Education, Globalization and the Nation State.

The article discusses the book "Education, Globalization and the Nation State," by Andy Green. The book prunes the excesses of proponents of postmodernism and globalization. The new and undeniable global reality of economic and social interdependence and interpenetration has fostered as many new roles for states as it has foreclosed old ones. The state is not an anachronistic construct, slowly receding into history. It argues that the most economically and culturally successful nation states have carefully and strategically deployed centralized state education as an invaluable tool of nation building, and should continue to do so. It points to the contingencies of state formation and the historical decisions and accidents that have allowed states to be realized in particular ways and not others. The state planning of education systems needs to take place on two fronts, the economic and the cultural. It has failed more clearly in terms of the latter. This failure to maintain social cohesion threatens to cripple civil democracies.