In the field of education, the world is progressively a smaller place. The communications revolution continuously alters the nature of the ways we live and learn. In the United States the impact of 9/11-11/9 is still felt and experienced in people’s daily lives throughout the country. For educators this is a wake up call to pause, make time and carefully assess the directions we are taking to foster learning in and for our global village.

The tragic events in our world today, ranging from ethnic conflict to the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to water and food shortages, make us realize that education is not and cannot remain in the classroom. As educators and lifelong learners we must bring the world, and its many diverse and particular challenges, into our learning. In this sense, regardless of how global the world may become, education is local.

Our task in the learning we create is to discover the specificity of local contexts as we expand the range of possibilities to communicate. We thereby infuse that which may be defined as a global dialogue with a curiosity and a joy to discover local cultures, narratives and traditions.

Finding Ourselves in Translation

If we are to get beyond our understanding of the world through the stories we read in newspapers, we must be in the world as we learn about the many voices in conflict and dissent, the fears that breed human insecurity, and the greed that perpetuates violence and despair. Learning helps us shape our worldviews. For many Americans who do not travel as a learning experience, education through various media, international films, Osama, to cite one example, or still photo narratives, Lori Grinker’s After War to cite another, offer increasing opportunities to open their eyes to the local context. That particular experience may thereby become a genuine part of their understanding. This is the learning that gives voice to those in other cultures whose experiences teach us so much individually and collectively.

This is a type of learning for a world in transition that asks us to step out of the safety of our own little corners. It is that learning which calls us to find ourselves in translation as we wake up to events, which, although not in our physical vicinity, touch us as human beings. The universal meaning of tragedy in conflict, of a human condition that is the result of deprivation, necessitates not only that we think more immediately about the real world. Ethical concerns lead us, as active subjects in the world, to explore in our learning together how things could be otherwise. It is this journey of discovery in education that opens us to the possibilities, the potential, to find ourselves in translation.

In our multicultural societies, communication translates into a search for a common language. Conceptions that previously held true are revisited as we experience what the author Lillian Hellman described as Pentimento: “Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When this happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on the open sea. That is called Pentimento, because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again."

In this context, the myth of the melting pot no longer defines the American society. Yet, that society is still is left to draw on the wealth of ethnic cultures that populate US shores. This cultural diversity is a precious asset in education on which the country must be able to rely in the decades ahead. America continues to take in the world’s peoples. Unlike Rome centuries ago, the United States Republic has a responsibility to find a way to live this diversity for the benefit of the many, not the privilege of the few. It is through education, public and private, local and global, that we create the meeting places that allow differences, openly expressed, to flourish. It is in the learning that defines life’s journey, through an education in society across the lifespan, that we increasingly find ourselves in translation.

Learning Through Media

The influence of the Internet and other communications tools, particularly radio, in education has introduced a more active dynamic in the learning process. These tools offer a new dimension to education whose vocation, in the perspective of Paolo Freire, is still to realize genuine communication anchored in dialogue and, by extension, solidarity. The present era is one in which learning is, for better and for worse, more strikingly influenced by the media.

Ethnic conflict teaches us that education is part of the problem or part of the solution. It is not neutral in the evolution of states and societies. Media coverage of wars can perpetuate division or facilitate understanding. In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, education that includes references to media in all its forms creates meeting places for debate and discussion. The traditional classroom is, by virtue of the introduction of new technologies, open to a more pluralistic dialogue over time.

In these meeting places, we create learning communities in which there is a genuine opportunity to infuse the global perspective with our understanding of, and empathy for, local contexts. This vision of learning is one in which education must not be limited by the physical space of a classroom. It is education that by definition transcends borders in geographical places, education that translates the global village into a local reality.