Globalization for the children of tomorrow

Globalization for the children of tomorrow

Globalization is now a reality and for the better or the worse, there is no turning back. The question that we must ask ourselves is not whether we accept it but what shape we want it to take. The title of this blog, “The Arrow”, is an open question to us all about what form of globalization it is that we want and how we will educate our children in this new world.  

Globalization imposed itself on me in 1979 at the age of one when my parents moved from the United Kingdom to France. It is rare to refer Britons in this way, but I was born to a family of immigrants. In turn, I would come to epitomise what it means to be a part of the global workforce, moving from France to mainland China to Hong Kong, for economic reasons. This will not be my last move.

The places in which I have lived, studied and worked define me yet I am not really a part of any of them, forever the outsider, the stranger… the foreigner. I am not on my own in this situation, as mass immigration has been with us for many years now. Yet the phenomenon has started to accentuate itself. How do we define ourselves and where can we say that we belong? The current cultural and societal frameworks seem to be inadequate.

Looking around me here in Hong Kong, I see a growing community of people that we can call trans-nationals. How will we fit into national schemata? Indeed, cross-cultural migration is no longer linear and binary but complex and multi-dimensional. What are my daughter and my son, born in Hong Kong to a French mother and a British father? We are at the frontlines of a new race, a new nation and a new culture being created.

It is in that search for a common thread, an explanation or a sense of belonging, that I Googled “England France China Hong Kong history”. Surely there had to be a way that they could all be related. It was then that the pieces of the puzzle came together, “The Arrow War” otherwise known as the Second Opium War, appeared as the search result on my screen. The Arrow, a Hong Kong registered ship laden with opium, was seized by Chinese authorities which led Franco-British troops to invade China once again.

There it was, the timely reminder that globalization has been with us now for a long time already. The most important event, in the gospel according to Google, to have brought these four countries was a war, a trade war over drugs. I then remembered that in fact I had visited the Summer Palace in Beijing a number of years ago with my wife and I had been ashamed to see a plaque commemorating how British and French troops had looted and burnt it down during the Second Opium War.

We still live in an age of continued imperialistic aggression, where trans-national organisations have learnt how to exploit the loopholes and the failings of outdated forms societal organisation and governance. Nation-states can no longer adequately answer the needs of a growing proportion of its citizens.

Education in particular will play a preponderant role in answering those needs. We need to fight for the improvement of the quality of the education that is provided to our children. It should be equitable and open to all as an inalienable basic human right. Privilege and wealth should not determine access to it. Education should bring about social justice and instil values of tolerance and charity in our children. Our offspring are now well and truly global citizens who need to learn how to share and sustain our planet. They should be enlightened, reflective and critical. Education should be child-centred, respecting those children and not disparaging them. Their physical, intellectual and emotional integrity needs to be protected. The holistic development of our offspring has to be pursued and not a narrow model of education focussing only on economic efficiency. Our youth are not human capital but human beings.