Conflicts of Globalization and Restructuring of Education
“The Conflicts of Globalization and Restructuring of Education” Douglas Kellner
The September 11 terrorist attacks have generated a wealth of theoretical reflection as well as regressive political responses by the Bush administration and other governments (Kellner, 2003b). The 9/11 attacks and subsequent Bush administration military response have dramatized once again the centrality of globalization in contemporary experience and the need for adequate conceptualizations and responses to it for critical theory and pedagogy to maintain their relevance in the present age. In this article, I want to argue that critical educators need to comprehend the conflicts of globalization, terrorism, and the prospects and obstacles to democratization in order to develop pedagogies adequate to the challenges of the present age. Accordingly, I begin with some comments on how the September 11 terror attacks call attention to key aspects of globalization, and then provide a critical theory of globalization, after which I suggest some pedagogical initiatives to aid in the democratic reconstruction of education after 9/11.1 September 11 and Globalization The terrorist acts on the United States on September 11 and the subsequent Terror War throughout the world dramatically disclose the downside of globalization, and the ways that global flows of technology, goods, information, ideologies, and people can have destructive as well as productive effects.2 The disclosure of powerful anti-Western terrorist networks shows that globalization divides the world just as it unifies, that it produces enemies as it incorporates participants. The events reveal explosive contradictions and conflicts at the heart of globalization and that the technologies of information, communication, and transportation that facilitate
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globalization can also be used to undermine and attack it, and generate instruments of destruction as well as production. The experience of September 11 points to the
The September 11 terrorist attacks have generated a wealth of theoretical reflection as well as regressive political responses by the Bush administration and other governments (Kellner, 2003b). The 9/11 attacks and subsequent Bush administration military response have dramatized once again the centrality of globalization in contemporary experience and the need for adequate conceptualizations and responses to it for critical theory and pedagogy to maintain their relevance in the present age. In this article, I want to argue that critical educators need to comprehend the conflicts of globalization, terrorism, and the prospects and obstacles to democratization in order to develop pedagogies adequate to the challenges of the present age. Accordingly, I begin with some comments on how the September 11 terror attacks call attention to key aspects of globalization, and then provide a critical theory of globalization, after which I suggest some pedagogical initiatives to aid in the democratic reconstruction of education after 9/11.1 September 11 and Globalization The terrorist acts on the United States on September 11 and the subsequent Terror War throughout the world dramatically disclose the downside of globalization, and the ways that global flows of technology, goods, information, ideologies, and people can have destructive as well as productive effects.2 The disclosure of powerful anti-Western terrorist networks shows that globalization divides the world just as it unifies, that it produces enemies as it incorporates participants. The events reveal explosive contradictions and conflicts at the heart of globalization and that the technologies of information, communication, and transportation that facilitate
1
globalization can also be used to undermine and attack it, and generate instruments of destruction as well as production. The experience of September 11 points to the
References: Appiah, A.A. and Gates, H. L. (1999) Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: BasicCivitas. 40 _________(2003b) From September 11 to Terror War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy 41 _________ (1997) "Towards an International Social-Movement Unionism", in: New Left Review, 225, pp 3 Barber’s recent Fear’s Empire (2003) sharply criticizes Bush administration policy of 5 While I find Hardt and Negri Empire (2000) to be an impressive and productive text, I am not and postmodern politics, see Best and Kellner 1991, 1997, and 2001, and the valorization and critique of postmodern politics in Hardt and Negri 2000 and Burbach 2001.