The recent May 2nd, 2011 issue of Time magazine lists 100 world’s most influential people. Time said that it picked the list from all point on Compass. Drawing an analogy from this to the COL concept, I went on to map the people from this compass to the COL quadrants to see how many are from each of these quadrants to help me assess where we are heading ourselves in the 21st century in terms of universal education and global learning.
Michell Rhee had been quoted by Time author as ‘An unstoppable advocate for school reform’. She shunned high-salary job offers that resulted from her high-profile tenure as the chancellor of the Washington, D.c., school system and instead founded her organization “Putting Kids first”. It’s going to be her lifetime commitment.
Let me take you now to the other part of the world, popularly known now as silicon valley of the world – India. Here I find Time author quoting Azim Premji as ‘Teaching his nation to earn, learn and give’. As the chairman of IT powerhouse Wipro Ltd, he is personifying the India’s economic transformation through education. His foundation supports program that reach more than 2.5 million children in an effort to provide universal primary education in India. Sounds familiar to Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster – my frequently quoted pioneers in delivering education to masses from the B-quadrant.
Now heading to down-under Australia. The NAB (National Austalia Bank) started a program called Schools First that gets the funds to improve schools around Australia including the seeding funds to start up a totally a new program that is relevant to the the place where the kids are from and studying.
This brings me back here.
Time lists Geoffrey Canada as ‘A superman of inner-city kids’. He stands tall and high to show the rest of us the education is the surest path out of poverty. His concept of providing craddle-to-career continuum and to support disadvantaged kids makes him an extra-ordinary innovator combined with heroic qualities. His simplest idea – you cannot divorce where kids live from where they learn. His HCZ (Harlem Children’s Zone) project that started as a block pilot has evolved to cover not only the kids but also guide the parents to play a key role in their kid’s learning.
However, the learning comes from exercising our most important muscle – the brain. Time lists VS Ramachandran described as Marco Polo of neuro-science as ‘Solving the mind’s riddles’. He has studies visual perception and range of conditions from synestesia to autism. With his simple yet innovative ideas like phantom-limb therapy, he is changing how our brains think about our minds.
Time goes on to list other influential people from political space, sports space, celebrity space, humanitarian space, environment space, social space and finance space to complete the points on the compass and in doing so map the world as well.
Superimposing the Compass on the COL, you will see a pattern emerging that will lead us all to realize where we as one world are heading to achieve a balance in the four quadrants of COL.
If someone can understand the playing field of the world from this aspect and if someone takes on the world as a place that has no geographical or national boundaries, then most of the energy that is being used to protect these boundaries can be diverted to prosper the knowledge and the wisdom that is needed to protect the world habitat and to provide a means to improve the living conditions to one and all.
Can COL take us there and on that journey? Only time can tell