Families as Educators for Global Citizenship: Five conundrums of intentional socialization

An international multidisciplinary Symposium on ‘Families as Educators for Global Citizenship’ was held in Budapest in December 1994, jointly convened by the Institute of Family & Environmental Research (London) and the Hungarian Sociological Association.

We based our work on two propositions: first, that families everywhere socialize their offspring for the norms and behaviour valued in their social systems; and second, that there are major changes going on a ‘global’ scale which are relevant to current socialization practices. We asked how changes in global culture and values impact on families and how families are responding. In the light of the importance of these questions and the sparseness of reliable answers, we suggest the need for research on families and the teaching/learning of social values: 1. How do families actually teach values: how much of it is intentional instruction, how much inadvertent teaching, as in association with language teaching and non‐intentional modelling ?

2. How do families reconcile their local traditional values with those emerging as part of global culture (i.e. the humanistic values of universal human rights, gender equity, respect for the environment, non‐violent conflict resolution and diversity).

3. How are personal identities formed which incorporate a global dimension, and how are conflicts in multiple identities (local, national, regional global) managed?

It is recognized that at present it is probably a minority interest to undertake intentional socialization for global values. However, we suggest that it will be increasingly recognized as important. For families seeking to instill such values, a number of conundrums are apparent. We have identified five for preliminary analysis.