Global Citizen Curriculum

"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." (Socrates)

What is taught in schools makes a big difference. United Fruit was giving out free textbooks to grade schools in order to make children like bananas more (see Why The Banana Business Of Chiquita And Dole Is At Risk). This would effect them as adults as well. If an organization realizes the importance of giving children information about bananas and how that can eventually result in greater profits for them, this shows the importance of what is taught to children in school.

This section like everything else in this documentation is in development. It talks about the development and global deployment of a curriculum with the aim of educating children from a young age with the following goals:

• Be good responsible citizens
• Show dedication and commitment to excellence in whatever they do, whether it relates to matters in personal life, career, volunteering or any other avenues.
• Instill the overview effect in every human being and have it become a critical part of their personality/character/worldview, thereby developing a strong concern for protecting planet Earth and the desire to live cooperatively in a global society
• Focus on and improve various aspects of the individual's personality such as emotional health, conscientiousness, empathy, authenticity, openness, low dogmatism, self-esteem, curiosity, leadership abilities, personal responsibility, and other positive personality attributes
• Have a medium to high level of tolerance for ambiguity (Reddit comments on a related article)
• Play an important role in a cooperative global society that works towards the advancement of humankind.
• Be able to think rationally, logically and independently. Learn the principles of Epistemology. Think with depth and precision and develop an ability to objectively evaluate different ideas at the same time and be largely immune to confirmation bias. Use our brain's maximum potential.
• Learn about defective political systems, the harmful things that our existing leaders have done (for example), how to vote for the best candidate so they don't make mistakes that voters of today do, the types of political parties (hostile, divisive, having unskilled and corrupt candidates) and candidates to avoid; discourage blind party loyalty and instead be able to evaluate issues objectively
• Learn to be good and effective parents. This needs its own dedicated initiative because it would involve extensive training and education and it is so critical for children to have good parents. They are the future of humanity.
• See all diversity-related groups (national, geographic, gender, racial, faith-related and so on) as equals and treat them with equal respect and tolerance.
• Develop a passion for volunteering and live a lifestyle that benefits themselves and society
• Be great at problem-solving (for example analyzing all possible solutions and choosing the best). This means training and practice in effective problem-solving.
• Be good in decision-making. Consider all possible sources of information and analyze outcomes
• Reward people who follow the above principles.

All these items require further detail and study. The curriculum could span the entire lifetime of an individual. It would be taught to kids of a young age to people when they're 18 or so. If needed, revision training could be offered to a person of any age. The curriculum would be designed to discover, nurture and strengthen unique personal abilities and provide an environment for the individual so these abilities can be fully utilized in society.

This training can be improved in many ways and this will need feedback from others about what they think can be taught. Also its relatively easy to think of traits that we want others to have. Its challenging to create methods that can be used by others to develop and strengthen those traits over time.

This initiative would take the help of teachers, educators, psychologists and other subject-area experts to develop a curriculum that would become part of the existing education system. It would be continuously improved like any other project on Javul. It would be developed in multiple languages with all kinds of teaching methods targeted (courses, books, exercises, videos, powerpoints, face to face classes and so on). Needless to say the curriculum would be available for free. To encourage deployment, countries or education systems that deploy the GCC would receive benefits that can be decided later.

The GCC will try to create partnerships with other organizations with similar goals such as The Foundation for a Better Life.

The GCC doesn’t strive for perfection or the solution of every problem, only improvement over the current situation. This means we are not expecting anyone to become perfect in any way after this training. We’re hoping to see incremental improvement.

Misc

This is a small interesting test for how open-minded someone is. If we're present in a culture where saying a phrase is expected when the other person sneezes and we dont say that phrase, what impact does this have on the other person? If its an instant hostile or negative reaction (but of course its never shown externally), this is not desirable. We want to see no effect and a realization that its just a cultural thing and that the other person should not be judged negatively for not following the culture about something that is not important or necessary.

At the same time, if its part of culture to be polite in traffic and communicate intent to other drivers, this part of culture makes sense and its the duty of someone new to that culture to notice the differences and learn new habits which are necessary while operating in that culture or environment.

Tests like these can be part of teaching rational/logical thinking.

Polarized views

Many times people take sides on topics and often one side is wrong and has no science, research or data to support their points of view. Yet they defend their views passionately and intensely without applying common sense and available data. We need to study why people divide themselves into groups like this, why they feel compelled to defend themselves, what motivates them, what can be done to reduce this from happening and help people think more objectively and be willing to change their views based on new data. We should see how the GCC can be used to deal with this issue.

Links

The following links are examples where the younger generation is the target of various kinds of education:

• https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/ - "The Global Digital Citizen Foundation is a non profit organization creating exceptional resources for educators and dedicated to cultivating responsible, ethical, global citizens for a digital world—learners who strive together to solve problems that matter to create a bright future for all."
• Empowering adolescents: India launches Saathiya resource kit - "More than 1.5 lakh teenagers are being trained across India to address queries of its 26 crore adolescents on reproductive and sexual health, substance abuse and mental health among other issues concerning their age."
• New program uses comics to teach kids about junk science - "Oxman has teamed up with health scientists, educators, clinicians and communicators from 11 countries – including Australia, Uganda and Britain – to create educational materials designed to teach kids the critical thinking skills they need to make informed health decisions."
• Denmark to give children in migrant neighbourhoods compulsory lessons on democracy and equality (Reddit comments on this story)