Educationist and Advance Education Trust President Mansoor Fasial on Monday said that roots of global citizenship lie in our understanding of the ‘oneness’ of humanity.
“It is an ethical belief that we all must care about each other and the planet. We ought to recognize the interdependence of the world and its repercussions, helping each other in the process to make our choices and commit actions. Building communities for achieving peace, harmony and prosperity at all the, local, national and international level, is a sustainable principle we all must embrace,” he said while addressing a seminar at Lahore City College.
He said the United Nations on September 25, 2015, adopted a set of 17 goals [Millennium Development Goals] including ending poverty and hunger, ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all. “Each of these goals has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years. These goals are rooted, may all be happy – a profound invocation for the wellbeing of all, not just human beings.” He said everyone needed to do their part, most certainly educators and schools, to achieve these goals.
Building a successful career is arduous. At the school level, we have to develop a culture that serves as a model for high-value learning and creates college, career and life pathways. Mansoor Fasial proposed some standards that serve as a benchmark for an authentic and sustainable change in the career education in the schools, college and university level as well;
Firstly, define a vision and inspiration, here the emphasis is not just on the destination. A vision anchored in values and life skills is an important catalyst. Secondly, a fair assessment of students’ potential, interest and learning attainments is mandatory for a dream building. It is important that we ask students, what place looks magical to them, where does their ‘mojo’ lie, who are the people they will like to collaborate, what transformations will they want to drive their life.
Thirdly, the GROW model propounded by John Whitmore (Coaching for Performance: Growing People, Performance and Purpose) is helpful. It proposes a four-step exercise- Goal setting, reality check, options mapping and deciding which option to choose. This model creates a purpose behind goal-setting.
