How can schools and learning environments for children and youth go global today?
At first, we should develop knowledge and understanding among young people and education staff of the diversity of all cultures and languages, and the value of this diversity to help young people acquire basic life skills and competences for their personal development, for future employment and for active world citizenship, as stated in Comenius.
This means that we should promote greater awareness of others and their customs and cultures and there is no better place than school, a place reserved for learning and where we can find a great diversity. A few people think that ethnic minorities bring something to the host society, which tends to be as complete and stable. However, the true multiculturalism has to rely on the double track of the interrelationships and the interplay of influences. Diversity is creativity and cultural enrichment. This is the way to globalization, which is reached by multiculturalism, and the rest stay halfway in what we call multiculturalism. So the school should be seen as intercultural not multicultural because the word intercultural emphasizes the points of contact, hence in the necessary dialogue between cultures.
Cultural pluralism involves thinking again the host society itself and extends this concept to all levels of education and all schools, not just those with children of minority ethnics.
The changes that have occurred in our societies involve the need to modify cultural models that the school transmits.
The involvement of teachers is important and also to show respect for the values of each culture. I also believe that the most important is to educate the teacher to adapt to this new society multicultural, so as to educate students in school.
All of this, we have worked in class by a comparison between globalization and internationalization:
Globalization Internationalization
- Unification - International citizenship
- Interaction and integration - Co-existence
- Bring the world closer - Exchange
We also talked about how to become an open-minded, which is very necessary if we are to become a global society, but before you have to have some intercultural competences to become an open-minded. You have to try to understand the others. Listen and ask questions is the best way to have intercultural competences. How to become an open-minded:
- Positive actitude
- Tolerance
- Cooperate speaking one language
- Respect
I think the conclusion to al of this is the following sentence:
"We are all citizens of one world."
