Globalization and Education

According to Alfred Marshall, a thinker of the classic economy, “the most valuable capital of all the capitals is the one that is invested in human beings”. Of these words we can deduce the importance of education as a motor of development for the nations. Since the present concept of globalization has a fundamentally economic origin, the education takes a special significance like generator from capital.

This phenomenon appeared long ago with the development of the international trade. But for some years it has intensified considerably thanks to a particularly favorable political and ideological context to its development, as well as to the acceleration of the technological innovations, especially in the field of the communication. The planner of the education – in any State that it comes from - must reflect on the numerous consequences that a similar phenomenon generates, particularly in terms of mutations of the work market, in order to manage as well as possible the adaption of the formation system in its country.

The increasing complexity of the economic relations at a world-wide level - demanding greater efficiency and technical, productive and commercial refinement - intensifies the competitive character of our societies and the emphasis in expectations of economic utility that the subjects and the governments direct to the education. It is more manifested the urgency of different sectors from the society to introduce changes in the educative system that allow the teenagers to enter successfully and efficiency in the dynamics of the present economy and, mainly, future changes that will assure to the country a favorable position in what we call the global market. The entailment between education and economic development has become something of obvious and fundamental importance at this rate of history, simply something urgent in view of a country like ours, with serious deficiencies in the material conditions of life of a significant part of its population. But it is indeed the need of this alliance and the intensity of which is presents itself and demands our attention, which accentuates the possibility of an estimation of the education in which all the nondeductible senses to fees and utility are neglected and subjected to a stage of eclipse and delay.

Consequences of globalization concerning the training needs

The international dimension is not totally absent of the present educational systems: thus, in the superior education level, for example, particularly in the sectors of science, technology and investigation, the integration of foreign students hasn’t stopped increasing during the last 30 years to get to represent today more of a million people. However, in the majority of cases the distributed education does not respond to the new exigencies born from the globalization.

As recalled by J. Hallak, the objective of the majority of the actual educational systems, that consists of making a national economy work forming an abundant manpower for certain and precise tasks and allowing an elite to have access to the direction and management positions, appears partially un adapted to the mutations that the contemporary societies undergo, as proved in the new observed forms of illiteracy in some of the more developed countries.

Indeed, to respond the challenges of globalization it seems necessary to prepare people for a world of the work where the tasks that have be carried out will be in constant evolution, hierarchy will yield its place to an organization of networks, the information will journey through shared informal channels, the initiative will predominate on obedience and where the “logics” at stake will be particularly complex due to the extension of the markets beyond the borders of the States. Therefore, education must help the people to carry out tasks for which they were not formed, to prepare themselves for a professional life that will not have a linear character, to improve its aptitude to work as a team, to use the information in a independent way, to develop their capacity of improvisation, as well as their creativity, and, in the end, to forge a complex thought in relation to the operation of the real world.