Character Education as a Universal Standard for Global Citizenship

Introduction

When the topic of lack of education is raised, it is generally assumed that access to education is the problem. However, lack of education can also refer to the problem of ineffective education or inconsistency in education. In many places around the world, education is promoted by the state — for example, Qatar has developed Education City — but a deeply ingrained culture still exists that resists overtures to education (Bahry & Marr, 2005). The problem that exists in terms of education on a global scale is that education means different things to different people in different cultures, and there is no universal standard or shared set of goals that educators around the world pursue at the same time. This creates an overall effect of educational deficiency, with significant gaps between communities. For instance, students in some affluent communities in America are more educated than learners in poor communities in the same nation. One issue is inequality, but the more fundamental issue is that the lack of education around the world results from a lack of universal standardization.

Calling for more access to education is insufficient. What is needed is a clear, universal approach that can appeal to all cultures and serve as the foundation for universal education. This topic is important because today's globalized world may splinter into fragments and into nationalistic conflicts if global citizenship is not achieved. The ethical implication of this topic is that it can provide the ethical framework needed for uniting the world. To promote global citizenship, character education must be provided as the foundation for learning and it must be provided uniformly — otherwise there will be stark differences in the type and level of education that people receive from different states all over the world.

Lack of education is a problem for the development of global citizens. Because education standards and access to education are not uniform around the world, there is little chance of a truly global citizenship developing. Moreover, there are cultural barriers that prevent education in one part of the world, such as the Middle East, from being comparable to what it is in other parts of the world. Without equal access to education and universal standards and curriculum, the global citizenry will be disjointed and unequal, and therefore not truly global. One of the challenges to global citizenry is a lack of education; however, there are other obstacles as well, such as the rise of nationalism in countries like China, Russia, the United States, and states in the Middle East. Cultural obstacles also cause education standards to differ from place to place. To bring uniformity to classrooms around the world, a shared standard must be agreed upon, and there also needs to be a standard of character formation, since this is the basis of all future development.

The Problem: Education Without Character

Why is the lack of moral education at the foundation of the problem of lack of education? The emphasis on subjectivity in the modern era has led to the rise of Ethical Egoism, in which every person sees himself as the arbiter of what is good and bad. There is no focus on external realities, objective truth, ideals, or universals. Instead, the ends justify the means, and the only ends that matter within an Ethical Egoism framework are those that matter most to the individual self. The modern era is consumed with the Self. It does not want to hear about conforming the Self or one's character to an objective standard, because doing so means submitting the Self to a higher rule of law. The Self wants to establish its own rule of law — but in doing so, it creates an environment in which Self is pitted against Self and individual against individual. There is no allowance for collectivity or for the very possibility of global citizenry. As Hill (2015) points out, people must adopt a more cosmopolitan sense of their place in the world so that they can see themselves as part of a larger global community in which cultural diversity exists. Finding a foundation of education that all can agree upon is the way to promote global citizenry and close the education gap. Implementing a system of virtue ethics in education is the way to achieve this (Gong, 2010).

The problem of lack of education is rooted in the lack of character education, which stems from the modern world moving away from traditional philosophy and embracing subjective frameworks. Traditional philosophy united the world in the past. All cultures — from Islam to Judaism to Christianity to Asian philosophical traditions — could share in the ethics promoted by Aristotle, which were grounded in realism (Kristjánsson, 2014). Today, nationalism is on the rise, and subjectivity is promoted in place of objectivity in philosophy. Aristotelianism, which once united the ancient world, is ignored, and in its place, subjective modern theories that create division and foster resentment are taught instead.

A third problem to address is the issue of critical thinking. There will always be a lack of education so long as schools fail to teach critical thinking. As Freire (2000) points out, memorizing information is not the same as learning, and much of modern education focuses on memorization and rote learning. Schools do not teach critical thinking because they do not actually want people learning to think for themselves. They want to produce students who accept whatever they are told and do not challenge the ruling classes (Freire, 2000).

Conclusion

Lack of education is a problem preventing global citizenship. At the root of the problem is the lack of character education and a universal ethical framework for standardizing education. Students need to understand why it is important to form their characters in alignment with virtue as an ideal — one that is simultaneously practicable in real life as a realistic habit that can be made part of one's character. This is an important conversation to have because the world is more divided than ever today and needs to be united at the most fundamental level, which is education.