{"id":7120,"date":"2017-12-04T07:06:49","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T07:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7120"},"modified":"2017-12-04T07:06:49","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T07:06:49","slug":"a-global-educators-responsibilities-and-their-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/12\/04\/a-global-educators-responsibilities-and-their-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"A global educator's responsibilities and their limits"},"content":{"rendered":"

The St. George's House<\/a> consultation on the SDGs is over. \u00a0It was stimulating.<\/p>\n

It seems clear to me that young people can be helped to think about global issues at at early age, and then to be helped to build on that thinking (and learning). \u00a0 This raises issues of progression (and coherence), at least from a teacher\u2019s perspective. \u00a0 I remember (this is years ago) complaints from HMI that they went into schools and saw children learning about X (this was probably environmental issues) but there was no coherence to it, with 14 year olds learning in one school what 10 year olds were learning in another, and 8 year olds in another, and many students being asked to study the same things twice. \u00a0HMI said this left students bewildered.<\/p>\n

Commendably, Oxfam (and maybe others) have addressed the progression issue in relation to global citizenship education \u2013 See page 16 of the resource you can download here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But attempts at rational progression and coherence raise issues of instrumentalism and the possibility that learner autonomy might be jeopardised. \u00a0After all, \u00a0some learners might want to study what they<\/em>\u00a0find interesting (off-piste,<\/em>\u00a0as it were). \u00a0And any student might learn something that a school rather wished they hadn't (say to be very critical of the UK's 0.7% aid spend). \u00a0Each of these fit ill with many forms of progression that you might have come across.<\/p>\n

In relation to all this, an awkward question presents itself.<\/p>\n

If, at the end of a learning programme about the Goals, a student comes up to you and says this:<\/p>\n

\u2013 That was fantastic.\u00a0 Such a great programme; so many insights.\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned so much.\u00a0 Thanks, in particular, for the really stimulating way that you approached it.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine it could have done better.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Having thought about it a lot I\u2019m convinced that we should take the goals very seriously.<\/p>\n

\u2013 However, I think that the 0.7% aid budget should be devoted to helping the very many people across the UK who live shockingly deprived lives (as evidenced, for example, by the latest UK social mobility report). \u00a0After all, as Kate Osamor, the Labour shadow secretary of state for international development said<\/a> the other day: \"The Sustainable Development Goals begin at home<\/em>.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As an educator, what do you think? \u00a0Do you think you\u2019ve done a good job \u2013 here\u2019s someone who\u2019s thinking for themselves after all \u2013 not to mention all that praise for you. \u00a0Or do you think you\u2019ve failed utterly because they\u2019re not thinking the right sort of thing?<\/p>\n

If you're an educator, there is only one possible answer here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The St. George's House consultation on the SDGs is over. \u00a0It was stimulating. It seems clear to me that young people can be helped to think about global issues at at early age, and then to be helped to build...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}