An education for globalization should therefore nurture the higher order cognitive and interpersonal skills required for problem finding, problem-solving, articulating arguments, and deploying verifiable facts or artifacts. These skills should be required of children and youth who will as adults, fully engage the larger world and master its greatest challenges, transforming it for the betterment 62
of humanity – regardless of national origin or cultural upbringing.
Globalization has become a widespread idea in national and international dialogue in recent years. But what do we mean when we invoke each of these terms, and is there really a meaningful distinction between the two.
Globalization‟s shifting and controversial parameters make it difficult to describe it as clearly as a dominant force, both positively and negatively, shaping the environment in which we live. Motivated by economic forces and driven by digital technologies and communications, globalization links individuals and institutions across the world with unprecedented interconnection. In doing so, it, in some way democratizes and intensifies interdependence and in other ways creates new forms of local reaction and self-definition.
While it may spread certain freedoms, higher living standards, and a sense of international relatedness, it also threatens the world with a
“universal” economy and culture rooted in North American and Western ideals and interests.
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Global education, as distinct from globalization, does what higher education has traditionally aimed to do: extend students’
awareness of the world in which they live by opening them to the diverse heritage of human thoughts and action, and creativity.
Global education places particular emphasis on the changes in communication and relationships among people throughout the world highlighting such issues as human conflict, economic systems, human rights and social justice, human commonality and diversity, literatures and cultures, and the impact of the technological revolution.
While it continues to depend on the traditional branches of specialist knowledge, global education seeks to weave the boundaries between the disciplines and encourages emphasis on what interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary studies can bring to the understanding of to human problems. Some see global education as a vehicle for the promotion of global education that might itself be seen as the West‟s effort to destabilize fragile balances in economic and political systems.
Characteristics of Globalization Linked To Education
* In educational terms, there is a growing understanding that the neo-liberal version of globalization, particularly as implemented ( and ideologically defended) by bilateral, multilateral, and international organizations, is reflected in an educational agenda that privileges, if not directly imposes, particular policies for evaluation, financing, assessment, standards, teacher training, curriculum, instruction and testing.
In the face of such pressures, more study is needed about local responses to defend public education against the introduction of pure market mechanisms to regulate educational exchanges and other policies that seek to reduce state sponsorship and financing and to impose management and efficiency models borrowed from the business sector as a framework for education decision making. These educational responses are mostly carried by teacher unions, new social movements, and critical intellectuals, often expressed as opposition to initiatives in education such as vouchers of subsidizing private schools. 65
* In economic terms, a transition from Fordist to Post-Forndist forms of workplace organization; a rise in internationalized advertizing and consumption patterns; a reduction in barriers to the free flow of goods, workers and investments across national borders; and correspondingly, new pressures on the role of workers and consumer in society.
In political terms, a certain loss of nation-state sovereignty or at least the erosion of national autonomy, and, correspondingly, a weakening of the notion of the “citizen” as a unified and unifying concepts, a concept that can be characterized by precise roles, rights, obligation and status.
* In Cultural terms, a tension between the ways in which globalization brings forth more standardization and cultural homogeneity, while also bringing more fragmentation through the rise of locally oriented movements. Another theoretical alternative identifies a more conflicted and dialectical situation, with both cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity appearing simultaneously in cultural landscape. 66
Globalization is undoubtedly an important constitutive feature of the modern world. One of the current interdisciplinary assumptions is that globalization necessarily amounts to the loss of cultural identity.
Philosophers may argue endlessly about globalization, but they can all agree that it refers to an increasing interconnectedness and convergence of activities and forms of life among diverse cultures throughout the world. As it has been plausibly suggested, a culture “is no longer a discrete world. It is transformed to accord with a world of ruptured boundaries” (Held and McGrew, 2003). Globalization has attracted the attention of many disciplines because it affects both self-understanding and cultural identity.
If we look at the recent developments in the education sector globally, we can summarize the implications of global information society in the education system as follows:
* Demand for widening the education access for all.
* Continuous lifelong learning(e.g., facing the boundaries between present and inset, formal education and working life).
* Global versus local cultural developments.
* Creation of new educational networked organizations (e. g., global virtual universities, virtual schools, multinational educational consortiums, etc.).
* Changing of educational management from hierarchical institutions to equal distributions of network organizations, from commanding to negotiating.
* Demand for more flexible and general skills (e.g., meta-skills such as problem solving, searching information, learning meta-skills, etc..).
Core Values and Competencies for Global Education
Our vision of global education was organized around the following core values: peace and non-violence, social justice and human rights, economic well-being and equity, cultural integrity, ecological balance, and democratic participation. Core skills and competencies included self-worth and self-affirmation, the affirmation of others, including cultural and racial differences, critical thinking, 68
effective communication skills (including active listening), non-violent conflict resolution and mediation, imagination (the ability to envision alternatives), and effective organizing (Mische, 2001).
Socio-Cultural Issues on Globalization
1. Massive migration – Globalization and massive migrations are changing the ways we experience national identities and cultural belonging.
2. Managing difference – It is becoming one of the greatest challenges to multicultural countries. From France to Sweden, Brazil to Bolivia, Indonesia to Malaysia, the work of managing difference calls forth a new educational agenda. Children growing up in these and other settings are likely than in any previous generation in human history to face a life of working and networking, loving and living with others from different national, linguistic, religious, and racial backgrounds.
3. Global changes in culture deeply affect educational policies,
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