I'm old enough to be part of the generation — and perhaps the social class — whose mothers told us: "Eat everything on your plate. There are people starving in India." The impression I got from such exhortations, as well as from the school curriculum, was that we in the United States were healthy, economically comfortable, and happy. People in "underdeveloped" countries were hungry, poor, and miserable. The story of Ladakh calls these stereotypes into question, and also makes us rethink the idea that "development" is always an inherent good — or that there even is such a clear-cut category as "development."

I begin my Global Studies curriculum by examining the contact between some indigenous cultures and the modern world. I want students to question the "primitive" to "advanced" paradigm that has long been a fundamental myth of Western cultures. Of course, I'm not anxious for students to imagine indigenous cultures as conflict-free Edens or to conclude that everything "modern" is corrupt. Nonetheless, I do want students to appreciate key aspects of many traditional societies — ecological sustainability, cooperation, interdependence, considering "us" instead of only "me" — that may be crucial as we confront the future of the earth and of humanity.

I also want my classes to "visit" societies that prompt them to reconsider basic features of our own society. Words and concepts such as economic growth, progress, development, and individual freedom are often presented to students (and the rest of us) as synonyms for "good." But such comparisons are problematic. They are ideological building blocks for practices that are inherently unsustainable — for example, proposing that an automobile-based consumer society like ours is the model of "development" for countries around the globe. They celebrate the production of a cornucopia of things, while turning our attention away from a social and ecological emergency that includes the frightening pace of global warming, rainforest destruction, species extinction, pesticide proliferation, and the like. Finally, they discourage us from considering fundamental alternatives to the current damaging socio-cultural arrangements.

Central to this curricular rethinking in my classes is an extraordinary video titled, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, and is based on a book of the same name by Helena Norberg-Hodge. Ladakh is in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, and is so high in the Himalayas that it is snowed under for eight months of the year. In fact, it's the highest place in the world where people live year-round. It's the size of England, but is home to only 130,000 people.

When I first watched Ancient Futures, I was fascinated by its portrayal of traditional Ladakh, a place where people appear to be deeply content yet that lacks the material possessions valued in industrial societies. In this harsh land, with only four inches of rainfall a year and very short growing seasons, Ladakhis had worked out an elaborate system of cooperation, environmental care, and economic self-sufficiency.