The College and The Coffee House: 2
Should
Education become more local, or global? This was a question posed to me
in a conversation: As in these cases, I improvised an answer. But, as
usual, the obvious answer is not necessarily the right one, and is
indeed worth interrogating.
Most
education, at the present time, is locally focused. This is because
Education, at least mostly, is a part of the State, that funds its
existence and direct its agenda. Many educators around the world work
for the State, or at least, their wages are subsidised by the State.
Even in cases where a global institution sponsors education - Church is
the most prominent example - the State controls it tightly, through
curriculum and credential.
The
dynamic of work and commerce, however, has been global. The
WTO-inspired globalisation touched far corners of the world over the
last few decades, as did the crumbling of the cold war politics. English
as a language has gained currency, even in China, and the Internet and
the Worldwide Web has changed how we access information. This tension
between local and global has come to education - and the vector points
to global. Over the last several decades, education, curriculum and
credential have become more homogenised and more portable - and the
future points to it becoming more so.
But,
beyond the obvious, there are other questions that we should answer.
Education is indeed a formally constituted activity that needs state
sponsorship, but this is not the case with learning. All learning is
local, in a way, because it is usually understood in local language and
within local contexts, defined by the learners' lived experiences.
Besides, economies and work are becoming more local at this particular
inflection point of technologies and economic interaction, with global
supply chains being politically resented and technologically challenged.
Based on this, we could arrive at a completely different answer, that
education should become more local and point to empirical evidence that
it is indeed becoming so.
However,
one could also argue that all ideas are global, even if they are
locally interpreted through language and context. Our nationally
determined politics and social lives melt into global past as soon as it
is consigned to it, adding itself into the global history of human
race, or something even bigger, the big history of the universe. Atoms
behave the same in Detroit and Delhi, the Oceans encompass all
continents and the climate transcends national boundaries. The
archaeological remains in British Museum or Louvre are not only of
British or French origins, and we did not have all-American Dinosaurs at
any point in their long existence. As far as education concerns
knowledge, it is already global, whether or not we accept the same.
I
am arguing that we can start from all education is local and we need
global context and eventually arrive at a point that all knowledge is
global and education translates it into local context.
So,
in the end, the answer will depend on what we think education is. If we
narrowly define education as a formal activity, as in College, it will
remain limited to who pays for it and what is for: It will be
state-funded locally mandated activity which would need to become more
global. However, if we step beyond the formal boundaries and look to
include the informal learning, we would have the world upside down -
global knowledge seeking local context and engagement. That is indeed
the spirit of the Coffee House.
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