ABSTRACT
Global Citizenship Education is a program and a movement promoted by UNESCO and based on commitments to the universal values of the United Nations including peace, human rights, care for heritage and the environment. It embraces the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and intercultural communication. This agenda appeals to many language teachers whose experience of learning to engage with new cultures and communities encourages them to find common standards and reference points. Language teachers may express aims of opening minds and offering windows to new ways of thinking. However, they may be constrained and challenged by conservative policies such as the neoliberal testing and accountability regimes that favour learning grammar rather than culture and focusing on exam success rather than broadening horizons. A further limitation is inherent in the constitution of UNESCO as an association of nation-states. This encourages a diplomatic view of the world where nationality is salient and perhaps essentialized. This perspective is relayed through many language textbooks and courses. Education for cosmopolitan citizenship recognizes diversity at all levels, local, national and global. It focuses on person-to-person and group-to-group relationships rather than mediating communication through a national or diplomatic lens. This change in perspective is a major challenge to language education as currently practised.
