Who Needs Global Citizenship Education?

• In Event: Papers From Members of the International Academy of Education

Abstract

Challenges and disapproval of public education systems are widespread globally. Although there are multiple models of public schooling, broadly speaking, in countries with democratic systems of government, there is an implicit desire to establish direct relationships between schooling for all, citizenship, and democracy. And there is a long-standing and strong consensus about the importance and relevance of public education for democracy (see, e.g., Berliner and Hermann, 2022). Citizenship education is one of the central aims of public schools, and very rare to find a system that does not trumpet the preparation of students for informed citizenship or something similar. What will be hard to find is an equally consensual perspective about what role and concrete model public schools should play in educating democratic citizens. Systems of public schooling are criticized by voices ranging from very conservative to very liberal positions, and the list of complaints keeps growing: from suppressing freedom of choice to questioning the adequacy and efficacy of public financing; from its bureaucratic nature to its incapacity to respond to discriminatory practices; from neglecting the local dimensions to ignoring globalized political and economic pressures.
All these challenges are not entirely new, but their global dimension and magnitude suggest that the notion of public education guaranteed for all is also contested. Against this background, and especially related to the educational dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic and environmental crisis- models of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) have been frequently presented as pedagogical answers to be incorporated into public schools. In this paper, we present data from a questionnaire answered by 20 of the most cited experts in the field of GCED. The data indicates that despite good intentions, most GCED models have been framed as evolutionary and redemptive models, reinforcing neo-liberal perspectives of minimizing both the public sphere and governments’ obligations toward their citizens (Goren & Yemini, 2017).
With some noted exemptions (Andreotti, 2015) GCED models tend to promote an “entrepreneurial self” with the implicit assumption that the responsibility for solving global problems lies exclusively with individuals’ behavioral changes, not as a shared responsibility between citizens, governments, and international institutions (Estellés & Fischman, 2021). However, as the global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the environmental disaster compellingly show, the problem is not only that there are individuals who are not able to imagine and carry out forms of cooperation with other citizens around the world, but also –and perhaps more importantly– that many governments are not willing, nor demanded by their citizens, to do so. Instead, more realistic models of GCE are needed. This paper concludes with new questions to strengthen the debate and alternatives for imagining a non-redemptive and more realistic GCE.

Authors

• Gustavo E. Fischman, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Marta Estelles, University of Waikato
  Presenting Author