Students as Global Citizens: Educating a New Generation

Monteiro, Sarah

Montiel-Overall, P. (2012). STUDENTS AS GLOBAL CITIZENS: EDUCATING A NEW GENERATION. Library Media Connection, 31(3), 8-10.

Summary:

Patricia Montiel-Overall’s article is essentially making a call to teachers and librarians to help develop global citizens. She begins by discussing the global issues that our students need to be aware of. She feels that students should understand and be conscious of globalization, how the health of our ecology is not separated by borders but intertwined across the plant, how technology has connected us and can even be distributed unfairly, and how policies are not reflecting current global situations.

She goes on to explain how the Common Core State Standards are “opening doors” to developing global citizens. The Standards call for international benchmarks that will teach students how to be aware of the world around them and teach them to find solutions to global problems. Librarians and teachers are in a unique position where they are the ones who will be providing our children with these lessons. The standards are in place, but now it is up to the teachers’ and librarians’ willingness to accept these standards to help create a “new generation of global citizens.”

Review:

I completely agree with most of what Patricia Montiel-Overall had to say. Teachers and librarians are on the frontline of changing our way of thinking as humans. We are the ones who will be influencing our future generations about the global world, our impact on it, and how to make it better for everyone. The CCSS benchmarks do clearly state that we are trying to create better people, but I really do not believe that the actual standards and ridiculous requirements that are being put on teachers and librarians are helping us do so. The insane education “reform” we call CCSS and the testing that goes along with it is, in my opinion, doing the exact opposite of what its benchmarks claim to be doing. What teachers and librarians are going through with the new standards and teaching to the test in public schools is as far away from educating global citizens as possible. We are creating test taking machines, robots who only know what it takes to write the formulaic essay that is demanded by the CCSS and its assessments. Monteil-Overall says, “new educational standards are a starting point for forward-thinking and rigorous action” could not be further than the truth. If we were just relying on the standards but allowed teachers and librarians to put implement them they way they see fit, that statement could be true, but the CCSS standards are assessed using impractical, inaccurate, and unfair testing that completely negates the positive global citizenship we truly mean to teach our students. Sorry for the angry rant! Like I said in the beginning, I believe is everything she had to say about being global citizens. Seeing the CCSS part just upset me because I feel she was inaccurate with that.

CA-Common Core Assessments