Moving from moral to political: the three principles derived from John Rawls’s ideas of justice that have a potential to transform global ctizenship from re-active to pro-active and reflexive

Abstract

Global citizenship education (GCE) was developed with an objective to equip students with values, knowledge, skills, and action plans to address complexities and challenges associated with globalization. Service learning trips for students between global north and global south countries1 have become one important part of educating youth to become global citizens, to prepare them to live in harmony with people of diverse cultures and ethnicities by learning about them and the challenges they face. GCE that deals with service learning overseas, however, has been critiqued for prioritizing the needs, interests, and perspectives of global northerners, as well as focusing on morality. We suggest here that this focus on morality can re-enforce global power imbalances, when global citizenship education fails to acknowledge and de-construct inequalities in North-South relationships. Thus we seek to identify or elaborate an alternative model to help students of diverse cultures find common ground and relate to one another in a just way. This paper reimagines a global citizen as an autonomous, political subject, thus shifting the focus from the moral to the political. We draw on ideas of justice propagated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice and Fairness as Justice: A Restatement. The three principles we consider for re-constructing global citizenship education are: elimination of self-interest from moral choices; respect for diversity of views, legitimate conflict of interests and right to decide; and acceptance of persons as autonomous individuals. The paper begins with a description of GCE for service learning that details some of its problematic aspects. After that, it discusses Rawls’s ideas and maps three principles that can help us re-consider GCE education. Each principle has implications for GCE discussed here, though each also poses new challenges to teachers and students. Thus the paper ends addressing the following questions: What kind of “citizen” is it that we want to become global and work to better the world? How is moral different from political and why is it important? How can this new model be built, if at all, and how can it affect students, their picture of the world, and actions for social justice?