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Educating Children To Become World Citizens

Educating Children to Become World CitizensThere has been generally positive growth in the awareness of global issues for a long time now. Global poverty is one such issue. Cases of successful poverty reduction can be used as inspiration for encouraging global engagement from a young age. Educating children to become world citizens may very well inspire them to become future leaders for positive changes worldwide.

However, the subject of poverty can be a difficult concept for students to grasp. It is especially challenging for those who have no exposure to a world beyond their own. Teachers who feel passionate about exposing children to global poverty must consider the age of their students. Depending on the class’s age, teachers can determine the best methods and approaches for introducing such an important topic.

Potential Curriculums

  • Ages 6-10: For children at such a young age, the concept must be sensitively introduced. One such way to do this is by framing poverty through a story. A storybook allows children to make comparisons between someone their own age living in poverty and their own lives. Afterward, the lesson encourages them to ask questions and relate their own experiences to what they are learning about.
  • Ages 11-13: Children at this age are already more aware of the small differences between themselves and others. This awareness makes 11-13 the perfect age range to introduce children to cultures apart from their own. For the lesson, instructors may assign children a specific country that is facing extreme poverty and ask them to research schools in that country. Students may then compare the resources, teacher’s education and accessibility of the school they are researching to their own school. Documenting these differences in a notebook allows the children to then use the notebook as a reflection of what they have learned.
  • Ages 14-18: As young adults explore their lives and their futures, they are excited to explore different and new concepts. They are also developing their own opinions about their passions and beliefs. Exposing them to different artistic observations of poverty through documentaries and photography helps young adults see impoverished countries as unique and vibrant rather than poor and helpless. Additionally, young adults become more aware of their own finances at this age. Students making their own money for the first time are able to sympathize with lessons on the economy of poor countries, such as microfinancing and budgeting less than $1 a day.

Organizations Educating Children to Become Global Citizens

Exposure is critical when educating children to become world citizens. Introducing pertinent organizations and speakers who have been affected by global poverty or work closely in fighting it makes lessons come to life.

  • Edutopia, founded by George Lucas, this foundation is on a mission to transform education. One of its goals is to provide children with the knowledge that will help them in the real world when they grow up. The website provides teaching strategies including how to diversify what students are taught. The 5 Minute Film Festival is a resource through Edutopia that gives teachers access to various documentaries. The festival also includes the Change Series, published by the creators of the documentary Living on One Dollar. This includes episodes on the challenges developing countries face. Some such challenges include access to clean water, resources for natural disasters, and the prevalence of malnutrition.
  • CARE is an organization that works to make a difference in countries facing extreme poverty. They recognize education as a primary resource in poverty eradication and provide a toolkit for teachers addressing some of the major challenges in making poverty a thing of the past. CARE uses the United Nation’s Millenium Development Goals as guidelines for lessons and activities such as women empowerment, disabilities and diseases. 
  • TV Programs: Journalist David Brancaccio hosts PBS NOW, a program that addresses domestic issues but also goes beyond by looking at the world as a whole. The show addresses foreign affairs, the environment and health. Teachers can use the show’s various topics, such as child brides and climate change, to assist in educating children to become world citizens.

Hope for the Future

Children’s rising interest in international issues from an early age allows them to see the world from a different perspective. There has already been a lot of success in reducing global poverty. Yet, understanding challenges across the globe is often overlooked – even by people in wealthier countries that are given the luxury of education. By exposing children and allowing them to explore the world, teachers are educating children to become world citizens.

– Zoe Schlagel
Photo: Flickr

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The Fight Against Learning Poverty

The Fight Against Learning PovertyLearning poverty is defined as not being able to read or understand a simple text by the age of 10. It is common in developing countries. As of 2017, 262 million children from ages six to 17 were not in school. More than 50 percent of children are not meeting the minimum standards in reading and math. In addition, their teachers and the teaching quality have not improved over time. Especially elementary school teachers, who are arguably the most important. As a result of this plateau, around 750 million adults were illiterate as of 2016. The vast majority of them are women. The largest populations of illiterate people are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Many schools in developing countries cannot provide efficient learning environments because they do not have access to computers, electricity, drinking water or basic facilities and infrastructure.

The UN Sustainable Development Goal 4

The United Nations created Sustainable Development Goal 4 to fully address the issue and solve the problem of learning poverty around the world. It consists of five pillars.

  1. Make sure students are prepared and motivated to learn: The first pillar focuses on motivating students to learn when they attend school. The parts that contribute to making this successful are Early Childhood Education (ECE), nutrition and stimulation. There has been much evidence to show that intervening during a child’s earliest years is the best time to build a strong foundation for the future, especially for children who are less fortunate than their peers.
  2. Effective teachers at every level: The second pillar focuses on increasing the number of quality teachers available. Incentives must be made more to entice more people to the field of teaching. Thus, improving its compensation policies and making it easier to transfer into will help with this issue. Selecting and hiring based on talent, effort and achievements will ensure that these are high-quality teachers. Once in a teaching position, teachers should continue to improve. Additionally, teachers should be educated on how to use tech resources.
  3. Equipped classrooms: The third pillar emphasizes on providing classrooms with a simple but efficient curriculum. This includes increasing access to books and technology and coaching. In addition, teachers are urged to “teach to the right level.” This means they should start with a one-size-fits-all approach and adapt to students’ needs as necessary. It enables children of all different learning levels and styles to learn at the same time. Teachers should also provide feedback to the students so they can further improve their personal education.
  4. Safe and inclusive: The fourth pillar focuses on maintaining a safe and inclusive environment for all students. Many countries are falling into crises, violence and fragility. Schools do not need to be added to the list of places where a child does not feel safe. An unsafe environment makes a child want to stay home. When they do attend, they are more unwilling to learn. Also, unsafe environments from violence or discrimination do not foster learning. As for inclusivity, teachers and staff should not stereotype a student based on their gender, race or disability. Schools must be inclusive to those who have trouble keeping up with their peers.
  5. Well-managed education systems: The fifth pillar is focused on good management in education systems. Principals should show how to further their careers and how to become better leaders for their schools. Moreover, there should be clear authority and accountability in schools.

The World Bank’s Literacy Policy

The World Bank has introduced a Literary Policy package outlining interventions to boost literacy. So far, a few countries have already started following it, including Egypt and Brazil. Egypt has begun the Egypt Education Reform Project. The project focuses on four core values:

  1. Expanding access to quality kindergarten
  2. Improving education delivery through digital learning content
  3. Developing educational professionals
  4. Developing computer-based assessment systems

There are many expectations for this program in the future. For example, the project predicts that it will be able to serve around 500,000 more kindergarten students including those from poorer districts. There will be a 50 percent improvement in early education. Additionally, there will be two million new quality teachers and two million students in secondary school.

Furthermore, the past 10 years have been good for Brazil as a result of its increased efforts in elementary school education. Their rate of learning poverty has been rapidly declining but is currently at 48 percent. Consequently, Brazil plans to increase quality and labor productivity. This necessitates increasing its quality of education. As a result, they are working on improving early education, teacher training and providing more financing.

Overcoming learning poverty is an essential step in the Sustainable Development Goals. It will not only improve the lives of the children learning but it will also decrease poverty rates and increase economic development. Hopefully, programs like the World Bank’s Literacy Policy and SDG 4 will motivate more countries to make education a priority.

– Nyssa Jordan

Photo: Flickr

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International Aid Organizations Improve Global Education

Global Education

To foster growth in developing countries, there has to be a focus on global education. Many children and adolescents are out of school worldwide, often due to poverty, conflict or financial deprivation. Approximately 24 million children globally will never see the inside of a classroom, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Five international aid organizations have stepped up to expand worldwide access to educational opportunities: The World Bank, Global Partnership for Education, United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, Global Education First Initiative and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The World Bank currently plays a significant role in providing educational access across the globe. Since its creation in 1944, the organization has invested $69 billion globally in more than 1,500 educational projects.

Recently, the World Bank laid out the “Learning for All” plan, an education strategy focused on ensuring that all children and youth receive learning opportunities by 2020. The organization plans to double its investment in global public education by 2020, spending approximately $5 billion to improve education in developing nations

“The truth is that most educational systems are not serving the poorest children well,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in an interview with Reuters. “With nearly a billion people remaining trapped in extreme poverty today, sustained efforts to improve learning for children will unlock huge amounts of human potential for years to come.”

The Global Partnership for Education works to develop effective and sustainable education systems across the globe by collaborating with national governments and development partners.

“The Global Partnership for Education supports developing countries to ensure that every child receives a quality basic education, prioritizing the poorest, most vulnerable and those living in fragile and conflict-affected countries,” the organization’s website states.

If all students in developing countries received basic reading skills, 171 million people worldwide could be lifted out of poverty, according to the organization.

Created in 2012 by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the Global Education First Initiative aims to strengthen global education through political advocacy.

The initiative works to reach three priority goals: ensuring that every child is in school, improving the quality of learning worldwide and fostering global citizenship through education.

“Without universal education, in other words, winning the war against illiteracy and ignorance, we cannot also win the war against disease, squalor, and unemployment. Without universal and high standard education we can only go so far but not far enough in breaking the cycle of poverty,” U.N. Special Envoy for Education Gordon Brown said in a statement on the organization’s website.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was established in 1945 to foster peace, poverty eradication, lasting development and intercultural dialogue across the globe. Education is one of the primary ways the organization aims to reach its goals.

“As a human right in itself, education is also fundamental to realizing other rights, and an enabler for reaching all the Millennium Development Goals. It plays an essential role in reducing mortality and morbidity rates; eradicating poverty and hunger; strengthening resilience to natural hazards and ending abuse, violence and armed conflict,” Olav Seim, Director of the Education for All Global Partnerships Team said in a UNESCO press release.

With headquarters in Paris and 52 other field offices, including regional bureaus in Bangkok, Beirut, Dakar and Santiago, the organization works worldwide to foster educational opportunities.

The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is a U.N. program that aims to provide long-term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children in developing countries.

Founded in 1946, the organization aims to ensure that children have access to quality education opportunities regardless of their gender, ethnicity or life circumstances.

UNICEF works to get children back to school after emergency situations or disasters and provides educational initiatives to give children in remote areas, as well as children with disabilities or those facing social exclusion, access to education.

The organization recently launched the “Let Us Learn” campaign, with the aim of bringing educational opportunities to the world’s most vulnerable children, focusing on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Liberia, Madagascar and Nepal.

– Lauren Lewis

Sources: Global Partnership for Education 1, Global Partnership for Education 2, Global Partnership for Education 3, Reuters, U.N. Global Education First Initiative, UNESCO 1, UNICEF 1, UNICEF 2, UNICEF 3, UNESCO 2, UNESCO 3, UNESCO 4, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, World Bank 1, World Bank 2, World Bank 3
Photo: Flickr