A New Cosmopolitanism – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Y Fu Tuan, one of my favorite thinkers, on our greatest educational challenge…

How might we label ourselves in the 21st century? To risk a broad generalization, I say we are either ethnics or globalists. As ethnics, we hold on to certain cultural traits—headgear, art, cuisine—that we deem essential to our identity and self-esteem. But ethnics lack the sense of centrality that primitive cosmopolites had. As globalists, we are also limited. True, our connections are worldwide, but they are confined to financial transactions, the acquisition, exchange, and fusion of material goods, customs, and fashions, all very playfully, even creatively, done, but with an underlying sense of insecurity. Above all, as globalists we lack anchorage in the cosmos: We do not see ourselves as citizens of the stars above and the earth beneath, which is my way of saying that we globalists, for all our wealth and technical knowledge, are deficient in grandeur, in a sense of our dignity as human beings.

In this decade, we need to regain our self-confidence, our dignity, as cosmopolites. How? Through primary education. Young children must be taught that they are inheritors of the best in human thought. Nothing less can give them the confidence they need.

via A New Cosmopolitanism – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.