10 minute read
Intercultural
Alí Castillo(3ro BGU) Opinion article
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Hi, my name is Alí Castillo, and I think we should start talking about what “Openness” means as a concept. It's a word that denotes opportunity and possibilities. And now, everywhere, the world is opening up, and it's a good thing. Why is this happening? If I have to take my shot, I say it’s because of the technology revolution, even more simply, I’d just say the internet, that’s why the world is being opened.
Don Tapscott, one pretty recognized businessman, once said that “as it turns out, openness has several different meanings, and for each, there's a corresponding principle for the transformation of civilization. ” That implies that in a new world, in this new world that's been opened up, the main pillar for civilization is openness. Now, the principles of openness, according to Tapscott, are:
As the second one we have Transparency: This is about the available information, not just what we can learn but what we can discover. As globalized as the world is, there’s nothing someone can hide forever and perfectly. You don’t need to imagine everyone naked anymore because we’re basically all naked now, in terms of information; and not just us as individuals but the companies are naked as well. This principle, as controversial as it sounds, is actually good because if you’re going to be naked, you better have something impressive to show up; the thing here is that this transparency has brought light to shadows and made from values and integrity no longer just optional qualities but necessary ones for everyone, individuals, companies, countries, whatever.
The third is Sharing: Now sharing is about giving up things right? It’s usually associated with generosity but now it should be associated as a necessity. This is because you can no longer keep something for yourself, selfishness is no longer an option, if you choose that path you’ll probably have counterproductive effects. So now, this openness in the world has reinvented the whole human production and has set up a new model of research that encourages us to place assets in commons, and in doing so, create a rising tide that could lift all boats, not just for the industries but for humanity.
Finally, we have Empowerment: With the opening of the world the saying: “Knowledge and intelligence are power” has become stronger; and as the knowledge becomes more distributed, there's a concomitant distribution and decentralization and disaggregation of power that's underway in the world today. The open world is bringing freedom.
With that in mind, why would you say we haven’t had a big conflict in the last 7 decades, I mean, like a global war? If you ask me I’d say it’s because human beings have developed weapons powerful enough to annihilate the whole life on earth. Do you know what that means? It means that every single country is scared, and they should be, that’s why they’re so careful about starting a conflict because that implies the creation of a really dangerous scenario. Now, what if I asked you for the reason you think every human being is not killing, robbing, or raping one another? Curiously, it’s the same one, we all got to be careful in this society, not because we can start a global war but because we can end up in jail or worse. So I think nobody is meditating on what this “half-peace” stands. Because it doesn't stand on trust, relatability, or anything like that, it stands on fear and the threat of a possible, bigger or smaller, reprisal. But you know what? It has worked out, it’s true. Even so, I do have a problem with it, not with peace not with the end but with the means. And you can call me naive or an idealist or something like that, maybe I am but I prefer calling myself a faithful person because I have faith I believe in a world where peace could be achieved in a pretty
different way, a more organic way. So let’s think about this for a second; It's been almost 80 years since the first atomic bomb was detonated, it’s been almost 80 years since that sense of fear and threat was triggered in the population mindset so it’s been almost 80 years since this artificial peace was established. Now, the world is not the same as it was then, a lot has changed, the world has become a lot bigger, it’s opened itself through the years.
I was asked to answer a question, what does 'opening the world' mean to me? Well, for me it’s a revolution; it’s happening right now and in its whole was created by a new generation of young people with hope in their hearts and ambition in their veins, people that didn't want to be treated as subjects anymore and want to feel free. And now the world has opened itself it will never be closed again, so we’re not putting this back, this open world should have as an emblem the empowerment and freedom, this world has been brought to a whole new arc of history towards openness. For me, this should not be the fear age, because it's an age of networked intelligence, an age of vast promise, an age of collaboration, where the boundaries of our organizations are changing, of transparency, where sunlight is disinfecting civilization, an age of sharing and understanding the new power of the commons, and as I said it's an age of empowerment and freedom.
I get a lot of hope that maybe this smaller, networked, open world that we can perceive around us might be a better one in its whole and that this new age of networked intelligence could be an age of promise fulfilled and of peril unrequited. It's obvious that this world is not perfect; it has problems and I have just approached one of so many, but I’d say it’s worth the try to make it the way we’ve always dreamed.
I was asked to propose a solution for the problem that I’ve exposed, and the truth is I don't have any idea what that solution could be. And I shouldn’t have. I mean, out here we can find philosophers, politicians, scientists trying to find that out; we’re not living the perfect peaceful utopia, so I’d say they haven’t found it out yet, so why in hail should I, a 16 years old Ecuadorian guy, have the perfect formula for peace? Now, even when I cannot offer you that solution, I can make you a promise. I’ll promise you all for as long as I live I’ll try to communicate this same message to every single person willing to hear it; I’ll make as much as I can so every person that I could reach, no matter of precedence, age, gender, or whatever,
Still have a little bit of faith in the possibility of a new future. Not a future based on fear and hate and threats but a future, a world, based on trust, respect, and openness.
Thank you.
Wasted but Not Lost
Mateo Vivanco (3ro BGU)
For the worse or the better, education will not be ever the same. Due to the global pandemic, teaching has changed to an online version of it, obligating us to take advantage of technology and the internet, obligating both students and teachers to change their previous methods. Before analyzing nowadays schooling and how it would be in the future, we have to take a look back on how it was before entering quarantine to see if something has improved up to now. Were we learning correctly? Finland and Canada, among others, are ranked as the best in the educational aspect. The reason is quite simple: they avoid wasting students’ time, by teaching only what is necessary and encouraging them to do what they like. Their educational system is designed so that what students learn is not only the socalled basic subjects, but they hope that, by having fewer hours of class, they will take advantage of their free time doing something to their liking, be it: studying more, practising some instrument, mastering another language, among a lot of productive activities. So, answering the question above in short, no. Most of the content learned today is not productive unless the person specializes in a field where you will use that, but for life itself, the usefulness of most of the content reviewed during much of high school will be practically nil, removing valuable time that can never be replenished. Since April 2020, everything related to school and college is made through a screen, in our own homes, because of the confinement. It still has some issues, but we kept on working. The thing is, despite the radical change, the latest mentioned problems have not been solved yet, committing them again and again, making students keep wasting their time in making homework, learning a lot of useless data, instead of exploiting it. Not everything is lost yet. Like it was said at the very beginning, everything has changed, and as I recently mentioned, there are plenty of bad things, but we can still find some light at the end of the tunnel.
It seems that the virus came to stay for a while, and for the same reason, we will have to adapt to being in front of screens for longer, perfecting our search methods and investigation tactics. But we are supposed to have extra time to do things we enjoy, but as education has not transformed to the ideal version of it, students keep wasting their time in nonsense ways: like studying useless subjects or collecting their homework to a portfolio. All this process called: Online Classes will end up in permanent long-term changes and plenty of benefits in life in general. From now on, people will get used to technology more easily than before, education will evolve to adopt the internet and technology as a smart and useful tool to improve knowledge and teaching. A long time ago, education was wrong in some places, but in important ways. Time of face-to-face learning relationship has finally gone, and we did not make any improvement at all. Therefore, the change has to come now, approaching the problem from another perspective. Instead of trying to make changes in the real world, now we can do it in the online world, with more ease for everybody, because this situation is not going to end soon, and something has to be made. Finally, we can conclude that education has made thousands of things wrong, and still does, but, as time passes through, stuff is changing with it. So, we can expect that, in a few years, this quarantine will be considered a blessing to the learning process, because we should have learnt how to take advantage of tech many years ago, and thanks to the pandemic, people saw themselves obligated to do so.
This article about the issue of education during the pandemic was written as part of the application process to become a LAC21 Ambassador of UNEIN del Pacífico.
