Globalisation Education AND Geographical Education ...



GLOBALISATION EDUCATION AND GEOGRAPHICAL EDUCATION: INSEPARABLE FUTURES

Rod Gerber

1. INTRODUCTION: THE CONCEPT OF GLOBALISATION

Over the last quarter of the twentieth century we have come to appreciate the advent of the concept of globalisation – a concept that has come to be the basis for considerable ferment from an increasingly vocal section of our society. The wild protests that occur frequently at international economic forums typify such vocal behaviour. It is a concept that tends to divide societies rather than unifies them. It also tends to amass kindred industrial interests that often result in the development of massive corporations which have annual budgets larger than most countries. What is this force that has emerged on planet Earth to attract such attention?

Globalisation, according to Hudson (2000:63), “refers to the processes which increase the scale of social life, and therefore increasingly involve processes which operate across borders at multiple scales.” Initially, globalisation appeared in the economic sphere through the deregulation of financial markets, the rapid expansion of communications technologies, and the development of global financial markets that were hubbed in a limited number of financial centres. This has resulted in the depression of the economies in some industrialised countries and in developing countries that provide raw materials for industries (Delors, 1996:41). The economic focus for globalisation has since been expanded to include political, social, cultural and environmental dimensions. To use a maritime metaphor, the world is awash with the flows of money, goods, ideas, services, images, some diseases and pollutants. The universalisation of telecommunications through the World Wide Web has accelerated the process of information transfer and exchange to the extent that even remote geographical regions have global access to information and ideas.

2. GEOGRAPHY’S ROLE IN UNDERSTANDING GLOBALISATION

Understanding globalisation is essential for the survival of humanity in the twenty-first century. Geography, with its foci being on human use of place and space at different scales, and the resulting interactions and modifications, is well placed to assist us to appreciate anew geography based on globalisation. The world economic map has been redrawn to highlight: new centres for world trade around the Pacific rim; a less clear cut North-South divide; science and technology networks that link up research centres to major business corporations around the world; and crime, especially through the illegal trade in drugs, arms, people and nuclear materials. Globalisation may, therefore, be seen as the attempt by markets to escape the restrictions imposed on them by States. Once geography focused on geopolitics. Now, it focuses on geoeconomics – the flows and exchanges of resources and ideas The resulting financial globalisation is exemplified by watching the business programs on global television channels such as CNN. Here, global markets are projected on computer screens on a persistent basis. Globalisation is a very real phenomenon in the world of sport where competitions such as the World Cup in the game of soccer or football are organised on a global scale. Also, the investigation of global environmental problems, eg. global warming, involves the interaction of numerous human and physical dimensions on our planet.

The US publication Geography for Life (Bednarz et al., 1994) highlights that the geographically-informed person understands the interactions of these human and physical processes at different scales from the local to the global. What globalisation does is to shift the emphasis away from local and regional studies to macro- or meso-level studies. It also causes geographers to move away from studies that are based on a limited group of people who interact with their environment, to studies that consider how huge populations of people attempt to sustain their world. Consequently, geography is now being used to focus on new types of organisations that are populating the world and are having a global influence on our lifestyles and behaviours. Such bodies as: the environmental group Greenpeace; the insurance giant Axxa; the World Trade Organisation; the Coca Cola beverage company, and the Nestle food company, all have changed the way that many populations live and experience their worlds. In the coming years, education will become a force in globalisation that extends far beyond state and national boundaries.

3. A NEW PSYCHOLOGY TOWARDS GLOBALISATION

The impacts of globalisation, as they accumulate throughout societies around the world, will cause people to think differently on how they interact with other people and how they treat their environment. While we live in a shrinking world in actual and cyber senses, we still think heavily as individuals. The impact of globalisation on the way that people see themselves and their other global inhabitants will be to produce a collective, and hopefully, unifying perspective on our planet. Then, the hope will be to be act in a constructive and sensitive manner towards fellow human beings and the environment.

The roots of such a new psychology could be based on the four pillars that were proposed in the Delors Report (1996:85-97). These are:

a) Learning to know by combining a broad general knowledge with the opportunity to work at depth in a few subjects.

b) Learning to do in order to develop occupational skills and competencies to deal with many situations and to work in teams.

c) Learning to live together by developing an understanding of other people and an appreciation of interdependence in a spirit of respect for values of pluralism, mutual understanding and peace.

d) Learning to be in order to develop one’s personality and to be able to act with greater autonomy, judgement and personal responsibility.

The intention of these pillars of education is to think about education in a more encompassing fashions that people can learn to deal with social, environmental, economic, political and equity issues on a global scale in a sensible way. Just how well it can be achieved depends on how committed people become to life-long and life-broad learning that focuses on global events and issues.

4. CHANGING ROLES FOR TEACHERS AND LEARNERS

Geography teachers and students in countries around the world will need to think globally if they are to facilitate teaching and learning of, about and for globalisation. In so doing, it is their duty to focus and the benefits and the costs of globalisation. This will enable members of the global society to develop a conscious commitment to work for or against globalisation. Like many human–induced conditions which have been visited upon different groups of people around the world, globalisation should be seen as contributing different pluses and minuses to improving our lives. Therefore, the facilitative geographical educator will need to develop distinctive pedagogic strategies to promote as full an understanding of globalisation as young minds can grasp. It will not be a case of telling these young minds that globalisation is good or bad. Rather, it will be an exercise in providing access to information that will enable young minds in different cultures to determine for themselves what their stance will be on globalisation, and how they will approach issues that result from globalisation in their own communities.

As for the learners in these different cultural groups, there will a strong need to adopt learning strategies that suit the level of access that they will have to global information technology, their community context, the variety of learning context in which they operate, and the extent to which co-operative and collective values toward learning exist in their community. Whether the most effective learning occurs in formal or informal contexts again depends on views on learning that prevail in the local community, educational values that influence what is learned and how it is learned, and the opportunities that people have to exercise what they have learned about globalisation in their own lives.

5. IMPACTS FOR CURRICULA AND POLICY

If educational policy makers and curriculum developers want to promote the concept of a learning society that is demanded by globalisation education, then they have to try to develop learners who can think deeply about the concept of globalisation. If not, then the hype about globalisation that abounds in contemporary magazines, television channels and newspapers will become the educational tool that develops our society. This alternative is not a pretty choice when we consider how globalised the media industry is.

A key ingredient in the formulation of policy in regions, countries or states will be the extent to which international co-operation can be built into the relevant educational policies and the extent to which resources can be injected into educational developments to promote such co-operation. Geography curricula can be revised to place greater emphasis on the study of global social and environmental aspects. However, they need to be developed from the base of the life-worlds in which the learners have. Developing a geography curriculum that takes a purely global focus will be insufficient for it does not build a bridge between the learners’ experience and the wider world which may be viewed vicariously on the Internet or television. Globalisation that is studied in a geography curriculum should possess some relevance to these young minds. Otherwise, it will be discarded forever from their life-long learning.

Different approaches to geography curricula have been posed over time. Effective education of, about and for globalisation will necessitate exposing the learners to different kinds of approaches so that they can choose the approach that best suits their attitudes towards globalisation. This means exposure to inquiry-based, critical, student self-paced, collegial and teacher-led approaches in the geography curricula. The student should be in control rather than the teacher for making decisions on how to study globalisation. The teacher should provide the opportunities for learning rather than dictating a single proven approach to learning about globalisation through geography.

6. PARTNERSHIPS AND PARTICIPATION

Just as the practice of globalisation involves the connections of different areas across the globe, so geographical education for globalisation should focus on the employment of participatory approaches to geographical education and the formulation of learning partnerships within communities and across communities throughout the world. Hart (1997) argued that to counter the traditional educational practice that ignores the socio-cultural context in which people are learning we should adopt a situated approach to environmental learning that involves an understanding of environmental phenomena “in place”, in their complex spatial relatedness to one another. Cuevas, Millan and Reid (2000) demonstrated how this could be achieved in a number of sites in rural Mexico. The dual power of participation in situated learning and the development of learning partnerships has to be explored fully to implement programs on globalisation in geography curricula in different countries.

7. THE CHALLENGE FOR THE NEXT 25 YEARS

The challenge for geographical education in regard to contributing to the development of an understanding of globalisation is to promote in learners and educators a kind of reawakening of consciences amongst all peoples on our planet. The purpose of such a reawakening is to assist in the tackling of the worsening inequalities that are occurring around the world. The distribution of economic and social capital is being skewed in favour of the Haves both within countries and across countries. Education, and particularly geographical education, should become a social exercise that promotes education for justice that recognises that modern technology can enhance the understanding and practice of globalisation, but that it also can increase the divide between the Haves and Have Nots. To promote globalisation education for life, geographical educators around the world must use their curricula to promote socialisation in communities amongst young and old people in formal and informal learning environments. We need to assist learners to understand how the globalisation forces operate and how our society is being changed forever. This is a complex spatial, social, and economic process, but one in which geographical education must play a leading role. Otherwise, many people will believe that globalisation is only an economic process amidst a busy world.

8. REFERENCES

Bednarz, S., et al. (1994) Geography for Life. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Research and Exploration.

Cuevas, M., Millan, G. and Reid, A. (2000) Pedagogical implications of situated learning: Environmental workshops in rural Mexico. In M.Robertson & R.Gerber (eds.) The Child’s World: Triggers for Learning. (pp. 344-364) Melbourne: ACER Press

Delors,J. et al. (1996) Learning: The Treasure Within. New York: UNESCO.

Hudson, A. (2000) Towards a global political economy. In A. Kent (ed.) Reflective Practice in Geography Teaching (pp.57-67). London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

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