Do You Even Know What Global Citizenship Is?

After waiting months to get the names of our students at the Chilean school, my group was finally assigned a senior boy who we would get the chance to interview. Thanks to the student and to Marco, my group’s interviewer, all three interviews were completed within a single weekend. My role in the group was transcriber, so I was able to spend a lot of time with Marco’s recordings. Our student was very opinionated about his school and the way that it shapes its students. For me, the most interesting aspect of his answers was how he talked about the school’s mission statement and the way in which it was executed through the school culture.

The opening statement of the Chilean school’s mission is “We want to form young people who will be useful to this country and are trustworthy”. This was striking because the theme of our research project is global citizenship and how students understand themselves in terms of their country and the world at large. In our class, we define “global citizenship” as the recognition that an individual is a member of a developing world community that they are responsible for participating in. Surely, if the mission statement declared that the Chilean school was teaching their students how to be global citizens, then that must be the truth.

Turns out, our student did not feel as though his school was following through with this mission. When asked “do you think that your school is fulfilling its mission statement?”, he responded, “No, I think the students are very individualistic. Like they don’t care about society, they just want to be successful people”. Moreover, when asked how his school defines global citizenship, he could not provide a definition. Because the school places so much emphasis on global citizenship on their website, I was confused as to why the student’s understanding differed so much.

 

 

I gave the discrepancy between the school’s mission statement and the student’s understanding a lot of thought. Two things came to mind. The first was that the Chilean school was putting a polished and well-sounding statement on their website as a way to gain attraction and maintain their status as a globally elite academic institution. This quickly reminded me of our class’s conversations about the knowledge economy and how the increasing importance of knowledge and technology is creating a more globally connected market. Of course an elite institution like the Chilean school wants to compete within the growing knowledge economy in a way that maintains their competitiveness. Therefore, their emphasis on global citizenship in their mission statement is not a surprise. Even if they fail to execute properly, their mission looks impressive to outsiders.

The second thought that came to mind was the reliability of our student. Throughout the interview, he mentioned multiple times that he did not get along well with his teachers and that he spent a lot of time playing rugby and socializing rather than on academics. Additionally, he mentioned that he disliked his school for a range of reasons. Naturally, I questioned whether the school was failing to execute their mission properly or if our student was refusing to acknowledge their efforts.

 

 

However, if it is true that the student is not acknowledging the school’s attempts to teach about global citizenship, then this is still very significant. To me, it suggests that there is a disconnect in the transmission of information. Ultimately, I believe that it is the school’s job to understand the ways in which their students learn best about these topics and to adjust their curriculum accordingly. The fact that our student is a senior in high school and can not articulate the definition of “global citizenship” is worth exploring further. I am looking forward to reviewing his interviews further and identifying where the school could possibly improve its execution of its mission statement.