From a New York Times article today full of lament about the frustrations of the young Middle Eastern generation, there are hints in these excerpts about something that can help:
Stymied by the government’s failure to provide adequate schooling and thwarted by an economy without jobs to match their abilities or aspirations, they are stuck in limbo between youth and adulthood. . . . With 60 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25, this youthful religious fervor has enormous implications for the Middle East.
Other major markers of this youthful generation are:
- their world has always had the Internet,
- most of the youth have mobile phones — even the grade school age youngsters do.
Certainly in the next handful of years the phones Middle Eastern kids carry will have access to the Internet that is comparable to or superior to what is now available on desktop devices.
The global commons of information into which the new generation of all countries and cultures is rapidly getting connected brings a fundamental new frustration for all types of tyrants of the mind. Educators can help the intellectual liberation of the commons by seeing to it that a kid in any culture who has a mobile can use that device to learn reading, writing, arithmetic and the subjects once limited to academic institutions. Mobiles can deliver much that a youngster needs to know in order to match his or her abilities and aspirations. Making that delivery happen quickly across the planet is key to their future and ours of the older generations.
