Preparing leaders for the global south: the work of elite schools through global citizenship education

Abstract

ABSTRACT The main role of an elite school is to produce future leaders and this paper examines how four elite schools in different parts of the Global South are engaging in this process. Despite the critiques of global citizenship education (GCE) being a vestige of the colonial project, we analyse closely how it is being actively and productively appropriated by the four schools. Our comparative analysis highlights two different types of leaders being created. Two schools are seeking to produce regional sociopolitical transformational leaders, while the other two institutions are more focused on individualised, self-interested future subjects. We show how a range of GCE orientations is drawn on across the four schools that have different geo-political and spatial reaches and are ultimately productive in (re-)producing elite classes. Furthermore, these GCE orientations also have the potential to disrupt the unequal relations currently found between the North and the South.