Global Citizenship Toolkit
Understanding & Defining Global Citizenship
Though the definitional arguments currently rage in the theoretical literature, in a very practical sense a global citizen is a person with the ability to work, play, and live somewhere other than the land of their birth. Beyond simply having multiple addresses, this person exhibits agency (is proactive and engaged in civic life) and primacy (has the capacity to make change happen). At the emotional and philosophical level, the global citizen considers herself to be transnational: committed to the human issues no matter in what nation state they occur.
The global dimension to citizenship is that The Everyone, everywhere is in the global village. We need to advance the discussion of how to promote a global conscience.
The Everyone, Everywhere: Global Dimensions of Citizenship Dé Bryant , Director, Social Action Project (SOCACT) , Indiana University South Bend, IN
The job of engaging the world, of bridging cultures and differences, of true public diplomacy is far too important to leave to our international leaders. Each and every one of us must be a citizen diplomat. Global citizens are as ready to get on a bus, a bike, or a subway to volunteer in a soup kitchen across town as they are to step on a plane bound for Africa.
Whatever else may be claimed in the statement “we are citizens of the world,” at least there is the ethical claim that we belong to one global moral community within which we have global responsibilities and some shared universal values.
Dowers, 2002, p. 127
The gap between rich and poor nations continues to widen, and the pandemic of HIV/AIDS continues to grow around the world. We see in these issues a true crisis of leadership and a failure to make necessary choices. We need to shape a new generation of global citizens who will take the actions needed to make the choices necessary. Poverty is not persistent because of nothing, war doesn't emerge from nowhere - these are our choices and we simply haven't chosen well.
…the globalized world we live in demands that we have new competencies. To stay competitive U.S. citizens need to be proficient in foreign languages. Currently one in six U.S. jobs is tied to international trade. We can also see in the skills set gap in overall cultural and geographical awareness. Despite the interest in international education the numbers of students in study abroad is ridiculously low. The point is that there is a widening and distressing skill set gap that we need to close.
Campuses need to find more opportunities for new global citizens to make a difference back home as well as on the global stage. Global citizenship is not just about the number of stamps in your passports.
Carol Bellamy, President CEO of World Learning/ School of International Training
The central idea is that global citizens spend time each day thinking about their responsibility to maintain not only the health of their particular city, state and country- but also about the civic and moral duties they owe the planet and its people.
McGill, 2003
The question “are American higher education institutions engaged in their local, national, and global communities” is not sufficient. Clearly American higher education institutions are engaged as contributors to the regional economic base, economic incubators, and providing research and development services to private corporations and to a variety of government sponsored projects let alone to the types of engagement activities resulting in transforming neighborhoods. Some of the ways higher education is engaged impacts student learning and it certainly shapes the way our students come to understand and actualize a notion of global citizenship through the lifestyle they choose to live, their consumer choices as well as political preferences.
Mark Falbo, Dare American Higher Education Build a New Social Order? In the Service of Whom and the Promotion of What in the Education, John Carroll University, OH
We believe that the ability of our graduates to meet the demands embedded in our mission is dependent on their capacity to be “at home in the world.” By this, we mean a sense that wherever they find themselves they can be at home and make a home because they respect difference, can view the world from multiple perspectives, can adapt to new situations, and have the ability to put themselves at the margins. Embedded in being at home in the world is the ability to cross boundaries: real boundaries of language, nationality, geographic region; and personal boundaries of faith tradition, sexual orientation, mental health, and physical ability.
Blending Local and Global Experiences in Service of Civic Engagement Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran and Alison Geist, Director, Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service Learning, Kalamazoo College, MI
In this new environment, it is essential that students consider the notion of global citizenship. Individuals are increasingly being asked to rethink their conceptions ofidentity and belonging to adjust to the realities of a highly integrated global order and tounderstand the effort that will be required to address the challenges to that order. Thelimited capacity of the state to fulfill various responsibilities to its citizens has added tothe need for this rethinking. However, there is still no overarching consensus as to what
ought to constitute the components of this more expansive citizenship
Baubock, 2005
If Progressive Education is to be genuinely progressive, it must emancipate itself from the influence of this class, face squarely and courageously every social issue, come to grips with life in all of its stark reality, establish an organic relation with the community, develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare, fashion a compelling vision of human destiny, and become somewhat less frightened than it is today at the bogeys of imposition and indoctrination.
Counts 1932:259
…we as an intellectual community must analyze causes; use imagination and creativity together to discover the remedies to our problems; communicate to our constituencies a consciousness that inspires freedom of self-determination; educate professionals with a conscience, who will be immediate instruments of such a transformation; and constantly hone an educational institution that is both academically excellent and ethically oriented.
Ellacuría 1982:2
There is a general tendency for U.S. institutions of higher education to approach global citizenship with an exclusive focus on the development of U.S. students. We should strive to strengthen education for global citizenship in our individual schools, but do so in ways that contribute to, and are informed, by the civic initiatives of sister institutions in all parts of the world. A more fully international perspective on global citizenship can yield greater educational outcomes and community outcomes — at home and abroad — and also can guard against a developed countries bias with respect to the nature of the values and skills of global citizenship. Global citizenship should be about equipping students from all countries to be responsible and effective community leaders and policy advocates.
Elevating Global Citizenship By Building The International Civic Engagement Movement Of Higher Education Robert M. Hollister , Dean and Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Professor. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service ,Tufts University, MA
When we talk about global citizens, we’re talking about people who have that capacity to confront a local issue and be mindful of its impact and be mindful of other options that may be out there that could be better than ones that might simply be generated by the local group.
Schattle, 2008, p. 78
I associate the idea of global citizenship with habits of mind, heart, bofy and soul that have to do with working for and preserving a network of relationships and connections across difference and distinctness, while keeping and deepening a sense of one’s own identity and integrity.
Noddings, 2005, p.23