Globalization is not new – though the
current form is probably the most well-documented and researched.
Tilly (2004) talks about the three forms of globalization –
migration of population; spread of ideas, techniques and forms of
organization; and increased coordination of activities at a world
scale. Throughout history, people have always felt the “grass was
greener” somewhere else, from the first humans who left Africa to
find more verdant lands to the post-WWII flight from Eastern Europe
to escape crushing memories and destruction. Each time, the
immigrants brought with them their traditions, culture and way of
life and, even when pressured to conform, the two (or more) cultures
melded – or as Bhabha (1994) would say, created hybridization.
Throughout the middle ages, kingdoms and fiefdoms fought each other
and gained power through mutual alliances. In Cleopatra's time, she
formed an alliance with Julius Caesar in order to promote Egypt's
place in the Roman Empire. Within the last 60 years, the United
States has become a world power - meaning that the ideas, fads,
fashions, commerce and businesses of the US were replicated,
extended, and adopted by other people and countries.
As a backlash to the “Americanization”
of the world, new forms of organization are becoming the ruling class
of the world – World Bank, European Union, and the World Trade
Organization,and the International Monetary Fund. The increased
coordination of activities at a world scale is what is new with this
current incarnation of globalization. In the past, the conqueror
would determine how activities were organized with in the empire –
and generally the conquered would be forced to adopt most of the
conqueror's ways. The Roman Empire built extensive roads in order to
better administrate their lands. The Islamic Empire was united
through religion. The British Empire dominated through colonization
and conversion. However, today, the coordination is through economic
means, and is not confined to a single country or government.
Multi-national companies and international cooperatives are
determining the day-to-day activities of a major chunk of the world.
According to Newsweek, the top ten global companies are Wal-Mart
Stores,Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Toyota Motor, Chevron, ING
Group, Total, General Motors, and ConocoPhillips. The world power is
whoever controls “power” - most of the top 10 companies control
gas and oil. Although OPEC still controls the land where most oil is
found, these international companies are improving technologies to
get more oil from other fields and produce alternative forms of
energy. On a more personal level, Appiah (2008) believes that
globalization is not only having access to knowledge of the lives and
ways of other people, but also, having the power to affect other
people.
McKenzie (2004) gives a checklist for a
global citizen, which includes: global appreciation, supports
sustainable living and development, being epistemologically nomadic,
multilingual, multicultural, being prepared to stand up for others
who are very different or far away, be empathetic, and radically
challenge those ideas that seem unquestionable or inevitable.
Globalization and Education
World culture theory, as developed by
John Meyer, Francisco Ramirez, John Boli and colleagues, argues that
the culture of schooling is converging toward a single global model,
based on evidence of broad similarities among schooling systems
across nations, including common ideals, institutional forms and
practices, organizational features, curricula and instructional
methods. For many American international schools, much of the
unwritten curriculum is an enculturation of American values and
educational priorities. The school has to educate both parents and
students how to “do school” the American way, which includes
projects, group work, disagreeing with the teacher and others and
supporting opinion. Often schools give workshops and handouts about
homework, reading practices and bullying. By doing this, the school
feels it is preparing students to fit into American universities and
international universities. But, is that creating global citizens? In
actuality, like the Romans did as they conquered other peoples, the
schools are creating citizens that could fit into American society.
And yet, the local community and culture, along with the tertiary
school culture (made up of locals, third country nationals, and
Americans), had a strong influence on how American education is
interpreted in that context. As Lee and LiPuma (2002) said, “these
interpretive communities determine lines of interpretation, found
institutions, and set boundaries based principally on their own
internal dynamic.”
Bauman (1998) cites Dunlap's principle
of the company belonging to the shareholders, not the workers or
locality. This is true in a lot of schools, yet more evident in
American international schools – especially in the schools where
the student population is overwhelmingly foreign as opposed to local.
Generally, the school board is elected of and by the parents. This
board sets policy, approves hiring, budget etc. Often, the parents
will only be in-country for 2-5 years, so their agendas are short
term - “what's best for my kid.” It is difficult to get long-term
programs and ideas to move forward, because the student body and
faculty turn over every 2-5 years. There can be a sense of “freedom
from the duty to contribute to daily life and the perpetuation of the
community”(p. 9) along with “no need to engage, if avoidance will
do.” (p.11) Often American or third country national students will
not become involved in local sports or hang out with neighborhood
kids because the students knew they would move away eventually. With
a high turnover rate for foreign hire teachers, many outreach
programs that are started, such as visits to a local orphanage and
offering professional development to local teachers, ended as soon as
sponsoring teacher leaves.
Within a country, an international
school often has unique ties to the local government. Often, the
government has to sanction the formation of an international school,
which for developing countries, means creating and passing new laws.
Implicitly, this means the ruling body agrees with the fundamentals
of having foreigners educating the youth in the country. Which,
conversely, indicates that the local educational system could not
handle the demands of the foreigners in the local schools. By
creating separate schools, the nomadic foreigners are insulated from
the context of local society, which does, (in many cases) create
resentment. In some schools, students are bussed directly to the
school, with only a few students, who speak the local language,
taking public buses. However, these students may cover up or take off
their uniforms because they would be harassed by local students about
being “Preppies” or the rich kids who go to the school that
anyone can buy their way into. The American international schools are
generally better funded, are able to import supplies and materials
easily, sometimes get special treatment from the government (taxes,
educational requirements etc), can hire more educated faculty and the
students come from a higher socioeconomic class than the local
population.
To combat this resentment and to create
“globally aware citizens,” many American international school
require community service projects for the students, which, in
theory, gives back to the local community. However, at times, it
creates a greater sense of superiority in students and faculty,
rather than empathy. As Bauman (1998) says, “Globalization divides
as much as it unites; it divides as it unites.” (p. 2) When
shopping for gifts for the poorer local kids, some students would buy
inferior gifts than if buying for their own friends, assuming that
since the local kids had little, any gift would be appreciated.
But what does it mean to educate for
global citizenship? Appiah (2008) states that there are three ideals
for global citizenship: 1) No single world government 2) Caring for
the fate of all fellow citizens 3) Engagement in real conversation
between people. He looks back to the Greek sense of education which
was to shape the citizen for their common, communal life. However,
now, that community is not just the polis, or city/local area. It has
expanded to include a global common life – the cosmos. So, schools
should be educating for cosmopolitanism – “universality plus
difference” (p. 92) which recognizes the fallibility of knowledge
and the right for each person to live their own life, as long as that
way only effects his/her own fate, even if someone else thinks that
way is wrong. Which means, that as a global citizen, a person should
spend more time listening and learning from other people, rather than
imposing their own will or pointing out their differences. Becoming a
global citizen, in Ebbeck's view (2008), should be more about gaining
a future-oriented perspective, one that envisions not only a personal
future, but a world future with less violence and more tolerance,
which is sometimes called a “peace curriculum.” Mckenzie (2004)
echoes Ebbeck's concern about the extreme violence in the world, but
he believes that the primary purpose of schools should be builders of
community – one that cooperates, not confronts; builds
interdependence, teamwork and patience. And, through the strength of
the school's community, promote community outside the school grounds.
Examples of Global Citizenship
Education
Often, the job of teaching “global
citizenship” is put on the social studies teachers and curriculum,
rather than being infused into the core beliefs of the school.
However, even within that context, there are obstacles to effective
global citizenship pedagogy. First, there is no single definition of
global citizenship education. It is often subsumed under other
frameworks, such as multicultural education or even economic
education. Even when it is placed within citizenship education, there
are significant differences in the requirements of local verse global
citizenship. Finally, many people fear that a focus on global
citizenship undermines local citizenship (Rapaport, 2008).
Global Learning is a specific
pedagogical approach in which learners of different cultures use
technologies to improve their global perspective through contact and
cooperation with people of other cultures (Gibson, Rimmington, &
Landwehr-Brown, 2008). In this model, the instructor creates a set of
necessary conditions: 1) Cultural contrasts between participants
(ideally in different countries) 2) Modern communication technologies
such as Internet and web-based communication applications 3)
Substantive and authentic goal 4) Designed to require teamwork. Once
these conditions are met, the learners must use a range of
attributes/dispositions and processes/skills which may need to be
explicitly taught. By engaging with others, especially with those who
may be different, on a project with a mutual goal, learners come to
understand how interconnected and interdependent the world is, in
spite of cultural diversity. However, more influential, the authors
found, was the fact that the instructor also becomes more globally
conscious through the contacts made in the design of the project.
In Singapore, Lim (2008) documents a
unique fusing of content area knowledge and multi-user virtual
environments to create a role playing game in which the player must
work together with other players, to solve social, ecological and
cultural problems reminiscent of current problems. Through “quests”
players must define the problem, research possible solutions using
examples from other cultures, and design a policy paper describing
their solution. The underlying design of the game supports student
agency, tolerance and diversity, while at the same time, removing the
barriers between school and non-school knowledges. In replicating the
global issues currently being faced, and engaging the students as
citizens, they realistically practiced the skills needed for
responsible adult global citizenship.
References
Appiah, K. (2008, April). Education for global citizenship. Yearbook of the national society for the study of education. 107(1), pp. 83-99.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences. Cambridge, Polity.
Ebbeck, M. (2006). The challenges of global citizenship: Some issues for policy and practice in early childhood education. Childhood Education, 82(6). p. 353-357.
Gibson, K.L., Rimmington, G.M., & Landwehr-Brown, M. (2008). Developing global awareness and responsible world citizenship with global learning. Roeper Review, 30(1). p. 11-23.
Lee, B. & LiPuma, E. (2002) Cultures of circulation: The imaginations of modernity. Public Culture 14(1): 191-213.
Lim, C. P., (2007). Global citizenship education, school curriculum and games: Learning mathematics, English and science as a global citizen. Computers & Education, 51. p.1073–1093.
McKenzie, M. (2004). Sense of community and the emerging global citizen. Independent School, 63 (3), p. 10-16
Newsweek. (2008, July 21). Global 500. Fortune magazine. Retrieved December 26, 2008 from http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2008/full_list/
Rapoport, A. (2008). A forgotten concept: Global citizenship education and state social studies standards. Journal of Social Studies Research 33(1), p. 75-93.
