Educating Citizens for Global Awareness

Educating Citizens for Global Awareness Nel Noddings, Editor New York: Teachers College Press, 2005 In an era of narrowed curriculum, can educators turn away from the notion of citizenship education as preparing students to succeed in a competitive world and prepare students, instead, for successful living in a cooperative world? The collection of essays in Nel Noddings' book investigates issues relevant to such an approach to citizenship education. Authors address issues of gender, conflict resolution, home places, cultural citizenship, international history, religious pluralism, and a vision for 21st century educators. They offer insights for refocusing citizenship education with an intentional care for both people and ideas. The collection of essays reflects a theme from the U.N. Women's conference in Beijing (1995) that is consistent with Noddings' own work in the areas of moral education, ethics of care, and gender perspectives. As Peggy Mcintosh explains in her essay, at the Forum there was "a sense of a shared and global agenda. " That sense is evident in Educating Citizens for Global Awareness as authors imagine communities of care at the local, national, and international levels. Three particular issues in the collection sparked further consideration for me as a teacher educator to understand that shared and global agenda. One was engaging students in the discussion of history as an evolving story in global citizenship. A second issue used the concept of cultural citizenship to explore the complexity of multiple cultural and national identities. The third issue dealt with the shared environment in learning to care for physical places and remembered places. It also raised the question for thoughtful citizens: What is the role of home places that connect people to the Earth and to their heritage? First, Stephen Thornton's essay reminds us that world history is a shared and ongoing story. The end of the story is not yet written, but it does include people from many nations. So, he integrates international perspectives into the study of U. S. history by inviting students to participate in historical events as decision-makers and analysts. For example, he shows the events that precipitated World War I began as an international event in the Balkans long before U. S. troops entered the war. Then, following the war, what was seen as a peaceful solution, cost one group its homeland and re-emerged as ethnic conflicts in the late 20th century. The relationships among groups of people in the region continue to impact the global community. He explains that events have relevance to students when issues that affect nations on a global level are seen at a national and local level. His point is that history does not need to be taught as a completed event with details students absorb from an expert's interpretation. Rather, events in history can be taught through the lens of a shared, global agenda. Educating students for global awareness includes knowledge of events past and present as students seek solutions for justice and peace for multiple cultural groups. Thornton proposes that student content knowledge should lead to some kind of engaging educational activity, perhaps conflict resolution as Stacie Nicole Smith and David Fairman suggest in another of the essays. They give a classroom example of conflict resolution successfully infused into the curriculum. A second issue concerned with a shared and global agenda is found in the essay by Gloria Ladsen-Billings, who asks, "Who does your school think you are? " Although school curriculum treats all students as if they were White, middle-class, and native-born, demographics show that is not true in many of the nation's public schools. Ladsen-Billings reminds us of our "cultural citizenship" whereby we identify ourselves individually and collectively as members of cultural groups that may overlap with multiple civic identities. …