General Education Capstone

WEEK ONE GUIDANCE 

Globalization

Over the past several hundred years, advances in transportation have made international trade and international travel easier, cheaper, and more frequent. Today it is possible to travel from any place in the world to any other place in the world in 24 hours or less. There have been consequences for everyone, from international trade and investment, economic development and increasing prosperity, to changes in education, personal experiences, and physical well-being. For the most part, most people are healthier, better fed, longer-lived, and more prosperous than at any time in the past. There have been many benefits from globalization but there have also been some negative consequences.

Some of those negative consequences have been negative effects on the physical environment. While some of the more impoverished or less-technologically advanced countries have benefited from globalization, other countries have been locked into a cycle of increasing indebtedness (Shah, 2007). Criticism has been leveled against the First World countries for removing local raw materials from impoverished countries to their own benefit rather than the local citizens.

There are also long-range, long-term consequences that we are only now beginning to recognize. While the world is no longer wracked by major wars, there are more small wars than in the past. Some of that conflict is due to the resistance to globalization. 

Global Citizenship

Thus we are faced with a choice: to become a member of the globe or to retreat behind our own national walls. Is it, however, possible to refuse to become a global citizen? At the rate that the world is getting increasingly smaller and more immediately connected, more and more political, social, and cultural issues are becoming international, trans-national, or global concerns. As we have seen, what happens in Yemen, Syria, and Somalia has a direct effect on us at home, wherever home may be.

Please visit and read this page: Global Citizenship from the United Nations (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

 

POINTS TO PONDER: One of the principles of Critical Thinking is to consider the consequences, results, or the outsomces of the decisions we make. 1. What are the alternatives to becoming a member of the global community? 2. What are the possible consequences of failing to establish a global community?

 

This would seem to put a burden on those of us who want to accept responsibility for the world we live in and the world of our children’s children. As the world gets smaller and more intimately and immediately interconnected, we can become part of the solution or part of the problem. Global citizenship involves accepting personal and national responsibility for the world in which we live. The global citizen is actively engaged in trying to make things better in order to preserve a high living standard, peace, and stability around the world. This also means becoming part of a global community, allying oneself with people from all around the world, regardless of any differences in race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.

 

Global Education

At this point, it seems that only a disaster will halt the progress of globalization. Whether we want to be part of a global civilization or not, it appears as if we will be by default. If that is the case, then we have to learn how to work within the new, global context. We will have to learn about other peoples, other cultures, and other ways of looking at and being involved in the world. We will have to learn how to appreciate not only how we are diverse but also how we are all similar underneath the apparent differences.

One of the reasons for general education courses and liberal arts courses is to help students see how people are pretty much the same throughout time and across different cultures. In literature courses we can look at Oedipus, Othello, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Hester Prynne share similar characteristics to people we know even though in some ways they appear at first to be quite different from us. Under the differences between religious we can find similar characteristics. Within cultures we can find how different people have found solutions to similar problems. In history we can find examples to draw upon in order to avoid the mistakes others have made in the past.

When we can learn to appreciate the differences and to value them for what they can add to our lives we can move beyond xenophobia and make our lives, individually and societally, better and more meaningful. That is possible, however, only if we are willing to learn from other cultures and to learn how to value learning itself. 

Individual Identity

There are those around the world as well as here at home who are afraid of globalization. One of the fears voiced by those abroad it that the world is going to be turned into some American version of McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Walt Disney and that their cultures, religions, and viewpoints will be taken away from them. Other think that globalization will be the end of democracy and freedom. See, for example, Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld (Ballantine Books, 1996) or Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011). There is the very real possibility that modern global terrorism is a reaction against the assumed Americanization of the world.

However, if we look carefully at American corporations’ foreign offices, we see that rather than supplant local cultures, they have accepted facets of those cultures and adapted to those cultures. One example is the wide variety of kinds of corn and potato chips that Frito-Lay offers in different countries, most of which are not available in the United States. 

The question of local and personal identity may be seen as a threat by some, but it may only be a perceived threat rather than anything real. We see that the Islamist terrorist groups think that American (and by extension Christians) are trying to wipe out Islam and replace all religions with some version of Christianity; while here in the United States many Christians seem to think that globalization will spell the end of Christianity. Both views cannot be true simultaneously, but both could be wrong.

 

 

POINTS TO PONDER 1. If we accept the inevitability of globalization, how can we make the best of the situation? 2. What is the best of the situation?

 

The future shape of the world and our own individual lives will be based on the decisions that we make, both individually and as a nation. In order to make the best decisions, those most be informed decisions. Rather than rely on emotions, belief, hopes, or faith, we should make those decisions on the best available information and through careful, reasoned thought.