As a University Lecturer, it always surprises me that my Australian students know so little world history. And by this I mean that they learn, mostly, Australian History, as well as European and British history in schools and come to university quite uneducated with regard to global history outside of these parameters.

The problem with this is that we are not preparing our younger people to be true citizens of the world.

Citizens of the world need to operate with cultural intelligence. And cultural intelligence starts with awareness.

But we cannot have awareness, without understanding. And we cannot possibly understand, unless we have context.

When our young people travel the world – to places that are a little off-the-well-trodden-track, like Sri Lanka and Malaysia, Croatia or the Eastern Bloc for example, in most cases they do so with very little knowledge of the background and the environment in which people live and work. And without this general knowledge, often prejudices and misunderstandings arise – quite needlessly.

In corporate working environments too, young Australians tend to be vastly ill equipped to deal with inter-cultural issues when they arise. Misunderstandings and miscommunications are rife, (some with devastating consequences such as revenue loss, talent loss, staff disengagement, and productivity disruption). And we are supposed to operating within a global economy.

As a general rule people don’t like to think of themselves as racist. But generally speaking, we are. Because we are largely ignorant of other cultures and racism is born out of ignorance. But because we don’t like to openly acknowledge this, we are teaching the next generation to be racist too, because we are not giving these young people adequate opportunities to learn more about other countries, especially those countries that are going to be prominent in our future, such as China, Japan, and South Korea.

The reason that history is so integral to harmonious cross-cultural relations is because it provides context. It helps us to understand where people come from, how this influences what they do and the way they behave. We begin to see how people are often a by-product of their backgrounds and at this point we become able to judge people, situations or circumstances by their own standards and merits and not by our own limited preconceptions.

Because, quite simply, this is the key to tolerance. And we need tolerance in bucket loads if we are to become key players in a global economy.

It is time that the Australian education system looked to the future and rewrote the history curriculum, providing students with a wider, more comprehensive view of the history of the world, not just some parts of it. In this way we can provide relevant information that will help to teach the young international citizens of tomorrow to approach intercultural relations with context, so they can view people and places and events without prejudice and with curiosity, and, in doing so, fully embrace all of the rewards that come from experiencing true cultural diversity.