For a geek like me, International Museum Month is a good reason to celebrate. I’ve been a bit of an addict since childhood, and a particular interest of mine has been those that deal with cultural anthropology. I was one of those kids who spent a lot of time staring at wrinkled mummies and antique kimonos. I liked learning what things were called in different languages. I needed to see what people ate and wore in other places, how they played and how they learned. I was, and still am, fascinated by the many ways that thinking and living are interpreted around the globe.
This sort of curiosity about others is called Global Awareness. It’s been identified as a key aspect of 21st Century learning , and it isn’t hard to see why. Over half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan spoke of a “Global Village” and acknowledged that the development of new information technology would make it much easier to access other cultures. It goes without saying that there have never been more opportunities to be globally aware as there are today, and it’s pretty hard to imagine what life must have been like a thousand years ago, when most people had no idea that the rest of the world even existed.
Global Awareness involves asking questions like:
- How do people in other communities, countries, or other continents think, work, play and live differently?
- What concerns do most cultures have in common?
- What issues affect people across the globe? How do we collaborate to address these issues?
- What can different cultures learn from one another?
- What responsibilities do we have to others within our community, and beyond it?
It really isn’t hard to see why these questions are important, is it?
