Responsible curiosity: what it means to be a global citizen
“I see global citizenship as involving a sense of open-mindedness and adaptability”
Global citizenship has become quite a political and controversial concept. In 2016, the UK Prime Minister at the time, Theresa May, declared “today, too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street…. But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means”.
And then, in 2019, Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that “the future does not belong to the globalists. The future belongs to the patriots”.
I don’t agree with either of these statements, writes Martin Hall, head of school at ACS International School Hillingdon.