BENEFITS OF GLOBAL EDUCATION AND HOW IT HELPS STUDENTS BECOME GLOBAL CITIZENS?

The primary role of education is to enable students with the skills, aptitudes, and dispositions required to be effective and competitive in the current and future world system. There is an ever-increasing awareness among educators, students, parents, policymakers, and the general population that education needs to respond to the constantly evolving global paradigm.

Global Education refers to the extent to which global development issues are integrated within the formal curriculum. Global education is seen as a way of extending students’ views of the world by exploring their perceptions and connections. It helps them to recognize and think critically about different cultural, economic and social perspectives. New communication technologies have allowed students to connect with global cultures. The most pressing world problems, such as climate change, terrorism, and arms control, will require unprecedented levels of international cooperation. Globalization has affected students on a local, national, and international level, and our education system must prepare students for these new realities.

Global education promotes skills, values, and knowledge that are crucial to a student’s development. According to the Global Education Census 2018- students felt that their teachers are the most important source of information on global issues. However, this same group also reported receiving a very large part of their global information from the internet and television. Perhaps as a result of relying on informal means of education, students lacked a comprehensive understanding of global issues: of those students surveyed, roughly half were unfamiliar with developing world debt, were unable to name a country in which human rights abuses take place, and could not name an NGO that is actively addressing global issues.

The 21st century has seen an explosion in research, curricula, and organizations dedicated to promoting global education. The Global Education First Initiative led by the United Nations has emphasized the importance of fostering global citizenship under its main agenda. Changes in school systems across the world ideas, values and knowledge are changing the roles of students and teachers, and producing a shift in society from industrialised to an information-based society. The rise of a global society, driven by technology and communication developments are shaping children into global citizens. There is an emerging world community to which we all belong.

As Socrates once quoted– “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” Global education carries the seed of a world that we all want.