These days it has become quite vogue for American academics, college presidents and local political pundits to bandy about the words “Twenty First Century University” in reports, lectures and talks to teaching faculty, accrediting agencies, potential students and tax payers. One can hardly blame them, considering that the U.S. has become the world’s greatest debtor nation with a trillion dollar deficit; has a financial system supported marionette-like by a former Cold War enemy the Chinese; has become saturated with nationwide crime related violence; is in the midst of pending ecological disaster as a result of our consumptive relationship with the planet; plus the minor things like rising unemployment, poverty, distrust of the government and general despair. But just maybe it is a part of the human DNA—one that has traversed epochs and geography—to remain hopeful and at the very least, naively optimistic.
Over fifty years ago the polymath R. Buckminster Fuller http://www.bfi.org/our_programs/who_is_buckminster_fuller was very optimistic about the abilities of humankind, particularly college educated youth, to employ scientific and technological know-how to enhance human life and ecological well being; while simultaneously staving off any induced constructs of lack—economic, ecological or otherwise. Bucky often referred to himself as Guinea Pig B living on Space Ship Earth because his life (as all humanities should be) was an experiment. Fuller’s writings and speeches which have been compiled into books are a literal tuition free, 21st century curriculum.
In the face of the aforementioned scenarios, we may yet find salvation within the current university structure. Of course the implications are, as in nature, that certain universities will have the conviction, foresight and economic and intellectual capacities to thinking, intelligent and contemplative university for a 21st century solution. If the academy can not provide us with viable solutions, then we must out of necessity look towards the contemplative, thinking, unfettered man or woman that has broken away from learned dogma.
The 21st century university model for the United States could be one modeled after the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford http://www.21school.ox.ac.uk/ that has as its primary mission: “the utilization of integrated scholarship across a range of disciplines to identify, research and find solutions to the biggest challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century.” This model could and should be used nationally and internationally by individuals and institutions that don the title university trained or university
Martin, http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=219257963&channel=27638673 who “has been in the forefront of computer technology and futurist thinking for over thirty years,” is of the opinion “that salvation from imminent doom can only be found in today’s teenagers.” These concerned and intelligent groups of tech-savvy millennials are called the transitional generation by Martin. Nat Irvin http://www.mba.wfu.edu/apps/facdetail.cfm?id=1053 the founder of Future Focus 2020 http://www.mba.wfu.edu/default.aspx?id=57 and a director of the World Future Society http://www.wfs.org refers to these trans-generationals as Thrivals.
Martin’s hefty, thought provoking tome The Meaning of the 21st Century: the Urgent Plan for Ensuring Our Future http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-21st-Century-James-Martin/dp/1573223239 is a blue print that poses questions and provides answers. Furthermore, this treatise should be read and studied by each of the earth’s citizens. It is imperative that every college student, faculty/staff member and local citizen read and ponder Martin’s ideas. For instance he posits that the transition generation in their lifetime will: experience certain parts of the world being void of fresh water which in turn will cause a lack of food production; global warming that will bringing about mass migration and storms more powerful than Katrina, religious extremism and terrorism, and genetically modified viruses used against all perceived enemies foreign and domestic. Since “things are going to get more and more turbulent as we go along, and the dangers …more severe,” the job of the transition generation is to get humanity through the canyon with as little mayhem as possible into smoother waters.”
Consumerism and supply-and-demand capitalism has endowed America’s college student with the mantra of wealth and ownership. However, as Jacque Fresco http://www.thevenusproject.com/vp_jac.htm likes to point out, if you have poisoned water and soil and no food then money and material possessions mean nothing. So there it is!
More than ever before, the librarian and information specialist is called upon to work beside and collaborate with specialists, generalists and academics. All of the interdisciplinary creativity and ingenuity that humanity can muster must be strategically harnessed. The outlook is good if we act now and get it right, but, the Dark Ages threaten to engulf us once again if we get it wrong.
