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Citizenship and Global Citizenship are concepts which have been embraced by many diverse bodies. Governments are keen to promote it, as are NGOs, commercial companies and universities - there is a new undergraduate degree in the subject. Don McKinnon, the Commonwealth Secretary General has recently given a speech promoting it.
Why then is there so much interest in this subject? Why is the Welsh Assembly promoting the subject so strongly?
The rationale for the concept of global citizenship begins with the local communities in which the people of Wales live. We have seen, in recent years, the growth of the ‘global village’ that we are all said to live in. Immigration has meant that people are, in many areas of Wales, being educated with and working alongside people from different cultures. Our lives are increasingly influenced by the global context, from the war in Iraq to the negotiations being facilitated by the World Trade Organisation.
These issues impact upon people’s lives wherever they reside. We are global citizens and in order to fully take on the role we need to explore this relationship between global issues and local communities, to become aware of our roles within both the local and the global community, and to develop the political literacy which will enable us to participate in our communities in Wales, in the UK and in the wider world. It is this dual aspect – ‘awareness of’ and ‘participate in’ - that is central to the idea of global citizenship.
Oxfam gives an excellent definition of what constitutes a global citizen. www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/teachers/globciti/whatis.htm
The core of such an approach is based on working for social and environmental justice. This involves looking outside our own contexts to a take a wider perspective and to examine citizenship from differing points of view including non-western perspectives, in order to discuss the rights and responsibilities of all citizens.
Global citizens need to be able to reflect on their own lives, and their place within their communities and the wider society, including reflecting on their role in a participatory democracy and in the general welfare of society. This will require people to be aware of the increasingly pluralist nature of both the society in which they live and the world around them, and to take account of this in any decision making process.
Such global citizens will need to become familiar with the various institutions (economic, political, educational etc.) at local, national and global levels that influence and in some cases control the lives of people. They should develop the skills necessary to compare the stated values of those institutions with the reality of their performance. In order to fully employ these skills students will need to be able to locate information from a variety of sources, and be able to assess the validity of those sources. See the Canadian project on teaching media literacy - www.worldvision.ca/home/media/MediaLit.pdf
The issues of concern to a global citizen would be varied, but would include:
Who is Promoting Global Citizenship?
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