Whoa, Nellie!

Our class blog is crazy, amazing, and borderline out of contol (in a good way) -- there's so much to read and look at. I finished listening to (I have the book on CD) chapters 1-4 of The World is Flat and; I went to the postings on Friedman and read some and skimmed over some. Like I said, there's just so much at times, I find it difficult to sort through. I'm realizing that I should and must spend time reading every day.

Anyway here are some thoughts about our world that is flat:
Before listening to any of the book I already knew the world had been flattened. I just didn't realize how flat it was and how many factors went in to the flattening. And thinking about the great lengths Friedman went to for this work. But two things that boggled my mind were his descriptions of Wal-mart's headquarters (anyboy else think of that Southpark episode?) and UPS' syncronized supply chains. The world is flat because all of these massive webs have been spun across the globe. I had no idea UPS employees fix Toshiba computers and that UPS employs meteorologists and is the largest private user of wireless technologies. It all makes perfect sense after stepping back from it, but is nonetheless fascinating. While listening to all of this and the rest of chapters 1-4 I found myself wondering, "How will all of this apply to my future English classroom?" Well, because the world is flat and we are in the midst of so much technological change, I must take part in fulfilling the "economic destinies" of my future students. Current classrooms don't seem to being much to help students survive in the flattened world. As Karen asked on the class blog: "What would an ELA pedagogy with self-actualization even look like?" It would be thought of as radical to most because students would be reading and blogging about what types of literature and writing are important to them. I think a reading-writing workshop setting combined with blogging, and using Wikipedia would help students realize who they are as people and what matters to them. I would have loved to pick my own reading material in high school (I got to do that one time that I can remember, in 9th grade, and I read Ayn Rand's Anthem. Besides this being a good book- we could pick what sounded interesting to us rather than listening to a recording of Julius Caesar. We did that too.) and write about it.

I know I'm only scratching the surface of The World is Flat and the course content but, if the U.S. doesn't pick up the pace we are going to be flattened by the flat world. All the poor English students and teachers will be crushed reading Shakespeare or Arthur Miller's The Crucible out loud until the end of time!