The Educated Student: Global Citizen or Global Consumer?

This story takes me back to my senior year Sociology class.  For anyone who has had Sociology, you have a slight advantage over students who haven’t taken it.  Because it is in Sociology where they teach you the ways of the world from culture to American government.  In the words of Barber, it is “..history, the arts, sociology, and anthropology, all those fields that make young people aware of the rest  of the world in a comparative fashion.” And it is true that sociology opens your eyes to the mind games and secrets of the political, corporate and commercialized world.  Barber has opened my eyes to the ways the modern world feeds on our needs for new school supplies by forcing schools to “make a deal with the devil”.  They lease the schools new equipment just so they can shove a 12 minute program down our throats, 3 of which are advertisements. He also opened my eyes to the problems from September 11, that extended beyond terrorism.  It made the whole nation stop what it was doing in it’s perfect little bubble and gave a huge reality smack in the face about issues going on overseas and to remind us that the oceans that divide us are just a false sense of security.  It turned everything upside down and challenged us to rethink our goals in life.  There are so many issues concerning the entire world today that may turn out to be beneficial on the bright side of things.  Issues mentioned in the essay such as Global Warming and AIDS and West Nile can connect us in a way never imagined.  We can come together and help treat and prevent these horrible things.  I truly believe that the key to solving a lot, not all but a lot of our major problems today is Education.  If we are going to be such a diverse nation then I think we should take the time to learn about the inhabitants of those foreign places.  Understanding each others cultures and getting rid of ethnocentricity can bring us one big step closer to world peace.