The curriculum we live

I missed the first Zoom session of my new Global Citizenship Education (GCED) course, and I felt bad about it.

I had an unavoidable conflict that day. I had done the readings and followed the online discussions, but I knew I had missed something. So when I finally got the recording — and the chance to continue with the class — I found time at midnight to sit down and catch up. I thought I would simply take notes and complete what I had missed. Instead, I kept pausing the two-hour video. Some parts brought me back to my own years inside classrooms.

This is my second UNESCO-backed GCED online program, now on curriculum development with Dr. Virginia Floresca-Cawagas. Somewhere in our discussion, a familiar question returned: What are we really educating people for?

I have been teaching for almost three decades — mathematics, physics, research, journalism, counseling and other courses. I have also spent years in school administration. I know the usual language of education: competencies, outcomes, assessments, standards, employability.

All these matter. I want my students to graduate, find decent work, help their families and build good lives. I know what a diploma means to a Filipino family that has sacrificed for it. But I found myself asking: Is that enough?

The session spoke of education that also works toward nonviolence, justice, human rights, inclusion, intercultural understanding, sustainability and inner peace. That hit home. I have taught students who were very good with numbers. But being good with numbers does not automatically teach us to care about the people behind them.

COVID taught us that painfully. I remember students attending online classes with good laptops and stable internet, while others borrowed phones, looked for a signal or struggled just to buy data.
Same class. Same lesson. Same deadline. But never the same chance.

Now we have AI. I work with technology, and I see what AI can do. I use it, too. But as a Gen X teacher, I also worry about what happens when the tool begins doing the thinking that Gen Z and Gen Alpha students are supposed to learn to do. The session raised concerns about critical thinking, academic honesty, privacy and an emerging “AI divide.”

What stayed with me most, though, was simpler. Dr. Cawagas spoke of education helping us work toward a more nonviolent, more just, more inclusive and more sustainable world. At first, those sounded like very big goals. Then I began thinking of the students I have taught.

Peace can begin with a child who no longer fears a bully. Justice can begin with asking before judging. Inclusion can begin with hearing the quiet student. GCED suddenly felt very real.

Then Dr. Cawagas mentioned using mathematics to examine poverty, inequality, climate change, even corruption. That caught me. Why not let students work with a public budget, calculate percentages, and compare allocations and expenses? It is still mathematics, except the numbers now have lives behind them.

One participant used a metaphor I especially liked. Looking at the fabric behind the facilitator, she said GCED should be woven into education. That word stayed with me: woven.

Perhaps we do not always need another subject, seminar, advocacy week, committee or tarpaulin. Maybe some things simply need to become part of how we already teach. And perhaps part of how we live as teachers.

After all these years, I have realized that students learn many things we never put in our lesson plans. They notice whom we listen to. They notice how we treat the struggling student. They notice whether rules apply equally. They notice whether we can admit that we are wrong. Students notice more than we think. They know whether we truly welcome questions or simply tell them to “think critically.”

My first GCED course helped me find global citizenship in ordinary moments — from checking a viral claim to asking about flooding, public money or how we treat someone different. This second course is making me rethink curriculum. Maybe GCED is already there, in the questions we make room for and the people we choose to notice. After years of working with curricula, I am finding there is still much to see.

Perhaps the curriculum my students remember most will never be printed. It is the one they see me live.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.