GLOBALIZATION: THE NEW CULTURE

Globalization: The New Culture

Globalization: The New Culture

Introduction

Like 'globalization', 'education system in K-12' is a high abstraction. Accordingly, it is easy to slip into the assumption that arrangements in education system in K-12 globally are pretty much the same as arrangements in the United States. But differences in the histories and political economies of the nations of the world have resulted in differences in the situation of education system in K-12 across the globe. This regards not only questions of access, funding, organization, programmes and institutional variety, but questions of needs and goals.

Moreover, even if one restricts one's sight to education system in K-12 in one country, for example, the United States, there are huge differences between public and private institutions, Research I Universities/Liberal Arts colleges, four-year colleges/Community colleges, non-profit/for profit, proprietary schools (which offer training in trades and regulated industries, e.g. auto-mechanics, tourism), online universities, corporate universities (for example, Sun Microsystems University, the University of Toyota) and finally, 'diploma mills', digital and otherwise.

Similarly, while it is clear that 'globalization' is a real phenomenon, one can easily fail to acknowledge its complex and multidimensional character. Depending upon how it is characterized, globalization takes on enormous ideological freight. One popular view, well articulated by Thomas Friedman (1999), holds that 'globalization involves the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before'. Friedman (2005) has more recently coupled this idea with an idea directly relevant to education system in K-12, the idea that 'the earth is flat'. He quotes the co-founder of Netscape: 'Today, the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want.' Reducing this process to economics and technology is one thing; whether indeed, the process is 'inexorable' is another, and finally, whether 'the world is flat' in Friedman's sense is still another highly contestable idea. Here we might notice that politics is and will remain a critical difference in outcomes - educational and otherwise. All of these layered dimensions have a bearing on education system in K-12, some directly, some indirectly. But four additional problems need to be noticed here.

Stakeholders in the Education System

First, some of the processes and tendencies currently occurring in education system in K-12 at some places, at least, might well have occurred in the absence of the post-World War II phenomenon now titled 'globalization'. Second, there are reinforcing, overlapping and sometimes contradictory features of this process. Capitalism is surely a critical dynamic but as Ritzer (2004) notes, 'McDonaldization's' commitment to efficiency, calculability, predictability and control is a development of the 'rationalizing' process which Weber rightly associated with capitalism and modernity. Similarly, 'Americanization' is an obvious subprocess of globalization, since not only are US corporations still dominant forces in the global political economy, but a host of cultural features, many propelled by new technologies of mass communication, and many particularly pertinent ...