Globalization, Education, and Cultural Identity Assignment

Globalization, Education, and Cultural Identity - Assignment Example As the essay declares in recent decades, the push towards globalization had been unrelenting. Seen mainly as a means by which countries could improve its competitiveness in the global market for goods and services, nations of the world embarked on an all-out race to adopt the international (read: Western) manner of speaking, dressing, and acquiring a taste for music on the MTV, products sold on eBay, or movie stars on HBO. Children are especially vulnerable, because their minds are much like a blank book for anyone to write in, so unguarded are they in discerning right from wrong. It is therefore a valid concern for policy makers to determine whether educational stress on globalization benefits a country economically at the expense of its unique cultural heritage. Answering this would provide direction for institutionalized education on how to deal with unfolding developments in this area. As the paper discusses Christoph Wulf, professor of general and comparative educational sciences in Freie University in Germany, outlined some crucial points in the transmission and learning of intangible heritage. Focusing, for example, on the cultural element of rituals and practices, Wulf is of the view that what makes rituals and other practices socially and culturally effective is the performative character of the body. Rituals are valuable social functions. They help to organize the transition from one social status to another, at socially and existentially central moments such as marriage, birth and death.