Blogs
Global Citizenship
To begin with, a global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.Within our group, we’ve used our experience as students and the study of different courses offered by the Alberta Education System, to analyze the effectiveness of the Canadian education system in educating global citizens. Global citizens should possess these essential qualities; they should listen to the voices of influential and marginalized citizens equally, they should enforce individual and collective social rights. They should encourage a diverse and accepting society, think critically, challenge preconceived biases and create global change. In this context we have analyzed the canadian education system and arrived at these recommendations.
Firstly, we analyzed the Career and Technology Studies (CTS) curriculum. CTS courses involve courses such as Food Studies, Fashion Studies, Construction and Technology to name a few. A CTS course encourages competency, and is a wholly competency - based curriculum. The courses focus upon skills that can be applied in your day to day life and the future. Most importantly, CTS courses, as declared by the Alberta Education System, are known to enhance employability skills. This means that majority of CTS courses do not emphasize the expression of citizen voices. While they may encourage students to explore ways to change the environment and to seek sustainable change, CTS courses are not typically known to help students challenge biases in media, nor to challenge preconceived biases. Overall, CTS courses do succeed towards being able to share the collective duty of enforcing economic and environmental rights. However, they do not emphasize enforcing any sort of rights, or working towards a diverse and accepting community.
As well, we’ve researched about the Career and Life Management (CALM) curriculum. In summary, the CALM course is a course that emphasizes the importance of knowledge, attitudes, competencies and values in life. It encourages an understanding of self as the basis for making healthy choices, having healthy interactions with those around you, and having to use resources wisely for the purpose of lifelong career development. In short, this course is designed to improve students’ theoretical understanding of health issues and their ability to apply practical skills to personal situations. This course emphasizes making decisions with regards to one’s personal health and well being, but does not contribute to challenging media, creating sustainable change. Although this course does emphasize about the importance of making the right decisions, and relates to the differences of which an individual can make through their own knowledge, attitudes and values; this curriculum and structure of this course does not ensure of the voices of marginalized and influential are heard of equally. Neither does the CTS curriculum inspire for its students to critically view the media , or to challenge preconceived biases. In summary, it can be argued that, in spite of the CALM course moderately enforcing cultural and economic rights towards their students, the course lacks the capacity of having to enforce the aspects of environmental and social rights.
Through our perusal of the Alberta Science Curriculum, we found many significant points that related to our discussion. In every sect of the the curriculum, be it Biology, Physics, or Chemistry, the main overarching themes that relate to global citizenship were present to some extent. Firstly, the importance of incorporating varying worldviews into our everyday studies is heavily stressed and we are encouraged to consider the social and cultural contexts in which theories develop. Along with this, the significance of Aboriginal perspectives are also meant to be discussed. We as students are also expected to enquire, criticize and question what we are taught, which is an important aspect of being a global citizen. Biology especially emphasizes the criticism of sources to determine whether or not the findings are representative of diverse perspectives, and to insist on evidence before accepting new ideas. With regards to enforcing environment and sustainability, the curriculum emphasizes how students need to achieve a balance between the needs of humans and the environment. The curriculum has also stressed the importance of participating in social and political systems in order to influence environmental policy, and to work to preserve our environment. The curriculum has done a great job with targeting these points and recognizing that these qualities are necessary for students who wish to be critical and involved global citizens. However these points are not actually emphasized in practice. Science courses, for the most part are based on “book knowledge”, and treated as such, rather than something garnered from personal experience. Many of the things taught in the science department are concrete, unchallengeable ideas which leave no room for debate, making criticism impossible. Another issue is that while the curriculum wishes for us to be acquainted with different perspectives, it is not always possible. From experience, western perspectives are most often hailed as the pinnacle of knowledge and discovery while there is an (unintentional) disregard for other perspectives, simply because they do not represent our information the way we know it today. For example, Charles Darwin, famous for his theory of evolution takes all the credit, while Arab scholar ibn Khaldun had formulated this theory nearly 500 years prior. This unfortunately, is a testament to the underrepresentation of minorities in our classroom discussions, and for Canada’s own First Nations, Metis and Inuit population, the representation is virtually nonexistent. In our modern society, if students need to embody what it means to be a global citizen, the curriculum needs to be thoroughly enforced, and more opportunities need to be available for students wishing to get involved in influencing governmental policies.
In addition, through our personal experience in the Alberta school system and the examination of the Alberta Education social studies curriculum, we have determined the effectiveness of the Alberta’s schools in teaching global citizenship. We discovered that the education system effectively emphasizes the importance of marginalized and influential citizens being heard equally. In particular the education system emphasizes the voicing of Canada’s aboriginal population’s concerns and opinions. In this area of global citizenship we have no recommendations. In the aspect of of critically viewing information, challenging preconceived biases and creating sustaining change, we believe Alberta Education is doing an effective job. There is some emphasis on critical thinking. However, we believe more hands on experience in critical thinking is necessary. Students need more in class opportunity to research and debate issues, thus allowing students to think critically analytically. In the topic of creating sustainable change, we have found that Alberta education does an excellent job of creating students who are informed about global issues. However, there is a severe lack of emphasis on becoming involved in global issues. We believe that the alberta curriculum needs to be altered to include emphasis on becoming involved as a global citizen. In the final aspect of becoming a global citizen, the enforcing of social rights and the encouragement of a diverse and accepting society, we also have recommendations. The education system capably educates students on the importance of individual and collective social rights. However, as mentioned earlier the system emphasizes becoming informed but does not encourage becoming involved. This needs to be altered if Canadian students are to become effective global citizens.
The Social Studies curriculum emphasizes about becoming informed, but it doesn’t encourage upon becoming involved. The curriculum needs to be reformed to emphasize student involvement in global issues.
Our recommendation for the science curriculum would be to include perspectives of different scholars, and scientists from different times in history, and continents other than europe and north america. We would also benefit from a greater emphasis on sustainability, and more opportunities to make a greater impact than just within our school.
Our recommendation for the CALM curriculum would be to accommodate for a broader perspective. Specifically, what is meant by this is that, although the CALM curriculum does stress upon the importance of knowledge and values, and although the curriculum does encourage for a better understanding of oneself and to have healthy interactions with the people around you it is really, only meant to reach the extent of your own neighbourhood community… The curriculum of the course doesn’t really encourage you to become involved to the point of becoming a global citizen. Therefore, our recommendation again, would be for the structure of CALM to furthermore, encourage its students to be more involved and more aware of not just local events and people, but global events and and international people.
Our recommendation for the CTS curriculum would be to emphasize more on group identity rather than individual identity. Although, it has been mentioned within the course description, that this course is designed to prepare students for transition into adult roles in the family, community, workplace and/or further education, meaning that they will soon be a part of a bigger and broader community; the description however stresses more heavily upon how this course is an individual competency-based curriculum. The first steps towards achieving global citizenship is always, to think within a collective matter, therefore by having to teach this course with an emphasis more upon group identity, the students will be able to further relate to the impact of a global society (citizenship). (ex. the skills been taught are for becoming a carpenter, during the instruction of the skill sets, also be sure to accentuate upon the impact of a union of carpenters as compared to an individual carpenter)
