Foreword

Educating the Global Citizen provides a comprehensive overview as well as fine-grained analyses of the impact of globalization on the three countries (the United States, Canada, and Mexico) of North America. The international scholars assembled in this volume document how the various forces of globalization interact not only with national but with state/provincial and local levels of society to shape the goals, governance, financing, content, processes and outcomes of education. Of particular concern to the contributing authors is this driving question: What implications do educational reforms of the past three decades have for the formation of democratic citizens and the achievement of more just societies? Moreover, who benefits from current public policies framed by a dominant neoliberal ideological agenda that promotes privatization and decentralization of social services as well as a market logic and competitive business model determining the regulation and running of school systems? In systematically critiquing the deleterious consequences of these current policies, the authors also point out the contradictions that beset them and engender opposition. They describe democratic movements that both resist and offer alternative views of how education systems can contribute to individual development and collective well-being.

Educating the Global Citizen is the first volume in a series of comparative case studies undertaken in sixteen countries. The book’s useful conceptual framework and cogent organizing themes are an excellent introduction to a cumulative body of scholarship that promises to illuminate the most significant issues confronting education systems internationally.