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Issues from 1998
Issues from 1998
 
 
 
 

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Thinking globally

Twenty Scotch students have taken up the challenge offered by a new subject – Global Perspectives.

WORDS: NATHAN LIU – YEAR 10

‘Why Global Perspectives?’ was the question my parents asked me when they saw Global Perspectives on my list of possible Year 10 electives. I simply replied, ‘It sounds different and interesting and it goes for the whole year!’

Global Perspectives is a high intensity research-based subject, where you can develop great research skills that will be the key to success in the following years of high school and university. The freedom to choose your own issues to research is what makes it completely different to other subjects.

What does this mean? Well, it means that when it comes to projects, you’ll always find that you are never locked into any specific area of research, since there’s such a wide range of topics you can choose from, including peace and conflict, water, food and agriculture, poverty and inequality and disease and health.

So what do we do? A lot of time is used to plan and research our projects. But when we aren’t working on our projects, we learn skills like dissecting questions, differentiating between fact and opinion, how to analyse and draw our own conclusions, and also how to avoid value judgments. We also have sessions where we share articles on global issues from The Guardian and other newspapers and journals, and take part in line debates about issues like free health care for all.

One of the highlights so far has been hosting a mini-conference with Nossal High School, Berwick, where Sandra Opoku spoke on behalf of ‘The Global Poverty Project’. She talked about the different areas of world poverty and what were the most effective ways of dealing with them. What struck the students was the idea of ‘the girl effect’, where providing aid and support to girls and women will result in improvements in those villages for the whole community. The class also welcomed a speaker from World Vision and the Global Foundation, and scheduled a visit to the Amnesty International state conference.

There are 20 students who have selected Global Perspectives this year. We have taken up the challenge offered by this subject, and although at times we find the workload greater than we might have expected, we all believe it is very rewarding and well worth the extra work it takes to understand the challenges facing our world.

Updated: Monday 24 June 2013