Blog

When discussing Rejuvenate with Professor Reimers, an essential principle that he emphasized was the motivation behind our attitude to community engagement: rather than seeking to provide a service with a “savior attitude”, organizations like TRJ should focus their attention on collaborating and interacting directly with those who it seeks to impact. With Rejuvenate, this translates to developing our program curriculums with student-centric interests at heart. As an example, Professor Reimers cited IDEO, an award-winning platform that has been praised for its “design thinking” creation process. In essence, this approach prioritizes empathy and argues that observing (and understanding) the behavior of consumers/users should be the most significant factor considered when developing a concept or product.

On the topic of policy and other government-driven approaches to education in the United States, Professor Reimers stressed the importance of not reverting to pre-pandemic circumstances. Though it certainly exacerbated certain problems, the COVID-19 Pandemic also exposed several underlying issues that had been plaguing the educational system for years, if not decades. The months and years following the pandemic ought to be an opportunity to drastically reform and rethink the government's approach to education. He pointed to his case study, Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century, which detailed numerous examples of educational systems (comparing countries in Latin America, Asia, and the United States) that had varying degrees of disparities and inequities in their respective institutions. He cited Singapore as a paradigm for other nations (I recommend his publication, “Fifteen Letters On Education In Singapore”) since its government-led campaign to eradicate gaps in its educational system has been immensely successful. The nation demonstrated this preparedness during its 2020 pandemic response for learning, which guaranteed device and internet access to all students. Professor Reimers explained that this is largely due to factors such as consistent government efficiency and continuity in policy

Of particular significance was the issue of digital literacy skills among youth, which Professor Reimers and I spent a good portion of our meeting discussing. He mentioned the need to incorporate these skills into academic curriculums and prioritize their teaching equally with other typical school subjects. While countries such as England and Australia have taken steps towards this by laying out a nationalized standard for digital literacy (available for reading on their respective government websites), the United States has fallen behind in this respect. Although numerous state governments in America have undertaken initiatives to increase digital literacy, federal guidance has largely been lacking — especially in comparison to other nations as detailed above. Professor Reimers pressed that the widespread adaptation of certain standards and curricula is crucial to eliminating the disparities in digital literacy.

Thank you, Professor!