ABSTRACT
Jill sits behind her desk in the back of a windowless classroom on the second floor of Hickory High School and watches her twelfth grade English students file in, peel off their backpacks, and slump down into the tightly packed desks. She sighs as she reflects on their family backgrounds—working and middle class homes that have survived on steady manufacturing work—and ponders the global forces transforming her students’ futures in ways that may leave them behind. She understands the changes in the local economy and their direct connection to the global economy, and notes how “terrifying” it is to admit that the manufacturing jobs that sustained her students’ grandparents for sixty years just no longer exist. Furthermore, she believes that students in her school will be competing for jobs with students in China and India. Because of these economic transformations, and their direct effect on her students’ livelihoods and future, Jill feels obligated to offer them more than just a global consciousness. She wants her students to have the competencies—skills and knowledge, or human capital—they will need to succeed in this new world of frightening economic realities.
