Nationalism and International Education
A marriage of convenience or an inevitable divorce?
A marriage of convenience or an inevitable divorce?
We are alike in our diversity, sharing the same planet, thinking the same thoughts, facing the same unknowns.
By Dr Stephen Whitehead
As an educationalist with a peripheral public profile I am occasionally asked my opinion on Generation Z, and upcoming, Generation Alpha.
Invariably the questioner expects me to be worried about how social media, mental health, sexting, and exam stress are impacting children.
Indeed, I am concerned about these issues, but overall, I am very optimistic about the youngsters currently going through school and university. They strike me as the brightest generation humanity has ever produced, certainly they are better educated and more globally aware than their forbears.
Environmental activism is just one example of them finding their global voice.
Witness also their desire for change in places as culturally disparate as Hong Kong, Moscow, Santiago and Mumbai. They are the generation that wants the UK to remain in Europe; the USA to be a liberal, non-racist functioning democracy; and which seeks an end to the discrimination of women and LGBT people.
They are also the generation that is rejecting nationalism.
When a four-year-old starts at pre-school and begins learning about different cultures, different languages, different ways of being in the world, then very quickly their sense of identity is both broadened and deepened. Regardless of the monocultural discourse emphasised at home by their parents, this child is slowly but inevitably becoming globally minded.
Identity development is by osmosis and the school culture and learning processes are key variables in this dynamic, eventually becoming more powerful than anything emitting from governments concerned to build youths’ fealty to nation, or from parents expecting their child to be better versions of themselves.
For children, the process of becoming globally minded is, however, not just undertaken by osmosis but fed by deliberate and strategic intent. It is openly declared in school mission statements, inculcated in the school climate, visualised through the diverse school community, and taught in classrooms every day of the week. And when that student eventually goes on to study at university for three or four years, diversity ensures that their acclimatisation to global citizenship is virtually complete.
Yes, they may still support their home country during the Olympic Games and the FA World Cup, and relax by listening to K-pop rather than U2, but this doesn’t make them who they are; any more than me supporting Liverpool FC makes me a Liverpudlian.
I find all this highly encouraging, and that is before I reflect on Samuel Johnson’s famous pronouncement that:
‘patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’.
By all means feel you have a home, somewhere to return to, a place where you are always welcome, a guarantee of abode without recourse to endless visa runs. Just do not imagine that ‘home’ mirrors who you are anymore.
Because it doesn’t.
Increasingly, for young people around the world, and not a few oldies like myself, the traditional narratives of place and nation no longer command one’s sense of self. The age of the internet is overturning many long-held convictions and powers, including the power of governments to enlist jingoistic discourses in pursuit of nationalistic self-admiration.
Generation Z don’t like being told who they are and certainly not who they should be.
Unsurprisingly, not many governments welcome this turn to open-minded internationalism. They see it as undermining national loyalties, national identities, and national pride.
In this judgement they are correct.
Unfortunately for them, though not fortunately for globalists, internationalism is too far gone to stop. The horse has well and truly bolted out the gate.
One such worried country is Malaysia.
In 2006, the Malaysian government changed the law to allow local students to enrol in international schools. Back then, international school students in Malaysia were overwhelmingly foreigners. Today, there are 44,575 Malaysians compared to 25,220 foreigners in 163 international schools across the country. And that gap continues to widen. This is causing some Malaysians to fear an “identity crisis” among local students.
The same concerns are now being raised in many countries anxious that their children are too internationally minded to become ‘patriotic citizens’. Even the USA, the original mentor of globalisation, now has some American politicians designating international mindedness as nothing more than an attempt by China to undermine American hegemony, notably through Confucian Institutes.
Of course, countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines should indeed be facing a hard truth — which is their state education systems are failing. Talk to any parent from any of these countries about why they are prepared to pay high international school fees, and I guarantee the answer you’ll receive is because they see it as a worthwhile investment, almost guaranteeing their child entry to a higher-level university, likely in the West.
For those who do, parents are not choosing internationally-orientated education in order for their children to become less nationalistic, but that is the inevitable outcome.
International education opens a child’s mind to the rich, diverse splendour and often harsh reality of humankind. And in so doing it reframes that child’s point of reference — no longer seeing the world through the prism of a local community culture, but through direct immersion in different languages and different values; in the process producing an altered consciousness, an enhanced self-awareness.
And that cannot be undone. What we come to know, we will always know.
When we discard ignorance, it stays discarded. Identity is not fixed at birth, reflected in the colour of your skin or predicted by which flag you wave; it is who we are in the moment and that moment is only limited by our knowledge, understanding, and imagination.
If education does anything, it is to open students’ minds. And once opened, there is no closing them down again. That is why it is so precious, potent, and powerful.
But even without the impulse provided by schools, the drive towards globalisation and internationalism would persist. Indeed, it is inevitable.
As Yuval Noah Harari explains in his book ‘Sapiens’ (2015), since humans first walked out of Africa some 200,000 years ago, they have been slowly coalescing into ‘bigger and more complex civilisations’, an ‘inexorable trend towards unity’.
Along the way, thousands of micro cultures have disappeared, largely forgotten, to be replaced our single global culture. Most people will imagine themselves members of a nationality, but as Harari argues, that association does not make them distinctive: humans now share the same geopolitical system; the same economic system; the same legal system; and the same scientific system. Most of us speak one (or more) of three ‘global’ languages; English, Chinese, Spanish. And most of Generation Z are dancing to the same music, watching the same TV series, using the same social media.
This global culture is not homogenous — there are multiple lifestyles around the world — but no longer do we live separate from and unknowing of, each other. We are alike in our diversity, sharing the same planet, thinking the same thoughts, facing the same unknown.
Schools may need to be seen to marry patriotism with internationalism, but we all know that is simply playing to the gallery. There is no happy marriage between these two narratives, only a convenient arrangement created for the various spectators, notably host governments.
Like most marriages of convenience, it is for appearances only.
Retreats to patriotism and nationalism, out of fear of global unity and ensuing loss of some nation-state sponsored artificial identity, are understandable at one level, but also increasingly anachronistic and inevitably doomed to failure.
Which should make all us ‘international’ educationalists feel rather pleased.
By Dr Stephen Whitehead (views are author’s own)
This article originally appeared in EDDi: Educational Digest International.