Flatter than the Real World

What is the Flat Classroom?
Dr. Z (UNI Ed Tech guru) has recently introduced me to the Flat Classroom Project led by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay. It is a “global collaborative project” undertaken by middle and high school students from around the world. Students communicate with Web 2.0 tools such as wiki spaces, instant messaging, and Skype to improve tech skills and learn about other students’ cultures and perspectives while they create projects based on the topics raised in Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat. I have signed up to be an “expert advisor” on Globalization and Outsourcing for this project. One of FCP’s videos states: “Flat classroom projects have the power to produce international citizens with a world view based on understandings, not misinformed bias.”

I’m all for open communication, and studying and giving value to different cultures. But whose idea was it to dedicate educational objectives to producing “international citizens?” I speak three languages, have a BA in Anthropology, I've traveled extensively and lived and taught abroad... but I am definitely still an American citizen.

America's industry and wealth are out the window. Disinformation and Bread and Circus makes citizens increasingly unaware, apathetic, impoverished and enslaved to an encroaching police-nanny state that serves a corporatocracy. This country may be fermenting, but my objective as a social studies educator is to help students understand where that wealth and liberty was lost, by studying history. Thus, as an American teacher in the USA, I want to produce American citizens with informed worldviews. American citizens can still teach and learn in a flat classroom project.

With regard to the last part of that aforementioned statement in the FCP video, “understanding, not misinformed bias,” I must highlight a key consideration. Who exactly are the students in the Flat Classroom Project? There are students from public schools in the USA, and students from international schools in several different countries. Ok, so that means that there will be a great diversity of perspectives to weigh in on the topic of globalism in Friedman’s book, right? Well, we need to understand that students who attend international schools may not necessarily be of such diverse perspectives, based on their common socioeconomic standing. International schools serve the children of the wealthiest members of society in their respective cities, usually with considerable populations of foreigners working for a multinational corporation. International schools and students are direct products of globalization. International schools' students’ families have benefited from globalization, and of course, will likely share a common perspective that is favorable of it. I highly doubt that the students who attend Brazil’s public schools for half days (because the government can’t afford to provide full days) in crowded classrooms of 50 or more students with no computers or access to the internet will contribute to such projects. The same applies to those millions of lower class students from Africa, or China, or India, etc.

International collaborative online learning projects like FCP indeed create unique learning opportunities for participants, and can help to broaden horizons of students. Yet one must bear in mind who exactly all of these international students are, and consider what bias they will carry based on their SES and backgrounds. To truly develop a diverse understanding of the "flat world”, we need to hear from the students who have been negatively affected by globalization and outsourcing. Children of jobless American autoworkers, Chinese factory slaves, and fatherless Indian farm children would contribute very different perspectives than children of wealthy business and government elites.
So what is the flat classroom? I don't believe it exists. Will it?