Improbable Probabilities: Education Cross Borders

Abstract

Statistically speaking, I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now. Not by a long shot. I was born in 1965 in a village so unremarkable that the word “obscure” might be too generous. Xianggong Yuanzi, nestled in the mountains of Eastern Sichuan, was the kind of place maps ignored and governments pretended did not exist. If invisibility were an official status, we would have earned it without paperwork. [...]

And yet, here I am: a professor at a university in the United States. I have also held academic posts in the UK and Australia, worked with ministries of education, designed new curricula, founded research centers, written language-learning software, and even helped build schools. I have delivered keynote addresses at education conferences in more than 20 countries and written more than 40 books and 150 articles—in English, a language I first encountered in the person of a thickly accented rural teacher with more enthusiasm than fluency.

What explains this improbable journey? For me, the answer is questioning: rethinking traditions, challenging conventional policies, and interrogating practices that hurt more than help. I have never stopped asking: Why are some people left behind? And what can we do to change that?