Education for Global Citizenship A Guide for Schools

Why is Education for Global Citizenship essential in the 21st century?

In a fast-changing and interdependent world, education can, and should, help young people to meet the challenges they will confront now and in the future. Oxfam believes that Education for Global Citizenship is essential in helping young people rise to those challenges for the following reasons:

● The lives of children and young people are increasingly shaped by what happens in other parts of the world. Education for Global Citizenship gives them the knowledge, understanding, skills and values that they need if they are to participate fully in ensuring their own, and others’, well-being and to make a positive contribution, both locally and globally.
● Education for Global Citizenship is good education because it involves children and young people fully in their own learning through the use of a wide range of active and participatory learning methods. These engage the learner while developing confidence, self-esteem and skills of critical thinking, communication, co-operation and conflict resolution. These are all vital ingredients in improving motivation, behaviour and achievement across the school.
● Current use of the world’s resources is inequitable and unsustainable. As the gap between rich and poor widens, poverty continues to deny millions of people around the world their basic rights. Education is a powerful tool for changing the world because tomorrow’s adults are the children and young people we are educating today. Education for Global Citizenship encourages children and young people to care about the planet and to develop
empathy with, and an active concern for, those with whom they share it.

INSIDE:

• What is Education for Global Citizenship?
• Classroom activities
• Case studies of good practice