A World Our Students Already Inhabit
Picture this:
- A teenager in Ohio follows a climate strike in Europe on TikTok before the school bell rings.
- A tenth grader in California asks her teacher why artificial intelligence can write news stories faster than journalists.
- A student in Texas watches headlines about migration while her own family navigates the realities of displacement.
Today’s students are already immersed in a world that is fast, fragile, and interconnected. They don’t just read about global issues in textbooks — they experience them in real time, on their screens, in their communities, and sometimes in their homes.
And yet, our schools rarely provide the framework to help them make sense of it all. Too often, the global is treated as “extra” — a Model UN club, a cultural assembly, a short elective, or a study abroad program available only to a few.
It’s not enough.
What Schools Miss
Advanced Placement (AP) courses offer rigor, recognition, and opportunity. Students can study U.S. History, Government, Human Geography, Environmental Science, and more. Each is valuable. But taken together, they still leave a gap.
There is no AP course designed to prepare students for global citizenship.
Instead, global learning remains scattered across classrooms and schools:
- A service project here,
- A world language course there,
- A passing conversation about climate change or migration when the news demands it.
Without a dedicated, integrated approach, students are left with fragments. And inequity grows: some schools invest in global education, while others lack the resources to do so.
What Students Could Learn
Now imagine a classroom where:
- Students debate the ethics of climate action using data from multiple regions of the world.
- A math lesson is grounded in statistics on global inequality.
- A literature unit pairs African poets with Asian novelists to explore shared themes of migration, identity, and resilience.
An AP Global Citizenship course would provide the framework to make these connections explicit and rigorous.
Students would:
🌍 Explore how global systems shape local realities.
They’d see how climate change affects the food on their table, how global supply chains shape what they wear, and how technology reshapes communities both near and far.
🤝 Build intercultural skills.
They’d practice empathy, dialogue, and collaboration — not just for travel or exchange programs, but for the workplace, civic life, and democracy itself.
🔎 Analyze issues through multiple perspectives.
They’d approach sustainability, inequality, migration, and digital ethics as lived realities, not abstract concepts — moving beyond stereotypes toward nuanced understanding.
🧭 Develop critical thinking and empathy together.
They’d learn to evaluate sources, spot misinformation, and connect intellectual rigor with moral imagination.
This is not enrichment. It’s education for life.
The Geographical Imagination
At the Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute (GIEI), we call this work challenging and expanding the geographical imagination.
Part of the geographical imagination is the capacity to see how our lives are bound up with people, places, and ecosystems at home and beyond our immediate surroundings. It’s about asking:
- How does what happens “over there” affect us “here”?
- How do our choices ripple outward into the wider world?
- And how can we act responsibly, with empathy and foresight, in light of those connections?
This isn’t about memorizing capitals or maps. It’s about reimagining the world as an interconnected home, full of overlapping stories and shared challenges.
We’ve seen students light up when they recognize these connections — when they begin to see themselves not just as local actors, but as part of a global community. An AP Global Citizenship course could help scale this learning for millions.
Why AP? Why Now?
Why AP? Because AP matters. It sets a standard of rigor. It legitimizes subjects in the eyes of schools and colleges. It makes opportunity accessible to more students, not just those in specialized programs.
And why now? Because the world is demanding it.
- UNESCO identifies Global Citizenship Education as a cornerstone of building peaceful, sustainable societies.
- The OECD measures global competence as a key 21st-century skill.
- Colleges and employers want graduates who can think critically, communicate across cultures, and lead in an interconnected world.
The College Board has acknowledged that no AP course in Global Citizenship or Global Competence exists today. But they are listening. Which means this is the moment to act.
A Call to Action
Every generation has to decide what kind of education it owes its children.
In ours, the answer is clear: education must go beyond preparing students for college and career. It must prepare them to be responsible global citizens.
That’s why we’re calling for the creation of an AP Global Citizenship course.
Because students deserve more than test scores.
They deserve to be prepared for the real world they’re inheriting.
They deserve the chance to become the globally competent leaders our future needs.
📢 We’ve launched a petition to show the demand. Add your name, share widely, and help us make this vision a reality: https://chng.it/XjWQzXDbH8