global_education


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	Global education

	... is it important ? What is it all about ?


	There are people who consider their parental duty well done if their kids manage to reach full age without unwanted pregnancies and criminal records. Luckily the vast majority of parents define their educational aims clearer and somewhat more ambitious!

	A considerable percentage of mothers and father encourage and support their children to find their calling with their individual map of life and help them to get from A to B.

Parental Pals belong to a third kind of parents: having a goal and navigating your way there successfully is just the beginning.
They believe in encouraging their children to become “expert map readers”. They want them to be able to negotiate their way through any environment, to any and as many places they want and to have the skills and the creativity to manage well.
Life is not a race to reach the finishing line as fast as possible, it is a piece of music:


	The music of life ( at least, two minutes of it) : ...........


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Please take the time to watch Dan Pink explain the surprising science of motivation (a TED talk, August ‘09).

Contemporary education, very much like modern business, no longer functions on the “carrot principle”. The three key factors are:

Autonomy:
the urge to direct your own life

Mastery:
the desire to get better and better at something that matters

Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.


	The mismatch between what science knows and what business / education does:


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	ParentalPal.Org offers parents a wide range of ideas, lots of useful information and above all the means to connect with others. Parental Pals are travel companions on the way to a better education system, they support and mentor each others children and they multiply each others chances and opportunities. Please see the individual pages on Hybrid Education, Surprise management and ParentalFusion to get a larger picture of this global family universe. Visit School Pal and the ParPal Project to find out about the exciting programs for participation and don’t miss out on the mind boggling and very entertaining talk of Sir Ken Robinson about creativity in our school systems! Read on below about the facts of global education and what Parental Pals can do to bring great things within (affordable) reach:

		Let’s get started with some cost considerations. Comparisons can help to draw a mental map of possibilities. Sending a twelve year old boy to a top of the range public (boarding) school in the UK in 2009 will confront you with annual fees at Charterhouse or at Eton College of EUR 35.000,- (USD 45.300,-). The annual cost at a reputable school such as The International School of Brussels will amount to EUR 25.850,- / tuition only (i. e. not including board, lunch etc.; USD 33.500,-). Sending a fourteen year old girl off for a language holiday with a reputable organization: a three week package for students is priced between 1.500 and 2.800 EUR (USD 2.940,- to 3.600,-) depending on destination, program and distance covered.

Global education, multilingual studies, the multinational and multicultural raising of a child, these topics are a concern for a growing numbers of parents all over the world. You may well be one of them. As Kevin Bartlett points out in his article in ExpatExchange about the Business of International Education: “Today, the business of international education is booming. With increasing numbers of globally mobile families, there are currently over 1000 international schools world wide, with numbers continuing to rise by about 6 percent a year. Make no mistake, international education is a growth industry with a global annual revenue of over 4 billion US dollars.”
What had started as a necessity to serve expatriate families (covering everything from business people to diplomatic staff) is today in fact a highly regarded way of bringing local children in touch with the rest of the world. For those who can afford it.


	Here is an eye opener from a quite different perspective, taken from an article in the New York Times:

... “A growing number of South Korean families, known as "wild geese," are choosing to live separately, schooling their children in English-speaking countries where the mother and children live while the fathers remain in South Korea to work.
They are driven by a shared dissatisfaction with South Korea's rigid educational system, are seeking to give their children an edge by helping them become fluent in English abroad while sparing them, and themselves, the stress of South Korea's notorious educational pressure cooker.
More than 40,000 South Korean schoolchildren are believed to be living outside South Korea with their mothers in what experts say is an outgrowth of a new era of globalized education.” ...


	Please read ... The article: LINK The slide show: LINK

This touches the souls of many parents because they know the dilemma only too well: What they would love to offer their children is very often simply not affordable or out of reach for other reasons. One way to a solution is to see if similar results can be obtained by innovative co-operations and smart partnerships. It is one of the key issues for ParentalPal.Org to establish partnerships with the potential to build such bridges.

Specific solutions are always one-offs but inspiration is the beginning of all inventions. Some suggestions from Parental Pals are thoughts they intend to put into practice themselves (or have already done so). We want to pass some of these ideas on to you.


	... some South Korean families were to team up with parents with a genuine interest in establishing connections in East Asia, who like the idea of their own children befriending exchange pupils and offering them a second home, who are happy to welcome them for getting-to know-each-other-visits to let them rest assured that their child will be in good hands?


	What if the financial contribution they make for accommodating their child were just what’s needed to help pay off that mortgage and yet considerably less than what the Korean family would have had to finance under other circumstances? An honest cooperation and a caring and friendly home from home. Quite possible and a lot more family-friendly than the current status quo.

... talented youngsters who just will not be able to deliver the kind of academic performance required to take them into the top universities ? Parental Pals can make up for their potential lack of good connections and other deficiencies by establishing partnerships to compensate this pretty well.
They can give each other what is perhaps too hard to achieve without support: language training through holidays abroad at a fraction of the cost of a paid package and yet a lot more efficient ... Holiday jobs in fields where it would be awfully hard to get a foot on the door without such a connection ... Genuine peer-to-peer motivation where all parental advice was a waste of time and energy ? No limits to your imagination...

... parents all over the world would place more emphasis on their own interests, professions and personal goals within this context? They should, you know.
They might end up forming much stronger bonds with partners who are in fact more than just the parents of their own kids’ peers. Parallel friendships enable attractive synergies and double the enjoyment factor on both generational levels. Examples (like these !) needed? The co-operation of journalists, the knowledge exchange between teachers, passions like music or perhaps gardening, the membership in a NGO ...

If your want your kids to find something cool introduce them to cool people who are fond of it !

... you found out that you do not really need an all inclusive holiday package with “funimation” for your offspring ? Simply because a change of environment can be a true eye opener !
What if Parental Pals anywhere in the world made it possible - like a catalyst - to communicate your own interests and hobbies to your kids even though they always considered them boring? And the respect you get from others makes them see you in a new light ?

Parental Pals can give you the right environment to switch your children from I-want-to-be-entertained-or-else-I-am-going-to-be-a-real-nuisance to a bunch of youngsters who have found out how much more gratification they can get out of taking things into their own hands. True adventure is not a ready made and fully insured thing to be purchased off the shelf. Once they realize that they will not need animation any longer.


	...and don’t ever settle - keep an open mind and a passionate heart !


	... there’s more to follow - it’s work-in-progress. We invite you to visit the Educational Links page where you find an interesting collection of sites for international education and access to knowledge- and learning networks ! The Think Tank offers additional useful information on academic options.


	Family = synergy of generations. Parental Pals = synergy of families.

My education was dismal.
I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.

Woody Allen


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