Harmony and Dissonance in International Education: The Limits of Globalisation

Abstract

There is a tendency to assume that the rhetoric of globalisation matches the reality.In fact, national cultures still shape educational systems and, thus, are signifiers of dissonance.The creation of “harmony” is no easy matter.The development of transna tional mechanisms is an attempt to overcome some of these barriers and to create a sense of region.The focus has moved, therefore, not so much from national to global but from national to regional.The development of international education should not be dependent on myths.Notions of globalisation and harmonisation are seductive because they appear to offer untroubled gateways to mobility and, thus, enhanced understanding of other cultures.In practice, however, the greater the mobility created for the relatively wealthy nations of the developed world, the greater the gulf grows between those nations and the poorer countries.Thus, the most profound limit to globalisation is poverty.