Globalization and Philosophy of Education

The term "globalization" is relatively new. Alfred E. Eckes, Jr. and Thomas W. Zeiler credit Theodore Levitt for coining the word in 1983 in an article in the Harvard Business Review. In a short time, other authors adopted the term. Thomas Freidman, for example, used the phrase to define the 1990s. Freidman claimed that the world had entered a new era because free market capitalism brought about the integration of countries and the standardization of cultures. Scholars disagree about the effects of the worldwide changes. Although Friedman claimed he did not admire globalization, he asserted that countries that had McDonald restaurants never went to war with each other. On the other hand, critics of the spread of multinational corporations such as Ken Saro-Wiwa contended that corporations such as Shell Oil Company deprived indigenous people of their homes, their livelihoods, and their lives. In 2003, UNESCO adopted a convention to safeguard such cultural inheritances as language, performing arts, rituals, and skills with crafts, warning that globalization caused people to disparage older, more traditional ways of life. The aim of this paper is to describe the efforts of two philosophers of education who tried to preserve the values of democracy in the face of extensive social changes going on during their lifetimes. The subjects are William Torrey Harris and John Dewey. (Contains 32 footnotes.)