Describes the Future Problem Solving Program, in which students from the U.S. and around the world are tackling some complex challenges facing society, ranging from acid rain to terrorism. The program uses a creative problem solving process developed for business and industry. A sixth-grade toxic waste cleanup project illustrates the process.…

Efforts to improve American high schools must center on their most fundamental deficiencies. Out of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's High School Futures Planning Consortium have evolved experience-based principles (outlined in sidebars) that other school leaders can adapt for improving their schools' organization,…

To prepare today's students for tomorrow's world, schools must expand the curriculum to include development of values, attitudes, and interpersonal skills. Being liberally educated means becoming more reflectively aware, other-centered, cooperative, stable, and self-confident. Greater psychological maturity is the goal. (MLH)

Neither the traditionalists nor the structuralists have addressed what schools should be teaching to prepare students for citizenship in the twenty-first century global society. The American Forum's model schools network, part of the global education movement, identifies four domains of student inquiry for future school curricula. Includes five…

The World Future Society, an association to study alternative futures and a leading source of futures information, is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization that acts as an impartial clearinghouse for a variety of viewpoints. The society publishes three periodicals, "The Futurist,""Future Survey," and "Futures Research Quarterly."…

In one Iowa school district's (state mandated) global education program, students contemplate (1) their roles and stakes in world issues; and (2) ways to pursue dreams and desired outcomes through available governmental and nongovernmental avenues. A sidebar describes the Odyssey of the Mind international problem-solving competition. (MLH)

To become responsible citizens, students need to assume a global perspective. Activities to initiate a sense of world-mindedness include having students participate in a Model United Nations Program or in the 1,000 Cranes Club, arranging overnight visits between students from different schools and cultural backgrounds, and establishing pen pal…

Describes the career and professional accomplishments of Siegfried Ramler, from his job as translator at the Nuremberg trials to his current role as administrator at Punahou School in Hawaii. The most powerful expression of Ramler's internationalism is the 20-year-old Pan Pacific Program, now firmly rooted in Hawaiian educational life. (MLH)

The economic and political implications of a linguistically incompetent America are far-reaching and frightening. While other nations attain direct access to U.S. information through the public media, Americans need translators and interpreters. Self-interest is also a worthy incentive for choosing and studying foreign languages. Includes 19…

Education's greatest challenge is not technology or accountability, but the need to discover a new way of thinking. The shift from a Cartesian to a configuration view of the universe requires new conceptual models and compatible educational practices (like cooperative learning). Concepts of content/process and complexity and chaos need…

Applies complexity theory, a movement in contemporary physics, to instruction of a sixth-grade math class. The mathematical chaos theory, embracing random and nonlinear patterning, contradicts the reductionist, particularist, and atomistic view commonly applied to science and teaching. Fractals and self-organization are similarly powerful,…

According to Sam Keen, education's fascination with high technology is taking us into a highly consumptive, urban, competitive, individualistic, and corporate future. Instead, a more organic relationship with the natural world is needed to sustain life. The integrity of rural life and the virtues of self-reliance represent reasonable alternatives…

An introductory editorial essay on responding differently to student differences, the theme of this issue of "Educational Leadership." Addresses problems arising from discrimination and tracking, and cites articles that show how dissimilar students can work together. (TE)

To serve all gifted students, we must broaden identification methods, develop more and varied types of programs, and provide comprehensive teacher training. (Author/TE)

The research on identifying and educating gifted youth supports the use of multiple identification measures, accelerated instruction, and ability grouping. (Author/TE)