Global education's role in addressing societal challenges and student perspectives

Education

Defining Global Education

Teachers constantly find themselves wandering in an apparently continual sea of school reform literature and policies. Furthermore, the frequently unfriendly, and more and more politicized public debates about educational issues add to the feelings of helplessness and frustration experienced by a lot of classroom practitioners, particularly those working in large, urban settings. And if teaching wasn't challenging enough, these practitioners face supplementary challenges, like poverty, hostility, overcapacity, and huge bureaucracies, which drain valuable energy from the main goal of opening students' minds. Teachers are more and more being mandated to address societal issues and multifaceted global problems in their classrooms. The issues of poverty, crime, drugs and family dynamics are far beyond the school's means to resolve. Yet, they generate a high level of stress for both teachers and students, with an irrefutable impact on what does, or doesn't, happen in class. Unfortunately, two of the major disciplines teachers have to tackle are often at odds in United States society. These disciplines are multicultural education and global education (Baker, 1999).

Global Education

Global Education is an educational viewpoint which comes from the idea that modern people live and interact in a more and more globalized world. Subjects like fair trade, sustainability and poverty often take center stage. The idea brings into focus social and political connections and tries to raise an energetic consciousness of structural resemblance, dissimilarity and unfairness. Global Education enables students to reach a global viewpoint and see conditions and problems in an international and holistic context. Students should be motivated to replicate their identity and lifestyle and assume responsibility (Global Education, 2010). According to Paolo Freire, education should involve a shift in world view, as people learn to their whole world from a different perspective (Cooper, 1995).

Global education is an education perception which comes from the idea that modern people live and interrelate in a more and more globalized world. This makes it vital for education to give learners the occasion and competences to reflect and share their own point-of-view and role within an international, unified society, as well as to comprehend and discuss multifaceted relationships of common social, ecological, political and economic issues, so as to develop new ways of thinking and acting. Yet, global education should not be offered as an advance that everyone may accept uncritically, since it is already known that there are predicaments, tensions, doubts and different insights in an education process when dealing with worldwide issues (What is global education, n.d.).

Global education is about implementing the vision required to move to a model of partnership between peoples, cultures and religions at micro and macro levels. Transformative learning by way of global education entails a profound, structural move in the fundamental premises of thoughts, feelings and actions. It is an education for the intellect as well as for the heart. This involves a fundamental change towards interconnectedness and creates opportunities for achieving more fairness, social justice, understanding and collaboration amongst peoples. Three main stages of transformative learning are strongly connected to global education:

An investigation of the present world circumstances

A vision of what alternatives to leading models might look like

A progression of change towards accountable global citizenship (What is global education, n.d.).

Global education as transformative learning implies participatory decision-making processes at all these stages. The objective of this kind of learning is to promote joint knowledge and communal self-awareness. Global education challenges greed, disparity and egocentrism through collaboration and unity instead of dividing people through opposition, disagreement, fear and hatred. Global education as transformative learning provides a way to make changes at local levels to pressure the global in the sense of building citizenship through participatory policies and methods, so that people learn by taking responsibilities that cannot be left only to governments and other decision makers. "At both micro and macro levels global education brings together the agendas of different fields of education: Development Education, Human Rights Education, Education for Sustainability, Education for Peace and Conflict Prevention, Intercultural and Interfaith Education, the global dimension of Education for Citizenship etc. - in order to define the common grounds of global education" (What is global education, n.d.). This will generate a real impact on both formal education and non-formal education, which has an enormous role to play in bringing people towards a wider understanding of their real power to shape the future.

But global education is not only about global subjects, world troubles and how to find resolutions all together. It is also about how to foresee a general future with better life conditions for all, linking local and global perspectives, and how to make this vision real and possible, starting from a small spot in the world. Transformative learning allows people to form a common vision for a more just, sustainable world for all. A focus on the kind of future that is wanted is therefore vital in such a transformative vision. Global education can add to the visioning process, but it can also play a role in the formation of new methods where social movements and non-formal learning processes are necessary as they make room for principles, issues and advances not central to official learning and give voice to all people, including the marginalized ones. By shifting the focal point onto the transformation from a culture of reproduction and supremacy to one of partnership based on dialogue and cooperation, global education modifies established global economy rules by reinstating human dignity as an innermost value (What is global education, n.d.).

The purpose of global education is to promote long-term human survival by developing greater respect for and cooperation between fellow human beings and greater concern for the environment on which all people depend for their very survival. "A rationale for global education is offered, and suggests that content be structured around five basic themes: (1) global interdependence; (2) human resources, values, and culture; (3) the global environment and natural resources; (4) global peace and conflict management; and (5) change and alternative futures" (Global Education Guidelines, 2010).

Differences between Global Education and Multicultural Education

Global education is concerned with concerns and problems connected to the survival of human beings in a world area. International studies is a part of global education, but the center of global education is the interdependence of human beings and their universal fate, in spite of the national boundaries within which they live. A lot of people confuse global education and international studies with ethnic studies, which deal with ethnic groups inside a national boundary, such as the United States. Each year the fate of all peoples become ever more closely tangled. Human concerns become global issues as people search for work, obtain resources, access oceans and their resources, move around the world, grow in inhabitants, uphold and share water, use and misuse air, and of course, struggle to comprehend each other (Baker, 1999).

People need look no further than their own homes to see the interdependence of world trade; no further than their neighborhoods to see the results of international migration and multiculturalism; no further than the news to see the causes and effects of global economics, ecology and ethnic conflicts. "While domestic debate continues over the nature of these connections, few can doubt their existence. As these connections increase, educators, utilizing a global model, can provide a context that allows students to analyze and understand the impact of world events" (Baker, 1999).

Multiculturalism and globalism are obviously not unique to the United States. The majority of Western societies are racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse. Ethnic revival movements have come up in a lot of countries including quite a few Western European nations (Banks & Lynch, 1986). This type of revival movement occurs when an ethnic group organizes efforts to attain equality inside a society. It may try to get rid of bias, to legitimize its culture inside the nation, and try to form a positive identity. Ethnic revitalization actions tend to come about in nations that are previously ethnically diverse but where ethnic stratification exists. Some nations have had immigrants arrive from previous colonies. "Many immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe have settled in other nations in search of jobs. Many nations in Europe are faced with the challenge of educating diverse ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious groups" (Baker, 1999).

The United States needs people who understand cultural diversity and speak languages in addition to English. Both global and multicultural education must work toward that end. The most significant force for cooperation between the two is the connection of goals and content. Both movements work to improve intergroup and global understanding and relations, to improve intercultural communication, to reduce stereotyping, and to help students comprehend human diversity without loosing sight of the traits that all peoples share.

No person belongs to only one group. Each person belongs to a lot of groups involving things such as gender, age, financial status, social class, area of residence, national origin, religion, and cultural or ethnic group association (Baker, 1999).

When multicultural and global education operates independently, they sometimes compete with one another and with other subjects for time in the school curriculum. Collaboration between the two, consequently, makes sense when developing new curriculum.

While multicultural educator's center primarily on ethnicity inside the United States, global educators stress worldwide phenomena. Some educators on both sides pay little attention to the connection between ethnicity and world affairs. Multicultural educators must intentionally include global perspectives in their courses and global educators must deliberately include ethnicity as a part of global education (Baker, 1999).

Conclusion

Multicultural and global education should work together to help students understand what it means to see things from a particular point-of-view. Both sides need to aid students develop the capability to recognize points-of-view, whether they come from individuals, ethnic groups, areas, nations, or international organizations. World events offer an excellent way to unite multicultural and global thinking by analyzing the effects of different viewpoints. The investigation of perspective in world events should included multicultural scope. Ethnicity and national identity have not always worked together in a positive fashion, for example. "Looking at examples of situations where we draw from history and from contemporary global and national events can help students examine the role and importance of perspective" (Baker, 1999).

Multicultural and global education should help students recognize how their values have been developed and help them understand the impact of world trends and events on members of different groups. A knowledge of groups provides information that help to better understand people. This provides a vital link between global and individual concerns. Both multicultural and global education should evaluate and contrast ethnicity in the United States with ethnicity as it functions in other parts of the world. Educators need look at how Americans of different ethnic groups sustained, customized, or lost aspects of their heritage (Baker, 1999).

Both multicultural and global education looks at how group stereotypes, which get in the way of intergroup relationships develop. Educators need to involve their students in ways in which group images are shaped. If students learn to appreciate the process of stereotyping, they should become more considerate citizens of the world (Smith, 1976). A good way to do this would be to expand the school curriculum into the community. Families, peer groups, churches, the workplace, media and television are all components of external curriculum.

Oftentimes this curriculum aids people to better appreciate other ethnic groups as well as global associations (Baker, 1999).

Even though there are some fundamental differences between global education and multicultural education it is apparent that when the two are joined together they can provide a very effective platform for educational opportunities that allow people to be prepared for working in the world in which we now live. And in the end this is what is most important as people should not be set up to fail, but should be prepared to do their best.