A Paradigm Shift: America’s Public Schools as Training Grounds for 21st Century Authentic Leaders

Recently, a question was answered for me during a chance conversation. The question had surfaced periodically in my mind over the course of a year or so. The question was: What was the source of my interest in international affairs and other cultures? Over the years, my career choices have involved, in some form or fashion, international work; be it in the public policy arena, academia, or in my role as an associate pastor in my church. Where did that interest come from, I wondered? While I was growing up, my parents had not traveled overseas, nor had I or my siblings. The dinner table, although a place for vigorous discussion on current domestic affairs, was not a place where talk of global affairs entered the fray on a regular basis. Yet the seeds for a love of the world and its people, and a desire to try to solve at least some of the world’s problems, had somehow been planted in me.