Globalization and Education the Modern

Globalization and Education

The modern world is uniting. Countries are branching outside of their national borders to take their economies to soaring new heights. Yet, this great interconnectedness is seeping into more genres than business. Education has been drastically affected by the wave of modern globalization. With this spread of globalization, more intimate private education has shifted to larger and more generic public institutions with a rise of importance in vocational training as major educational structures; additionally, education itself has become a form of capital in which individuals and corporations are making a profit off of.

Globalization is a new concept that is taking the world by storm. According to research, "a globalized world is one in which political, economic, social, educational ad cultural events become more and more interconnected, and also one in which the impacts of these events in one society affect extensively the lives of people in other societies," (Oni 2007:30). Therefore, globalization seems to include the formation of a united global culture along with a united global economy. It serves to unite people once divided by thousands of miles. In modern day analytical thought "globalization is often synonymous with internationalization, referring to the growing interconnectedness and interdependence of people and institutions throughout the world," (Epstein 2010). Thus, it opens up the opportunity of education to branch outside of national borders. Teachers can learn more and implement international practices. Cultures once far removed from the prestigious educational systems of the Western world, are now opened up to using education as a tool for the improvement of their own unique societies. Thus, with the rise of globalization there has been "A massive spread of education and of Western oriented norms of learning at all levels in the twentieth century and the consequences of widely available schooling are a large part of the globalization process," (Epstein 2010). With this in mind, it is obvious that the modern day effort to unite the world will also carry with it a huge impact on educational systems all over the world.

Past educational systems focused on more individual and intimate educational practices. Private tutors were most common in individual households, with very little of the population sending their children off to larger educational institutions. The elite would hire the best and brightest minds to tutor their children. According to the research,

"Before the institution of public education, the education of the elite was carried out by tutors working with their pupils in a highly personalized manner," (Burbules & Torres 2000). Thus, most of the brightest minds in past generations never even stepped foot into an institutionalized classroom. Additionally, it was not only the elite who benefited from these more intimate systems of education. Those who did receive educations did so within the sphere of the family or small community. These children were educated by the localized family and community structures; "for children of rural or working families, education or upbringing was also a personal affair, governed by families and local communities," (Burbules & Torres 2000). Being so localized, the education acquired by many was primarily community biased. It helped them live and survive within the specific community they were raised in. Thus, "Fitting into a community, whether a local or national culture and way of life, can be seen as the educational imperative cutting across these contexts," (Burbules & Torres 2000). Yet, this intimate and localized educational system did not correspond to the goals of globalization.

The educational institutions of today barely remember such intimate past times. Instead, there are massive public institutions, funded by public funds, which are much less intimate and community orientated. Globalization has increased the creation of educational systems as large public entities, far removed from the individual communities and familial powers. With this, students have greater access to universal concepts, but less specialization to help them succeed in their individual communities. The modern public system instead pushes individuals into educational programs which benefit the larger global community over smaller individual ones. Therefore, "the political implications of education surpass the conditions of an individual to be educated, and constitute a strategic set of decisions that affect society at large -- hence the importance of education as public policy, and the role of the state," (Burbules & Torres 2000). However, funding such massive public systems is a huge challenge for many nations. In many cases, educational budgets are low on the totem poll in terms of other areas of funding concern within the pressure to implement a globalized economy. In this sense, "In the scenario of a rapidly developing market economy, governments have less access to resources; this is impinging on the scale as well as the quality of education," (Menon 2007:31). This paints the picture that going global does tend to place true commitment to education by the wayside.