Week 9

The Contemporary World

Overview:
This week you will learn to evaluate the potential Future of Globalization – Global Citizenship
Education.

Expectations for the Week

● Complete the activities in this learner guide.
● Answer the questions posted after each activity.
● Take note of any concept, topic, or terminology that you are not familiar with. Use the
Stream feature in Google Classroom to initiate or participate in discussions. ● Manage
your time wisely. You should be able to complete the readings and activities in this
learner guide in three weeks.
● Complete and submit your final output before week 18 ends.
● Accomplish the Course Evaluation form before week 18 ends.

Globalization And Education: Challenges

And Opportunities1
This excerpt is taken from an online article by Sadegh Bakhtiari that discusses and
emphasizes the positives and negatives of globalization, technological gap and Human
Rights.

Excerpt:

GLOBALIZATION, EDUCATION AND LIFELONG LEARNING

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjS46uqgISIAxVhrlY
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ownl oad%2F3461%2F3508&usg=AOvVaw0SgxHZfmbg0WZ0PaDHjeMd&opi=89978449

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People can only contribute and benefit from globalization if they endowed with knowledge, skills
and with the capabilities and rights needed to pursue their basic livelihoods. They need
employment and incomes, and a healthy environment. These are the essential conditions which
empower them to participate fully as citizens in their local, national and global communities.
These goals, can only be reached if national governments allocate adequate resources to
education, basic infrastructure and the environment, and create the institutional framework
which ensures broad access and opportunity. Education is a major concern for all societies. As
the foundation and essential driving force of economic, social, and human development,
education is at the heart of the change that is dramatically affecting our world in the areas of
science, technology, economics, and culture. It is the reason behind social change and scientific
progress, and in its turn, it is subjected to the results of progress that it itself has engendered,
both with regard to content as well as methods and established aims. In spite of the
aforementioned facts, some people argue that education systems no longer seem to take into
account the new needs confronting people everywhere in the world. For example, René Bendit
and Wolfgang Gaiser make the following observation on the education system in the United
States of America, which could be applied to many countries in the world :

The education system has failed to meet current social challenges. The increase in youth
problems such as a problematic transition to the working world, increasing poverty, teen age
pregnancies, drug abuse, intolerance towards minorities, juvenile delinquency and violence, are
treated as a reflection of the fact that schools are no longer have any connection with the real
life world.

In order to integrate into the world economy, people must not only acquire the knowledge and
tools of traditional knowledge, but above all, they must be capable of acquiring new skills
demanded by a knowledge society. Indeed, the resulting rapid change in technological and
scientific knowledge make learning a permanent process, a lifelong learning process in the
words of the Report of the International Commission on Education for the 21st Century to
UNESCO, entitled: Learning, the treasure within.2

Lifelong learning is based on the following four fundamental precepts:

• Learning to know, by combining a sufficiently broad general knowledge with the opportunity to
work in depth on a small number of subjects. This also means learning to learn, so as to benefit
from the opportunities education provides throughout life.

• Learning to do, in order to acquire not only an occupational skill but also, more broadly, the
competence to deal with a large number of situations and work in teams. It also means learning
to do in the context of young people’s various social and work experiences which may be
informal, as a result of the local or national context, or formal, involving courses alternating
study and work.

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• Learning to live together, by developing an understanding of other people and an appreciation
of interdependence, - carrying out joint projects and learning to manage conflicts – in a spirit of
respect for the values of pluralism, mutual understanding and peace.

• Learning to be, so as to develop better one’s personality and be able to act with increasingly
greater autonomy, judgment, and personal responsibility. To that end, education must not
disregard any aspect of a person’s potential: memory, reasoning, aesthetic sense, physical
capacities, and communication skills.

SOME POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION

Although globalization seems to be unavoidable to many countries and numerous initiatives and
efforts have been made to adapt to it with aims at taking the opportunities created from it to
develop their societies and people, in recent years there are also increasing international
concerns with the dangerous impacts of globalization on indigenous and national developments.
Various social movements have been initiated against the threats of globalization particularly in
developing countries. The negative impacts of globalization include various types of economic,
political, and cultural colonization by advanced countries on those developing and
under-developed countries. Inevitably, how to maximize the opportunities and benefits from
globalization to support local developments and reduce the threats and negative impacts of
globalization will be the major concerns of developing countries.

As mentioned above, globalization is creating opportunities for sharing knowledge, technology,

social values, and behavioral norms and promoting developments at different levels including
individuals, organizations, communities, and societies across different countries and cultures. In
particular, the advantages of globalization may include the following.

• Global sharing of knowledge, skills, and intellectual assets that are necessary to multiple
developments at different levels;

• Mutual support, supplement and benefit to produce synergy for various developments of
countries, communities, and individuals;

• Creating values and enhancing efficiency through the above global sharing and mutual
support to serving local needs and growth;
• Promoting international understanding, collaboration, harmony, and acceptance to cultural
diversity across countries and regions.

• Facilitating communications, interactions, and encouraging multi-cultural contributions at

different levels among countries.

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At the same time, globalization, potentially creating serious negative impacts for developing and
underdeveloped countries. This is also the major reason why there have been so many ongoing
social movements in different parts of the world against the trends of globalization particularly in
economic and political areas. The potential negative impacts of globalization are various types of
political, economic, and cultural colonization and overwhelming influences of advanced countries
to developing countries and rapidly increasing gaps between rich areas and poor areas in
different parts of the world. In particular, the potential negative impacts include the following:

• Increasing the technological gaps and digital divides between advanced countries and less
developed countries;

• Creating more legitimate opportunities for a few advanced countries for a new form of
colonization of developing countries;

• Increasing inequalities and conflicts between areas and cultures; and •

Promoting the dominant cultures and values of some advanced areas.

GLOBALIZATION, EDUCATION, AND TECHNOLOGICAL GAP

In today’s global economy and information society, knowledge and information are the keys to
social inclusion and productivity, and connectivity is the key to global competitiveness. Yet in our
unequal world the networked economy is able to incorporate all that it regards as valuable, but
also to switch off people and parts of the world that do not fit the dominant model.

Technological capability is essential. Countries need the communications infrastructure and the
production system which can process and use information for development; and people must
have access to the knowledge and the ability to use it, in order to participate, take advantage of
and be creative in the new technological environment. That puts education and skills at the
center of a fair and inclusive globalization.

Online distance learning could become a powerful tool for developing countries – reducing the
need for expensive physical infrastructure for tertiary and vocational educational facilities and
enabling investments to be made instead in communications equipment, with curricula and
teaching provided through regional initiatives. The Global Distance Learning Network (GDLN) is
one such initiative. It is a worldwide network of institutions which are developing and applying
distance learning technologies and methods with a focus on development and poverty reduction.
Such networks are likely to play an important role in building technological capabilities by:

• Increasing the technological gaps and digital divides between advanced countries and less
developed countries that are hindering equal opportunities for fair global sharing.

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• Global sharing of knowledge, skills, and intellectual assets that are necessary to multiple
developments at different levels.

• Creating more legitimate opportunities for a few advanced countries to economically and
politically colonize other countries globally.

• Mutual support, supplement, and benefit to produce synergy for various developments of
countries, communities, and individuals.

• Exploiting local resources and destroying indigenous cultures of less advanced countries to
benefit a few advanced countries.

• Creating values and enhancing efficiency through the above global sharing and mutual
support to serving local needs and growth. Increasing inequalities and conflicts between areas
and cultures.

ILO argues that promoting international understanding, collaboration, harmony, and acceptance
to cultural diversity across countries and regions by promoting the dominant cultures and values
of some advanced areas4 and facilitating multi-way communications and interactions, and
encouraging multi-cultural contributions at different levels among countries. Clearly, the
management and control of the impacts of globalization are related to some complicated macro
and international issues that may be far beyond the scope of this paper.

The increase in poverty in the world is the most tragic phenomenon in this era of abundance. It
is the cause of marginalization and the exclusion of increasingly bigger groups of the world
population and in particular, affects children, the young, and women. As a consequence, we see
the development of cultures of poverty and marginalization that lock the same people into the
cycle of poverty and reinforce their exclusion.

But it is still the inequality with regard to knowledge that constitutes one of the biggest
challenges of our societies. The traditional raw materials and non renewable natural resources
under threat of extinction no longer occupy the most important place in the process of
production and development. It is knowledge in itself that has become one of the key resources
of economic growth. We thus see a new category of workers appearing on the scene,
“knowledge workers”. Without knowledge, you are subject to marginalization and progressive
exclusion, but the corollary is also true. “The higher the level of education and training of a
country’s population, the more chances a nation has of seizing opportunities and minimizing the
social cost of technological change and the transition towards a more open economy”.5

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GLOBALIZATION, EDUCATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Education has been proclaimed an integral part of human rights: “It must be free and
compulsory with regards to basic, elementary teaching. Vocational and technological teaching
must be widely available and access to higher education available to all equally, on the basis of
merit.”6 Education is also the driving force behind economic growth and human and cultural
development. The application of policies of compulsory basic education for all and investment in
quality teaching have meant governments and experts have been able to measure the impact
on populations and the society as a whole. That impact can be seen in improvement in health,
lowering of the rate of demographic growth, reduction of child mortality and increase in life
expectancy. Education also means that populations become aware of their rights and obligations
as citizens and are thus able to participate actively in the construction and management of life in
their communities.

According to studies undertaken by UNESCO as well as by UNDP, the world economic crisis,
which dominated the eighties, spread in virtue of the constraints imposed by economic
globalization. It was also pointed out that “the process of restructuring and social adjustment that
have taken place in most countries and are still taking place in some, seem to have had a lasting
effect on national politics at the expense of education.”7 The education sector has not yet
acquired the right to benefit from special treatment or to be exonerated from the application of
policies limiting public expenditure in general.

This is the end of week 9. Good luck for your Terminal Assessment.