Youngjoo Lee
SEO24
South Korea
Challenge
The United Nations (UN) has placed a strong emphasis on global citizenship education (GCE) by designating it as the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). By 2030, the goal aims to ensure that all learners acquire the necessary knowledge and skills through education for sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, and global citizenship. GCE is more critical than ever in empowering learners to contribute to a more inclusive and peaceful world. The year 2023 is filled with global issues such as the Hamas-Israel war, increasing global warming, and growing intercultural conflicts. These problems aren't happening far away they are our problems, the problems of our students. So, to help our future students develop the skills they need to solve these problems, Almost every school offers about 5 hours of global citizenship education each year, including peace education, sustainable development education, multicultural education and so on. Unfortunately, students are mostly focused on school work and academic performance, and lack interest and engagement in these world issues. Especially in our school, many students have two working parents, so they spend most of their after-school time in private educational institute such as math and English before their parents get home from work. Parents are also often only concerned about their children's grades and entrance exams. Schools are also required to teach a certain number of hours of curriculum, which makes it difficult to provide additional in-depth lessons about the world issues. But the world's problems are our problems, and they are our students' problems. If things keep going this way, our students won't be ready to deal with these challenges when they grow up.