SKHS Promotes Global Awareness

“No other public school in Rhode Island has a global studies course that I know of,” said International Relations teacher and Model United Nations coordinator Mr. Buxton, who also teaches Global Studies. “We at SK helped Prout create their Global Studies.”

Although only two-thirds to three-quarters of SKHS students take global studies, Buxton thinks the course improves the awareness of the SKHS student body. However, other public schools in the state may not quite be there yet.

Rhode Island’s educational priorities may not be in order, according to Buxton.

“Rhode Island is insufficiently focused on global studies,” he said. “A lot of states have state Model UN conferences. Rhode Island has a model legislature, but we don’t have a state Model UN.”

The global studies teacher says this is just an example of how worldly education around the state needs improvement. Buxton thinks a curriculum change is necessary to improving students’ global awareness.

“You need a comprehensive course where kids learn about global issues,” said Buxton. “You have to set up an expectation for [students] to learn.”

Mr. O’Malley, who teaches public issues, agrees.

“It’s definitely the responsibility of the school,” O’Malley said. “We should be learning in school about [global issues].”

“When I was little, there were old people on street corners and you could just listen to them talk,” said O’Malley. “You may have gotten a slanted view, but at least it was something.”

Now, O’Malley says, there are other distractions that prevent students from gaining the global knowledge they had in the past.

“I hardly ever see a kid reading the newspaper,” O’Malley said. “There are more distractions than ever.”

With television companies adding more and more channels every year and Internet and cell phone use continuing to increase, most would agree that teens have more to draw them away from the education process than at any previous point in history.

Still, according to Buxton, SKHS has an advantage over many other public schools when it comes to global awareness.

Buxton points to Model UN as the best example of that.

“We have 150-175 students participate in Model UN each year,” said Buxton. “There is nowhere where any school comes close to that.” Buxton talked about how most other schools that host Model UN conferences usually have only 30-40 students participate from their school.

SKHS sets up Model United Nations conferences every year in April. In Model UN, students discuss topics ranging from the Six-Day War to the genocide in Sudan as mock delegates from various countries around the world.

SKHS Model UN Co-Secretary General Alex Hwang agrees that although many students are indeed ignorant of the world around them, many at SKHS take the initiative to become educated through school organizations and taking classes that make them more globally aware.

“Adults aren’t informed enough about the kids who care,” said Hwang.

Senior SKHS social studies classes such as Honors International Relations and Public Issues focus on global issues in an attempt to further student global awareness.

However, only a small amount of students take these classes because neither is required by the SKHS curriculum. In fact, the only specifically required social studies course in the curriculum is U.S. History.

The New York Times reports on the American lack of global awareness in the Patricia Cohen article “Dumb and Dumber.” The article featured a recent Susan Jacoby book entitled Hand-Wringing About American Culture- Are Americans Hostile to Information?

The article references two studies: one, a 2006 National Geographic poll, found that “nearly half of 18-24 year-olds don’t think it’s important to know where countries in the news are located,” and another study that showed only 23 percent out of the people polled with some college education could find the nations of Iraq, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia on a map.

In the article, the author refers to a conversation she overheard where a man explained to another man how the “Vietnamese” attack on Pearl Harbor started the Vietnam War.

O’Malley points to a more recent example.

“Most Americans thought Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11,” he said. This, says O’Malley, is a perfect example of why ignorance is so dangerous.

“People were so uninformed about reality that they were led to believe things that just weren’t true,” explained O’Malley.

“After 9-11, I thought there would be a flurry of activity in that direction,” said Buxton, referring to a more globally-oriented curriculum. Unfortunately, he says, there wasn’t.

However, there are some positive signs around the nation. As more opportunities emerge, students around the country are taking a step in the right direction.

In schools, more and more students are participating in study abroad programs than ever before.

Open Doors, a premier study-abroad organization, reported that there has been a 150 percent increase in student participation in study-abroad programs within the past ten years.

Another recent New York Times article covered a New York state school district, the Herricks district, that has “integrat[ed] international studies into every aspect of its curriculum.”

The article details how authors like Hemingway and Hawthorne have been scrapped for authors who write about subjects that are both more modern and more worldly, such as SKHS graduate Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Interpreter of Maladies, and Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner. As a part of the art curriculum Herricks students are required to paint international scenes.

At SKHS, both books are or at one point have been figured into the curriculum through the summer reading requirement. Organizations like Amnesty International and the Invisible Children club help to promote global awareness within the school system. Model U.N. also brings global issues to light and educates students about what is happening around the world.

Hwang points to the hundreds of students that participate in Model UN each year and the plethora of courses offered at SKHS to prove that this school is ahead of the awareness curve.

Still, he admits, there are reforms to be made.

“A majority of kids in this school don’t care about anything but their social lives,” he said. Hwang, like Buxton and O’Malley, believe that global studies should be integrated into the curriculum. Hwang, however, takes it a step further.

“There should be a graduation requirement that involves global current issues,” said the SKMUN Co-Secretary General.

While students may frown upon any more graduation requirements than they already have, O’Malley and others believe that something else must be done.

Why? The reason is simple, according to O’Malley: without knowledge, no one can make their own decisions.

“If you don’t know what’s going on in the world, you can be very easily manipulated.”