Globalization in Education: A Historical Narrative
The process of globalization, which enhances the cooperation at the international level, is not new to the human history. Although, during last century, people had been experiencing its oftentimes evident effects more than ever, this process has its roots back to the medieval times or even earlier. In particular, globalization profoundly influenced the area of education among other spheres of social life and brought more benefits than drawbacks allowing better education by using dissertation methodology https://top-dissertations.com/methodology/ it was achieved by building universities, popularizing and developing science.
First of all, gradual development of educational centers in the medieval times all over the world occurred due to several factors that explain further globalization in the sphere of education. The first factor is the spread of literacy, which facilitated greatly and improved the process of transferring knowledge to a bigger number of students at a time. The second factor is, in fact, the continuation of the first one; it is the spread of handwritten documents and later typography. These two factors had enormously contributed to the formation of globalized character of universities and others learning institutions and were quite universal in different parts of the world.
Moving on to the very characteristics that globalization demonstrated in the area of education, it is worth mentioning that educational institutions attracted people with various backgrounds who aimed at studying particular areas. Oftentimes these people came from different parts of rather broad territories. For example, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which was open for students of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian backgrounds, who studied not only Persian philosophers’ texts, but also Indian and Greek ones; or the oldest learning center in Europe, the University of Bologna, where students from all over the Europe could gain profound knowledge in their respective field of interest.
Thus, all these examples, though there are many more, prove that ten or more centuries ago the most intellectually progressive individuals were seeking to obtain knowledge. Students and scholars of different backgrounds met in these educational centers, they shared their knowledge, and it all added to the raising globalized nature of education. Moreover, in some sense, all these educational institutions, from the very beginning of their formation, had a global character. As Wendt and Renn mentioned, “This movement of knowledge between different intellectual centers and across global and local scales was especially clear using the example of Aristotelian commentaries that were written in different parts of the world”.
Through the periods of Enlightenment and later, closer to the 20th century, these trends only intensified, making education more universal and democratic in terms of access to knowledge for a greater number of students. Nowadays, in the 21st century, the influence of globalization on education all over the world is undeniable as the free and unlimited spread of knowledge and information, which is the most significant feature of modern globalization, intensively promotes a more diverse and more competitive educational environment. Few centuries ago, the best universities attracted students and professors with various backgrounds from different parts of the globe.
As a result, contemporary globalization demands from both students and teachers to be highly skilled and to improve their knowledge all the time so as to be more valuable on the jobs market. The equality brought by globalization to the area of education also means that the scale of measuring someone’s skills is not local or national: it is global, which makes the competition to obtain a worthy training and necessary knowledge rather intensive. Furthermore, due to such diversities in the 21st century, globalization has also raised the importance to be culturally attentive and having universal values, taking into account people’s different backgrounds.
Hence, as it is shown above, through all the centuries since the establishment of the very first educational institutions in various parts of the world back to the 21st century, globalization was an accompanying feature of the studying process. As the cornerstone of education lays in the need to share knowledge, globalization adds enormously to the spread of valuable ideas, gathering intellectual people who come from different parts of the globe.
