Citizens of the world – what should they be like in the 21^st century and how should they differ from non-citizens; what should the process be of their education, training and multiplication and of its monitoring and formalization so as to raise confidence and respect for this status?

Granted that the eventual formation of a world citizen can only be the outcome of a successfully conducted, monitored and formalized process of an individual’s education, training and multiplication, this paper will reverse its answers order and start off by attempting to account for the required process of formulating an individual’s world citizenship’s conscience.

Educating an individual to become a world citizen can be legitimately seen to commence at the primary level; the teaching of a child to this effect should be ranked as an essential, involve an-across-all-six-classes minimum three hour weekly spread-over and revolve around the following four main pylons consisting of principles serving as prerequisites for the grounding of a world citizen’s conscience:

a) Each individual in the world is entitled to equal rights to education, employment, social welfare, voicing their views and standing up for their rights as well as to ascending the ladder of social hierarchy.

b) Each individual in the world is entitled to equal duties and responsibilities towards maintaining social order and improving social governance standards as well as their fellow citizens’ wellbeing.

c) Each individual in the world has the same fundamental needs corporally and mentally.

d) Each individual in the world is entitled to the same number of opportunities for accomplishing social prosperity-oriented tasks bestowed on them, as well as their self-set objectives.

During their secondary education level an individual should be subjected to further consolidation of the aforementioned principles, consisting of a gradually  intellectualized analysis of their components and the reasons why they should be considered as prerequisites for a global conscience, as well as of a solid argument-based establishment that, being  indispensable features of such a conscience, they are impervious to any ensuing criticism, regardless of its origin and the circumstances dictating it. The lesson of civics which would almost entirely be based on such an instruction must be an obligatory one in all six classes and be taught by especially trained teachers as one of the most essentials, alongside ,that is, humanities and mathematics, numbering no less than four hours weekly.

During  their tertiary education level an individual should be involved in an across-all-years, cross-disciplinary, 5-hour-weekly stretching to a maximum six-hour-graduation year-weekly  curriculum of civics whereby the student would be initiated into advanced analytical and exegetical formulas of sociological, anthropological and philosophical studies of the human historical, social and cultural evolution targeting the innermost causality underscoring the essential nature, significance and indispensability of the principles underpinning a world citizen’s conscience.

Following that, the individual would be subjected, in the form of attending a postgraduate course or by registering at a special social institution, to a special training for at least one year, consisting of courses involving practical applications of everyday life circumstances calling for the successful exercise of the so-far-attained knowledge of the overall components of the world citizen’s personality and conscience in order to cope with the complexities incident to them, thereby testing the individual’s extent of mastering the overall knowledge background hitherto acquired. Research on the side of both tutors and students should also be encouraged at this particular stage in order to investigate further possibilities of enhancing the world citizenship conscience potential, whereas  recurring tests, mobilizing the students’ critical faculties on the knowledge and experience hitherto gained,  would help determine the students progress; Following the assessment of the  overall performance at the end of the year, the individual would be deemed either successful and subsequently granted the insignia of the World’s Citizenship or short of the required standard and consequently referred to a further one-year-training.

Such institutions as could be given a state-issued mandate and therefore qualify to run the aforementioned advanced education and training courses may include Universities or other Higher scholarly or even vocational Education establishments; the WPF has already foreseen such a need and included the provision in his high priority objectives agenda of setting up two philosophical institutions patterned after the Socratic and Aristotelian Academies in ancient Greece, admission to which is conditional upon learning and conforming to the minimum prerequisites outlined in the relevant website link.

The component of monitoring the education and training process in the aforementioned institutions could be accounted for by a yearly rotating Teaching Assessment Exercise (TAE) as well as Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in each of them, conducted with a view to unremittingly maintaining instruction and research tasks at a satisfactory level. The courses relevant to formulating and enhancing a global conscience may be included in such disciplines as Sociology, social anthropology, History, Psychology, Law, Comparative Ethnology and Political science; new books and articles relating to this new discipline will have to be compiled by adequately qualified experts, implementing the required state-issued  mandate, for all education levels taught courses, as well as posted in related Internet links, besides researching existing bibliographical items with the view to tracking down, collating and utilizing pieces of information that could be used, in conjunction to ongoing research-attained feedback, with a view to promoting the potential for the creation of a global citizenship conscience.

Finally , the state has to take necessary legal measures to institutionalize, through  drawing up and voting the necessary bills, the overall concept as well as effort and campaign of raising a global citizenship conscience, thereby officially establishing or updating  educational institutions, courses and University curricula as well as teaching disciplines and positions to this effect; furthermore states have to legislate provisions in national constitutions sanctioning at the highest level the overall  initiative and vesting the resulting global citizenship status with a special onus and authority of at least the same leverage as that incident to its national equivalent. Such an action by the various states would constitute the eventual formalization of the overall undertaking and objective of creating a world citizenship conscience and eventually status.

It should be the task of all individuals to hold a concerted effort towards the fruition of the above initiative; only a global conscience that transcends cultural, religious, economic and educational discriminations can vindicate and expedite a cultural universalization process, as it is only the problems that can be viewed as common that trigger off and harness human potential of all individuals at its highest. The challenge lies ahead of us and the gantlet is there, large as life; it only remains for us to pick it up, or else we will have to run it. The choice is ours.