From Pixabay- by MarcVanduffel
Activism solves the problems of today, but education solves the problems of tomorrow. In that spirit, I want to present a proposal for an “open borders curriculum.” I believe that schools do not make enough of an effort to inform students about the importance of migration, even though the scholarly consensus is that migration is generally a good thing. To correct that, teachers may want to include open borders ideas in their curriculum or even teach entire courses about open borders.
K-12 Education: For younger students, it is pretty easy to include open borders ideas in history or social studies classes. Here are a few examples.
Social studies teachers could have a lesson on why migration is completely normal. Throughout human history, people have migrated for work and to escape troubling circumstances. Borders are abnormal.
Many K-12 courses already include a bit of content that celebrates human diversity. This can be expanded to a broader lesson. We get diversity by allowing people to move across borders.
At the high school level, open borders can be easily worked into American history and social science classes. An American history class can focus on the simple fact that America had open borders for the first 100 years and it was generally a good thing. A high school economics class can have debates about the pros and cons of drastically deregulating migration.
College Level Courses: Of course, there are many courses that focus on migration but few present an in-depth open borders perspective. Luckily, there is lots of material to work with.
In the humanities, you can read fiction and poetry about the harmfulness of borders. Perhaps the most well known humanist in this area was Gloria Anzaldua, who wrote eloquently about the border being an “open wound” in the land. Literary scholars have identified an entire area of writing on borders and border violence that can be investigated.
A college economics course could be an in-depth review of migration. While a few prominent economists, like George Borjas, are anti-migration, most economists tend to see migration as an obviously positive policy.
A history course could review the sordid history of migration restriction in-depth. It’s not pretty. Students should know about the nasty politics of the Chinese Exclusion Act and other forms of legislation that restrict movement.
The purpose of this post is not to claim novelty. A lot of the material I refer to already exists. Rather, it’s a call to pull it all together into a coherent course of study. If we can do that, schools can teach it and we might be able to make a better tomorrow.
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My books: Grad Skool Rulz - cheap advice manual for grad students / The history of Black Studies / Obama and the antiwar movement / A Social Theory book you will enjoy reading / Intro Sociology for $1 per chapter
Thanks a lot for the post. I am also in favor of global free movement and open borders. At the moment, there is a paradox that the numbers of walls, fences and horrible obstacles is higher than in 1991, when the Cold War ended. What do you think about this article? http://heindehaas.blogspot.com/2017/03/myths-of-migration-much-of-what-we.html
And my recent one?
https://glibe.substack.com/p/migration-identification-and-decentralisation