A great and timely post. Our school has just added a component for ‘global citizenship’ to the newly mandated graduation portfolio that every BC student (starting next year) will have to complete and present in order to graduate.

The term is a great one, but as you suggest, implementation in a real classroom setting is a slippery fish. Case in point: the idea of incorporating ‘global citizenship’ as a portfolio aspect was brought up in a staff meeting to much approval, yet our staff room is regularly stocked with cheap, not fairly traded coffee. Second point: our school (a private school) has recently adopted a gym strip policy, which I believe will be put into practice this fall. This occured shortly after we had a speaker in our chapel speak on very real exampels of how we can be ‘global citizens’ in terms of where we spend our money. Hey hit hard on sweatshop labour and unfair trade…
Our school’s gym strip (which will be bought to the tune of thousands of dollars initially, then continue to be bought with each new student entering the secondary school – ie every transitioning class…), yeah, probably sweatshop made clothing. The problem here is that we often espouse or voice approval of a topic like being a good ‘global citizen,’ but we aren’t modelling it as a staff, and as a school….I have attempted to lobby for sweat free gym strip, but the ‘deal’ was already in the works with the supplier, so I was told it was too bad. I continue to lobby for fairly traded coffee in our staffroom…and it is there sometimes.
My beef is seeing on the one hand high ideals (which are great…I think we need to try to work to better our world and the conditions of others…), but then daily practices that negate any kind of ‘charity’ or ‘globally minded education’ we do.
I am sounding self righteous here…I want you to know that this is a process for me…I still have lots of clothing in my wardrobe that was probably made by exploiting workers, but I am working on finding alternatives, and I have been drinking fairly traded coffee for years.

Sorry for the rant, Graham, but I wanted to agree with your idea that teaching global citizenship in practical ways is very elusive in an already curriculum and standard choked environment. I see tremendous opportunities in language arts and social studies (in certain grades, perhaps…) for providing students with ways to learn more about the world and issues within it, but I also see an institutional divide (in my case, and sadly, this probably translates into other school settings as well…) between our teaching and our own policies and practices…

A tough one.

Thank you for your remarks on this issue…