Global Citizenship in Education
In our increasingly interconnected world, the actions and decisions of ordinary citizen are more likely to affect others across the globe than ever before. This can be extremely beneficial but can also be extremely dangerous. Within the educational system, the concept of global citizenship education (GCE) is beginning to supersede movements such as multicultural education, peace education, human rights education and international education. Additionally, GCE rapidly incorporates references to the aforementioned movements. The concept of global citizenship has been linked with awards offered for helping humanity. Teachers are given the responsibility of being social change agents. Audrey Osler, the director of the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights Education at the University of Leeds, England affirms that “Education for living together in an interdependent world is not an optional extra, but an essential foundation”. With GCE gaining attention, scholars are investigating the field and developing perspectives. Here are a few popular perspectives:
Critical and transformative Perspective
Citizenship is defined by being a member with rights and responsibilities. Therefore GCE must encourage active involvement. Dr Michael O’Sullivan believes GCE needs to be taught from a critical and transformative perspective, whereby students are thinking feeling, and doing. GCE requires students to be politically critical and personally transformative. In this learning environment teachers provide social issues in a neutral and grade-appropriate way for students to understand, grapple with, and do something about.
Worldmindedness
Graham Pike and David Selby view GCE as having two strands Worldmindedness is the first strand which refers to understanding the world as one unified system and a responsibility to view the interests of individual nations with the overall needs of the planet in mind. The second strand is Child-centeredness, a pedagogical approach that encourages students to explore and discover on their own and addresses each learner as an individual with inimitable beliefs, experiences, and talents.
Holistic Understanding
The Holistic Understanding perspective was founded by Merry Merryfield, and focuses on understanding the self in relation to the global community. This perspective follows a curriculum that attends to human values and beliefs, global systems/issues/history, cross cultural understandings, and the development of analytical and evaluative skills.
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Famous quotes containing the words global, citizenship and/or education:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“I would wish that the women of our country could embrace ... [the responsibilities] of citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“Do we honestly believe that hopeless kids growing up under the harsh new rules will turn out to be chaste, studious, responsible adults? On the contrary, by limiting welfare, job training, education and nutritious food, won’t we plant the seeds for another bumper crop of out-of-wedlock moms, deadbeat dads and worse?”
—Richard B. Stolley (20th century)