Suitable for: Student teachers

Learning Objectives: to generate discussion about different views of the importance of the global dimension in educaiton

ESD&GC concepts: All

This activity uses statements with students to generate discussion on the Global dimension. Print and cut out the statements, then stick them up around the room. Students walk round the room and choose a statement according to the instructions you have given them.

You could ask them to choose which they:

Think is most important
Disagree with most
Like the most

Then ask students to get into a group with others who chose the same statement and discuss it. It would help if each person in the group had a copy of their chosen statement.
Each group then presents their statement and why they chose it to the rest of the class.

STATEMENT 1
‘…talk to any teacher about the issues affecting the world today (conflict, intolerance, environmental damage, poverty) and ask if they think schooling should prepare young people for understanding and dealing with them, then most will agree profoundly.’
Enabling Effective Support for a Global Dimension in the School Curriculum. North-West Regional Draft Strategy. 2002.

STATEMENT 2
‘Global Education … weaves together the separate threads, such as economy, environment, society and technology, by which we make sense of the world. It is needed to help us fully realise our interdependence with all life forms, to understand that, ultimately, survival in isolation is neither desirable nor possible… The dangers of education without a global perspective are starkly evident in the history of the twentieth century.’
Pike (2000) ‘A tapestry in the making. In; Goldstein, B. & Selby, D. (2000) Weaving Connections.

STATEMENT 3
‘The Global Teacher Project is the most exciting and rewarding project I have embarked on, and the most enduring. The pressure of preparing for SATs had made me a curriculum technician – a teachoid! What about values, attitudes and life skills? Was I preparing pupils for a changeable, uncertain world – to make decisions, to listen to and respect others, to express their views? No! I was transferring information … to satisfy rigid curriculum demands and tests. Using story I made anti-racist teaching an integral part of the curriculum. As a result literacy skills have improved and pupils have a passion to become anti-racist citizens.‘
Ellen Lloyd (2002) Global Teacher Project Newsletter

STATEMENT 4
‘We are used to hearing our schools assailed by critics who want to know why ‘Johnny can’t read, Johnny can’t write’ and who call for a return to ‘the basics’… But why do we stop worrying there? … Why not worry that Johnny can’t dance, can’t breathe, can’t meditate, can’t relax, can’t cope with anxiety, aggression, envy, can’t express trust and tenderness? … that Johnny doesn’t know who he is… ? Let us admit that the basic skills have nothing to do with Johnny’s health, happiness, sanity or survival, but with his employability. Whose interest, then, is Johnny’s education serving?’
Roszak (1981) Person/Planet. London: Granada.

STATEMENT 5
‘The volume of education … continues to increase, yet so does pollution, exhaustion of resources, the dangers of ecological catastrophe. If still more education is to save us, it would have to be education of a different kind: an education that takes us into the depths of things.’
Schumacher, E. F. (1973) Small is beautiful. London : Blond and Briggs.

STATEMENT 6
‘Children and young adults deserve to know that their fate is inextricably linked to, and affected by, the lives and decisions of others across the world. They have a right to understand the crucial issues facing the planet and know that they can personally play a part in helping shape the future.’

‘Education for sustainable development and global citizenship is not an extra subject of study. It is a way of approaching the existing school curriculum and school life. It can be liberating for learners and teachers alike.’
Jane Davidson, Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, WAG
Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship guidance
Accac, Dfid, Estyn, WAG