"We used to think of North Carolina in terms of Murphy to Manteo and mountains to sea," explains one teacher, "but now we talk about Durham to Dubai and Bessemer City to Beijing, because we know we are educating students for a new, global economy."
To help prepare students for the new economy, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is providing more instruction in global languages - also called "critical languages" - Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic.
UNC-TV's new 26-minute documentary, LEARNING WITH THE WORLD, visits classrooms across the state to see how students are learning about these languages and cultures.
Highlights range from the Confucius Classroom at Central Carolina Community College in Sanford to a kindergarten class in Arabic taught by a former basketball player from Egypt to a passionate high school Russian teacher from Burgaw.
