and professions. It's not just limited to the diplomatic corps these days.
• Increased diversity of students and immigration from many parts of the world means schools need to understand more about the cultures of their students
• If we didn't know it before, September 11 certainly brought home our interconnectedness with other parts of the world and our lack of knowledge, particularly of the Islamic world.
• And this interconnectedness is only going to increase. Our children are growing up in a whole new world --- one in which as workers and as citizens they will be working with people and issues from all parts of the globe in ways that simply weren't true for most of us.

So what should we do about it? As the standards movement in American education has made important strides in the last dozen years, we have seen an important and long-overdue focus on what students should know and be able to do at various points in their education. Yet somehow this consensus for meaningful and rigorous standards has not made international knowledge and skills a high priority. If we are to have a world-class education system, and let's really talk about world-class, our definition of educational excellence must go beyond literacy and numeracy to include knowledge of the history, geography, cultures and languages of other parts of the world.

Some say it can't be done, that schools have too many other things to do. But there are wonderful examples of it being done in classrooms around the country. Our commission pointed to some. We look forward to hearing about examples in your states over the next few days. Teachers get excited when they have the opportunity to extend their own learning. And they show that we can teach the reading, writing, research and critical thinking standards through international content. But these classrooms are the exception. This is where your leadership comes in.

States are the laboratories of our democracy. They also, as we all know, have the constitutional authority for education, set student standards, regulate teacher education and provide a substantial amount of the education funding. It used to be the case that states left international matters to the federal government. No more! States are busily trying to figure out how to succeed in this new globally connected age. So you, the state and local leaders in your states are the pioneers who can prepare our students for this rapidly changing world. And that is why I'm delighted that this conference is being co-sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Offices, the Education Commission of the States, and the National Governors Association.

James B. Hunt, Jr. is the four-term former governor of North Carolina and chair of the National Coalition on Asia and International Studies in the Schools.

LINKS

The James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy
For additional information contact:
Dr. Juddith Rizzo
James B. Hunt Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy
The University of North Carolina
P.O. Box 9380
Chapel Hill, NC 27515
Telephone: 919-843-4085
Fax: 919.843-2557

Asia in the Schools: Preparing Young Americans for Today's Interconnected World