Globalization - Fear or Freedom

My neighbor Gloria, a sixty eight year old woman refuses to buy any goods at her local Wal-Mart store. She adamantly says “I do not want to be their patron; they have taken away business from small shops in our town”. Reflecting on her comment I sense that there is a fear of globalization in small towns of USA especially where the labor jobs have been sent away to China, India and other developing countries. This comment from my neighbor inspired me to search for more information. As an educator I realized that globalization is indeed changing the face of America and how we deal with it today will determine what kind of life our children will have tomorrow.

Globalization is complex. It is complex because it has created interdependence at all levels of society. At economic level it refers to multinational companies of developed nations using labor from developing countries, hence creating a shift in types of jobs and productivity in the US; at political level these big companies have been accused of gaining power beyond boundaries of nation states hence threatening the nation state power structure; and at cultural level it refers to mixing of cultural values of people across the globe.

Although there is much dialog over the Web about positives and negatives of globalization, I believe globalization is about us – the people. I do not want to give into the fear of unknown outcomes of this global revolution; rather I want to focus on what I can do to deal with it. With Internet connectivity, people can communicate with other people anywhere, seek out relationships at all levels, and exercise individual freedom of expression and influence masses if they want to. That is empowering and at individual level I want to center on that.

Furthermore, a study, done in 1999, to generate curriculum recommendations from multinational perspective, reported the following challenges that we should monitor as we teach:

• The economic gap among countries and between people within countries will widen significantly. This means the gap between rich and poor will widen.
• Information technologies will dramatically reduce the privacy of individuals.
• The inequalities between those who have access to information technologies and those who do not will increase dramatically. This refers to digital divide that is already dividing people in the US.
• Poverty in developing countries will increase. Poverty and homelessness is at rise in the US as well.
• Conflict of interest between developing and developed nations will increase due to environmental deterioration.
• The cost of obtaining adequate water will rise dramatically due to population growth and environmental deterioration
• Deforestation will dramatically affect diversity of life, air, soil, and water quality (Parker, Ninomiya, and Cogan, 1999, p.125)

I believe that these trends are interdependent and have direct implications for educators in the classroom:

1. Students and teachers need to view all areas across the curriculum from a global perspective. Connecting the dots from events in one country to the events in our country.
2. All students should have the access to technology in school and also should be taught to solve problems in meaningful ways. Thinking critically and strategically is the key here.
3. Students should be taught social skills to deal with cultures other than our own, and to maintain a proper conduct while communicating with people across the globe via technology.
4. Students should be made aware of the issue of equality and inequality and critically examine their civic responsibility as citizens living in their local communities and the global community.
5. Last but not the least, students should be taught to see connections between the world problems and our citizenship in terms of environment and use of natural resources. (More on this later)

Interdependence suggests that we must accept that we are not alone. What would I say to a parent who feels the same as my neighbor Gloria does? I would say, old jobs are not coming back, and if they did we would not be able to afford basic necessities of life today. However we can embrace it; we can read, we can learn, we can understand the economic, social, and political forces in this new global world, and use our freedoms to help prepare our children to live in it successfully.

Reference
Parker, W. C., Ninomiya, A., and Cogan, J. (1999). Educating world citizens: Towards multinational curriculum development. American Research Journal 36,(2) 117-148.