Elise M. Boulding - Building A Global Civic Culture

Building A Global Civic Culture

Boulding offers Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent as a holistic first step towards solving international conflicts. She envisions a “global civic culture” as not simply made of nation states but as a global community of human beings. The book enforces the idea of thinking globally on a microcosmic level to facilitate solving problems in a peaceful international order. Boulding believed that a civic world order could become a reality, while acknowledging the strife that exists now. "Building a Global Civic Culture" is geared toward addressing the world’s problems and offering ideas for solutions.

To create peace, Boulding believes that we must all become teachers and develop new learning communities. Everyone, old and young, will teach. Age groups will teach each other from their respective generations. How we perceive events unique to our generation shapes the lens through which we each see later events. We need to know what the world looks like to young and old alike. Boulding believes all will be teachers.

In order to do this, we must learn to think outside of the box. Humans are intuitive, creative animals with cognitive-analytic reasoning abilities. We as human animals can grasp complex wholes from partial sets of facts. Boulding states that for most of us, education has been tied to the maxim “stick to the facts, no need for imaginative thinking.” We are taught in school that imagination and intuition are virtues of the daydreamer, not the true student. To the contrary, Boulding states we need to harness both intuition and imagination to solve world crises. Ultimately this book encourages us to become both teachers and problem solvers and includes exercises to lead the way.