Vol.

LXV
No. 1/2013

85 - 92

School and the implications of globalisation

Emil Stan*
Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti, Bd. Bucuresti, 39, Ploiesti, 100680, Romania

Abstract
The phenomenon of globalisation has gone way beyond the boundaries of the economic, political and
social scopes; although the cultural globalisation is frequently talked about, paradoxically, the
implications on school are ignored. The current study makes use of the theoretical tool developed by
George Ritzer in two well-known works (The Globalization of Nothing and The Mcdonaldization of
Society) in order to analyse the transformations that school is going through nowadays under the
pressure of globalisation. The findings of the analysis are merely ascertaining and they lack ideological
connotations, although they highlight the authors opinions about school, education and their role in the
life of the individual and of the community.
Keywords: education; globalisation; standardisation; levelling; formatting; labour work; individual;
school.

1. Introduction
Education is spoken about as a process of transmitting; obviously, regarding
transmitting, there are several possibilities: transmitting is carried out in a framework
organised in a certain way, in ways considered to be appropriate therefore efficient,
under the close monitoring and supervision of specialists: we are certainly talking
about school, curriculum, as an assembly of experiences meant to have a formative
role, and by teachers; on the other hand, we can also talk about a secondary
transmitting process, an annex of the former, which accompanies it, completes it and
(possibly) continues it; in this case, the presence of intuition is compulsory (at least to
harmonise it with the basic or fundamental transmitting process), and intention in its
turn entails certain ways of putting it into practice, as well as the presence of some
persons with a certain level of specialty training. Finally, there is a third form of
transmitting, one that begins immediately after birth and which is distinguished by
several characteristics: the background is the environment in which the child lives; the
most frequent ways of education make reference to the direct, unassisted experience
of the child and occur as a result of the events, persons and things which are around
him, or, more importantly, arouse his attention; of course, we cannot ignore the
natural-vital predispositions which are innate and, in their turn, foster certain
experiences and discourage others. Although in this case the number of the
educational experiences is significantly lower and the life environment does not
explicitly contain intentions in the formation process, the interesting thing is that the
results are no only more durable, but also more profound. This type of education,
which the specialists in educational sciences call informal education (and which was
looked down on for its spontaneous character), does not seem to have the
characteristics of a process of transmitting.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: + 40 723 598 089

E-mail address: estan@upg-ploiesti.ro

Emil Stan /Journal of Educational Sciences and Psychology

The question that arises now is: what are the characteristics of a process of
transmitting? In order to answer this question, we shall refer to some analyses of what
some thinkers consider to be education: Platon, Karl Poper, Paulo Freire. At the
beginning of the Banquet, Socrates, who arrived later because he was preoccupied by
a problem, is invited by the host, Agathon, to sit next to him in order to share with
him the wisdom acquired as a result of over-considering the respective problem;
Socrates answers: It would be so good, Agathon, if wisdom were flowing every time
we touch each other, from the one who has more wisdom to the one who has less; to
be like the water that flows through the wooden wick, from the full pot towards the
empty one! If wisdom were like this, I would much appreciate now the fact that Im
sitting next to you. (1, 175d)
Poppers views regarding the theory of human spirit seen as a bucket is situated at
the same level: According to this, our head is like a perforated bucket by whose
holes the information in the outside world flows inside. This is actually the
fundamental theory of pedagogy. The funnel theory is the theory of the learning
process: the bucket is attached to a funnel through which information is poured. This
is the common theory. It is certain that our pedagogy narrows down to bombarding
the children with answers, without them asking questions first, whereas their
questions are disregarded. (2, p. 47)
For Paulo Freire, education, as it is nowadays put into practice, has a narrative
character, the teacher having the role of a narrator, which gives him a dominant
position within the narrative scenario: Narration (with the teacher as the narrator)
leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns
them into containers, into receptacles to be filled by the teacher. The more
completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the
receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. Education thus
becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the
teacher is the depositor. (3, p. 71-72)
Education as narration, having a centre of spreading its contents, which holds the
authority position within the educational scenario, is privileged by the current
situation; even if the teacher may not hold the central position any more, the actual
position is maintained, only its occupant being different: the team that drew up the
curriculum, the educational bureaucracy and the procedures that mediate and regulate
the relationship between teacher and student, the pressure group made up of parents,
the NGOs with interests in education, and probably the most important group, the
group of the business enterprises. From this point of view, by diminishing the
teachers influence and status, the student was left alone facing the interested
pressures of the others the only disinterested party, therefore the only one entitled to
speak on behalf of the student the teacher was silenced. Another major change
seems to be the replacement of the teachers authority (as a representative of
adulthood Gert Biesta) with the institution of the referee, anonymous and apparently
neutral, who takes care of the rules of the game being complied with.
Education as narration keeps its essence, even if the teacher has been deprived of
the quality of (sole) authority in the field of knowledge, having now the quality of
referee between sources and alternative knowledge products; downgrading the
teachers role and importance, we have not ruined the dependency/authority
relationship between an adult/knowledgeable and student/unknowledgeable, but we
have only replaced the one who has to process knowledge function of the possibilities,
needs and interests of the students, by a centre (which is unique, even if it is attended
to by a team) that states that they know what the possibilities, needs and interests of
the students are, thus being able to draw up an adequate curriculum. Education as
narration perfectly illustrates the second stage of human learning, as described by
Seymour Papert. For the American thinker, there are three learning stages which
describe the evolution of the relation between the individual and knowledge; thus, the
first stage begins as soon as the child is born and can be described as being the stage
of direct learning or experiential learning: Stage one happens when a baby is born.
And from that time there starts a process of learning by exploration, by touching.

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Everything is put into the mouth. Of course its not only in relation to things. Its
people as well. But there`s a learning going on that is driven by the individual, that the
baby is determining. Parents mightthink that they are determining what the baby
has learned, but its only a minor factor. (4)
2. The school between something and nothing
The second stage of learning involves going from exploratory learning, directed by
the childs needs and interests, to learning mediated by an adult, as well as by
language/narration; the right example for the second stage is school: Now there
comes a time when the infant is seeing a wider world than can be touched and felt. So
the questions in the childs mind arent only about this and this that I can see, but
about something I heard, saw a picture of, or imagined. And I think here the child
enters into a precarious and dangerous situation because not necessarily, but, I think,
in point fact in our societies, there is now a shift from experiential learning learning
by exploring to another kind of learning, which is learning being told: you have to
find adults who will tell you things. And this stage reaches its climax in school. (4)
In other words, in the second stage the child is not learning any more, but is taught
by adults, who tell him already processed information for him to assimilate. This stage
offers the foundations of globalisation as a defining phenomenon of today, and
globalisation requires generalisation of this learning paradigm. In other words, we can
speak about a mutual influence between globalisation on the one hand, and education
as a process of transmitting on the other hand. Fast capital flow, as well as
mcdonaldisation as a paradigm of rationalisation of the activity of corporations,
involves the existence of human infrastructure with similar (if not identical)
characteristics. In this respect, there emerged the idea of eliminating the differences
between the national educational systems, by imposing the same educational
paradigm, conceptualized at central level: thus, there occurs a category of processes
which, in George Ritzers opinion, is situated on an axis between two extremes:
something and nothing. For George Ritzer, Nothing is a social form usually
conceived and controlled at central level and devoid of significant essential content.
(5, p. 57)
The nothing is devoid of significant essential content, which means that it is
interchangeable. As a central category in explaining the phenomenon of education as
a transmitting process, 'nothing' gathers around it a theoretical constellation which is
(at least) unusual in approaching school and the educational phenomenon.
But what would nothing refer to actually at the educational level? First of all, the
need of corporations, organisations etc. which are involved in globalisation to make
use of labour force trained according to certain standards, which are the same,
irrespective of the geographical area, the traditions and needs of the respective
community. In this respect, first there occurred a switch of emphasis from education
to learning (from the language of education to the language of learning Gert Biesta),
which allowed for reducing/ignoring the unquantifiable elements: value aspects,
traditions, mentalities etc. Secondly, there was an attempt at moulding the educational
process according to the economic and cultural background, imposed on by the onthe-line work, a process theorised and favoured by the implementation of a
quantitative paradigm in describing and evaluating the educational process.
The quantitative-economic paradigm has allowed for uniformity of schools and
replacing the fundamental aim of education humanizing the child and preparing him
for the adult world by a simulacrum (Baudrillard) training labour force. Actually,
the process consisted of: levelling the curriculums, thus eliminating diversity as
(potential) danger of deviating from the standards set by the centre; levelling the
syllabuses, that is of the academic contents used, of the objectives set within each
field of study, of the assessment methods used and of the competences aimed at;
levelling the teacher training programs, of the teaching methods, which allows for
interchangeable teachers, it facilitates teachers mobility, but it makes them somehow
useless, at the same time, because a piece in a gearing is replaced by a similar piece;
of course, the obtained standardisation allows for rapid fixing of some breakdown

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occurred as a result of the unavailability of some teachers to teach, but a real change
of experience does not occur, the chances of learning new things are minimum, but
this is not actually what is aimed at; in fact, there are desperate attempts having the
online universities as their outcome to replace the teacher by a more reliable unit
and which (may) allow for an (almost) complete standardisation: the computer. All
this process is finalized by introducing a supervision from the centre, put into practice
by what is called the international credit system and which certifies for complying
with the standards, that is producing a similar graduate, interchangeable with any
graduate in the same field, irrespective of the geographical area of the school he
graduated from. Such a graduate has the characteristics of the nothing, in the sense
that George Ritzer uses the term.
3. The school as a non-place
Taking over George Ritzers terminology, we can describe school which produces
the interchangeable graduate (the nothing) as having the following characteristics: it is
a non-place, where non-persons (the teachers), using non-things (educational
resources contents, methods, material resources, means) offer educational nonservices (more exactly, training), the result being the non-graduate (a term we
introduce so as to give up using the term nothing, because of its negative
connotations).
All these elements must be conceived as functioning simultaneously, so that the
action of one of them sustains and increases the action of the others. A non-place
can be described by the absence of some distinctive characteristics which might pin it
to some geographical area an in a specific temporal moment. Without belonging to a
certain era or given geographical space, the non-place is functional everywhere,
though not belonging to any place. School as non-place is not claimed for by
educational traditions from a certain country either: what matters and is aimed at is
always functionality. A non-place is populated by non-persons, a term rather counterintuitive, which is why George Ritzer felt the need to explain it: The idea of a
person, of a human being, is obvious, but that of non-person, it is not. How can a
person be a non-person? In 1959 Erving Goffman wrote about non-persons (for
example, the taxi drivers whose presence that clients seem to be unaware), but for
most of us the term is counter-intuitive. A non-person is a person, definitely, but who
does not behave like a person, does not interact with the others like a person, and last
but not least, is not treated by others as a person. (5, p. 110)
4. The teachers as non-persons
Teachers are non-persons because they have a characteristic similar to non-places
they are prefabricated; this means that training future teachers takes place in similar
places (non-places), by means of some similar resources (non-things), using similar
strategies and methods (non-services), which means eventually that they will
perform similar services (actually non-services). This way, the competences of a
teacher are (almost) identical to the competences of another specialty teacher, the only
acceptable difference being the quantitative one a teacher may master the respective
competences to a higher degree. The qualitative differences that is the possibility
that a teacher may have other competences (as well) are not acceptable; starting
from levelling competences, it is hoped that the teacher may be soon replaced by the
perfect non-person (literally): the computer. Nowadays, the teacher is about to be
replaced by the characters in Disney parks: Those who play these roles are
interchangeable. And, even if they put a little originality in their acting, everything
they do is already planned in a detailed scenario, so it does not matter who is wearing
the respective costume. Whatever a character in Disney cast may say or do is hardly
complex or different, and the consequence is that any individual can be replaced; as a
matter of fact, a costume can be worn by several employees on the same day. (5, p.
110-111)

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Although the teacher can also use things as well, he will actually interact more
often with non-things; this means that the teacher is trained to be (and he actually is) a
user of some elements which are pre-fabricated in conditions pre-conceived by other
persons; there follows that a non-thing is conceived and controlled at central level
and is devoid of distinctive substance. (5, p. 104)
The curriculums, the syllabuses, the organisational manner of the school,
assessment methods etc. are examples of pre-fabricated things (non-things) which the
teacher (as a non-person) uses. The textbook may be the best example of non-things:
Textbooks are characterised by levelling in many respects. They usually have the
same size, the same page size, similar glossaries, bibliographies and indexes. Every
chapter often has the same format: presentation of the chapter, introduction, insertions
for further discussion, photos (usually colour), the glossary of the chapter and its
summary. (6, p. 55)
Obviously, such a textbook is perfect for a multiple-choice test. The multiplechoice test is the brand of mcdonaldisation, that is of nothing, as it represents the
final confirmation of turning school into mcschool: levelling the students by the way
of defining the student: any person (child, teenager or adult) who attends an
educational institution, with the aim of acquiring some knowledge, competencies and
skills (7, p. 96).
In other words, the uniqueness of the child is ignored because of the efficiency of
levelling; and the process goes on: levelled textbooks, teachers trained according to a
single pattern, identical learning environments, multiple-choice tests with items from
a common data base. Conclusion: predictable textbooks lead to predictable courses
and, in general, to a predictable experience in education (6, p.95). Predictable is
equivalent to levelling in this context. Levelling the predictable character started
with the higher education because its division force is much greater; if the graduates
represent copies of a pattern, if they are the result of an educational format (this is a
contradiction in terms from a certain point of view), then levelling is spreading in preuniversity education, in the institutions, the corporations, the jobs where they will
work. The American experience described by George Ritzer is amazing: The editors
have also provided other services of optimizing teaching for those teachers who opt
for their textbooks. The teacher may receive additional resources which he can use in
the class: course drafts, computer simulations, topics for discussion, videos, movies,
even ideas for associate professors and for the students projects. The teachers who
decide on using all these resources have hardly anything to do for course planning.
(6, p. 57)
The Romanian experience in the field of higher education is trying to copy the
American one, namely turning education into a routine process, levelled off, of the
on-the-line type, with teachers concerned with research and writing (excessive
bureaucracy represents the wrong understanding of the American experience, and the
effect was filling teachers time with bureaucratic procedures). What is ignored both
by the Romanian and by the American experience to the same extent is the effects in
the medium and long run in the pre-university education: sooner or later this will be
turned into a supplier of pre-fabricated components which will be assembled into the
final product in universities the nothing (a more complex prefabricate, which
meets the demands of labour market). What has been lost in the process? Education,
namely the human being.
5. The school as a provider of non-services
If school has turned into mcschool, attended to by non-persons (teachers trained
on-the-line), it will only offer non-services: Non-services are mostly offered by
non-persons, although it becomes more likely that persons as well should offer
services which are situated at the nothing side. Non-services will be mainly offered
in non-places and will imply the presence of non-things, but it becomes more likely to
be offered in places and imply the presence of things. (5, p. 114-115)
The equivalent for non-services is routine, whereas the teachers work becomes
more and more repetitive; the lesson becomes a process of assembling of some

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prefabricated elements: the contents, the didactic technologies, the objectives, the
childrens characteristics (levelled by turning them into pupils), the assessment
methods. Creativity is eliminated, enthusiasm is obliterated, emotional involvement in
childrens problems is forbidden or frowned upon, whereas education is replaced by
didactic technology (training). Mcschool already exists and produces
effects/graduates the online university: Just like a site, online university is a place
of flows information flows, flows of teachers and students who log in or log out
and it is unlikely to become a space in these flows which should slow down or cease
for a while () (5, p. 80)
6. Grobalisation and glocalisation in education
The lack of distinctive substance of the graduate (the nothing produced by a
system which replaced education with training) is representative for what George
Ritzer calls globalisation, as one of the two fundamental processes of
grobalisation (the other one is glocalisation). Grobalisation implies expansion,
conquering new markets (be they economic or cultural), but also the need to control
expansion and markets by the centre. The central control results in vanishing
differences, and this is obtained by creating a (quasi-global) network whose knots are
represented by mcschools (in fact, the typical example is that of McDonalds recipes).
Each mcschool within the network will use the same template/pre-established format
of producing nothing/the graduate: The idea of a pre-established format (template),
though related to that of set (in which one element is identical and equivalent to any
other element S.E.) and network, it highlights a different aspect of nothing because
it refers to a fundamental pattern or a mould conceived and used at central level in
order to create new forms. As the same pattern is always used, all reiterations of the
form are practically identical. (5, p. 128)
But, as mentioned before, for George Ritzer globalisation is not identical to
grobalisation, having also a process called glocalisation or hybridization and which
implies the unique combination of global and local elements; the effect of
glocalisation is the occurrence and fostering of differences, which involves on the axis
nothing-something a movement from nothingness (leveling) towards something
(differentiation, pre-eminence of the unique, of the individuality). In other words,
something is a social form, usually conceived and controlled at local level and
relatively rich in essentially significant content (5, p. 60)
7. The school as wonderful place
Can school be something? Yes, by G. Ritzers terminology, school can be a
wonderful place, that is a space where flows stop for a while; as a wonderful place,
school represents that communitys tradition, on the one hand, and on the other hand,
it fits into the picture, it is part of the geographical features of that place, which means
that, from the historical and architectural point of view, it is a landmark (it has the
characteristic of uniqueness). In a certain place, it is very likely to find deep and
significant inter-human relationships, as a result of the actual meeting between
teachers and students. But in this case, the meeting is unique, i.e. it can only be predetermined in very general terms, the lessons are not serial (they too bear the mark of
uniqueness), and teachers are there for their students, in order to meet their needs and
interests. But, most importantly, how can school remain an educational centre (with
the fundamental characteristics regarding humanizing the future adults), even if
there are huge pressures in order to be turned into a training centre? It is not our
intention to suggest that the two are opposite, we only state that liquid modernity
(Zygmunt Bauman) ignores the consequences of its actions at human and local level
in favour of the interest of the capital (making profit); from this perspective, what
counts are the technical competences of the adult (his quality as labour force), and not
his capacity to live a complete human life (his quality as a person). Immediate success
may be ensured by technical competences, but the balance of a life that ranks its
priorities at the level of personal development, family and career ensures success in

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the medium and long run; obviously, the speed of capital flow nowadays makes it
ignore the consequences in the medium and long run, because it will easily go to
another part of the world, leaving behind a poorly-qualified labour force, incapable of
professional, social and human conversion. Conclusion: school must remain an
educational centre, i.e. at least a space which allows for the meeting between the
representatives of adults (teachers) and the newcomers (Gert Biesta).
From this point of view, education actually means humanization through culture:
Culture is not that which organises free time, but it is that which may prevent people
from dashing against each other, from being worse than the wild beasts; even much
worse, because, unlike people, wild beasts are not driven by revenge, the fight to
death against their own species. (8, p. 28-29)
The conclusion is that education is fundamentally accounted for by the existence of
an initial ontological deficit of mankind, which prevents him from reaching
humanity by his town means or by his own procedures. (9, p. 180)
8. Better television than school
From this point of view, focussing school on technical, professional competences
allows for the child to be attended to by other humanization centres, but which do
not have this as their explicit objective: we refer to mass-media in general and to
television in particular, which professionally uses an arsenal of captatio instruments
with a view to raising rating, without being in the least concerned about possible
(most likely, as it was proved) arguable effects at educational level. If homo videns
(Giovanni Sartori) has no access to abstractions, he will not have access to complex
professions which should involve the feeling of responsibility and a motivating salary;
from this point of view, the person who is brought up by TV will be the prisoner of
professional conversion and reconversion courses, an example of nothing,
dependent on the slightest fluctuations on labour force market.
For ethnologists, man is born with a highly aggressive potential, but without the
instinctual mechanism of control over this aggressive potential, as a result of his. That
is why education is equivalent to a great extent to taming, which implies the
internalization of those cultural behavioural attitudes of control over aggressiveness,
by means of school and family. Television turns the aggressive potential of man into a
means of making him faithful as a spectator, namely a means of raising the rating and
the profit. Amplifying human aggressiveness by means of television is performed in
two ways: one is excessive broadcasting of violence, the other one is promoting a
generalized consumerism, handy for everybody, but which proves to be inaccessible
for most people in the absence of adequate financial means; there occur thus
frustrations, but also the strange feeling that everything is allowed, even putting into
practice of some acts of aggression; in this context, maybe we should mention that the
world today is not focused on production, but consumption, which means that the
sense of life (the principles, values, reasons for which we live in a certain way) is not
related to production any more, but to consumption. Even nowadays to a small extent
people fill their work, family, community and religion with sense; all these seem less
important today as sense sources (and as practices as well). The sense is rather derived
from shopping or tourism, both activities implying visiting the cathedrals of
consumption. (5, p. 216)
And television represents one of the most efficient means of publicity for the
cathedrals of consumption; from this point of view, television represents, at the same
time, a channel of transmitting of what Gilles Lipovetski called the violence of the
images of consumerist happiness, and which, as Judith Lozar proves, generates
aggressiveness to a greater extent than mass-media violence: Its not only .. the
violent images that incite them to violence, but the distance between reality and what
seems to be an ideal model, the precipice between being urged to consume and the its
actual absence. (apud 10, p. 169)
Tradition and the transmitted models by means of television encourage the
immediate satisfying of pleasures/needs, ignoring the duty towards the community,

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erasing individual responsibilities, fear towards the long-term projects: television is

the means of promoting nothing.
As a result, instead of taking over the tasks of school, as believed by those who are
in favour of turning schools in professional training centres, television offers
increasingly apprehensive reasons for preserving the educational dimension of school,
in the sense of taming the children, i.e. fostering the cultural control of genetically
determined behaviours: Whereas with an animal the instinctual life is guided by
pre-existent control means, with people such control means are transmitted first of all
by tradition. The child is able to be transmitted the general guidelines. If this thing
does not happen, the child becomes uncertain, as it has been proved, actually quite
aggressive as a means of social exploitation. (11, p. 277)
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Platon. (1992). Banchetul. Timi oara, Editura de Vest.

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4. Seymour Papert/Paulo Freire, The Future of School, http://www.papert.org/articles/freire.html
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Bucure ti, Humanitas Publishing House.
6. George Ritzer. (2010). Mcdonaldizarea societ ii. Bucure ti, Comunicare.ro Publishing House.
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