Globalization, Education, and Citizenship: Solidarity Versus Markets?

Abstract

This article suggests that globalization places limits on state autonomy and national sovereignty, affecting education in various ways. Those limits are expressed in tensions between global and local dynamics in virtually every policy domain. Globalization not only blurs national boundaries but also shifts solidarities within and outside the national state. Globalization cannot be defined exclusively by the post-Fordist organization of production; therefore, issues of human rights will play a major role affecting civic minimums at the state level, the performance of capital and labor in various domains, and particularly the dynamics of citizenship and democracy in the modern state. However, educational policy and its contributions to citizenship, democracy, and multiculturalism will face unprecedented challenges if the logic of fear, exacerbated by the events of September 11, prevails.