Global Citizens Do Community Service

People talk about global citizenship more and more these days, as it has become a core value for elite schools. Global citizenship refers to a spirit of deep understanding of social and economic disparity, cultural diversity of society,  and the pursuit for social justice (1). As the definition mentions “disparity” and “social justice”, I began to think about community service requirements for the students at a Taiwanese elite school that I investigated. This activity seems to aim to promote the elite students to achieve social and economic justice. So, it is worthy to dig into the topic: To what extent does community service shape students’ awareness of global citizenship in that school? 

The elite school in Taiwan provides a curriculum for students from kindergarten to secondary education. There are many interviews of students at the school talking about their experiences and feelings of elite schooling. For community services, Most of the students talked about their experiences of doing local ones, and they gave sufficient comments on the services. An alumni, Ryan, commented that “the cool thing is we actually have this connection with this aboriginal village… we really try our best to um to be involved with to be involved within our own community at least.” According to the description, the aboriginal village has a significant social disparity compared to the students’ social status. So the connection between the two social groups helps Ryan to “engage” in the contribution of English education, which aims to broaden the horizons of the aboriginal village. Another student, Grace, stated that “(community service) makes me appreciate what I have a lot more. And it helps me see the different social classes.” Also, she pointed out that “without it, we would take everything for granted because we’re really lucky kids and our families provide us with everything.” Community service did help Grace to develop a clear recognition of social and economic inequity and this can contribute to the education of global citizenship. The only issue here is, all of the community services mentioned were done in Taiwan for local communities. It kind of fits in  the requirements for “global” citizenship, but lacks “global” engagement. Is it possible for students from this school to incorporate this factor from doing community service abroad?

It is actually doable. Let’s take a look at an interview between Maggie and Ainsley.  Ainsley went to Cambodia for a volunteering program, but it was not offered by this elite school. When talking about her feelings about this experience, she felt that “it gives you a chance to um help other people in need but also gives the students a chance to experience the actual real world…there can be a lot of surprises and things.” Even though she went to a different country, the takeaways from this experience were similar to the previous interviewees as she learned to “help other people in need” and “experience the actual real world”. Referring to the definition of global citizenship, though the previous students didn’t do community services in other countries, their gains reach the expectations in this definition of global citizenship to some degree, since “cultural diversity” can also be achieved in different local communities as the students found significant differences between their culture and the local culture they tried to engage in. 

Unfortunately, not all of the students have significant positive feedback on community service. When Simon was asked about his ideas on community service, he replied that “I think it’s important if you really care about others and you’re really willing to volunteer but I don’t think it’s good if you don’t want to be doing it.” He believes that community service’s influence depends on people’s attitude. The influence won’t be good if the participants have no interest in it, which will not have a positive effect on the building of global citizenship’s mindedness. Another student, Eno directly said that “Community service… Um I do, but now I don’t. Because I was trying to get the service hours for graduation, but now I finished those so I no longer do it.” His sole purpose of doing community service was just for graduation requirements and he stopped doing it after finishing the curriculum expectation. It is hard to tell whether he had a positive comment on the activity, but he did it anyway just for graduation. Well, it doesn’t seem that he was very into it. So, when community service becomes a forced requirement for all the students at the school, people will judge the activity differently. Some people don’t have an obvious positive feeling about it. They just think it’s a normal course requirement that can either be favored or disliked by different people. So, yeah, its further influence on global citizenship can be limited.

Well, generally, the community service practiced at this Taiwanese elite school helped students shape their awareness of global citizenship via the cultivation of embracing cultural diversity and understanding of social and economic injustice. This achievement can be gained through both domestic and international service programs. It seems that, according to different interviews, some students didn’t show a strong interest in community service and it didn’t eventually influence their cultivation of global citizenship, to some degree I mean. It requires deeper interviews to see if these students’ detailed opinions on the activity can help them grow global mindedness or not.