Globalization can be described as the flow of goods, capital, technology, people and value across borders. It is a process which affects the socioeconomic policies, including educational policies, of different country in different ways.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept and meaning of globalization, and to look at strategies for integrating the dimension of globalization into education, focusing in particular on the impact of the global economy and new information technology. It includes a discussion of the breakdown of Japanese economic nationalism in the 1990s, an exploration of why education is important for responding to globalization, and a description of the main problems of the marketization of education.
The key to Japan's economic success in the postwar period lay in the development of the doctrine of economic nationalism, through which the social progress of workers and their families was advanced through the pursuit of the expansion and security of firms. This economic nationalism was emphasized by the system of lifelong employment, and the rapid growth of export industries in the 1975-90 period.
The economic recession in the early 90s marked the breakdown of Japanese economic nationalism, and was accompanied by an increasing awareness of a global economy and innovation of information technology.
A new consensus of the role of education is based on the idea that nations are able to win a competitive advantages in the world wide knowledge based economy through investment in new technology and upgrading the quality of human resources by the marketization of education.
This idea, however, threatens to increase the social inequalities and undermine the foundations of social solidarity. In order to reduce these problems it is necessary to rebuild the educational and employment institution and to upgrade the quality of local labor forces and industries.
