立教大学

Learning how to feel at ease with complexity has become a major issue in a globalizing world. In an age of massive flows of data, information bubbles and political distrust, growing up with a peaceful mind is an everyday challenge. Constant stimulations may incline individuals towards quick reactions, to the detriment of long-term and critical perspectives. GLAP aims at equipping students with the means to make the most of the new tools at their disposal to accept and cope with uncertainty, become active and mindful citizens, through an open curriculum, consisting in exploring together various disciplines applied on a wide range of cases.

Globalization has conveyed new issues and commons, transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries, thus requiring an open academic mindset and a mastery of various notions and methods, including foreign languages and global competence. Social sciences smoothly learnt to open themselves to comparative perspectives across cultures and times: our goal is to help students walking on the same path. GLAP aims at contributing to a rising effort of internationalization through comparative analyses and critical thinking, in order for students to feel capable of building up their own judgments, without taking refuge behind the comfort of stereotypes.

Assuming that intellectual curiosity is a major resource for personal freedom and happiness, as explained by Friedrich Nietzsche in "The Gay Science", liberal arts aim at diversifying students’ perspectives to all types of knowledge and complex phenomena, in both natural and social sciences. Empathy towards non-familiar questions and cultures is a key attitude to reach global understanding as well as personal happiness and self-confidence, the erosion of anger and resentment. Applying critical thinking without borders at an individual and collective level may help members of a society to build up a common good.

GLAP is accompanying students who want to be active on global issues in the future, such as the protection of global commons, by encouraging them to feed their personal interests, and giving them the skills to reach a global understanding, starting from academic methods. Developing global competence requires a mastery of foreign languages, as well as the capacity to act in complex situations, interact with various people, and adapt to new cultural environments.

For this reason, GLAP puts a great emphasis on communication, collective discussions on global issues. Students will discover how to appreciate learning from each other, sharing responsibility for the quality of their classes, and being proactive in class rather than simply obeying their teachers. The teaching methods at GLAP assumes that critical thinking and collective discussions are major means for helping students in building up maturity and self-confidence, as future professionals, members of society, humanity, and global ecosystem.