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After reading the Youth Statement at the UNESCO meeting, I believe that they are missing specific solutions when they address global citizenship education, and thus these messages lose their meaning. A great analogy to this would be to state the issue of global warming, but lack any feasible solutions to the problem and thus you begin to just state the obvious. Especially when reading the portion on the need to different cultures, religions, classes, etc a lot of this education already takes place so I would question to what degree must we as youth be educated. Personally, studying European History has already exposed me to many religions and thus I am equipped with the tools to understand a more diverse pool of opinions. For someone who has not studied religions or cultures in school, who decides what cultures and religions are to be taught to the students. Is this decision made by the school board, municipality, or government? Along with cultural education, when it is suggested that schools facilitate active engagement of students and enable them to become agents of change within the community, we must realize that many schools do not have the funding/ time/ or equipment and thus how exactly can we mobilize such action. Should we not first be combating the falling standards of education, teacher cuts, and social problems such as bullying before we facilitate global action. Personally, my modifications to this address would be to include localized action that can engage students not necessarily out of the classroom, but within it. We must find ways to make classrooms a conducive environment for dialog weather that be for environmental concerns, or violations of human rights, we must make education a more powerful tool locally before we move abroad. When looking at many of the global concerns as North Americans, we tend to isolate problems as occurring in developing nations and turn a blind eye to problems taking place in our own backyards.
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Powerful insights! Your critical questioning about the role, purpose and aim of education in local contexts, as the basis for future global action is a vital observation. I hope you can explore how that can be put into action further!
Thanks for these ideas! I want to hear more about the importance of putting action in context- that is very important. Your post, particularly the last line, got me thinking about a big framing question: how do we find a balance between not assuming problems happen 'over there'/recognizing global citizenship issues in our own contexts on the one hand and not forgetting the ways our lifestyles and norms in Canadian contexts are implicated in those problems 'over there' on the other hand. Hmmmm....
Curtis Riep
Mar 4, 2015