Curbing Ignorance and Apathy (Across the Political Spectrum) Through Global Citizenship Education

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Ben

The article examines how post-2016 U.S. political disunity is sustained by ignorance and apathy toward ideological “mirrors,” arguing that failing to know or care about others’ perspectives limits dialogue and mutual understanding. It recommends global citizenship education (GCE) as a means to cultivate knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to live and work in a globalized world. Drawing on cosmopolitan and advocacy dimensions, it explains why implementation is limited in K–12 schooling due to inequitable access, contested definitions, and scarce empirical evidence.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Ideological disunity and the problem of ignorance/apathy

Global citizenship education as a response

Dimensions of GCE and desired outcomes

Barriers to scaling GCE in public schools

UC Berkeley Berkeley Review of Education Title Curbing Ignorance and Apathy (Across the Political Spectrum) Through Global Citizenship Education Permalink [https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qn0z71d](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qn0z71d) Journal Berkeley Review of Education, 7(1) Author Thier, Michael Publication Date 2017-01-01 [eScholarship.org](eScholarship.org) Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Available online at [http://escholarship.org/uc/ucbgse_bre](http://escholarship.org/uc/ucbgse_bre) Curbing Ignorance and Apathy (Across the Political Spectrum) Through Global Citizenship Education Michael Thier 1 University of Oregon What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know, and I don’t care. —Jimmy Buffett Whether we know that snarky response as a Jimmy Buffett lyric or the punchline to a quintessential dad joke,“I don’t know, and I don’t care” captures the disunity that defines the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We know or care very little about our ideological mirrors to the extent that the “United” States, our voting patterns, and our reactions to them have become a curiosity for the other 95% of the world’s population. Our new national pastime of navel-gazing about an election that many pundits call inexplicable follows a campaign filled with rancorous rhetoric that revealed globalization as a springboard for the social unease that propelled Donald Trump into the Oval Office. Many voters chose their candidate based on perceptions of his business bona fides. Those voters either did not know or did not care that multiple bankruptcies do not align with such perceptions. Many voters used their ballots in protest, seeking an outsider whose expertise came from beyond the Capital Beltway. Those voters either did not know or did not care that public policy experience often predicts one’s ability to govern. Disheartened members of the political left continue to reproach the president and his supporters for what they see as a barrage of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and Islamophobia. But Trump opponents either do not know or do not care that packaging all 46% of the electorate as racists, misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, and Islamophobes is inherently misguided. Instead, Pehme (2016) counsels crestfallen liberals to engage right-leaning family members around the dinner table, suggesting that despite “a depressing number of them that deserve these characterizations, to brush aside the more than 61 million Americans who cast their ballots for Trump as mere hateful idiots is to perpetuate the liberal elitism that helped fuel Trump’s success”(para. 11) . Regardless of what your 2016 ballot looked like, choosing to neither know nor care about the perspectives of nearly half your country’s citizens exhausts any chance to win the hearts and minds of your ideological mirrors. Ideas lose transferability, if not meaning, once we squander opportunities for dialogue. As someone who has cast votes 1 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Michael Thier, University of Oregon, Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership; 5267 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, [97403. Email: mthier@uoregon.edu](97403. Email: mthier@uoregon.edu). Berkeley Review of Education Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 133–139 134 Thier for both major U.S. political parties, but who also counts himself among those who believe that two people can disagree while both being right, I recommend that we stop wringing our hands and cease asking how our country could have elected a reality TV personality with a professor-emeritus-length CV of un-presidential behaviors. Instead, asthe Serenity Prayer instructs, we must “accept the things [we] cannot change,” summon the “courage to change the things we can,” and find the “wisdom to know the difference”(Niebuhr, 1943) . Taking the latter tack, we should begin by accepting that

FAQs

What does the article mean by ignorance and apathy in the political context?

It frames ignorance and apathy as a refusal to know or care about others’ ideological perspectives, which undermines meaningful dialogue and the chance to win hearts and minds.

Why does the author argue for global citizenship education (GCE)?

GCE is presented as a way to build students’ knowledge, skills, behaviors, and dispositions for living and working amid globalization, helping them engage the world more thoughtfully.

What prevents GCE from becoming widely available in U.S. public schools?

The article cites inequitable access, a diffuse literature base, contested definitions, and a lack of empirical studies, leaving GCE at “boutique” status for many K–12 students.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Ben