Differing Standards of Education and Their Impact on International Exchanges: A Comparison of the United States and South Africa

With the rise of globalization, education has become increasingly important throughout the world. It is through education that most children develop vital social and mental skills that help them later in life to become successful in the working world. The way a country runs its affairs and how it relates to other countries are based largely on how its youth are educated. Most people realize the need for education; but as long as they see a school building with teachers, they think something productive is happening behind the building walls. This is not always the case. Education varies throughout the world, and the differences in educational standards do more to explain cultural differences than anything else. Thus, the differing standards of education in the United States and South Africa call for a need to standardize the education curricula internationally. This paper shows, through qualitative analysis, what specific differences in standards of education cause people in various countries to act as they do in functioning in the global system. Through archival research of data sources on the educational systems in South Africa and the United States, and examining how these countries act toward others, a relationship between education standards and intercultural communication is shown. This helps to explain how the different standards of education affect international communication.