Education in the Global Order

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This chapter shows that globalisation is being experienced as a discriminatory and even oppressive force in many places and that this condition has come to constitute what could be call a ‘puzzle’ for many families, communities and countries having to make decisions about the kind of education their young ought to have. It is suggested that we are beset by immense confusion, in many parts of the world, as we confront these questions. This confusion is about how much or how little of that which we imagine to be distinctly ours, whatever that might be, we wish to have at the core of the education our children ought to receive or, alternately, how strongly we wish them to be assimilated into that which has become the dominant culture. The chapter examines critically the attendant processes of assimilation and appropriation that are inherent in globalisation and modernity. The chapter argues that education has now, more than ever before, the responsibility of making the politics of knowledge, culture and social practice in the broadest sense of these terms, the core of the learning experience.