Globalization and the educational implications

This pursuit of profit has similarly influenced the broader educational practice in this period of globalization. This section examines the impact of economic globalization on education programs, more specifically on adult and community education, that are most closely related to CEC’s educational programs. Alternative educational responses to this dominant economic paradigm, such as popular education, are examined in a succeeding section.

Within this dynamic globalizing context, Ann Hodgson and Maria Kambouri69

67

Shiva, “The Greening…”, p. 59.

write that the knowledge and skills acquired through compulsory education continue to be

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relevant but are no longer sufficient to equip adults to deal with this context. They observe that the major policy response in the United Kingdom has been the development of strategies for lifelong learning, particularly to address the needs of the labor market. This understanding of lifelong learning, according to Ove Korsgaard70 is based on a neo-liberal concept that regards education as “an investment in ‘human capital’ and ‘human development’.”71

Research conducted by Alfred Telhaug is cited by Korsgaard72 on the educational system of different countries has revealed that economic globalization has already established its influence. Telhaug’s study shows a common tendency to shift from child-centered to economy-centered motivation. An example of this is the marked change in the use of the language of the market instead of language concerned with quality of life and community in formulating educational objectives.

The field of adult and popular education is not far behind. International bodies, like UNESCO, introduced in the late 1960s the concept of lifelong learning in relation to a humanistic tradition of democracy and human development. UNESCO has since allowed its educational policies to be strongly influenced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which views adult education as an investment for economic development.73

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Ann Hodgson and Maria Kambouri, “Adults as lifelong learners: The role of pedagogy in the new policy context” in Peter Mortimore (ed), Understanding pedagogy and its impact on learning

(London: Paul Chapman Publishing, 1999), pp. 175-194,

70

Ove Korsgaard, “Internationalization and globalization”, Adult Education and Development, Special issue: CONFINTEA V: Background papers (July 1997), pp. 9-28.

71

Korsgaard, ‘Internationalization…” p. 16.

72

Ove Korsgaard, “The impact of globalization on adult education” in Shirley Walters (ed),

Globalization, adult education and training: Impact and issues (London: Zed Books, 1997), p.18.

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Paul Belanger74 identifies that that the “critical issue in the lifelong learning debate has to do with the way in which societies will deal with rising general uncertainties.”75 This dynamic global situation is resulting to countries now adopting

… new continuing education policies, and introducing new measures for the training and retraining of the active population, including the organization of open learning and distance education schemes.76

However, Matthias Finger and Jose Manual Asun observed that this new emphasis on retraining

… has become ‘privatized’ in both senses of the word – become simultaneously a more private activity, and an activity which is increasingly run by the private sector for the benefit of private corporations.77

This condition is true even in developing countries where, according to Finger and Asun,

… since World War II, and especially since decolonisation, education in general, and adult education in particular, have accompanied development projects and practices. Whether it is conceived as adult literacy, as extension, as training, or as a post-literacy program, the main goals of such adult education were – and to some extent still are – poverty alleviation and economic development.78

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Paul Belanger, “The threat and the promise of a ‘reflexive society’: The new policy environment of adult learning”, Adult Education and Development, no. 52 (1999), pp. 179-195.

75

Belanger, p. 193.

76

Belanger, p. 187.

77

Matthias Finger and Jose Manual Asun, Adult education at the crossroads (London: Zed Books, 2001), p. 104.

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Given the prevailing context of “turbo-capitalism”79 that has transformed adult education into a privatized and an intrumentalized activity, Finger and Asun describe three probable scenarios for adult education practice, which according to them are not mutually exclusive.

The business school scenario is…a situation where adult education principles and practices are being incorporated into business training and development efforts…. The newly emerging concept of the learning organization, for example, allows these various adult education efforts to be integrated into a singe coherent framework, so that adult education is now being intrumentalized for the purpose of corporate development and growth.

The risk group scenario is … [where] adult education would be assigned

special risk groups of the current turbo-capitalism – those who are unable to fit into the accelerating industrial development process, such as the growing numbers of the unemployed, immigrants, young people, and perhaps women. All these and other risk groups would have to be ‘up-skilled’ and made fit for turbo- capitalism.

The leisure society scenario… was quite prominent in the 1970s, and gave rise to a whole field of continuing education, might well persist. There are particular groups of people in today’s society, even in the current economic crisis, who define learning in terms of leisure – particularly the elderly.80

All three scenarios share a similar role for adult learning, “as a mere tool that either promotes turbo-capitalism or repairing its most blatant negative effects.”81

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Edward Luttwak coined turbo-capitalism in 1999 cited by Finger and Asun, p. 3.

It is within this context that they ask “whether adult education as awareness-raising on social and environmental issues is still enough, given the perspective of a ‘dead-end

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Finger and Asun, p. 134-136.

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industrial civilization’?”82 These same questions are asked in examining CEC’s educational practice in the context of a globalizing world.

The previous discussion has focused on the negative impacts of economic globalization on the economy, the environment and on education. But there are others who identify the benefits of economic globalization. Jose Antonio Alonso83, in an OXFAM book described how the broadening of the international markets, a major feature of globalization, has “laid the foundations for one of the fastest periods of growth in the world economy between 1950 and 1973.”84 He noted that the broadening of markets has benefited not just the developed countries but also some countries in the Pacific Rim and Latin America. However, from the perspective of grassroots groups in the Philippines and of an NGO like CEC that has committed itself to working with these groups, it is difficult to get excited by economic globalization programs like Philippines 2000.

The other benefit that Alonso identified was the growing awareness at the global level for the need to develop structures and policies that address a globalizing world. He specifically identified the series of international UN summits as evidence of this growing awareness. The growth of this global awareness is examined in the following section, not from the point of view of the global institutions or corporations that have been the force behind “globalization-from-above”, but from the counterforce which Richard Falk has called “globalization-from-below”85 or a global civil society.

82

Finger and Asun, p. 5.

83

Jose Antonio Alonso, “ Globalisation, civil society and the multilateral system” in Deborah Eade and Ernst Ligteringen (eds), Debating development: NGOs and the future (Oxford: OXFAM GB, 2001) pp. 86-103.

84

Alonso, p. 88.

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