Chapter 4: Global Education in Poland

The idea of global education is rooted in the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the leaders of 189 states in the Millennium Declaration, at the United Nations organization (UNO) summit in the year 2000. Among the objectives contained in it are the establishment of the nations’ partnership for global development, world poverty reduction, natural environment conservation, improvement of education in the developing countries, as well as ensuring an equal status for men and women in a global perspective. One way of implementing those objectives is by shaping social consciousness through means of education.

At the beginning of the year 2008, the Polish Ministry of National Education initiated a curriculum reform on the general education in all schools in Poland. The changes envisaged in the reform came to life in the school year of 2009–2010, and they started with the first grades of gymnasiums and post-gymnasium schools. One of the more important changes (resulting from the recommendation of the European Commission) was the introduction of global education (other names used in Poland: developmental education, education for the balanced development, and education for global citizenship) into the school curricula. In 2010, an international team of experts representing academia and school teachers, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, offered a definition of the term. This will be enforced in Poland along with the extension of civil education and educational activities that aim at the development of the ability to understand phenomena that connect and link people and places on a global scale. The idea of interdependence has been referred to as the mutual linkage and permeation of the social, cultural, political, economic, technological, and environmental systems. The objective of those actions aimed to help students understand the global processes and codependencies, as well as our participation in them. They also aimed at the development of the students’ global consciousness, which is particularly characterized by openness, respect, the sense of solidarity, commitment, and responsibility for the world and its inhabitants as well as shaping competencies allowing for effective functioning in the global world. Such universal human values as peace, freedom, equality, human dignity, justice, and solidarity provide a foundation for the global education project.