A Forgotten Concept: Global Citizenship Education and State Social Studies Standards

Journal of Social Studies Research, Spring 2009 by Rapoport, Anatoli

In today's global environment, social studies educators have the opportunity to expand their students' vision of the role of citizenship in developing a democratic understanding by adopting multiple perspectives on citizenship. Global citizenship education is becoming an important component in citizenship education in many countries. However, unlike their colleagues in Europe or Asia, US teachers are still less enthusiastic about incorporating global citizenship perspectives into their instruction. This paper describes the obstacles that prevent social studies teachers from using global citizenship perspectives. It also explores whether state academic standards in social studies provide sufficient curricular guidance for global citizenship education.

Introduction

Thanks to Thomas Friedman (2005), we now all know that the world is flat. And it is going to become flatter yet. But it is also going to be "far more equal, far more active and energetic" (Zakaria, 2005, p. 92). We also know that the forthcoming and imminent equality, activism, and energy are going to challenge our traditional perceptions of the world. Global processes in economy, science, and technology have provided a tremendous impulse to changes in values, customs, and mores. Regardless of how positively or negatively globalization is seen throughout the world, it has already started to change the world, and these changes are irreversible. Economically, scientifically, and technologically, the United States has more or less, and I would argue more than less, succeeded in meeting the challenges of globalization. But are we prepared to face the inevitable moral, ideological, and political changes that go hand in hand with the changes in global economies? Even more importantly, are we preparing our students morally, politically, and ideologically to become citizens of a future world that is going to be more equal, active, and dynamic than this one? The future world is not only a world of common markets of goods, capital, or labor. It is also a world of common values, a world of tolerance, a world of multiple identities and loyalties, and a world of shared responsibilities. The tragic events of September 11, and even more so, the events that followed, demonstrate that citizenship education, particularly in regard to its global dimension, faces multiple contextual, methodological, curricular, and even semantic challenges.

In this article, I will demonstrate how such concepts as globalization and global citizenship are represented in social studies standards in various states. I will also argue that despite the interdisciplinary nature and content of the terms globalization and global citizenship, the social studies classroom is the primary locus of their curriculum application. Further, the reasons for the lack of interest among educators in addressing these two powerful concepts in the US classroom will be discussed.

Literature Review

The terms global citizenship education and education for global citizenship as well as other terms related to the concept of global citizenship are becoming more and more frequently used at scholarly conferences and in various educational discourses. However, one can rarely hear these terms in the classroom. There are reasons for this, both objective and subjective. First, there is no consensus on the meaning of global citizenship. We cannot use the familiar definition derived from the definition of citizen, argued Noddings (2005), because global citizenship is not about allegiance to a global government that is nonexistent. To Noddings, a global citizen is one who can live and work effectively anywhere in the world, supported by a global way of life. Guadelli and Fernekes (2004) referred to the non-normative stance of global citizenship and highlighted its complexity, transcendency, and inchoate status. Mcintosh related the idea of the global citizen to "habits of mind, heart, body, and soul that have to do with working for and preserving a network of relationships and connections across lines of difference and distinctness, while keeping and deepening a sense of one's own identity and integrity" (2005, 23). Dunn (2002) referred to "a citizenry that knows and cares about contemporary affairs in the whole world" (p. 10). The absence of a mutually agreed upon definition of global citizenship, which spans from a vague sense of belonging to a global community to more specific ways of individual and collective involvement in global politics (Heater, 1997; Ibrahim, 2005), has enabled researchers and educators to use this term and related terms loosely. It is not much of a surprise that this relatively new concept has also generated a lot of criticism, much of which is related to its social and political aspects. The emerging global civil society that perpetuates global citizenship and "is supposed to give it a 'political' character" (Armstrong, 2006, p. 349) faces several accusations itself: it is terminologically ambiguous, its supporters uncritically apply nation-state phenomena to global processes, and it undermines democracy by weakening the democratic institutions of nation-states (Cony, 2006). Armstrong (2006) argued that the supposedly "global" elements of global citizenship are much less universal and transcendental and thus, "the claim that a meaningful global regime of citizenship is emerging... should be treated with caution" (p. 355). Second, global citizenship education is usually conceptualized within the framework of international education, global education (Davis, Evans, & Reid, 2005), multicultural education (Banks, 2004; Dunn, 2002), peace education (Smith & Fairman, 2005), human rights education (Guadelli & Fernekes, 2004), or economic education. Practitioners are very well aware that none of these approaches, except maybe economic education, has secured a position in school curricula so far. Thus, global citizenship education, if taught as one of the topics within those frameworks, has become even more secondary.