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This content area provides a context in which children can explore the connections between self, family, community and the world at large.  Each area of emphasis within Human Studies and Global Citizenship plays a critical role in deepening children’s understanding of how their world works. Exploration by teachers, children, and families extends into the study of how people can most successfully communicate, collaborate, and connect within the context of the community.  As with other curriculum areas, teachers look for and create opportunities for relating this content to real life. Exploring identity, relationships and the ways we interact and communicate integrates social development, empathy, and the pursuit of understanding one another throughout the daily life of the school. Children expand these opportunities by reflecting upon the characteristics and experiences, past and present, of diverse cultures and populations of the world.  As the children mature, this area of the core curriculum supports their ability to grasp increasingly abstract concepts and complex ideas about human beings and the world at large.

he current educational system is based on individual and teacher learning. However, this simply isn’t realistic in today’s classroom. Students are social creatures and their education should be delivered in a way that is more in line with their day-to-day interactions. The solution? Go back to the principle that worked so well in the single school house model: social learning.  Student-to-student and social learning has already proven to be effective and cost effective (it’s free).

As part of a redesign of our instructional model, students should be provided with the infrastructure to collaborate with each other live, in real-time, 24 hours a day. We should give students free, collaborative, multimedia online study rooms with access to standards-aligned content. We should do this because we have a social responsibility to do it, but it also makes good plain economic sense.

Why limit your student population to a few hundred when you can leverage the knowledge of hundreds of millions?