Preface to Global Issues in Education by Greg A. Wiggan and Charles B. Hutchison

Through education, increasing numbers of the tiniest villages in the remotest places on earth are learning the importance and the impact of their own agricultural and traditional practices on the world and its economy. For example, the natives of the rain forests of Brazil understand that they are partial custodians of the very atmosphere the whole world depends on, and have learned that they should preserve the rain forests for all humanity. The fishermen along the shores of Atlantic Ocean in Ghana understand that fish supplies can be, and are indeed being exhausted by the insatiable appetites of ever-larger fishing vessels that deplete regions of the oceans their livelihoods depend on. Concurrently, however, commercial fishing companies from industrialized nations understand that their fishing practices are unsustainable, and that their profits depend on fragile ecosystems, many of which are in the custody of poor villages around the world. On the one hand, industrialized nations like the United States and Germany and multi-national oil companies depend on small regions of the earth that produce oil to satisfy their economic engines. On the other hand, these regions of the earth view themselves as a part of the matrix that makes the global economies successful.

One only needs to visit a remote village in Africa or Asia where multitudes of people are clutched to their cell phones or texting each other in order to understand the power of globalization. With passing time, globalization has become the universal force that is passively pulling all nations of the earth towards a common destiny. Nations are learning from each other at an accelerated pace, thanks to the Internet—for better or worse. For this reason, nations of the world are learning that they have no option than to join in the movement or be left behind.

The process of globalization is an implicit invitation to the world to participate in sharing a common global pie. Whether or not one shares the view that this pie is fixed in size and so intense competition is needed in order to have access to a good enough portion of it to be satisfied, or that the pie can be enlarged to satisfy all participating nations, there is one thread that runs across all participating nations: a common system for articulating different ideas. This system of articulation falls into the lap of education: the development of a common language and common measures.

As many savvy educators already know, educating just one pluralistic nation is no small feat: it involves the alignment of life and learning traditions of different cultures whose lifestyles are contingent on deep-seated systems of beliefs or philosophies. We know that traditions die hard. Thus, the enterprise of multicultural education becomes an experiment in harmonizing or equal-yoking these different systems into a smooth-running educational engine. Enter globalization, and this educational engine faces another burden to resolve: trying to pull a heavy weight along; another car on a train, as it were. In other words, in addition to harmonizing the needs of a pluralistic society—with all its complexities—there is the added burden of addressing a new educational objective: making students globally-competitive.

How to Read This Book

This book addresses the complexities of global education in an inter-connected manner, and this is especially evident in Chapter 1. For this reason, readers will find themselves being led through different circuits of ideas and yet in a progressively directional manner. Thus, when addressing the earlier chapters of the book, readers will be referred to issues in different sections of the book and vice-versa in order to offer deeper, circumspective understanding of the issues.

The layout of the chapters may be viewed as comprising three parts. In Part One (chapters 1-3), the broad issues of globalization are examined. This is followed by Part Two (chapters 4-10), where the interface of people and issues of multiculturalism are addressed, in the context of globalization. The last section, Part Three (chapters 11-17) address the issues of minority learners in relation to globalization. As reader may recognize, these divisions are not clear-cut, since the issues addressed in the different sections flow into each other and form a continuum—or better put, an interconnected, three-dimensional matrix of human issues—a testament to the ubiquity of human sensibilities, even in the enterprise of the globalization process.

It is the hope of the authors that the issues in this book will help readers to understand the current and emerging educational issues of globalization from peculiar perspectives.