Consultative Meeting on ‘Reinventing Higher Education for Sustainable Development Goals for the Future’

Dr. Rajesh Tandon spoke on Global Citizenship Education in India in the context of community engagement. Society has unwritten rules of rights and resp within the community, and this horizontal view of citizenship is lost which is the building block of citizenship.

Disenfranchisement is happening within society by society today. As global citizens of the world, we have a right to assert our horizontal citizenship without a supranational authoritative view of citizenship. By nurturing diversity across disciplines, where knowledge across university walls is respected and valued, one can learn global citizenship. Another important component is showing solidarity and sharing a sense of humanity with distant others who you may not know but from whom you can learn.

Tristan McCowan stated that contact across diversity is a key source of learning and Universities hold a special place for creating this epistemic space. There are many opportunities for being part of political action at universities, they are sites of epistemic awareness and create global citizens.

R Sudarshan stated that we need an internalising of certain values and that's what education is about. Education is about what kind of person you become after systematic studying and reflection. Global citizenship being pushed into curriculum etc may be counter-productive. We need to move away from understanding citizenship in terms of the state, we must look at it by seeing students as part of a larger world, to cultivate the value of fraternity, that's got to be a general mission of education.