case study on globalization and education

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Case Study on GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION

GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION

Introduction

Globalization its conception, fundamentals and the wider impact had made

its way in the forefront of international debates. Such debates encompasses many

different aspects that includes industrial, financial, economic, political, cultural,

ecological, social, transportation, technical, legal/ethical and finally, informational. The

very last aspect has a direct correlation with education because of the fact that, as what

Carnoy (1998) believed it to be, "two of the main of globalization are information and

innovation that are highly knowledge intensive". Indeed, the two elements have direct

implications on the politics, the economics and the culture of contemporary education inlight of this trend known as globalization. The paper maintains that as globalization is

increasingly becoming integrated into national economies, the national education,

especially on the area of national policy formation as it can be dictated, shaped and

manipulated by international organizations and hegemonic countries, is increasingly

becoming a commodity.

Globalizing Education

Information and knowledge are critical factors for globalization and so as themovement of these through globalizing schemas. The nature and the complexities

associated with the concept of globalization has altered the context by how the

educators operate at all levels and thus shifting the experience of both formal and non-

formal education as well as the cultivation of the various kinds of knowledge within

different societies. National educational policies, and its subsequent (or eventual)

changes, are the clear manifestation of these. Notable is that each government are

faced with the changing administrations, rules and power and therefore resulting to the

changes in many national policies especially within the education milieu, being

exacerbated by the changes in the international governments that the new or incumbent

governments must adhere into. Non-compliant governments shall face the

consequences.

To wit, there are financially-driven reforms that are inclined in redistributing not

ust the access by the resources, facilities, expertise, competence and quality of


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education, implicating most of the students that come from low-income families due to

the unequal distribution of income and the high value placed on knowledge. Carnoy

(1998) contends that though decentralisation could have a positive outcome for

educational productivity, many governments fail to recognise such and that quality

education is jeopardized significantly because governments relied heavily on

educational measurements being utilised by international organizations. To compensate

with the 'financial risks' of such action, national states are tended to pass the burden to

the people instead of prioritizing educational advancement.

World Bank, for instance, assumes a far-reaching role in promoting educational

development top-down. These sets of policies intended for the national education

framework delineate on how national states should approach their education systems

and policies. Entrenched on the lender-borrower relationship purporting reconstructionand development, 'conditionalities' are attached which have profound impact on the

governments' responsiveness to educational dilemmas which include skills

development, mass participation, equity, inefficiency of education and inadequacy of

educational planning and management. The real danger of such actions highlights the

autonomy of nation states on own national educational systems and policies. At first

glance, we can deduce that governments still have the power to intervene with the

educational processes where in fact, the World Bank essentially increased their central

direction and intervention by means of national curriculum requirements, educationalpolicy restructuring and other institutional indicators. True enough, the optimization of

academic participation is hindered by many factors that Jones (1997) outlines as: the

difficulties of implementing systemwide education policy; the impediment of enforcing

broader national objectives; the polarization of increased social segregation; the

reduction of equity due to low-leveled family income and the prejudice coming from the

parents.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) too

with a heavier weight given on General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to

have wide-ranging effects on educational systems and policies through the acceleration

on capital expansion. With the explicit movement of space, scale and territorialization,

there came the re-orientation of basic educational services as an important requisite to

capital accession in terms of cross-border supply, consumption abroad, commercial

presence and presence of natural persons. While also, these organisations attempted at


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optimizing the barriers to quality education in favor of globalisation which include that

lack of internationally-recognized institutions, the limited measures on provision for

direct investments, the existence of government monopolies and the national requisites

of establishing institutions pressuring educational institutions to make learning more

inclined to entrepreneurialism (Robertson et al(2002).

One opposing body is UNESCO that is prospected to play an incessant role of

shifting the adverse effects of and the consequences for the collaborative forces that

affects the global educational development framework. Jones (1999) posits that the

consolidation of the economics and the politics of globalisation will deliver a neutral

regulatory capacity of governments inspite of bilateral or multilateral systems. With

functionality at the heart of the operation, the universality of UNESCO's proactive

response is on advancing literacy at all levels regardless of the categorization of thecountry. A hindrance, however, is the prevalence and dominion of economic and

political ideologies that gradually fragments the world order, and the concluding

pragmatic effect of funding. Reiterating the focus on world order, Mundy (1998)

suggests that inevitable are the effects of global forces on educational systems and

policies in whatever level especially in multilateral efforts considerably because

interdependency is important whether in transfer of knowledge or absorption of

manpower. Within the changing world order, what should be prioritised is self-regulation

and not just policy diffusion though; and the wider engagement of non-governmentorganisations (NGOs) apart from the international organisations mentioned

above.

The stance points out one thing: national states lack capacity to address and to

at least support the education of its people through appropriate policing; and so resort in

'fixed action patterns' of designing national educational policies next to international

education policies. As such, national states start to marketised their education while

drawing away from the essentialities of "apparent commonalities or convergence across

localities" in order to trade knowledge, skills, expertise and competence in the global

marketplace vested on the maintenance of political legitimacy and power tradeoff

especially for the Western world (cf Ball, 1998). Known as 'policyscapes', according to

Ball (1998), these threatened national states remedied their educational 'problems' by

means of narrowing the extensive correlation of education, employment, productivity

and trade; enhancing academic performance with respect to employment-related skills


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and competencies; imposing direct control over curriculum content and evaluation;

reducing governmental costs on education; and increasing communal input to

education. The role is central to the role played by the NGOs wherein the shift in

educational policing is supported and promoted within the rubric of privatisation,

decentralisation, good governance and efficiency in education.

Slaughter (1998) echoed the voice of Carnoy, Jones and Ball while also

emphasizing that international policies move complementary with the globalizing

stratagems of the most hegemonic countries such as Australia,Canada and yes United

States and United Kingdom. The ongoing trend is the corporitization of education

whereby the cultivation of the so-called entrepreneurial acumen to find economies of

scale in the presence (and inexistence) of monetary capabilities, technoscience and

other specializations and multilateralism (p. 55). Regardless of the educational levels,for these hegemons educational policies are molded by already sound policies and

curriculum, access and finance and the degree of autonomy. With economic

competitiveness in mind, nonetheless, these otherwise stable policies had changed the

education orientation of the less powerful and poverty-stricken countries which

eventually resulted in decentralisation of educational systems and privatisation.

However, the emphasis is put on profit-driven R&D and educational autonomy

leveraging albeit intellectual property or statutory systems of protection. Should

intellectual cooperationism and market professionalism converged, the premise then isplaced on the degree of coordination of economy and autonomy (Marginson, 1997a)

Such convergences are embedded on the rationalizing initiatives towards

globalization through the occurrence of curricular restructuring and standardization of

educational policy considerations while also limiting the contribution of educational

administrators and professionals as part of social changes within these hegemonic

nations. For Davies and Guppy (1997), school choice is a one-dimensional implication

of economic integrationism by which education was envisioned to be a vital utility that

effectively justifies educational procedural reforms that considers bureaucratic

stalemate, progressive education and local community empowerment. Central to

delocalization of education, the changes within these democracies left a trivial revolution

by which the authority in education was centralised and devolutionised. Such labor-

learning effort in actual fact is a contamination of the traditional thinking that regarding

the fundamental organizational unit of education which is the school that has profound


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effect on the demarcation between schools and community and the eventual decision of

parents. As such, this highly-individualised form of learning made possible the

intensification of centralised curriculum as an economic endeavor rather than a social

initiative.

For Henry et al(1999), the globalised education is rather processual instead of

mechanistic since it conveys the extent of engagement on educational governance and

purposes. Provided that the world economic systems are conflict-laden that the control

of the social processes would only be detrimental, interventionism is by and large

inconsequential. The authors argued that the dominance of instrumentalism in essence

changed the purposes of education especially now that education is tended on

industrializing the pool of labors for global competitiveness. Such stance signifies an

agendum shift on educational policies, more than marginalizing equity, intoentrepreneurial policing in educational setting (Henry et al, 1999; Ball, 1998). Realizing

this, the impact of globalization is evident on the governance of education, the

development of market-driven politics and their combination while converting non-

market spheres into profitable fields of investment making education a profit-generating

activity than a national concern.

Though global market competitiveness serves as the impetus of the 'branding' of

schools, the impact is on the policy making bodies. Basically pluralistic, educational

policies shall be allied with educational priorities at national levels down to clusters.Tayloret al(1997) asserts that at this level globalisation processes are integrated into

educational priority priorities within globalised ideologies and globalised political

structures resulting to the globalisation of the culture where education resides that

further results in the emergence of globalised policy communities (p. 61). The premise

is that though globalisation is intrinsically political in nature, educational policies are

closely being integrated into economic frames wherein education systems and policies

are progressively more subjected into micro-economic restructuring. Indicators of which

are the incorporation of various educational activities as "saleable or corporatised

market products as part of a national efficiency drive" (p. 77).

Scrutinizing this fact, though the present rate of employment will be higher, and

will continue to do so, it would have reversal effect when it comes to education. Why?

The logic is simple. Such high rates of employment are driven by the young laborers

forced to leave schools in exchange of a job for familial or individual subsistence. This


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could result in the 'mass jeopardization' of the future if we are to base it on the recent

status of policy-making at national levels, if not massive joblessness. Truth remains that

as individuals are disadvantaged of the access to education, there would the existence

of further lowering levels of necessarily skills (Aronowitz and De Fazio, 1997). Self-

regulatory effort, albeit being theoretical today, shall move along with the enforced or

emergent structural adjustments for nation states as human development is put at the

core of educational stratagems including policies. Taking poverty as a whole, policy-

making should function on enrollment rates and on the quality of educational provisions

(cf Tikly, 2001). As such, it is necessary that educational policies should take the need

for basic literacy, the formation of the most appropriate skills intended for new global

production processes and the development and advancement of technical capabilities.

For many education is one of the many sources of global competitiveness, therationale behind treating education as an investment or commodity, nonetheless, the

approach must be holistic since there is the challenge of cultivating other important

sources of 'commodity' within education itself. Marginson (1997b) claims that in the era

of positional competition, education is continuously produced and consumed through

various types of education production: market (simple commodity and fully capitalist)

and non-market (common good, collegial and home-based) withier within government or

non-government institutions. The idea is that these kinds of productions generate

'positional goods' that render 'positional capabilities' on a market basis. Individualisedcommodities it may seem, these could plausible considered as the 'branding' of learning

and teaching methods and the learning to be key players of commercial nature. Schools

are persistently being penetrated by corporatists in gaining legitimacy towards market-

thinking and consumerism through inflicting influences of national educational policies.

In this process whereby either individual, group or nation state foreign investors,

especially hegemonic ones, are being assured of the throng of education consumption

while leaving the governments as employers of the last resort in blur (Aronowitz and De

Fazio, 1997).

Jones (1998) proposes a way by which the profound effects of globalisation on

education can be modified internationalism. Put simply, globalisation is the economic

integration whereas internationalism is the application of international structures that

promotes peace and well-being. The pro-democratic interplay between internationalism

and education, whether for global or local purposes, posits upholding peace while also


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being transformative in terms of localizing education within a supra-national frame and

not economic ones. Being instrumental and expressive, the teaching and learning

process embeds on orders, conducts, characters and manners as well as specific skills

and bodies of knowledge acceptable to all groups including existing, external forces

such as civic groups and the international organisations in shaping country-level

educational policies. In continuously harnessing the academic interdepency of the

nations, multilateral internationalism would be the key. Taking from this, it could be said

that internationalism of education does not necessarily stemmed from international

relations though it partakes in harnessing peace and understanding among international

education institutions.

Conclusion

What the paper discusses is the 'globalised education' whereby national policing

is put at the center. There are international organisations such as World Bank, IMF and

WTO as well as UNESCO that determines the framework of national polices in

academic setting. National educational policies could not escape the effects of

globalisation whether economically or politically. To conclude, there are basic ideologies

that the paper disclosed. First, since information is one of the core elements of

globalisation, the shift in educational policing trends is inevitable. Second, governments

and the extent of association with the international organisations could determine thedegree of globalizing agendum in their national educational policies. Third, whether

bilateral or multilateral, academic interdependence among nations is likewise inevitable.

Fourth, globalizing education is processual in nature. Fifth, the political and economic

imperatives of education and its globalisation change the orientation on and purposes of

education. Sixth, self-regulation must be prioritised and finally, internationalisation must

be seen as an alternative in redesigning national educational policies.

References

Aronowitz, S. & De Fazio, W. (1997). The New Knowledge. In A. H. Halseyetal(Eds.). Education, Culture, Economy, Society(pp. 193-206).Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ball, S. J. (1998). Big Policies/Small World: an introduction to international perspectives


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in education policy. Comparative Education, 34(2), 119-130.

Carnoy, M. (1998). Globalisation and educational restructuring. MelbourneStudies inEducation, 39(2), 21-40.

Davies, S. & Guppy, N. (1997). Focus on English-Speaking Democracies Globalization and Educational Reforms in Anglo-AmericanDemocracies. Comparative Education Review, 41(4), 435-459.

Henry, M., Lingard, B., Rizvi, F. & Taylor, S. (1999). Working with/against globalizationin education. Journal of Education Policy, 14(1), 185-197.

Jones, P. W. (1995). Review Article on World Bank Education Financing.ComparativeEducation, 33(1), 117-129.

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education. Comparative

Education, 34(2), 143-155.

Jones, P. W. (1999). Globalisation and the UNESCO mandate: multilateral prospects foreducational development. InternationalJournal of Educational Development, 19,17-25.

Marginson, S. (1997a). Research and Knowledge goods. In Markets in Education (pp.257-277) Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Marginson, S. (1997b). A political economy of education markets. In Markets inEducation (pp. 27-50) Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Mundy, K. (1998). Focus on World Order Educational Multilateralism and World(Dis)Order. Comparative Education Review, 42(4).

Robertson, S. L., Bonal, X. & Dale, R. (2002). GATS and the Education ServiceIndustry: The Politics of Scale and Global Reterritorialization.ComparativeEducation Review, 46(4), 472-496.

Slaughter, S. (1998). National Higher Education Policies in a Global Economy. In J.Currie & J. Newson (eds). Universities and Globalization: CriticalPerspectives (pp. 45-70). London: Sage Publications, Inc.

Taylor, S. et al(1997). Globalisation, the state and education policy-making.In Educational Policy and the Politics of Change(pp. 54-77 and 176-188 forreferences). London and New York: Routledge.

Tikly, L. (2001). Globalisation and Education in the Postcolonial World: towards aconceptual framework. Comparative Education, 37(2), 151-171.


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