Preparing Future Leaders:

1. Preparing Future Leaders: How Education Can Confront Global Challenges

2. High Noon: 20 global problems 20 years to solve them by Jean-Francois Rischard

3. 20 Global Problems. • What are they?

4. 20 GLOBAL PROBLEMS, 20 YEARS TO SOLVE THEM

5. Causes? • 2 global areas are producing massive change and increased complexity on this planet and are running ahead of our ability to manage them • population increase and • the new economy • 3-9 billion people from 1960 – 2055 – 95 years less than 3 generations • Global GDP from 6 trillion to 140 trillion

6. Ecological footprint overshoot—the next 50 year in perspective • 1960 3 billion 6 trillion .5 planets – • easily sustainable • 2005 6 billion 40 trillion 1.25 planets— • already operating on “Credit” • 2055 9 billion 140 trillion 2.25 planets— • this will not work! – • on current trends our children will inherit disaster and hardship– • I’ll be 85, daughters will be 52/49, with teenage-ish children

7. Why this growth is a problem • 5% growth rate—too fast—puts the planet into overdrive • These 2 forces produce more change and complexity than we are able to handle—exponential—creating too much change and complexity that it overwhelms the human institutions— • hierarchies that move slowly —creating a governance gap—Dog years vs bureaucratic /turtle years – clash between forces.

8. Dog years • Illustration—1 actual year = 7 years of change in population growth and economic change conversely it takes 7 years to create 1 year of political change—the purveyors of policy change lag sorely behind the forces of global change • Our governments can’t keep up due to the nature of our global government systems– Nation States (territorial with short election cycles.)

9. The exception • Of all the current global concerns, most “solutions” have resulted in failure. • Exception—the hole in the ozone layer. The culprit was easy to identify (6 industries) and then change the technology for a quick and efficient solution. • Four observations regarding current problems • They all have solutions • Not that costly: 1 trillion a year of a 40 trillion global gdp – just 3% • We have less than 20 years to act • Yet, none of them is being solved

10. My Point!? • The world’s urgent need for a new approach to global problem solving—crucial role of education in fixing them as education transcends boundaries. • AP is taking a leadership role in developing a curricula that leans towards global awareness.

11. It begins with us • 5-18 year olds • They need a working Knowledge of how the world changing and why. • Action: what can be done to solve them and why aren’t they being solved and what can I do? • Mindset – how can I be first a global citizen, second a national citizen, 3rd a local citizen. • Very different from the American Way of life.

12. Related text • Martin ReesOUR FINAL HOUR • The bottom line of this message is that the source of humanity's biggest threat is not Capitalism, or Communism, or Fundamentalism, or Atheism, but rather from the hubris of any and every human individual or group willing to place their convictions and commitments before those of any and all others.

13. William Sheridan on Our Final Hour • Humans have grown so smart and so smug that they seem to be able to rationalize why they would rather be "dead instead" of any of the ideological alternatives, no matter what the cost.

14. William Sheridan on Our Final Hour • Humanity's surplus of technical ingenuity has lead to weapons of mass destruction, genetically modified organisms, drug-resistant diseases, declining environmental resilience, "bio" or "cyber" errorism or terrorism, and conditions of increasing inequality (income disparity, digital divide, ethnic prejudice, gender discrimination). Humanity's deficit of moral sensibility leads most of those on the beneficiary side of such inequalities to shrug and blame such conditions on the global market, the culture of poverty, genetic differences, or environmental scarcities, but NEVER themselves!

15. William Sheridan on Our Final Hour • Who is to blame? Almost all of humanity! Everyone who does not live their life so that there is a convergence between their own, their group's, and humanity's interests, is undermining the conditions of their own sustainability. If we persist in such destructive behavior we are jeopardizing our own existence and that of the entire biosphere.

16. Most important tests? • If global problems are what our students and children are going to face, what sort of essential questions pertaining to global issues should an 18 year old be able to talk about? • What classes lend themselves to these issues?

17. How this relates to AP • AP history and social sciences 2007 • 1,001,963 39% of all AP exams (39%) • Of these one million test • US History 33% • Human Geography 5 % • Environmental Sci. 3 % • Comparative Gov. 1 %

18. What are you prepared to do?-- the untouchables • Small but deliberate steps in and out of the classroom • Non-fiction will have a global focus • Student writing will address global concerns • Encourage students seeking mentoring projects to examine the possibility of attacking a global problem • Challenge friends, colleagues, students to read High Noon with me

19. Other Possibilities • Global issues network (GIN) • www.EARCOS.org has materials online • An addition to Model UN – an extension where the objective moves beyond modeling and the practice it provides to real innovation and working together in the real world to change the world. • Perhaps send a delegation to the GIN conference 2009 in Washington DC

20. Even more ideas • Grow the Freshmen Service project to an ongoing program that a student can develop into a Senior Service project. • Freshmen year – serve Lexington (find a need- food bank) • Sophomore year – serve Kentucky (lobby gov. for more food for low income families) • Junior year – serve America (lobby congress) • Senior year – serve The World (raise money and awareness for the world’s starving children)

21. Just a thought--