ACADEMIA Letters How Language Education and Critical Cosmopolitan Citizenship Can Shape the Future of Humanity. Taciana de LiraSilva, University of Ottawa Globalization has fostered human mobility and interdependence worldwide, but also increased feelings of xenophobia and nativism (Appadurai, 2006). The emergence of these two contra- dicting discourses have created a binary understanding of citizenship, where global and local beliefs have fomented a deeper and wider distance among global cultures and resulted in mis- understanding and confict in a time when global cooperation is of utmost importance for human survival. Education does not have the solution for the global social instability (Davies, 2008), but it can challenge the problem. I propose that language education and CCC are a suitable approach to help learners become critical of injustice and develop moral solidarities that extend beyond national borders (Hansen, 2011). Critical Cosmopolitan Citizenship education can contribute to a brighter future for human- ity when interweaved in language education. Globalization has changed the focus of language learning; whereas, in former times the main goal of language education was communica- tive competence, presently the language classroom has become a place of cultural gathering (Starkey, 2007) that has the potential to build global understanding and acceptance of diver- sity. Language education can contribute to a brighter future through the engagement of learn- ers and educators in Critical cosmopolitan citizenship (CCC) education, an approach that fosters human rights, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability, through criticality and praxis (Freire, 1970) and the development of “skills of critical engagement and refexivity” (An- dreotti, 2014, p. 49). CCC refutes the abstract ideas usually connected to cosmopolitanism and gives prominence to local and global challenges associated to global mobility (Rizvi, 2009). Language learning through a CCC approach must include learners’ worldviews (e.g., sharing family stories, or reading news articles) and engender conversations on moral issues, possibly developing a sense of belonging to humanity, and a desire for action to contribute to Academia Letters, July 2021 Corresponding Author: Taciana de LiraSilva, tdeli071@uottawa.ca Citation: de LiraSilva, T. (2021). How Language Education and Critical Cosmopolitan Citizenship Can Shape the Future of Humanity. Academia Letters, Article 2351. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2351. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0