In a conversation with Dean Rucker yesterday, I learned that Mandarin programs will indeed be beginning at Mary Washington next year. This was very exciting news for me, but of course, these classes will most likely be immediately filled by upperclassmen. Hopefully I can at least start in my junior year, oh well. Anyway, this led into a very interesting discussion about how the global political and economic climate very much influences education curricula here at home. For instance, the new Arabic program at UMW is of course in response to our involvement in the Middle East. While I’d much rather get involved with Chinese trade than Arabic war, it’s still great that the university is ready to teach students what they need to know not only to reach their potential domestically but be very flexible globally. Maybe it was a little late on Mandarin, but better late than never. It’s not a stretch to state that (apart from English) Mandarin will be the most useful language to know in the business world in coming decades.

This trend in education reacting to the world was illustrated also during the Cold War, in which, of course, there was an influx of Russian programs in public schools. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, so too did collapse our public Russian programs. They quickly began to disappear from high schools and while they’re certainly not gone, they’re much less common than they once were. This is a good thing, though. We can’t teach everything that global operators could possibly need to know, but we should make an effort to stick with global trends. Even if China collapses in five years and Russia becomes an economic powerhouse (very hypothetical scenario), we’ll at least have been prepared for the most likely result. There are two goals now in education, I think.

1. Provide students with a diverse, “untouchable” education to give the ability to reach their best potential in whatever field in which that may turn out to be.

2. Prepare students to operate globally in concordance with current and expected global trends.

The first has always been a fundamental goal of education: preparing students for the world in which they’ll operate (domestically). But though it’s been happening probably longer than we realize, it becomes more and more important every day that students are prepared for the much larger and literal “world.”