Lifelong Learner

Last night I read an article from this week’s TIME: ‘How to Bring Our Schools out of the 20^th Century’, which talked about how U.S. schools could prepare the next generation to compete in the more challenging global economy of the 21^st century.

Here are some 21^st century skills it mentioned:

1. Knowing more about the world -- keyword: Globalization
2. Thinking outside the box -- apparently inNOvative/crEATive
3. Becoming smarter about new sources of information -- Google Era
4. Developing good people skills -- EQ (emotional intelligence)

I have some questions:

1. In the context of globalization, what shall I do with my cultural background? Do I really want to be a global citizen?
2. With overflowing information and proliferating media, do I still need hardcopies of books? Do I still need pens with no automatic spelling-n-grammar checking functionality? Do I still need to remember anything even everything seems to be just at hand?

(Okay, to show my competency to earn an I.B. (International Baccalaureate) diploma, I decide to continue with this journal in Chinese. :))

我对世界充满了好奇心，我喜欢站在时尚和高新科技的聚光灯下，也喜欢呼吸没有混凝土味的自然空气，体验那些和现代文明脱钩的民俗风情，我也相信自己的个人能力和潜力并不能在单一的生活环境里得到完全的锻炼的挖掘。

我觉得自己身上没有某个地方的浓重气息，我被我接触的客观世界感染，变成一个混合体。但无论今后能走多少不同的地方，我应该也不会变成一个世界公民，因为我始终对自己的民族文化怀有最深厚的感情和自豪感，这个唯一发展至今的文明古国，就像一个马拉松运动员，虽然没有瞬间的爆发力，但其深沉的智慧，岂是那些短跑运动员所能明白。

我绝对是信息时代的受益者，它符合我的性格特征，甚至为我提供了谋生的渠道；但我也不会把印刷品和笔杆子束之高阁，并且始终对自己的手写笔记最为满意。

总而言之，我觉得平衡感很重要，很多事情都是自相矛盾的，怎样取舍拿捏，我要实践的太多了。中国几千年文化沉积的‘中庸之道’，它并不是让你变得味同嚼蜡毫无特色。