ABSTRACT
Scotland rests on the northern border with England. While it shares any number of similar policies with England as part of the United Kingdom, in education Scotland has endeavored to pursue different policies. As an aggregate, these have led to higher results on PISA. It would seem obvious that the English would be curious about what is going on with their northern neighbors, and would send delegations up to adapt elements from Scotland for their own schools. What independent Scottish educational policies have the English tried out? None. Sweden shares a common border with Finland, also a high achiever on PISA. Finland’s school policies have been the polar opposite of the market-based strategies pursued by Sweden, and has become a must-see travel destination for school reformers the world over. What Finnish policies have the Swedes taken over? None. Extending 5,525 miles, the US has the world’s longest border with Canada, another country that has done well on PISA. Over 90 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US, making the overwhelming majority of their schools easily accessible for visitors from south of the border. What Canadian policies have been transferred into the US? None. For all of the chatter about data-driven decision-making that has gone on for years now, an insular imperative has characterized many nations. Their policy makers have been tone deaf. They have persisted with strategies that have not lifted student achievement. Such policy makers have failed to learn from nations that have performed better,
even when they share geographical proximity, a common language, and cultural similarities. Why is this? It’s hard not to think that long-standing and deeply ingrained attitudes of one country toward another play a role. The English economy is larger than the Scottish one. The same can be said about the Swedes in relation to the Finns or the US in relation to Canada. Countries that lead in economic clout appear to have a hard time admitting that they might learn from others who do better in education. It’s easier to be insular. The old insular imperative is related to the imperious imperative in paradoxical ways. How can an imperious stance be connected with insularity at one and the same time? This is possible if a nation projects its own policies and practices abroad for others to learn from while failing to model the position of a curious and open-minded learner in its own conduct. It is possible if a nation assumes that the answers to change all lie on one side, and that others, perhaps smaller and less powerful, have little to impart. It’s hard not to connect a certain arrogance to the ways that the imperious and insular imperatives have interacted over the years. This would not matter so much at a purely political level, if students were not the ones who pay the price in terms of lost learning opportunities. It would not matter on the level of theory if teachers did not suffer from a sense of diminished professionalism in practice. While educational policy makers in some nations have been strangely cut off from learning and trying out new strategies that they’ve acquired from across borders, what has been happening in other sectors? AnnaLee Saxenian’s study of digital entrepreneurs in The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy provides one example.1 In recent years computer engineers from India, Israel, and Taiwan have developed thousands of thriving new businesses as they connect labor demand in their home countries with technical expertise in Silicon Valley. “Brain drain” is out. “Brain gain” is in, with everyone benefiting through new jobs and greater prosperity. Silicon Valley in California is the hub of this burgeoning new industry that is transforming everything from how we communicate to how we shop. If you’re a technology entrepreneur in New Delhi or
Tel Aviv, you book a flight to San Francisco for meetings a few times a year to be sure, but you don’t have to live there. You go to the Bay area to get new information to take back, circulate, and capitalize upon on your home turf. It’s all about gaining new knowledge, moving it around with colleagues, and then making the most of it collectively-just as it should be for the professionals in our schools today. With all of this dynamism, to seek to contain education within standardized boundaries in a constricted curriculum with principals who are nailed down doing endless paperwork is to give in to an outdated insular imperative. Fortunately, educators don’t have to start from scratch. In the remainder of this chapter I first will describe a vision for global education that has been produced by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in three reports over many years that provides a humanistic understanding of the profession and its impact. Second, I will present a rights-based approach that is being used by transnational organizations as a moral anchor and political strategy to contain the worst aspects of globalization while making the most of its potential. Third, I will delineate strategies being pursued by Education International, the largest professional organization in the world with over 32 million educators, to advance a new change agenda. This encompasses the needs of students and teachers in both economically developed and developing nations.
