Last week my Milwaukee cab driver asked me the oddest question—“If your wife is on her _______ [menstrual cycle] does she still have to fast during Ramadan?” After coughing up Mountain Dew I tried to respond. Too rapid of self disclosure is over exposure. With carbonated nostrils and wet eyes I managed to muster a safe retort—“What do you think?” He nonchalantly shared, “I believe the Koran says that if you’re bleeding for any reason then you need to eat, or shouldn’t fast—but I’m not very religious and am not sure. I keep telling my wife it can’t be good for her not to eat during this time.”

His question seemed to come from nowhere—a random thought that even Letterman wouldn’t ask. However, the moment was intensely real. For some reason he seemed comfortable raising such a sensitive matter, and was desperate to find an answer. After all, we were only in the eleventh day of Ramadan—lasting until October 13th.

There’s nothing about me that gives clues of being from any Islamic country—I even use a cross pen. But he seemed to trust me. Perhaps it was my comment about his soccer ball as I entered his cab, and about his kids’ picture, and then his job in general. We briefly shared humanness, and quickly moved to things in common, and though thirty years earlier, I had lived in his country.

In many ways we were sharing the same space, discussing universal interests, issues, and things in common. But in other ways we remained in different places.

This happens often in this multicultural, economically diverse religious kaleidoscope we call globalization. We often share space but not place.

I had jumped into the cab immediately after a long conversation with Cliff Adelman—well respected for his lifetime of research for the U.S. Department of Education. Drew Koch (Purdue University) was also attending the National Symposium on Student Retention, and joined our reflections on Cliff’s keynote address, “Getting Graduation Rates Right: It’s an International Imperative Now.” Like the cab ride that followed, he noted that in comparative charts on educational gains between countries we’re sharing space but not place.

Countries have all joined the same educational discussion but need an interpreter. Numerous nations are attempting to track student success indicators, but at present we’re not speaking the same statistical language. In other words, as his data clearly reveals, it’s difficult to compare rates or statistics between most countries because we’re measuring different things. (See http://csrde.ou.edu for his notes at the conference, or http://www.ihep.org/ for his current work). For example, “retention” in one country usually means something completely different in another—yet we often endorse charts that compare student performance and success between countries.

I shared with Cliff that in some ways his research questions reminded me of Friedman’s discussion in The World Is Flat. That is, that many countries are now measuring student success and comparing results using the same software and terms. He said, “Yes, perhaps—but the world isn’t culturally flat.” While Friedman correctly notes that technology has given equal economic access to many countries –leveling the barriers and advantages—cultural differences continue to separate educational standards and reports.

If we continue to compare U.S. schools to other countries then we need to understand their approaches to education and careers. For example, if Russia is counting a tank repair track for an Associates degree in engineering, then comparing these to U.S. pre-engineering and engineering degrees is suspect. If the completion of one-year German accounting certificates are matched against bachelors degrees from Harvard, then the “official” international charts capture something other than reality. Adelman is convincing: before we bemoan the plight of American education in the light of international comparisons we need to have clean data. Even where similar educational aspects are being tracked, e.g., bachelors in nursing, Adelman reveals up to a 50% variance in the charts from what likely is reality. A common difference is that foreign degrees might be three years with no liberal arts versus the American four-year degrees by the same name, but with a liberal foundation.

Like the cab driver asking an awkward question about his cultural mores, Adelman has been forcing questions creating awkward moments in the academy, though thankfully of quite a different nature. His candid public appraisals beg for a response, and his research acumen exacts respect.

My second Milwaukee cab driver was Somalian, and also a Muslim. Though much more reserved than the first driver, he also mentioned Ramadan. It is, indeed, a major cultural identifier. As we drove through Marquette University and then to Alverno College, we passed several people in clothes associated closely with other cultures. I couldn’t help but think about Adelman’s retort that “the world isn’t culturally flat.” I wondered if the woman we passed in the quaisi-Burqa was represented in those international comparison charts, or if she was culturally banned from education and “overlooked” in baseline data.

As we left Alverno College, famous for its revolutionary “outcomes assessment” model, I noticed the western side of the small non-descript yellow bricked campus had a modern feel with a chrome statue of doves. This contrasted the eastern side of campus, which remained stately in its traditional Catholic form. On the lawn sat a circle of women apparently in a class session. A biker-vested woman’s shoulder tattoo seemed to accent the day—it was large bright patriotic eagle. Nearby was a mammoth stone relief on the building’s edifice. It was a robed person praying, and in Coptic-like simple art fashion included the words “Pray to the Lord.” Simultaneously an Indian family was walking down the sidewalk. Like the data differences I couldn’t help but think that indeed, “the world is not culturally flat.”

We share space but not place.

I was also reminded of Adelman’s otherwise brilliant address. Implied from the end of his official address was the suggestion to strip the liberal arts from American degrees and compare actual professional preparation degrees with the same in other countries. If this is, indeed, a way to gain clean data then I hope that the world never becomes culturally flat—we fortunately live in a country whose educational system still begs the deepest questions of humanity. In an earlier and very helpful article on community colleges, Adelman describes well what is transpiring with these “towns” or villages of students. http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/comcollege/index.html . His data is essential for those planning programs. However, the very dataset itself reveals a massive student group in search of purpose—life goals and attainment best understood through the discussion of the human condition. Yes, questions wrestled with in the liberal arts. Questions that also speak to citizenry, ethics and morality. Questions that result in understanding the fullness of the unparalleled American freedom.

A cab driver can ask about Ramadan while passing a statue devoted to the Christian message, and a Somalian Muslim can earn a living by driving tourists by patriotic tattooed women bikers flanked by quasi-Burqa neighbors. A scholar can travel freely and suggest improvements while hundreds from across the nation listen. In many ways it’s our major philosophical endorsements and understandings that reflect our cultures, and our ability to tolerate differences. And, it though liberal learning that American masses have barred both religious and political totalitarianism found elsewhere. Stripping the liberal arts, if I’m understanding correctly, would likely facilitate a flattening of cultures but it would also flatten the great benefits of being American.

The brilliant and engaging Adelman can describe in detail the cab drivers of Milwaukee, and using the same statistical language, cabbies in the Middle East. However, in the light of this data, Socrates, St. Paul, Chaucer, Jefferson, C. S. Lewis, the Brontes, Solzenietzen, Alborn, Steinbeck, Rick Warren, Parker Palmer and the host that have joined the Great Dialogue can help us to understand why they’re driving them. And, why we find ourselves in the same spaces but different places.

So what do your think? Comments?

People continue to claim controversial triumphs regardless of the gore of war. Yesterday I watched Pakistan ablaze from the Detroit Concourse. Today I gazed at a Civil War reminder in Baltimore’s harbor.

The crisis in Karachi illuminated Detroit’s massive LCD panels in the half-mile walkway in concourse A. With planes to catch and storms brewing, crowds still gathered to ascertain why Pakistan was in flames. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s return to her country was welcomed with carnage that killed around 140 people and wounded over 200 more. People like you and me and children like our own were splattered into eternity. Fifty policemen formed a ring of protection by locking arms, and lost their lives for not only Bhotto, but her ideals.

The world’s best education may have enhanced Bhutto’s understanding of humanity, but even her Harvard and Oxford professors couldn’t protect her from the flaws of the human condition. She now knows from her English philosophy classes that Socrates’ understanding of humanity is suspect—educated people still act inhumanely. Knowing humane principles doesn’t always correlate with a rejection of civilian slaughter. We painfully swallowed those tears of reality on 9/11.

David B. Ellis claims in The Master Student that all educated people “should know what their willing to bet their lives on.” The problem is, and always has been, that ideals clash and that military savvy usually triumphs. Pericles’ famous Funeral Oration could not save the world’s premier educated citizenry from the Spartan spears, and not much has changed except the weapons. However, Ellis is dead right—education helps us to choose sides, and it should help us to choose noble causes. Terrorism tests unbridled tolerance and a liberal education should help to remove or prevent blinders.

In Baltimore—the USS Constellation floats gloriously amidst one of the nation’s glamorous harbors. It’s a trophy from a dark day in American history—when families divided and neighbors took the lives of childhood friends. With the risk of imbibing a history of the victors, at the least this trophy sits proudly as a testimony to ending slavery, serving as the flagship in stopping slave ships from Africa (see: http://www.constellation.org/).

Our biggest hope is that when fires light our streets we can ascertain whose ship we want to board, whose captain we want to salute—those radicals seeking agendas not approved or acceptable, or representatives of our democracy. No matter how flawed, the past two centuries have shown the resiliency of Americans to find their way through controversy and to protect the dignity of people.

Streets will indeed burn again, but my hope is that through education we’re able to realize a generation with a burning desire to better society—and to build on the sensible and tested decisions of the past. To choose sides wisely before civility is challenged militarily. The basic rule of logic is the “Law of Non-Contradiction.” There are times when two opposing views simply cannot be rectified. When the captain of the USS Constellation stopped the three slave ships, this law was manifest in the lives of hundreds of fellow human beings with souls and dreams, fears and futures. There on the open waters, two value systems clashed and as an educated person, I believe the right view prevailed and people walked free. Today, many disagree as they continue to sell millions of children through human trafficking. In a sense, many have mounted a new USS Constellation in voting for and supporting views that end such wrongful behavior.

And as we see streets burning around Bhutto, we’re also challenged to choose which ship we’ll board. The radical Islamic terrorism behind these is akin to what has taken the lives of so many in New York and that troubles communities worldwide. Our educational outcomes need to help future leaders to set sail to intersect these bitter ideals and to protect the lives of our fellow citizens.

So what do you think?

Our security guard said the only thing worse than being stung by the scorpion, was being stung twice! Within hours the whole world seemed to know through pictures circulated by our middle school students back in the states. Gross black sores, a scorpion in a jar, a debilitated man wrenching in pain--it was all the rave.

We were digging an ancient monastery in Wadi Natrun, Egypt and he was helping to ward off treasure hunters. But on a windy night half way between Cairo and Alexandria he found himself hanging between life and death. The other guard carried him through the night to an active Coptic monastery and saved his life, and the story became legendary.

We had attached the excavation to ten schools in Western Michigan through our Odyssey in Egypt virtual program, and the website became a top-ten site globally. Although we had prepared a neat curriculum, and though the latest technology applications drew considerable attention, the unplanned scorpions were the biggest hit—and literally helped draw hundreds of thousands of hits to our site. Various media groups covered this initiative, including a centerfold picture in U.S.News and World Report of a monk emailing from my Mac Laptop in the midst of the desert.

However, all of our planning and creative lessons paled in the face of the near-death experience. The technology provided a connection, but the teens drove the communication. When pictures surfaced of the scorpion stings, thousands of teens began forwarding them around the world. When the guard healed he revealed his trophy—the caged scorpion that had crawled inside his covers. Once again, the internet danced as the students—digital natives—shared them worldwide.

Mark Prensky has made the term “digital native” famous, as it seems to reflect adequately a generation who was born into the high-tech world. Those of use who are older are called “immigrants.” We also call students born after 1981 “millennials,” though some are not necessarily digital natives due to socio-economic upbringing.

As a professor I’m aware that what I say in the morning might find its way on YouTube by noon. My walk across campus might be filmed from a dorm window, put to music by the Hansens, and manipulated into the Fox Trot by the weekend. What I say about the Aztecs might be recorded and inserted into a fabricated interview between me and Hillary Clinton. And whether they want to praise or punish, it’s only a click away. It’s not if we want to use this technology, but how to use it best in reaching our intended outcomes. The technology is not the issue, but the issues that reach others through technology.

This generation loves “open source” solutions, where they have a chance for input in solving problems or forming opinions. Wikepedia made this famous, along with the suspect “democratization of knowledge.” And more recently YouTube, Google mail, and a string of applications have expedited connectivity and delivery. When the guard was stung, we asked for possible solutions—and teens gave a zillion tips on treating scorpion stings, as well as which types of scorpions are the most dangerous. We also asked for tips on how much water it would take to sustain our 100 workers in 110 degree heat. How to move tons of sand without trucks. What to make of a pot of gold coins we found. What to . . . and each time the bandwidth could hardly squeeze in the responses.

Well, the scorpion bit took place in 1996. That laptop of mine in U.S. News (Nov.'96), a whopping 16 mg of memory—and it was cutting edge. The Mac camera we used was compliments of the sponsor, and we were amazed that it held 8 high resolution digital images, and 16 at low rez. Wow!

Whether you’re using a KayPro or a Lifebook, Morris Code or an iPhone, we need to keep in mind that the issue isn’t the speed of delivery but the issues being delivered. Also, that the original source is still important in this hyper-mediated era. However, with that in mind, we’d be remiss not wanting to communicate with the greatest haste--accelerated by remarkable think tanks like Veriana Networks, Inc. After all, the next time a scorpion crawls into your covers the answer might be a click and a country away.

Note: A few helpful books are The Millenium Matrix, Generation Me, Wikinomics, Millennials and the Pop Culture, and The World Is Flat.

What do you think?