WHAT ARE THE KEY GLOBAL ISSUES OF OUR TIME?

When we implement a global education program, we must necessarily address within its curriculum the critical global issues that we humans confront in our time -- and the coming future. It is the realization that we must resolve these transnational global issues, that has forced even entrenched nationalists to understand and accept the need for a global focus on education and planetary problem solving.

Some educators prefer to address these global issues within the framework of an existing curriculum, infusing certain issues into the scope and sequence of existing courses (environmental degradation within Biology or Earth Science; energy issues within Economics; nuclear proliferation within Government or Political Science, etc.) One advantage of this approach is that it creates minimum disruption to the existing curriculum. In some situations this is all that a global educator can do, given the inflexibility of many curriculum planners.

It is most often better, however, to create a dual-pronged approach: infusing critical global issues within the existing courses, while at the same time creating a separate course on "Global Issues" or "Global Perspectives." This provides maximum flexibility in the selection of issues to be studied and allows sufficient time for the analysis and discussion of difficult, complex issues.

When teachers communicate and collaborate with one another with respect to the consideration of global issues in the classroom, students have the advantage of confronting issues from different perspectives and from different levels of analysis.

Whichever method is followed, the question remains: Which issues should be included in the curriculum? Some local or regional flexibility is needed. In the USA, for instance, the war in Afghanistan may constitute a national priority; in East Africa, piracy in the high seas might take precedence. Nevertheless, there is a core of issues of inescapable global significance that should be a part of every global curriculum. I will identify below my own selection of the top five current issues of global significance, at the same time that I invite all readers to comment and amend the list based on their own experience and opinions. There is no magic to the number "five." In effect, it is an arbitrarily small number to encourage discussion and hard choices in the selection process. The real list for a course on Global Isues could be two or three times longer.

In my opinion, a first, unifying core for all other issues considered must be the ABSENCE OF RESPECT FOR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS IN TODAY'S GLOBAL REALITY. The analysis and discussion of a human rights paradigm will establish an ethical foundation on which to weigh all other issues considered. The definition of this human rights paradigm is made easier by the existence of many United Nations agreements and treaties that most nations of the world have accepted as a standard of acceptable human behavior -- even if in practice most nations violate multiple provisions of these accords on a regular basis.

At the very core of these UN agreements are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Establishing this human rights framework should be an initial priority of any global education program.

A second unavoidable issue is the ongoing revolution in gender roles that we can refer to as "THE FEMALE AWAKENING" -- possibly the greatest social revolution in human history. If we consider the extent of its direct and indirect impact on the entire human species and the restructuring power of the ongoing changes on all human societies, we must take note and help our students understand these revolutionary changes taking place in their lifetime. While it is true that this revolution is not affecting all human societies in the same measure and at the same time, it is also obviously true that no human society will escape the impact of the "Female Awakening."

The male domination of human society is over. The power of communications and transportation infrastructures will ensure that all corners of the world will soon have to adapt to the new human reality. The questions that still remain relate to the specifics of how the change will take place and the societal accommodations to the new order of gender equality. Not even the bulwarks of religious dogma will be able to withstand the impact of the female awakening.

A third issue of paramount importance is the dehumanizing impact of POVERTY, HUNGER AND DISEASE in the world. Poverty is at the core of hunger and disease -- as well as of overpopulation. Our students must confront the inhuman realities surrounding this issue. In previous posts we have discussed the need to develop "basic human empathy" to help our students understand and feel the destructive impact of abject poverty.

A fourth issue of paramount global importance is the ongoing and impending CLIMATE CHANGE, including global warming. Since so much has been written on this subject, I will not expand further at this point. Let us simply agree that -- given the scientific data easily available -- any teacher who at this point believes that climate change is not real, or that human impact has not been a significant contributor to the crisis, is not a teacher who should be teaching in a global curriculum.

My fifth issue is NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION. There are few things that political opponents around the planet normally agree on. However, whether we ask leaders of the USA, Russia, the EU, China, India or Pakistan, nuclear proliferation will regularly be mentioned as the top danger in an already dangerous world. We should listen and take note. The USA remains the only nation to have actually used nuclear weapons against an enemy's population; this unenviable record may be shattered if vertical and horizontal nuclear proliferation are allowed to continue.

While most national leaders are fully aware of the nuclear proliferation problem and have taken some limited measures to slightly diminish the dangers, the entrance of non-state actors --such as terrorist groups -- into the picture significantly complicates the future. If humanity is unable to deal with this problem, we are facing unimaginable disaster.

Those are my personal picks for the "top five" major global issues of our time. I realize that there are many others which could have been selected. One major barrier to the peaceful resolution of these issues is the lack of truly supra-national institutions that can speak and act for all humanity. We currently have an excess of nationalistic aggression and dogmatic fervor in the world. To counteract them, we have only international institutions (such as the UN) which provide a forum for all nations -- but are often not empowered to act effectively on behalf of all humanity. We must do better, either by creating new, truly supra-national organizations, or expanding the reach of the United Nations.

At the same time, we must develop better channels to listen to the voices of the weak and the oppressed, on whose behalf these supra-national organizations would labor.

The realization that we must move forward as a human species and seek trans-national solutions to global issues is seen in the partial success of the EU and other bodies; however, we must not delay. There is no guarantee that the dangers will wait for us.

All readers are invited to review my selections and make their own additions, subtractions, or changes as their knowledge and experience dictate. Feel free to discuss your views and agree or disagree in the "comments" section following this post.

I shall be looking forward to your comments!

WHAT MAKES IT GLOBAL ? PART l

As the global consciousness of teachers (and students) increases in response to planetary realities, more and more teachers are becoming de facto global teachers -- often without using that particular label. They are doing so as a response to the obvious educational needs of our students. Many of these global teachers wish for a clear template to apply to their classroom. When is our teaching "global"? What makes it so?

In the next three posts, we will attempt to provide some guidelines that will confirm to ourselves that our teaching is indeed "global." We will seek 3 different approaches to determining what makes our instruction global: (1) "Instinctive" globality; (2) Robert Hanvey's five dimensions of global understanding; and (3) the global dimensions that guide teaching for global awareness in the UK.

Many teachers, particularly older teachers who went to college before global education became fully established, simply follow what a colleague has called the "instinctive" approach to global awareness (here the term "instinctive" is used in its "spontaneous," or "visceral" meaning, rather than in its narrower psychological meaning.). "Instinctive" global teachers implement global education by using a comprehensive philosophical outlook to inform their pedagogical decisions. Often motivated by thoughtful internationalism or humanism, they arrive at common sense decisions about the educational needs of their students and apply them to classroom instruction using usually self-developed ways and means. They were global teachers before they adopted the term "global."

These teachers are guided by strong guiding principles and beliefs, such as, "we are all equal members of one common humanity," or "there is more that unites us than separates us as human beings," or "we should advance humanistic attitudes in our teaching," or "prejudice is not a rational or acceptable way of dealing with others who are different from us." Instinctive global teachers normally are surprisingly effective, since they have typically arrived at the global dimensions of education on the strength of their own convictions -- often relying on powerful self-reflection, logic, and a thoughtful analysis of our planetary reality. In the classroom, they employ the same tools of every successful teacher, simply adding a thoughtful question, an incisive comment, or a key global insight as they cover the required material.

Teachers more formally grounded on the conceptual frameworks of global education may occasionally underestimate these "self-made" or instinctive global teachers; that would be a serious mistake. The sincerity of their outlook and the power of their convictions most often make this group of teachers extremely effective. Yet, even these self-made global teachers can improve their effectiveness by adding a more structured conceptual framework to their teaching -- this is where Robert Hanvey comes in.

Just as we can perceive beauty in a painting or a piece of music, we can also perceive the beauty of clean, clear, and simple conceptual frameworks in the world of ideas. Robert Hanvey (1976) has given us one such approach. It is "beautiful" in its clarity, simplicity, and applicability to any classroom situation. Although many people have sought to revise, modify, or add to Hanvey's dimensions, they remain the single most powerful model of global education available to us. Hanvey maintains that there are 5 "dimensions" of global understanding. The implementation of any one of those dimensions at any moment in our teaching can make our instruction "global." They are not esoteric variables, but clear, simple guidelines that are easy to relate to.

In our next blog,we will focus on Robert Hanvey's dimensions. One day, history books will acknowledge the power of his inductive thinking and the enormous value of his contribution to education.

Until soon, then.