Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

2. Towards Education for Global Citizenship
To imbue the minds of the whole people with an abnormal vanity of its
own superiority, to teach it to take pride in its moral callousness and illbegotten
wealth, to perpetuate the humiliation of defeated nations by
exhibiting trophies won from war, and using these in schools in order
to breed in children’s minds contempt for others, is imitating the West
where she has a festering sore, whose swelling is a swelling of disease
eating into its vitality.
Rabindranath Tagore (1917/2010, p. 23)
Global citizenship education essentially involves fostering a consciousness of
identity as multi-layered and multi-dimensional, rather than as a homogenous
quality with a singular focus: the nation. In this respect, the present study shows
how far most Asian systems of schooling are from transcending nationallybounded
visions of collective identity. It is important to stress once again that
It is important to stress
that emphasising the
importance of going
beyond national
identity does not
mean denying the
importance of nationstates
as institutions,
nor of the sense of
belonging and mutual
regard that they
promote and embody
emphasising the importance of going beyond
national identity does not mean denying the
importance of nation-states as institutions, nor
of the sense of belonging and mutual regard
that they promote and embody. But to the extent
that mutual regard stops at national boundaries
(or those of faith-based or ethno-linguistic
groupings), threats to peace will remain acute,
and building transnational consensus around
strategies to tackle our shared environmental
crisis will remain an uphill struggle.
Reforming approaches to political socialisation to
encourage identification with those of different
national, religious or ethnic backgrounds is a
complex task, and a real transformation of mass consciousness is likely to take
more than one generation. Both that complexity and the pedagogical factors
rehearsed above mean that efforts to foster greater transnationalism and
tolerance of diversity should begin close to home. ‘Global citizenship’ can seem
a vague and airy concept; but regionally-rooted identities, based on bonds of
culture, faith and language are latent in Asia’s shared history. Societies across
the continent bear the imprint not just of centuries of invasion, conquest and
colonisation, but also of commercial and cultural interaction spanning many
generations, with profound and lasting consequences. To outside observers, it
can seem puzzling, not to say tragic, that Pakistanis and Indians, or Japanese and
Chinese, share many elements of a common literary legacy, enjoy much the same
popular culture, and share a host of tastes, beliefs and traditions — yet largely
choose to regard each other as enemy aliens. In these cases, the resources for
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Conclusions and Ways Forward