Gitanjali's Vision

I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power,- that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old worlds die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from thy heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, XXXVII

When the heart most wants to hide, it must find a new way to be itself. When the mind hits against the walls of its thinking, it must find a way to walk through walls. Tagore is a poet and a teacher and a visionary who has no equal in the 20th century, and he was completely unknown to me until I visited India in August of 2009. I had no idea he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, and was the first non-Westerner to do so, nor that he was a world class thinker in debate with Einstein, Gandhi, and other great writers, scientists, thinkers and feelers of his day. He established a school in his native Bengal at Shantiniketan, where he experimented with an educational philosophy based on direct experience and educated the children of India's political liberation movement. I admire him immensely because of his global vision, his marriage of East and West, his arguments against Gandhi's rejection of modernity, and his ennobling of learning. Together with Rumi, another poet with an expansive embracing of humanity, still relevant today, I am in awe at the beauty of the worlds they reveal with their words and wonder at the stilted legacy handed down to us today.

I never heard of Tagore until I spent time in bookshops in New Dehli, and I did not know anything about India, except the Christ like story of Gandhi and the wonders of the information revolution in Bangalore from the pages of the New York Times. I was never taught anything in school about Asia or Africa except through the lens of contact with Europeans. The language, geography, politics, literature, history, and contributions of billions were left out of my formal education. Cultural nuances that make up one out of six people on the planet were never discussed. I travel, I read, I teach. I love literature and I love history. I've been to 27 countries and speak a handful of languages. But when I arrived in New Dehli, and later arrived in Ghanali village in the Punjab, I was starting from zero.

My friend Christine Yap, had arranged a visit for a group of youth and educators to explorer her husband's homeland, and I jumped at the opportunity to immerse myself in a new culture. I love international travel and global education. I 2006 with Carlos Herrera I founded a non-profit, Education Without Borders Intl., because I believe in experiential, self-directed learning. While in Punjab, and later in Himachal Pradesh and Nepal I soaked up as much as I could. I read Amartya Sen, and learned as some Punjabi and Hindi... Me tori Hindi al Punjabi ati he. Muche chai acha lag ta he. I spent time with my new friends in Sikh temples, on the back of motor cycles, drinking chai, dancing banghara, and discussing culture. A world that no one in my life had every told me was valuable contained 1/6 of the world's population, is the fastest growing economy, one of the oldest centers of human civilization. It had never been on my cultural radar before. And despite the shifting sands of the Global economy, it is still not on the radar of most Americans.

In fact, most of the world is not on the radar of your average U.S. citizen, despite the fact that we are the home to the most cosmopolitan society on the planet. In the Bay Area where I live, or New York City where I was born, there is not a nation not represented, nor a language family not spoken by someone. As a people we are all new to this land, hybrids, and yet we are caught up in the cultural wars of the 19th century, the ethnic ghettos- balkanization- and Americanization response of the early 20th century, and the slick corporate homogenization of post-war America. Everyone is talking about the 21st Century, lamenting the ending of an American golden age, because the free ride of Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism is running out and a flat world is catching up. Op-ed columnists bemoan the lack of optimism, economists the lack of consumer confidence, and everyone has someone to blame. I don't think complaining about George Bush or big government, the Harlem Children's Zone or teacher's unions, the Tea Party or the Oscar Grant verdict, or any of the old conversations are going to get us to where we need to be. As my mentor, Steve Jubb says, that's still fighting inside the box. We need to embrace the complexity of our history, of our politics, of our heterogeneous population and see it for the advantage it is. In an age of interdependence, where we recognize that humanity is part of an ecosystem, a living network, the United States is a hub that cannot fail. Diversity is a strength. Global connections are a strength. Life long learning is a necessity.

I visited a state college in Rupnagar, Punjab. In an English class I introduced myself and had a conversation with a handful of students, explaining my interest in their education system. I was curious because I know that in the near future, "China will be the world's largest economy, India the second largest, and the United States the third." A young woman, the daughter of one of the school's professors stood up and corrected me. "No, no, no. INDIA will be number one, China second, and the U.S. third." She left no room for doubt. And based on the growth of e-based business, the hunger of a growing educated class in the developing world, and the quagmire of American politics and institutions, the realignment will happen quicker than we know it. But why should that be scary? Why is permanent U.S. hegemony an ideal in a world where 1 billion are overweight, 1 billion malnourished? Why shouldn't the world's two largest nations, with two of the largest culutral heritages, not have the largest economies 80-90 years after the end of European colonization?

In this blog, the first time I have ever put my thoughts online, I hope to explore issues of complexity. Why is it, an educated fairly worldly person like myself had a stereotypical-romanticized view of India, when it is the home to so much wisdom, knowledge and human experience? Why is it history in the U.S. is so narrowly defined as the European experience? Why, as an educator on the front lines in the Bronx, and Pasadena, completely committed to innovation did I miss the e-learning revolution happening around me, in pockets around the country? Why does innovation travel so slowly in the field of education? Why do business people think educators are incompetent and why do educators think money is bad and the people who have it are greedy? Why do people like simple narratives for complex problems, and how does that keep us from solutions? How can we change from a monolingual nation, with a multicultural population, in a global economy to embrace the Global Capital of the Americas? And by that I mean the human capital that is the birthright of this hemisphere, home to all of the cultures of the world.