EDDi XXIX
Holiday Special (December, 2020)
Dear subscribers
Hopefully this Holiday Edition of EDDi finds you on a beach or curled up next to a warm fire somewhere. You’ve earned the rest!
To keep your mind active between the mince pies, mulled wine or margaritas, this week’s EDDi is a long-read summary of the year - and, given the year it’s been, we’ve a lot to say!
Settle in to your sofa or get comfy on your deck chair and scroll below for our thoughts and takeaways from 2020.
Alongside that piece, we have a guest contribution from Dr Sadie Hollins. Sadie argues that, in 2020, the old adage ‘those who can’t do, teach’ couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, she suggests that:
If you are looking for some affirmation, a pat on the back, and a rallying cry for the value of teaching, you’ll find them in the article.
Also, as part of EDDi’s commitment to diversity, we occasionally feature contributions from non-native English speakers. The pieces are very lightly edited but retain the original author’s voice, tone and style. So, whilst these pieces are not written in the usual EDDi style, we hope that you will appreciate and value the contributions they make to our understanding of diverse educational settings. This week we have a piece from Sampoerna Academy, Indonesia. The article makes a useful companion to our long-read piece:
If you would like to submit your own work, please connect with us via: contact@eddi.ac
Happy reading and happy holidays.
EDDi
PS: If you are stuck for present ideas, don’t forget the book: International Schooling - The Teacher’s Guide. A great gift for friends and colleagues working internationally or looking to make the leap.
2020: THOUGHTS AND TAKEAWAYS FOR INTERNATIONAL EDUCATORS
2020 may have been the most challenging year of your life thus far.
But that’s probably because you’ve lived a comparatively luxurious, comfortable, protected and privileged existence.
Well, at least compared to your ancestors who had it much, much worse in 1920, 1820, 1720 and back through every century prior to that.
Let’s be honest, we’ve been spoiled; at least those of us who have a decent education, travelled the world, never known hunger, poverty, totalitarianism, war, homelessness, or the absence of modern medicine. Which is most every international educationalist - lecturer, professor, teacher, principal and administrator working in schools and universities around the world.
2020 has a been a wake-up call.
It rang the alarm, warning us not to assume our happy, privileged, protected existence will continue ad infinitum.
What I like about 2020 is that the effects of its unexpected events have impacted on everyone. Even the billionaires who saw their fortunes rise by 27% this year have to wear face masks and follow lockdown rules (well, to some extent), while also being aware of the new social rules over sexual harassment and racist behaviour.
Of course, Covid-19 may be global but it is not egalitarian; those who were poor and dispossessed at the start of the year are even more so at the end of it. But the social group most impacted during 2020 has to be the global middle class.
Back in 2018, middle class status was projected to reach some 4 billion people by the end of this year, rising to 5.3 billion by 2030. If still accurate, then it means that today we’ve reached a global tipping point, with half the world’s population middle class or wealthier.
But how accurate is this middle-class prediction at the end of 2020?
We don’t yet know as the research has not yet been concluded but one only has to read the dire economic warnings of the World Bank to realise that an awful lot of people are now financially running on empty:
As the health and human toll grows, the economic damage is already evident and presents the largest economic shock the world has experienced in decades…The pandemic is expected to plunge most countries into recession in 2020, with per capita income contracting in the largest fraction of countries globally since 1870.
In other words, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a far more damaging financial impact on people than did two world wars.
When half the world’s population suddenly find themselves in dire financial straits having previously expected, if not assumed, they would get a little richer year on year, then we are most definitely into uncharted waters.
So far, we are only a year into the global economic catastrophe.
If, in the next six months or so, the virus gets swept away by vaccine, good health management, or ‘herd immunity’ then very likely I’ll be writing the EDDi Christmas 2021 edition remarking on the amazing durability of the global economy and resilience of the middle classes to overcome the biggest financial crisis of their lives.
But what if it hasn’t disappeared?
What if the pandemic is as strong in twelve months’ time as it is today, and looks like going on into 2021 and thereafter? Because at time of writing, with the pandemic accelerating not declining, that is a very realistic scenario.
If that is the case, pretty much every government around the world (with the notable exception of China, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Korea) will be confronting the key question:
How much death and disease will our society tolerate in order to reverse the economic catastrophe?
That’s a VERY BIG question.
Get it right and your country may start to improve its GDP (and arrest the decline in middle-class prosperity) albeit at risk to the health of millions of its citizens. Get it wrong and the very same middle classes will be out on the streets demanding revolution.
Indeed, there are already indicators of a rise in popular protests and civil resistance which, while having disparate agendas, are united in being fuelled by social media, fear and frustration over Covid-19, and general dissatisfaction with governments whether democratic or authoritarian.
None of this should surprise us.
The unprecedented globalised middle-class economic advancement of the past few decades has not only materially enhanced the lives of many millions of people, it has heightened their expectations.
Rarely is it the case that humans, having improved their circumstances, remain content. They always want more, if not for themselves then most definitely for their children.
As an international educationalist you know this to be true not only personally, but for every one of those parents and students paying your wages.
But right now, an enormous global plug is plunged into the top of the middle-class genie bottle. No more hopes, no more expectations, no more assumptions of life automatically improving so long as we work hard, get educated, be a little entrepreneurial. Suddenly the future looks decidedly unclear. For a good many graduates streaming out of our high schools and universities, it looks decidedly miserable.
A YEAR TO FORGET?
Living through 2020 has been a salutary if not testing (no pun intended) experience on a number of levels, one of which has been having to face an incessant deluge of bad news.
Barely had we recovered from our 2020 New Year celebration hang-over, when a million protestors took to the streets of Hong Kong; Australia declared a state of disaster amid bushfires that killed as many as 500 million animals; a US drone strike at Baghdad airport killed a prominent Iranian general; Nigerian Islamic terrorist organisation, Boko Haram, slaughtered 89 Nigerian soldiers; Donald Trump’s impeachment trial began in the U.S. Senate; the UK formally withdrew from the EU, and the WHO declared the Covid-19 pandemic to be a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’.
That was just within the first 30 days.
Since then the bad news has just come streaming on like a nightmare one cannot awake from. Here are just a few of the monthly ‘highlights’:
February: WHO names the disease COVID-19
March: WHO declares a global pandemic
April: A killing spree in Nova Scotia leaves 23 dead – the deadliest massacre in modern Canadian history. (this was just one of a number of mass shootings by gunmen during the year)
May: The global Black Lives Matter movement kicks off following the police murder of George Floyd
June: China passes the HK National Security Law
July: Number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 passes 15 million
August: Two explosions in Beirut kill 220 and leave 300k homeless
September: Covid-19 death toll exceeds 1 million
October: Popular protests break out in Thailand and other countries
November: OK, fair enough, this was the one month to bring us all some good news. Roll on Biden and Harris.
As for December, well the Brits are looking forward, if that’s the right phrase, to their final departure from the EU. I hope that works out for them. I suspect it won’t.
Indeed, so much bad news and ‘international crises’ that much of it I’d forgotten ever happened.
My brain only has so much space for negativity.
Location has always been a key variable in influencing the quality of one’s life experience, but this year location has become without doubt the number one consideration.
One of my sons made the move back to Taiwan from the USA in February. While another of my sons went from Taiwan to the U.K. around the same time. Which son do you imagine has had the least normal year, which one the most normal year?
Since the middle of this year, a number of my professional acquaintances have said their goodbyes to Hong Kong after many decades in that city., choosing instead the relative democratic calm and safety of Canada.
Smart move on his part. Increasing numbers of Hong Kongers are queuing up to follow in their footsteps.
Me?
I’ve been blissfully hunkered down in my home in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, barely bothered by Covid rulings other than when I attempted to go shopping without my face mask.
Not that I can readily forget the sorry state of my home country, indeed it’s gotten so bad my friends in China have taken to offering me commiserations on the state of the U.K. Which is no surprise because China is one of the few countries not in crisis, either economically, existentially or due to the pandemic (even if many in Australia and the USA would wish it otherwise). As I’ve written elsewhere this year, the inexorable rise of China has merely accelerated during 2020, leaving all the other super-powers in its wake.
The implications for international educationalists are significant.
For those international educators who went home for a break and suddenly found the break just went on and on and they’re now struggling to get return visas, life will have been rather trying. Likewise, all those international education leaders have undoubtedly experienced the most challenging and stressful year of their lives, with little sign of respite – though by now they will at least have their online learning systems up and running.
As for all my friends and ex-colleagues working in near-bankrupt Western universities, especially in the U.K., all I can say is my thoughts are with you.
No one has had it easy this last 12 months, but some have had it very hard, not least those international school teachers who decided that 2020 would be a good year to move job – only to find the school they were fully expecting to start work in around July or August suddenly rescinded on its contract leaving them adrift, physically, financially and existentially.
All awful, much of it disastrous, though let us not forget the tens of millions infected by Covid-19, the unknown number who ‘recovered’ but continue to suffer mental and physical health problems, and not least the million plus who have so far died of the virus.
In fact, so much crisis, so many different crises, that it seems impossible to declare which is the most serious.
But let me try.
CRISIS? WHICH CRISIS?
If we attempt to list the crises facing humanity as we head further into the 21st century, these are just a few of the standouts:
Covid-19
Social-media fuelled unrest
Popularism and popularist politics
Racism and Ethnic conflict
Misogyny and patriarchal behaviour
Religious radicalism
White supremacism
Poverty
Unemployment
Hunger
Homelessness
Political and economic refugees
Conspiracy theories (e.g. QAnon)
Global warming/climate change
Which crisis you personally consider most important will likely depend on those impacting you directly. In which case I’d expect the largest percentage of readers to put Covid-19 at the top of their list.
Similarly, I reckon the biggest concern for Americans will be the future of their country and the hope that the Biden Presidency brings some much needed sanity to their lives. Likewise, most Brits will be hoping that Brexit doesn’t herald the end of the U.K. as we’ve come to know it.
But the one crisis we now should all be turning our attention to, and which is due to make Covid-19 related problems appear minor by comparison, is undoubtedly global warming and climate change.
These are the nine components of our climate system – called ‘tipping points’ and they are all under growing threat of abrupt and irreversible changes:
1. Amazon rainforest
2. Artic sea ice
3. Atlantic circulation
4. Boreal forests
5. Coral reefs
6. Greenland ice sheet
7. Permafrost
8. West Antarctic ice sheet
9. Part of East Antarctica
According to Nature magazine, passing just one of these tipping points – from the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet to the loss of coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest – may increase the risk of crossing others.
And, according to the October 2020 United Nations report “The Human Cost of Disasters”:“the planet risks becoming an uninhabitable hell for millions of people”.
For the UK’s Guardian newspaper:
“Humanity has just eight years to figure out how to get climate change under control before the future starts to look drastically worse”
Please tell that to all those popularist leaders, mostly men, currently in brazen and mind-numbingly stupid denial about the overwhelming scientific evidence that the world is not heading in the right direction, climate-wise. Especially Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, under whose leadership the ‘Amazon rainforest is condemned to destruction.’
Of course, Bolsonaro, along with every other popularist politician, prefers to peddle his own version of reality, of truth, not least because doing so helps keep him in power.
And it appears to work.
At time of writing, he is experiencing a ‘popularity surge’. Similarly, over 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in last month’s US Presidential Election, despite his denial of climate change facts and reality.
Which leads me to conclude that the most important crisis facing humanity is none of the above, but simply this one.
EDUCATION - ONLY (HIGHER) EDUCATION CAN SAVE US
Winston Churchill famously remarked,
“Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, expect for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”
Seems to me that the only chance of democracy working to best effect is to have an educated citizenship, combined with justice, liberty, equality, and a free press.
Of course, we may never achieve all these fine objectives, but at least we should try.
Not that it will be easy.
The French were the first to hail and institutionalise these socio-political objectives in their Third Republic manifesto at the end of the 19th century. Very impressive, though that didn’t stop the French acting as brutal colonialists over large parts of the globe. Nor have these principles resolved the current problem the French have of matching secularism with strict religious observance, or more directly, answering the question as to how the French (and all other Western democracies) can integrate Islam with long-standing notions of freedom and choice?
Big challenges for even the most informed and learned minds. But what is clear is that without education we cannot hope to get close to resolving the crises facing humanity. Without education, individuals and societies are vulnerable to manipulation, popularism, toxic ideologies, and disillusionment with democratic values.
But let me be clear, by education I am not referring to K-12, compulsory education. I am referring to higher education.
Most of the world’s population now experiences compulsory education and as a result is educated to a standard that would have been totally unreachable and unrealistic a century ago. In addition, young people today have access to much of the world’s knowledge, wisdom, science, and history through their laptops and smartphones.
Unfortunately, none of this stops large swaths of these ‘educated’ individuals believing in and following QAnon conspiracy theories, fake news, climate change deniers, right-wing popularist politicians, racists and misogynists, etc, etc. By way of example, recently published Cambridge University research showed that a staggeringly large number of our fellow humans have lost the plot altogether and believe Covid conspiracy theories, including the notion that the Covid-19 fatality rate has been exaggerated. When even 22% of Brits believe this and nearly 50% of Americans, what hope is there?
Well perhaps there is hope.
And that is revealed in this recent USA research which suggests that popularism thrives in a democracy when there are large numbers of voters without college degrees. The good news being that this cohort (of white voters without college degrees) is shrinking fast in the USA. In fact, since 1976 the percentage has declined from 71% to 39%.
The study finds it is this white, working-class lower-educated base which gave Trump his victory in 2016 and who are most likely to follow conspiracy theories and fake news.
“This demographic divide has become a bellwether for political preference: A Trump coalition of white voters without college degrees and a Biden coalition of college-educated white voters – especially women – and minority voters…[this] change in demographics is largely driven by aging: The non-college-educated white cohort is older and steadily declining as its members die. The Biden coalition is younger and aging into the electorate.”
This is the demographic reality that underpinned Biden’s victory.
Similarly, research has shown that it was the older non-college educated voters who supported Brexit. In other words, Brexit was caused by low levels of education. As was Trump’s victory in 2016.
“Educated urban voters are the key to success in a deeply divided America…Education has become the defining fault line of US electoral politics…Since 2000, the Republican party has seen its support increase most in those counties with more white, non-college voters.”
Biden won by an impressive majority, but worryingly, the election also exposed the embedded racism in US society. There are 70 million Americans apparently supporting racism and racist policies. Which tells us there are an awful lot of racists around, a great many of whom will simply hide their true feelings behind the anonymous voting process.
So, the lesson to be learned here is that to have any chance of improving humanity’s fortunes and future, including dealing with climate change, we need to get every young person into college education, not just in the USA and the UK, but all countries, not least those with popularist leaders such as Brazil.
The evidence strongly suggests that it is the HE experience which makes all the difference to an individual’s potential and ability to contribute to democracy, not least by enabling them to develop the thinking skills necessary to reject popularism and manipulation by social media fermented fake news. HE offers the opportunity to develop intellect and critical thinking skills to a high level. And never has humanity needed intellect and critical thinking more than at the end of 2020.
Consequently, K-12 schooling must be only seen as a stepping stone to HE. Never an end in itself.
As international educators, we are the ones charged with ensuring the next generation to rule get this message, fully absorb it, and act upon it when they are adults and are wielding power themselves, either through the ballot box or as leaders and influencers in society.
But there is an urgency here which we must also recognise because the unpalatable truth is that millennials are more disillusioned with democracy than any generation in living memory, with studies highlighting populism as an unlikely, if short-term, saviour of democracy in eyes of many young people.
“A majority of young people may now be dissatisfied with the political system, according to a study by Cambridge University…The research is based on the largest global dataset on democratic legitimacy, which collates the attitudes of more than 4.8 million respondents in 160 countries, between 1973 and 2020…This is the first generation in living memory to have a global majority who are dissatisfied with the way democracy works…Higher debt burdens, lower odds of owning a home, greater challenges in starting a family, and reliance upon inherited wealth rather than hard work and talent to succeed, are all contributors to youth discontent.” (source)
Around the world we are seeing Generation Z and young Millennials vent their frustration with traditional political systems by challenging the older generation of politicians.
During 2020 we’ve seen youth activism kick-off in Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, USA, Poland, Nigeria, Nepal, France, South Korea, Egypt, Lebanon, Norway, Mexico, Russia, UK, Venezuela. In fact, it is hard to find a major country that has not experienced the young protester phenomenon, whether spurred by Black Lives Matter, climate change, MeToo Movement, or a wish to put an end to male violence.
I suggest we need more of this, not less.
But at the same time, we need to ensure these young people are educated to recognise the dangers in popularist rhetoric and ideology so they don’t swop one toxic ideology for another.
And for me this is the Big Takeaway from 2020 – that ‘business as usual’ isn’t going to cut it for the many millions of young people now facing a bleak future through no fault of their own.
Yes, young voters are disconnecting from democracy – but who can blame them for that, given the appalling leadership we’ve seen emerge in democratic societies over recent years? And with job losses hitting young people the hardest, especially in those Western countries most severely affected by Covid-19, then anyone reading the runes can see which way this could be heading.
QAnon, fake news, rejection of democracy and democratic values, rise of popularism, religious intolerance, racism, misogyny, and the economic train crash currently being experienced by most of the world’s 4 billion middle classes, and it is plain to see that
Covid-19 is not only testing the health systems of the world, it is testing the political systems.
Stop for a second, absorb all that, then just try and imagine what climate change is going to do to democracy in the very near future.
This is the reality we are fast heading towards. Covid-19 is merely the signaller on the train track, telling us the lights have gone to red and we better change track pretty damn quick.
At the beginning of this article I speculated on a return to normal if Covid-19 gets cleared away.
The truth is, Covid-19 is not likely to disappear and even if it did then humanity is still left facing an even bigger crisis – climate change.
This is the ‘new normal’ we now must all learn to live with and adapt to.
For international educationalists such as ourselves, the challenge is to ensure we prepare our students for this fast-looming reality. And that job starts in kindergarten and continues through into higher education.
I am not arguing that schools, colleges and universities should be encouraging discontent, but they must be encouraging critical thinking, global mindedness, interculturation, total inclusivity, enquiry-based learning, collaborative learning, and the study of philosophy, sociology and history. Because this combination of skills, aptitudes and knowledges will best prepare young people for a future where the good life you and I have enjoyed thus far is not going to be available to our children and grandchildren - unless humanity changes direction.
And frankly, I don’t trust my generation (or the generation below it) to have the will, determination or ability to make that change.
In which case, our future very much rests with our students.
Which allows me to end this EDDi 2020 Christmas Edition on a positive note, because it is very clear there are some remarkable Gen Z kids around, much more switched on than you or I. Humbling even.
When you return to your class or lecture theatre in January 2021, whether online or face to face, reflect on the fact that you are no longer preparing individuals for work, you are preparing a generation to save us, and themselves. Let us educationalists therefore give Generation Z all the guidance and support they are going to need in this most important challenge ever to confront the human race.
Merry Christmas - or whatever it is you celebrate - and a healthy and safe 2021
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