Improving the World: What You Can Do






 * “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead; American cultural anthropologist; 1901–1978.)


 * “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man [all people].” (John F. Kennedy; 35th President of the United States; 1917-1963.) [Bold added for emphasis.]

Introduction
This IAE-pedia document builds on the two quotations given above. They remind us that we are all citizens of the world, and that each of us has the potential to help improve the quality of life of others. Each of us can help to solve local, regional, national, and global problems. Our focus here is on education as a vehicle to help address such problems.

The title comes from the What You Can Do section that I have included in each of the several hundred IAE Blog entries I have written and published (Moursund, 8/22/2010). A somewhat similar section titled You and Your Students ends each chapter of my recent free book, Brain Science for Educators and Parents (Moursund, 2015).

A recurring theme in IAE-pedia documents is that each of us is both a lifelong teacher and a lifelong student. For example, every time you have a conversation with another person, you are serving in both teacher and student modes. The person or persons you are talking to learn from you. You learn through the process of formulating and communicating your thoughts—this requires using both your cognitive and physical capabilities.

Our brains are designed for a lifetime of learning. In brief summary, we learn:


 * 1) Through interactions with people and everything else we encounter in our lives.
 * 2) Through processing and using information coming in through our external and internal senses/sensors.
 * 3) Through thinking about and using information stored in our brain.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has greatly extended our abilities to communicate with other people and with the steadily growing accumulation of human knowledge. ICT has provided us with new tools for gaining knowledge and skills, and for solving the problems and accomplishing the tasks we encounter at work, at play, and throughout the rest of our everyday lives.

This What You Can Do document has two main purposes:


 * 1) To help you to become more routinely engaged in activities that help to improve both the education of other people and your own personal education.
 * 2) To encourage and facilitate your becoming more actively engaged in addressing problems that might impact the quality of life of yourself and others, problems such as sustainability.

Examples of What You Can Do
Here are two examples of lifelong learning and teaching:


 * 1) Think about what you did yesterday that relates to being a learner and a teacher. Name one or more things that you learned and still remember today. What distinguishes these things from other data and information that you encountered, but have already forgotten? (This is a self-education activity in learning about your own learning.)
 * 2) Name one or more situations from yesterday in which you communicated some data, information, knowledge, or wisdom to another person. Was this a successful communication? (How can you tell? A message sent is not necessarily a message received. Reflect on this remark from the point of view of improving your own communication skills.)

How did you learn to do 1 and 2 above? Do you think it is appropriate for children and adults to learn to do both of these? If you answer “yes,” what have you done and/or what can you do to help make this educational change in the life of at least one person?

This challenge illustrates a major point in being a lifelong learner and a lifelong teacher. During your own life you have acquired a great deal of knowledge and experience, and you add to your knowledge and experience every day. As you share this with others, you help them to gain in knowledge, and you help yourself to better remember and make use of your own steadily increasing knowledge and experience.

Here is another example. Think about a news item that you have read or listened to recently that was depressing to you—the sort of news that suggests “the world is going to hell in a hand basket.” Think of another news item that was encouraging—one that you classify as good news. See my IAE Blog entry, Tell Me Some Good News (Moursund, 1/27/2016).

Each of these learning experiences affected you. The nature and extent of how you were affected depends to a great extent on how deeply you thought about (reflected on, internalized) the information and what you did with the information.

Reread the previous sentence. Do you understand and believe this assertion? If you have doubts or believe that you might benefit by more information on this topic, what are you going to do (perhaps right now) about it. Probably you are reading this IAE-pedia document on the Web. Here is a good opportunity to practice your Web search and self-instruction skills. And, this provides you with an opportunity to help other people by using the Web share what you learn!

Citizen of the World
You realize, of course, that every person is a citizen of the world—we are all members of the human race. Currently there is no “official” mechanism for us to have “world citizenship” papers. However, some of us are quite concerned about global issues and work for the betterment of all people on earth.

The TED Talks are one of my favorite entertainments and sources of interesting and useful new information (TED, n.d.). Well over 2,000 free short videos (typically in the 15-to-20-minute range) are available, with new ones added regularly. Each presentation is by a carefully chosen and highly qualified person or group. These presentations are translated into a number of languages and made available free to people throughout the world.

A number of the TED Talks focus specifically on education and ways to improve education TED, 2016). Each of these talks contain ideas that you may want to use and/or share with friends. (Click on the pictures at this site to bring up the talks in a particular category.) I especially like talks by Sir Ken Robinson. I strongly recommend that you look him up on the Web and view several of his presentations!

Hugh Evans’ TED Talk, What Does It Mean to Be a Citizen of the World?, recently caught my attention (Evans, February, 2016). Here is a brief quote from the website:

Hugh Evans started a movement that mobilizes "global citizens," people who self-identify first and foremost not as members of a state, nation or tribe but as members of the human race. In this uplifting and personal talk, learn more about how this new understanding of our place in the world is galvanizing people to take action in the fights against extreme poverty, climate change, gender inequality and more. "These are ultimately global issues," Evans says, "and they can only be solved by global citizens demanding global solutions from their leaders."

A modest number of people attended Evans’ initial live presentation. As of 4/14/2016, there have been 265,229 views of the TED Talks video. I think of this as a “miracle” of modern Information and Communication Technology.

The talk begins with a story about what one person has done. It is a remarkable story and illustrates that one people can make a difference in our world. Quoting from Evans:

I want to introduce you to an amazing woman. Her name is Davinia. Davinia was born in Jamaica, emigrated to the US at the age of 18, and now lives just outside of Washington, DC. She's not a high-powered political staffer, nor a lobbyist. She'd probably tell you she's quite unremarkable, but she's having the most remarkable impact. What's incredible about Davinia is that she's willing to spend time every single week focused on people who are not her: people not her in her neighborhood, her state, nor even in her country -- people she'd likely never meet.

Davinia's impact started a few years ago when she reached out to all of her friends on Facebook, and asked them to donate their pennies so she could fund girls' education. She wasn't expecting a huge response, but 700,000 pennies later, she's now sent over 120 girls to school. When we spoke last week, she told me she's become a little infamous at the local bank every time she rocks up with a shopping cart full of pennies.

Now – Davinia is not alone. Far from it. She's part of a growing movement. And there's a name for people like Davinia: global citizens. A global citizen is someone who self-identifies first and foremost not as a member of a state, a tribe or a nation, but as a member of the human race, and someone who is prepared to act on that belief, to tackle our world's greatest challenges. Our work is focused on finding, supporting and activating global citizens. They exist in every country and among every demographic. [Bold added for emphasis.]

What You Can Do Sections in the IAE Blogs
Over the years the idea, “Think globally, act locally” has been presented by many different people. It remains a very powerful idea. However, the Web now makes it possible to both think and act globally from one’s local place of residence. It allows one to build a global network of “friends” who share some common interests with you, and who may help you as you work to help solve local, national, and global problems.

To paraphrase my first grade report card, the teacher said, “David reads widely with understanding.” Now, more than 70 years later, that description remains fairly accurate. I still read widely, but the totality of human knowledge has grown very rapidly over the years, and I understand a steadily decreasing percentage of that knowledge.

As I read, I think about the educational implications of what I am reading. And, I think about what I can do to help others to better understand how our rapidly changing world is a major challenge to the educational systems of the world.

Often this thinking leads me to write an IAE Blog entry in an attempt to convince other people that they may want to do something about the changes that are occurring. In my Information Underload and Overload blog entry, I mention an idea that I have implemented for myself and I encourage others to do likewise (Moursund, 3/1/2016). I call my idea a Digital Filing Cabinet (Moursund, 2013). The idea is quite simple. Create and maintain an electronic digital file or collection of files that you personally use to store information that you believe will be useful to you in the future and that you want to share with others. I do this via several different Digital Filing Cabinet Web pages. More broadly, the entire collection of IAE free materials can be thought of as a multi-drawer digital filing cabinet designed to serve both others and myself.

Here is a specific example and some food for thought. I have long been disturbed by our high school dropout rate and by the number of graduates who find themselves to be not very well qualified as they move on into college. I addressed this topic in my first IAE Blog entry, Are High Schools Seriously Misleading Our Students? (Moursund, 8/22/2010). In retrospect, my What You Can Do comments for that entry were rather weak. I didn't think deeply enough and I didn't provide useful detail.

Here are some deeper and more useful ideas. How about discussing the topic of readiness with a high school student who plans to graduate and go on to college. You might ask, “Do you think you are making good progress toward being well prepared for college? How do you know?” You and the student might build the student’s initial responses into a plan of action that could significantly change the student’s life. The Web is a great source of free self-assessment instruments and samples of the types of tests that are still widely used as part of the college entrance process. Or, you might want to raise a version of this question at a school’s PTA meeting and/or pose a suitably modified version of your question to a meeting of the School Board. In your statement to the PTA or School Board you might want to quote a little data such as I have provided in my IAE Blog entry, College and Job Readiness of U.S. High School Graduates (Moursund, 11/18/2015).

The discussion in the previous paragraph illustrates what one person can do in a one-on-one setting and what one person can do in an effort to engage a person or a group of people who have considerable power.

Local, Regional, and Global Hunger
A great many people don't get enough to eat. At the same time, the world produces enough for to feed everybody. The problem is a combination our distribution system and our wasteful habits, policies, and procedures. Grocery stores provide an extreme example of waste (Butler, 2/10/2016). Quoting from Grant Butler's article:


 * France has become the first country in the world to prohibit grocery stores from throwing away or destroying unsold food. The law, which was unanimously passed by the French senate last week, forces supermarkets to donate aging produce and packaged food that's approaching it's "best by" date to charities.


 * The law is the product of grassroots efforts by French consumer groups to tackle that country's growing problems of hunger among the impoverished, and mounting food waste. Now efforts are underway to get other European nations to follow suit.


 * During last year's ongoing series about rising grocery prices, we looked at ways consumers can tackle food waste in their own homes, but there was no getting around the elephant in the room: food waste at home accounts for just 21 percent of the food that's wasted in America.


 * How much food gets wasted overall? It's staggering: According to a recent study by the National Consumers League, around 35 million tons of food is wasted in the United States every year, or roughly 40 percent of all the food that the country produces. Some of that food is wasted before it ever reaches the consumer market -- left in the fields to rot, or damaged in transit to the grocery store. But much of the waste occurs at the grocery stores, where blemished produce is often thrown out, and fresh baked bread is tossed at the end of the day.

Reflect about what you have just read. France dealt with this grocery store waste problem through a national law. So, why can't this approach be used in other countries, such as the United States?

What can you do? This problem lends itself to use of the Web and social networking. It is a local, state (or province), and country-wide problem. Raise the question with your friends. Read my IAE Blog Hungry Children—America's Shame (Moursund, 5/1/2014). Check out what the grocery stores and other food outlets are doing in your community.

Learning from Each Other
Maryellen Weimer has written an important short article, What We Learn from Each Other (Weimer, 4/20/2016). Quoting from the article:


 * When teachers tell me about some new strategy or approach they’ve implemented, I usually ask how they found out about it and almost always get the same response: “Oh, a colleague told me about it.” I continue to be amazed by the amount of pedagogical knowledge that is shared verbally (and electronically) between colleagues.

The article reports on recent research involving 35 Physic Department faculty members from a number of different institutions. Quoting again from the article:


 * [The faculty members] were asked about their understanding and use of Peer Instruction, capitalized because it refers not to generic student collaboration but rather to the protocol of individual answer, discussion, answer again, developed by Harvard physicist and educator Eric Mazur (and highlighted in a previous Teaching Professor blog post). Almost 60% of those interviewed said they had first heard about Peer Instruction via an informal discussion with a colleague. Only 8% said they had found out about it by reading, however many of those interviewed noted that they turn to written materials and presentations to deepen their understanding.

I found this report quite interesting. I read about Eric Mazur's teaching methodologies quite a few years ago. Mazur began work on his teaching methodology in the early 1990s. Indeed, he published a book about his ideas in 1997. For details about Eric Mazur's work, see Craig Lambert's article, Twilight of the Lecture (Lambert, March-April, 2012). Quoting from the Lambert article:


 * This innovative style of learning grew into “peer instruction” or “interactive learning,” a pedagogical method that has spread far beyond physics and taken root on campuses nationally. Last year, Mazur gave nearly 100 lectures on the subject at venues all around the world. (His 1997 book Peer Instruction is a user’s manual; a 2007 DVD, Interactive Teaching, produced by Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, illustrates the method in detail.)

To me, the message is clear. If you learn something through your reading or from a colleague—and you feel it to be well worth sharing—talk to your colleague! The chances are good that you know something that they don't know, and that you will be doing them a valuable service through direct communication with them.

A Request for Help
Many of you who read this IAE-pedia document have personal stories of what you have done and what others have done or not done. I would like to share some of these stories as IAE Blog entries and/or as additions to this entry. Please contact me at moursund@uoregon.edu with your ideas.

References and Resources
Butler, G. (2/10/2016). Should United States follow France's lead with laws banning grocery store food waste? The Oregonian. Retrieved 4/18/2016 from http://www.oregonlive.com/cooking/2016/02/are_mandatory_donation_laws_th.html.

Evans, H. (February, 2016). What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? TED Talks (Video, 16:56). Retrieved 4/13/2016 from http://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_evans_what_does_it_mean_to_be_a_citizen_of_the_world. For more information about the Global Citizenship movement, see http://www.theglobalcitizensinitiative.org.

Lambert, C. (March-April, 2012). Twilight of the lecture. Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 4/21/2016 from http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/twilight-of-the-lecture.

Moursund, D. (3/1/2016). Information underload and overload. IAE Blog. Retrieved 4/14/2016 from http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/information-underload-and-overload.html.

Moursund, D. (1/27/2016). Tell me some good news. IAE Blog. Retrieved 4/14/2016 from http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/tell-me-some-good-news.html.

Moursund, D. (11/18/2015). College and job readiness of U.S. high school graduates. IAE Blog. Retrieved 4/14/2016 from http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/college-and-job-readiness-of-u-s-high.html.

Moursund, D. (2015). Brain science for educators and parents. IAE-pedia. Web: http://iae-pedia.org/Brain_Science. PDF file: http://i-a-e.org/downloads/free-ebooks-by-dave-moursund/271-brain-science-for-educators-and-parents-1.html. Microsoft Word file: http://i-a-e.org/downloads/free-ebooks-by-dave-moursund/270-brain-science-for-educators-and-parents.html. HTML file: http://iae-pedia.org/Brain_Science.

Moursund, D. (5/1/2014). Hungry children—America's shame. IAE Blog. Retrieved 4/18/2016 from http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/hungry-children-america-s-shame.html.

Moursund, D. (2013). Digital filing cabinet. IAE-pedia. Retrieved 4/14/2016 from http://iae-pedia.org/Digital_Filing_Cabinet/Overview.

Moursund, D (8/22/2010). Are high schools seriously misleading our students? IAE Blog. Retrieved 4/14/2016 from http://i-a-e.org/component/easyblog/entry/are-high-schools-seriously-misleading-our-students.html?Itemid=58.

Moursund, D. (8/22/2010 to present). IAE Blog. Access the complete contents of these blog entries at http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog.html. Access a list of titles and links to the blog entries at http://iae-pedia.org/Italic textIAE_Blog.

TED (2016). Education. TED Talks. Retrieved 4/16/2016 from https://www.ted.com/topics/education.

TED (n.d.). 2100+ talks to stir your curiosity. TED Talks. Retrieved 4/14/2016 from https://www.ted.com/talks.

Weimer, M. (4/20/2016). What we learn from each other. Faculty Focus. Retrieved 4/21/2016 from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/what-we-learn-from-each-other/?utm_campaign=Faculty+Focus&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=28667232&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9CtSlHr3VBukCShaUyAv5iv9aPzqgoVOnnM5MrknwZ1avnZ6A6Sf59YHCVsqbwJm0BeKdqK9JVdPB3xPqcGsv0oSWiYw&_hsmi=28667232.

Author or Authors
This document was developed by David Moursund.