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 in light 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 the movement 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 nonformal 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 consequences. To wit, there are financially-driven reforms that are inclined in redistributing not just the access by the resources, facilities, expertise, competence and quality of must adhere into. Non-compliant governments shall face the

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 reconstruction and 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, educational policy 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

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 the country. 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-government organisations 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 (NGOs) apart from the international organisations mentioned

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 is placed 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 laborlearning 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

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, into entrepreneurial 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 nonmarket 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. Taylor et 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

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). Selfregulatory 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, policymaking 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, the rationale 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. Individualised commodities 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 marketthinking 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

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 the degree 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.

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