Citizenship is the most interesting topic in education. More than other topics it is influenced by local circumstances and by ideologies. Nations can differ about what they think is a âgoodâ citizen. Within nations people can also differ in their views on âgoodâ citizenship. Citizenship education is therefore not only the most interesting and important subject in education but also the most contested subject. The concept of citizenship has been what I call âbroadenedâ (Veugelers, 2021). The concept has been extended from the national, to the regional and to the global level. The concept has also been âdeepenedâ, from the political level to the social and cultural level. It is about the kind of person a society wants. The concept of citizenship is nowadays about the kind of political system, society, community and persons a nation aspires to. Within a nation people can have different ideas about what they think their nation needs; it is about the moral values that are important, the norms that are established, and the institutions that support and control these values and norms. This all makes citizenship and citizenship education so relevant and interesting to study. Comparative studies are needed to show similarities and differences between nations. Complex and dialogical studies are needed to show diversity within nations. Critical studies are needed to analyse international and local influences on the kind of citizenship and citizenship education lived and practiced. Researching citizenship education is a combination of many academic disciplines, in particular political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, pedagogy and educational studies.
The book Global Citizenship Education in the Global South: Educatorsâ Perceptions and Practices shows this complexity, is comparative, and uses many different academic traditions. Central in the book is the notion of global. It transcends citizenship above the nation state. Globalisation is the process of linking different parts of the world, it is seeing the world as a connected identity. However, globalisation is not a neutral process of connecting. The global processes embed and articulate different ideological orientations. In his book How Ideologies Are Shaping Educational Discourses, Spring (2004) analysed important ideologies that link global ideas and practices with national and local developments. Spring distinguishes four important global ideologies: (1) nationalist education; (2) schooling workers for a global free market; (3) globalising morality with human rights education; (4) love the biosphere in environmental ideologies. The first two are really top-down movements; the third and four are more horizontal movements. After reading the book âGlobal Citizenship Education in the Global Southâ I want to add two bottom-up movements: (5) social justice
Each nation and even each educational practice has its own configuration of ideologies; its own story of education. In particular with a topic such as citizenship education local, cultural, social and political ideas are expressed and they make their own interpretation of global developments. All these global ideologies are influencing or at least trying to influence local developments. In narratives on citizenship and citizenship education âWesternâ ideas are dominant. This dominance can be found in science, in particular in social sciences; and education studies is a good example of it. âWesternâ ideas, and in particular American ideas, are dominating the academic field. But there is also a growing diversity within Western society and in global discourses. Distinctive voices are articulated and enter the field of academic discourses. It is important to listen to other voices. Voices from the Global South who face other challenges, who use other local knowledge, who have their own communities and their own educational practices. These voices need to be part of dialogues on the global level. Our book series âMoral Development and Citizenship Educationâ has always emphasised the linking of the moral and the political. The first book was âGetting Involved: Global Citizenship Development and Sources of Moral Valuesâ (Oser & Veugelers, 2008). The book clearly demonstrated how morals are embedded in social and political relationships. Some volumes in our series are more focused on the moral, others more on the political. But all books analysed moral values in their social context. Some volumes already included voices from the Global South. And there was a volume on civics in Latin America (Garcia-Cabrero et al., 2017).
We very much welcome this new book from the Global South. Emiliano Bosio and Yusef Waghid brought together an interesting group of scholars from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The book clearly shows the connectedness of moral values and citizenship. It focuses on caring ethics and humanity empowerment. The book editors argue for a critical and de-colonial paradigm informed by the values and knowledge of critical pedagogy ingrained in social justice. In different chapters the authors address issues they are confronted with in their teaching practice, in particular in universities. Many speak about conflictual issues, power relations, the impact of globalisation and neoliberalism on local circumstances, they link citizenship with the ecosystem and they present local cultural struggles. They try to work towards equality and democracy amid diversity, global peace and planetary well-being. In their concluding chapter Emiliano Bosio and Yusef Waghid argue for a democratic pluralistic global citizenship education (GCE). GCE in their view is about recognising the
And with Emiliano Bosio and Yusef Waghid I like âEmbracing Educatorsâ Voices from the Global Southâ. Many chapters use the work of Paulo Freire. To paraphrase Paulo Freire (1972), I would say âwe should make the moral more political and the political more moralâ. This book clearly works in this direction and shows many interesting voices, and contributes to a more pluralistic view on moral values and global democratic citizenship education.
References
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin.
Garcia-Cabrero, B., Sandoval-Hernandez, A., Trevino-Villarreal, E., Diazgranadis Ferrans, S., & Perez Martinez, M. (Eds.). (2017). Civics and citizenship: Theoretical models and experiences in Latin America. Sense Publishers.
Oser, F., & Veugelers, W. (Eds.). (2008). Getting involved: Global citizenship developments and sources of moral values. Sense Publishers.
Spring, J. (2004). How educational ideologies are shaping global society. LEA.
Veugelers, W. (2021). How globalization influences perspectives on citizenship education: from the social and political to the cultural and the moral. Compare, 51(8), 1174â1189.
Wiel Veugelers
Series Editor