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The events and
aftermath of September 11 have been widely attributed to “a failure of
intelligence.” That may be.
But I think they are also attributable to failures of imagination,
of curiosity, of knowledge, of comprehension.
The United States and others were caught flatfooted by the
terrorist attacks not only because we lacked military defenses or reliable
airport screening, but because we have been fundamentally unaware for a
long time of the historical, cultural, economic and political factors
which form and characterize the peoples of the world, some of whom are
acutely disaffected with the current global order.
Does that
mean that September 11 and the fear that still pursues us are “all
America’s fault?” Not a
chance. We had been sleeping.
We had let ourselves be lulled into the comfortable but grossly
outdated belief that strife on the other side of the world makes good TV
but is someone else’s problem. Calculated
and unblinking human slaughter is never justified by cultural nuance or
how tough things were for the perpetrators growing up.
How are we now to
respond? Well, the California
Pistol and Rifle Association is launching a statewide billboard campaign
to promote handgun ownership. On
the other end of the spectrum, some public institutions are still working
to avoid any suggestion of hard feelings in our national reaction.
But it’s
you – because of who you are and what you do with your lives – who
have the opportunity, the responsibility, to respond in the most
constructive and sustainable way possible. To respond by undertaking to enlighten the minds and hearts
and expand the understanding of the students, families and communities of
this state. The last couple
of days you’ve worked hard and effectively to find practical ways to
convert the realities of a changing world into educational programs that
prepare the next generation of North Carolinians to live informed,
constructive and satisfying lives. You’ve
formulated curricula and instructional approaches employing new and
exciting global perspectives that reduce our reliance upon worn out
concepts like “those people over there,” “us vs. them,” and “the
foreigners among us.”
You’ve planned
for changes in the ways you teach and what you teach, in how you develop
educational policy, how you mobilize the commitment and resources of your
communities. You’ve looked
at your social studies curricula, at new opportunities for study abroad,
at the global dimensions of the world’s environment and North
Carolina’s own history. You’re
prepared now to bring your students into positive confrontation with the
differences that define and the commonalties that unite all our human
tribes.
There’s a lot on
your plates these days. It
was there when you left home the day before yesterday, and it’ll be
there when you get back: more
students and less money, the ABCs, the
perennial budgetary conflicts between Bunsen burners and football helmets.
But global
awareness, knowledge, understanding have in the past five weeks -
and it should have happened long, long before – but they have in the
past five weeks moved way up on our priority lists – our personal
priorities, our national priorities, our human priorities.
The importance of these things in the contemporary life of our
educational institutions and systems and the future lives of our students
and communities is not limited to specific grade levels, to whether we
teach in little circles of small chairs or in vast overcrowded lecture
halls, not limited by geography or demography or ethnicity or politics.
Global perspective, knowledge and comprehension must be the stuff
and substance of our curricula from smart start to the baccalaureate.
You have in these two days laid the groundwork for such a
systematic and seamless educational movement in North Carolina.
World View and the other people and intellectual and material
resources of this university are eager to assist and support you in that
work. Please call upon us.
Through a failure
of imagination, curiosity, comprehension -
along with intelligence -
this country has been assaulted and insulted as never before.
We’re recovering, and we’ll be okay.
But someone should do something to keep that from happening again
for those reasons. Someone should do something that outlasts this tragedy to
imbed global consciousness, and the ability to live successfully in a
global society and a global century, in the minds and hearts of our
students and our nation.
Someone is
doing something. You are.
Go to it.
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