Originally published on May 5, 2013.
For the past few days I have felt like I was two steps behind where I needed to be. I’m not used to this feeling and I don’t like it. Today I feel better. Not because I am no longer two steps behind, but because last night I started reading Douglas Rushkoff’s book PRESENT SHOCK: When Everything Happens Now.
According to Rushkoff, feeling two steps behind is not such a terrible thing. He suggests that most of us constantly feel like we are much more than two steps behind where we should be. He points out that we live in a world where “Kids text during parties to find out if there’s something better happening somewhere else at that moment.” Somewhere they are not, somewhere they feel is two steps ahead of them.
The title of Rushkoff’s book is a pun on Alvin Toffler’s 1970 seminal work Future Shock. In it, Toffler predicted a world whose “pace mankind would be unable to keep up with.” According to Rushkoff, Toffler’s world has arrived.
Toffler’s future is our present. A present Rushkoff labels as shocking. We are, according to Rushkoff, “…lost in a digital tsunami…tumbling in an overwhelming, almost tyrannical, now, a present in which we’ve lost our cultural narrative, our past, and our future.” It is indeed an apocalyptic present that Rushkoff suggests; however, he does state that depending on how we approach our present, we can drown or we can thrive.
So, what’s thriving in our “shocking” present? Well, luckily for everyone reading this, one of the things that is booming is the business of international education. According to a recent article in the New York Times, there are currently 7,000 international schools in the world (whatever “international schools” mean). This is an increase of 153% in ten years. The same source predicts that this number will double in the next decade. All of this says absolutely nothing about the quality of education or of student learning; it only speaks to volume. It captures the essence of supply and demand. Speaking of which, when I arrived at ASB three years ago there were about 40 schools, in Mumbai, that had the word “international” in their name; today there are ninety-one. In fact, schools in Mumbai offering the IB Diploma have tripled in four years. Is this good or bad? I don’t really know. But it sure is interesting, especially when you juxtapose it against the numbers below.
So, what is not thriving? Well, to start with: toilets for girls in local schools in cities, towns, and villages across India. That’s right; “toilets for girls in Indian schools” is not an area of growth in our “present shock.” I don’t have the numbers from a decade ago, but according to last week’s Hindustani Times, 46% of Indian schools DO NOT have a single toilet for girls on their campuses. When I read this article I asked myself, “What does 46% really mean?” So, I did some research and some math and came up with this: in India, there are 1,214,296 “recognized schools” for children aged 5-13 years of age (that would be elementary and/or middle schools). This means Indian schools are “missing” about 500,000 toilets (that is only one toilet per school). My next question was: What does the number 500,000 really mean in the grand scheme of things? As a number, without context, 500,000 is too abstract for me to intellectually manage. So, I did some more research and a bit more math. And I found my context. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics in the United States there are less than 100,000 public schools in the U.S. So, if my math is correct, the U.S has 1/5th the number of schools that India needs toilets for girls. Once I had this comparison I finally got it. And, yes, I am shocked at the volume!
Speaking of shock with the present state of affairs, I was going to write a paragraph on the average ratio of educators to students in Indian schools (it’s 72:1), but I decided not to bring it up because last week I celebrated the fact that ASB has a ratio of 5:1. However, on the topic of education, girls, and India…check this out: 1 million Indians applied to be considered for government jobs in civil service this year. In the end, only 1,600 were selected; that’s a selection rate of 1.6%; consider: MIT has an atrociously low acceptance rate of 8.2%. But this story gets better…on the selection exam the highest score was by a young woman from Kerala – in fact, 12 of the top 25 test scores were by women. I can’t help but wonder if those 12 ladies went to schools that had a toilet for girls? I bet they did. And if I am right, imagine the impact on India, in every single sector, if every female student across the nation, had access to a toilet while at school. The impact would be phenomenal.
Rushkoff is not talking about the kind of shock I felt at the end of my math computations above. He isn’t referring to the shock from realizing that almost half of all Indian schools don’t have toilets for young girls. He’s shocked at what is happening at the other end of the spectrum – the shock in the world where people have lots of toilets. At ASB I believe our mission demands that we “prepare for” and “respond to” the shock on both ends of the “Digital-Tsunami-Toilets-in-School” spectrum. We need to prepare our students to be highly successful in a world overwhelmed by Rushkoff’s tsunami of digital information. Prepare them to thrive in their present by empowering them with the skills necessary to create a new and healthy cultural narrative out of their “overwhelming and tyrannical NOW.” As well as to hold on to their past, and to design their future. But that’s not all. We must also inspire our students to respond to their “present shock” with action: action that will significantly enhance their lives and the lives of others. We must inspire them to metaphorically create their own tsunami; a tsunami of hope and promise, a monstrous wave of positive change and the kind of social impact this world so desperately needs.