The False Promise of Global Learning

Why Education Needs Boundaries

Alex Standish

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441163370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Through the language of global learning, education is being reformed by corporations, political activists, and policy makers. Academic subject-based knowledge has been cast as elitist and outdated for a rapidly-changing world. The curriculum has been colonized in the name of teaching skills and attitudes for the global market and global citizenship. Can young people effectively contribute to society without an education in academic knowledge? Alex Standish argues that we can only educate children about the world if we are clear about the boundaries that provide education with its moral worth. These include the boundaries between: education and political activity, public and private realms, education and training, theoretical and everyday knowledge, communities, and subject disciplines. The False Promise of Global Learning demonstrates that the nature and purpose of education has become confused with social, economic, political, and therapeutic aims, and that control over the curriculum has been taken away from teachers and communities. This is a hard-hitting work that will resonate with all who have a stake in how - and why - we educate our children.

1

The origins of international and global education

International education has been around for some time. It has taken many different forms and been taught for a variety of ideological, academic, and pragmatic reasons. Scholars have long known that education can be a path to enlightenment, lifting individuals beyond the bounds of their limited experiences and resulting in diminished personal prejudice. Five hundred years ago, Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), a Roman Catholic Priest, wrote about the transformative potential of education to lessen a person’s ties to a state or place. Educated by the Brethren of the Common Life in the Netherlands and at the University of Paris, Erasmus’s concerns were in response to conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Europe. In the Education of the Christian Prince, Erasmus contended that the prince should study the liberal arts, theology, and literature in order to cultivate his ethical sensibilities and knowledge of human affairs.¹

In modern times, most early movements for public schooling in America and Europe were unapologetically nationalistic in character. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ruling elites were concerned that the masses would develop their own ideas, become unruly, and undermine the capitalist system.² The upper classes wanted to ensure that the working classes were socially integrated, ready for work, and supportive of the nation. Thus, British schools promoted the benefits and wonders of the British Empire, while American schools were preoccupied with the maintenance of the Republic and integrating the flow of immigrants into American society. In the 1910s and 20s, the curriculum in the US schools sought to “Americanize” new arrivals through education and new rituals such as the Pledge of Allegiance.

However, not everyone was in favor of schooling children in national identity, especially during a time in which nationalism was strong. After both world wars there were calls for international or peace education, with the aim of increasing the understanding between youth in different nations. Similarly, cultural studies, which emphasized different cultural backgrounds rather than a homogenous Anglo-American culture, was first taught in the 1920s. Since this time, international education has taken a number of different forms, global education being one of them.

This chapter will describe the divergent approaches to education that have taken place at different times under the headings of international education, global education, world studies, or global studies. We will begin with a brief history of international schools so that we can distinguish between these and the disparate forms of international and global education that grew out of the cultural conditions of the 1960s and 70s.

International schools

An oft cited starting date for international education is 1924, the year in which the International School of Geneva was opened for children of parents working at the newly founded League of Nations. This was the first of several new international schools established in the 1920s and 1930s. But international schooling predates the 1920s; Brickman cites thirty formal plans for international education between 1814 and 1914, including Spring Grove School in west London (1866), the International School of Peace in Boston (1910), and international schools at Chatou near Paris and Bad Godesberg near Bonn.³ These schools were supported by philanthropists, intellectuals such as Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall, and organizations promoting peace and international collaboration, including the International Bureau of New Schools in Geneva (1899), the American School Peace League (1908) in Boston, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1910). Yet it was the scale of the destructiveness of the Great War, the millions of deaths and hundreds of destroyed towns and cities, which amplified the calls for international cooperation and the curtailment of nationalism.

To this end, the Institute of International Education was established in New York City in 1919. A few years later, the National Education Association (NEA) held a world conference on education in San Francisco for the promotion of “goodwill and mutual understanding” in schools.⁴ The popularity of international education grew over the decade. A 1932 address by Augustus Thomas, the Secretary General of the World Federation of Education Associations, to the NEA in Atlantic City called for a world-wide plan of education for understanding and cooperation among nations, a curriculum with an international framework, and teachers trained with an international perspective.⁵ Developments were similarly afoot in Europe, with Geneva proving to be a hub for the promotion of international education. A year after the international school was opened the International Bureau of Education was founded in Geneva by the Institute JJ Rousseau. The Council for Education in World Citizenship, founded in 1939, took over the educational work of the League of Nations and was later instrumental in the creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Although small in number, international schools could now be found in England, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, France, and the United States. International education was not restricted to Western nations; Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore established an international school and world university near Calcutta in 1918, and the Yokohama International School in Japan was opened for children of foreigners in 1924.

After the Second World War, the theme of international education was taken up by the United Nations. Like the League of Nations in Geneva, a United Nations International School was established in New York City (1947) to serve the children of United Nations employees. UNESCO was specifically charged with the task of building international education: established in 1945, UNESCO’s stated aim is to “build peace in the minds of men and women” because it is in people’s heads that wars are started.⁶ Kenan Malik notes that the formation of UNESCO was a conscious decision by the leaders of the postwar alliance, taken in order to move away from the racist ideas associated with the biological view of humanity. UNESCO Man was a cultural being, not a biological one. However, Malik finds that instead of promoting a universal cultural being, UNESCO’s battle against barbarism replaced racial divisions with cultural pluralism. “Just as race once determined every aspect of human behavior, so now culture did the same.”⁷ In UNESCOs view, international education was concerned with promoting values of respect for different cultures: promoting, rather than transcending, difference.

One of UNESCO’s early ventures was the Conference of Principles of International Schools in Paris in 1949, attended by representatives of fifteen interested schools from across Europe and the US. Over subsequent decades, UNESCO has been instrumental in the promotion, direction, and coordination of international education, especially in Europe and North America. This it did through organizing conferences, writing key documents on international education, and supporting initiatives at the national level.

It is important not to treat all international schools or international education initiatives as the same. Today, there are over one thousand international schools worldwide, which vary in terms of how they define their international standing. Schools describe themselves as international for a number of reasons, such as “the nature of the student population and of the curriculum offered, marketing and competition with other schools in the area, and the school’s overall ethos or mission.”⁸

There are at least three rationales for the existence of international schools: pragmatic, economic, and ideological. International schools often open in a country to serve the needs of employees who have relocated to that country, frequently on a temporary basis, and who wish their children to receive a similar curriculum and be taught in the same language as that provided by schools back home. Such schools provide “globally mobile expatriates with a cultural bubble by isolating their children’s educational environment from exposure to local culture.”⁹ Such schools frequently teach in English and may serve children from a variety of countries. Mary Hayden notes that teaching in English is often the main attraction for parents who view English as an international language that will help their children in the global job market, and learning a second language is often viewed as an additional marketable skill.

Hayden also remarks that parents value internationally recognized qualifications, such as the International Baccalaureate and International GCSEs (General Certificate in Secondary Education). The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) was founded in Geneva in 1968 to provide the transnationally mobile with a qualification recognized by colleges, universities, and employers across the world. Its aim was to facilitate the “international mobility of students preparing for university by providing schools with a curriculum and diploma qualification recognized by universities around the world.”¹⁰ As a part of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, it also reflects the values and aims of the United Nations. Hence, international schools often arise for pragmatic and economic reasons in response to the wishes of transnationally mobile parents; and, as the number of transnational corporations has grown over the past couple of decades, the demand for international schools has increased.

Some international schools also promote the cause of international-mindedness, as noted above. Historically, this meant promoting solidarity across borders and a view that social, economic, and political progress could be achieved through international cooperation rather than competition between nations. For instance, Washington International School, located in Washington DC, serves parents who have come to the US capital from numerous different countries, as well as American parents who wish their children to receive an internationally orientated education. This is achieved through a broad subject-based curriculum, learning more than one language, an International Baccalaureate qualification, and learning about different cultural traditions. Such international schools focus upon education in a common body of knowledge, much like public schools, but with an emphasis upon cultural variation rather than national values.

However, Hayden notes that there is sometimes a disparity between the educational values of parents and the values of international educators. She suggests that many parents value international schools for providing instruction in English and subject-based qualifications that have a good standing in the Western world. In contrast, those working in the field of international education are more likely to emphasize ideological aims. Today, these aims are likely to coincide with those of global education, which seeks to move away from a curriculum that is Western-centric in terms of subject content and culture.

Strands of international/global education

There are many approaches that fall under the umbrella of “international” or “global” education. Summarized below, some approaches are knowledge-based, while others are skills- or values-based. For a more detailed background to the teaching of international education, see American Education in a Global Society: Internationalizing Teacher Education by Gerald Gutek.¹¹

Intercultural education

Intercultural education aims to help children overcome limited cultural experiences. This has been approached in different ways at different times and includes international travel and learning foreign languages. If education involves expanding the mind and one’s experiences, stepping outside of one’s culture and language is an essential part of that process. Only by gaining insight into the language and culture of people in other countries can one learn to see past the limitations and cultural biases of one’s homeland, to bridge cultural divides and comprehend our common humanity. This aim has been integral to many versions of international education, as well as liberal education and comprehensive education (as in England). Learning about foreign cultures and languages can take place in a formal class setting, through writing letters, Internet communication with foreign students, and guest speakers, but often pupils are encouraged to spend time in another country so that they gain a wider cultural experience. This may happen through a period of study a...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 The origins of international and global education
• 2 The making of global schools
• 3 Global knowledge
• 4 Global skills
• 5 Global ethics
• 6 The essential boundaries for learning about the world
• Conclusion: Avoiding responsibility for education
• Selected Bibliography
• Index