The importance of impactful experiences -general

[Boyd Roberts]

The IGC Award encourages participants to look at their own lifestyles and to enquire and research some of the background stories to the products and services they use in their everyday lives. It invites them to reflect on their everyday lives from this more informed position, and to consider any appropriate action they may wish to take, including changes in their lifestyle.

To be better global citizens requires us to care. Unless we care about something we may not be prompted to find out more, or, certainly, to take any action.

Caring does not necessarily emerge from careful critical research – although it may do so.  Something needs to strike us – to have impact upon how we think, how we view the world – to change our attitude in some way. Then – perhaps only then – will we be prompted to act voluntarily.

Recently I was discussing with friends who are involved in local nature conservation work what had started off this interest. In a number of cases, it was attributable to a key experience – being shown a particular wild flower by a parent, or in my case being taken by my parents to a place where I saw wild deer. This led me to think about the importance of impactful experiences on the development of global citizens. Should we try to arrange or ensure, that students are exposed to situations that may have impact – a breakthrough moment - that may alter their attitudes, or in some way alter the way they see the world?

When we work with students who are developing as global citizens our approach is not the same as our work in teaching skills or knowledge in regular subjects.  We are giving more attention to their attitudes and how we can encourage these to develop – although not trying to determine the outcome and steering very clear of indoctrination. We can expose Award participants to situations, places or activities that may have impact, and perhaps this is our responsibility as mentors or teachers.  The “experience” is personal and is what results when they process what they have seen and heard. 

Many of us will be familiar with school trips to places of interest. When such trips are part of regular classwork the emphasis may be on the knowledge and information students will acquire, as well as stimulating interest. But if we are considering arranging activities intended to have impact on our young global citizens, and their attitudes and how they view the world, we can perhaps  abandon or reduce the use of clipboards and questionnaires, and encourage more open-ended reflection – maybe by structuring peer to peer conversations. It is not what they know at the end, but how thy think that we are seeking to change.

So what sort of activities might we arrange to have impact on our young global citizens?

Here are just a few thoughts.

 

Providing opportunities for students to see food produced on a farm, food processing in a factory, a water treatment plant, a landfill site, a recycling centre could be influential experiences relating to personal lifestyle, eliciting responses in lifestyle towards a better world (Personal global footprint in Award terms).

 

Watching an animal behave naturally in a natural habitat, or seeing that swirling movement of thousands of starlings in the evening as they congregate before they roost, or visiting an unspoilt wilderness area are experiences that are likely to promote a valuing of the natural world, and may lead to wishing to take measures to ensure its protection.

 

Visiting a war cemetery, or speaking with a refugee or war victim can also have considerable impact.

Simply speaking with a person from a different background can contribute to better “Understanding other cultures and outlooks” – one of the components of the Award.  (Perhaps I can remind people here that we have a simple Award format for a structured interview with a person from a different background  - http://igcaward.ning.com/forum/topics/face-to-face-structured.

 

 

Impactful experiences continue throughout our lives. Among the recent experiences that have changed how I see things are visiting a slave fort in Ghana while on a visit there as a school head, seeing the striped “pyjamas” of Jewish inmates from a concentration camp in a museum, and visiting the Martin Luther King Jr Center in Atlanta, USA, and being lucky enough to see the migration of zebras and wildebeest in Kenya. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have such travel opportunities. But equally impactful was visiting a recycling centre near my home in the UK, and seeing what people throw away and how people sorted domestic rubbish. My own behavior as a “consumer” changed as a result.