Grasping Global Cities’ Societal Challenges

GLOBAL URBAN EDUCATION: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Brussels Study Institute

February 5, 2016

DR. FRED MEDNICK

Founder, Teachers Without Borders
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Part 1: Focus on Megacities

Data visualization and mapping of demographics show the meteoric rise of urban areas and
the megacity. Accompanying the miraculous and daunting task of addressing the logistics of
commerce and the mechanism of state, the megacity also presents more than its share of
challenges—the anonymous breeding ground for non-state sponsored acts of terror, as both a
major contributor to climate change and its greatest victim; the destination of displaced
peoples increasingly harder to count; and the focal point for sudden demands on public health
and the fragility of the social contract.
Megacities also blur the lines between the school, one’s community, and the nation state.
What was once global has become local. Their density offers enormous opportunities for
universities and research centres to collaborate to learn not only how cities can function, but
also to re-examine the function of learning itself. Policymakers are confronted with the
challenges of both meeting the basic needs of a population, and with building the capacity of
its higher education institutions to keep up with challenges seen and unforeseen. Education
within megacities is no longer a question of more, but of how—how to examine the critical
relationship between globalization, urban education, and sustainability. How to create
equitable policies to keep up with exponential population growth. How to integrate and
acculturate whole new communities unfamiliar with historical traditions and expectations.
Change has become the center, rather than periphery, of education.
This presentation will define the current landscape of urban life and the megacity through a
perspective not widely considered central to the provision of education: national and natural
disaster risk reduction.
Four million refugees are now escaping the horror of violence in their homelands and flowing
into Europe to escape economic or political injustice or neglect. The response of the global
community has largely been one of public hospitality and private discrimination. Boats arriving
on one shore are turned away and accepted on another. The wave of alt-right nationalistic
rhetoric sweeping through the United States and Europe is contraposed by an historical spirit
of openness and enlightenment. The classroom is no longer immune.
Two global conferences have captivated the world’s attention, almost dismissive of borders:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and The Paris Climate Summit. Questions abound
about how cooperative agreements can plan for and reach SDG targets that seem out of
reach, even at a steady state. In education, the emphasis on quantity (more schools, more
teachers, more resources) has given way to the measurement of quality (better instruction,
more advanced skills and competencies). The management of expectations and accompanying
initiatives are compounded by orders of magnitude in megacities.
At no other time in history has an education system been challenged to make connections
between climate change and public health, but this issue can no longer be ignored. Extreme
heat, poor air quality, reduced food and water quality, and population displacement are
characteristic of life in megacities. At the time of this writing, the Zika virus originating from
Brazil has been declared a global public health emergency. Climate change is no longer
someone else’s problems. Diseases hitch a ride in carry-on luggage and ignore borders.
We know, too, that inattention to student needs, a lack of teaching resources, and irrelevant
teacher professional development have been shown to create the conditions for lower quality
health, civic unrest, vulnerability to natural disasters, an inability to compete in a global
economy, corruption, and the heightened likelihood that young people will be attracted to –
or victims of – crime and violence.
The provision of education in urban areas and megacities requires a systematic determination
of the risks, hazards, and vulnerabilities of the educational structure itself, as if they were to
conduct a seismic analysis. I will examine the challenge from a geological perspective before
creating a corollary educational comparison.
Close to fifty megacities sit astride the earth’s plate tectonic boundaries. In the last 15 years,
up to one million people have died in earthquakes, 70,000 in China and 230,000 in Haiti, since
2008. Half of the children who die in earthquakes are crushed by their schools. A seismic risk
calculation is determined by a weighted score of: Disaster Risk (DR) = Hazards (H) x
Vulnerability (V), ÷ Community Resilience, which is measured by resource capacity,
mobilization capacity, and management. This (highly simplified) formula calculates expected
losses for x-lengths of time, based upon hazard types and intensities.
Whether or not a megacity is in an earthquake zone, the teaching of science would be remiss
without its direct link to safety. Expanding from there, any given megacity’s hazards could
include disruptions from forces of nature, violence, deterioration of infrastructure, resource
depletion. Vulnerability includes a percentage of loss from exposure and proximity to these
hazards. Education in megacities must consider how exceptions can become the norm.
The formula of risk assessment in education (as a measure of hazard mitigiation) is far more
revealing than its purpose as a metaphoric comparison to physical hazards and seismic
vulnerability. In early childhood education, a hazard can be the state of public health—levels of
immunization; access to clean water; accessibility and affordability of pre-natal and ongoing
care; and parental education. Vulnerabilities can be determined by who suffers from a lack of
accessibility, availability, and affordability of public services; disenchantment with the political
process; a lack of leadership or initiative in the service of dependencies created by external
support or charitable bail-outs, resulting in the abdication of responsibility for essential
services.
Within this landscape, comparative global urban educators must navigate through the wide-
open space between global policy, national policy, and local practice and consider the role of
culture as a traditional way of life and as a dynamic phenomenon like cultures grown in petri
dishes, revealing new challenges. Educators must evaluate whether a solution from one
country can fit into a new context; examine how to strengthen the denominator of resilience
to mitigate the growing numerator of hazards and vulnerabilities; how to construct an
educational system elastic enough to address the fault lines created by the sheer weight and
size of the city itself.
Teachers are often asked to shoulder the burden. Their voice is as critical to integral
development as any other, for they must translate complexity into order, recreate mini-
democracies, and maintain the social contract. An investment in global megacities must how
to care for, protect, and manage its natural resources in order to meet the demand. So, too,
must it care for its most precious and renewable national resources—its teachers.
This presentation of slides that follow may shed some light on how megacities can address
mega-educational challenges and how policymakers may look with fresh eyes on the assets of
educators to help them solve seemingly intractable problems.
Part 2: Slides
(see http://www.bsi-brussels.be/medias/upload/files/Mednick_Brussels.pdf)