Globalization and Education

Globalization is perceived differently by various theoreticians- for some globalization as the emergence of new global political structures such as the European Union (EU) or the World Trade Organization (WTO); for others it as the speed with which goods and information are moved; some see it also generating new communalities and lines of communication (Ferguson, 1999). They all agree that globalization is a set of take-it-or-leave-it changes on three levels-economical, political and cultural. The power of nations is weakening, since they control a very small percentage of capital and have to follow global rules (Burbules & Torres, 2000). This process affects each country differently and the smaller communities within them. Carney (2003) argues that globalization is not very global because it leaves out many countries.
In this paper, ‘North’ is used to describe the developed Western world and ‘South’ for the developing countries (III World).
Labour markets are getting polarized. There exists a small sector with high skills and good salaries, particularly in and from the North, and a large sector with low skills and low salaries in and from the South. If there are some international companies in the South then most of the brain- work is done by Western employees. In the West, mostly immigrants from developing countries do the lower level jobs but it is not the other way round. One of the driving factors for this might be education factor as it plays an important role in developing countries (value of intellectual leadership and usability, especially foreign language skills, as the world has not agreed on one lingua franca yet, and IT, ITC skills is increasing)(Burbules & Torres, 2000).
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