Foreign language education is one of the significant strategies for strengthening people's identities as global citizens. However, while building a feeling of global citizenship is frequently lauded as critical to meeting local and international difficulties encountered globally, the function of citizenship in this idea takes work. Instead, citizenship plays a contradictory role in this context, as citizenship frequently implies national bounds, but global citizenship ideals aim to question or interrogate these borders critically.
To begin, it is helpful to understand how learning other languages, mainly English, has historically occurred and continues to occur within the complicated political dynamics of Western-oriented processes of colonisation and globalisation in a variety of contexts across the world. Civilization, development, and worth have all been associated with English and other Western and colonial languages over time, creating the impression that mastering western European languages is still an essential aspect of global citizenship and global identity today.
Today, English is still regarded as the most valuable language for global commerce and as the language of great literature, whether from a British-centric or American-centric perspective.
Second, the viewpoint here illustrates the complexities surrounding views towards localism as a protection against globalism and nationalism in civic identity building. Dialect refers to a wide range of tactics for promoting and nurturing a local identity instead of a national or global identity. An emphasis on local language(s) in education is frequently an essential component of localism.
Local language education may improve early childhood education, assist students in learning and studying foreign languages, and increase a language group's feeling of dignity, respect, and legacy. That education was formerly provided in English or French rather than in indigenous languages reflects colonial domination rather than free choices in an equal society. From this vantage point, it may be counterproductive to continue using such alien colonial languages in schools where universal access and cultural heritage preservation are now priorities. Thus, local language policies can be political statements aimed at empowering local language speakers, although their command of English may need to be improved or more effective for learning.
When it comes to language policy, however, the "local" does not reflect a singular viewpoint on which languages kids should learn.
On the contrary, many "local" individuals prefer language in more prominent languages over language in their tongue. As previously stated, parents and children in South Africa and Haiti may request language education in English or French, perceiving these languages as a more valuable global currency than their "local" or "mother tongue." This is frequently seen regarding less advantaged groups in a community, who are commonly considered ignorant of their interests when making such statements by local elites.