The 21st century is often described as the era of globalization – but what does that mean exactly? Do we really live in a global village? Well, 10th graders from Escuintla city in Guatemala had a one-hour virtual class with their IVECA partners from Daejeon city in Korea in order to discuss these questions.
Obviously, it took them more than one hour to properly understand how globalization is influencing today’s societies. During the last three months, both schools carried out research and developed critical thinking on this complex topic. The students first defined globalization before digging down a little deeper to carefully investigate the political, economic and environmental impacts of this phenomenon.
On June 20th, during their live class, the teenagers presented their findings as well as their solutions to mitigate the detrimental effects of globalization. For example, students from Korea shared their ideas to reduce the loss of competitiveness experienced by some of their national industries. Likewise, Guatemalan students explained how the globalization of Spanish jeopardizes the existence of native languages in Central America. They emphasized the role which schools should play in keeping Mayan languages alive. Among other suggestions, they proposed to increase the number of teaching hours allocated to native languages.
Of course, the students did not only highlight the negative aspects of globalization but also pointed out the numerous benefits of this trend, including their IVECA experience itself as a positive outcome of globalization. After all, it wasn’t only students involved in this cross-cultural partnership, but two whole “villages”. From the English and Social Studies teachers who guided the students to parents who live-streamed their performance, in the end, it is two school communities who went beyond cultural and geographical boundaries to make the most of this worldwide network called the “global village”!