Volume 22, Issue 1

This paper summarizes the problematic aspects of a globalized neoliberal culture in education. Linking to the particular studies of this monothematic volume it discusses the consequences of the globalization of a testing culture in schools, the issues of developing civic literacy in the context of current education practice and the issues of forming a historic consciousness in present schools relating to the existing social discourse. Language teaching, currently dominated by the concept of language literacy or the concept of language education resulting from English language teaching seems to be significant. This paper reveals various ways in which the educational section is being contaminated by neoliberal transformations to point out their culturally devastating consequences in a critical way. The goal of this paper is to articulate the mechanism by which neoliberalism is infiltrating education in the form of discursive and physical “colonizing”.

After reviewing current proposals for standardized testing in K-12 education (United States) and for imposition of free-market economic and business models on higher education (Texas, Florida, and the United Kingdom), I argue that both types of proposals rest on flawed pedagogical assumptions and tend to undermine educational practices that promote the development of global citizens. I suggest that John Dewey was aware of the type of challenges now faced by educators and that he provided tools for blunting the force of these proposals and moving educational practice toward more desirable ends.

This paper discusses literacy as a socio-political phenomenon from the perspective of several relatively independent educational discourses. The first is critical education theory and research revealing the hidden mechanisms by which education policies act in the interests of a global market economy. The second is the perspective of critical pedagogy scholars on contemporary educational challenges, who offer responses similar to those discussed in current discourse on informal civic education. The third is the heated discussion of high-stakes literacy testing (related to OECD literacy studies such as PISA, IALS, etc.) the results of which are used as a source of argumentation for diverse attitudes and educational consequences. Based on an analysis of literacy theory, research on active citizenship and civic education, the term “civic literacy” is proposed and argued as a relevant conceptual frame for conceptualizing school as an institution which can be involved in resistance to all forms of power politics or ideological indoctrination and manipulation, while at the same time, respecting the traditional values and aims of general education.

The present paper gives an overview of the reflections of and reactions to publishing the results of the first wave of the OECD study Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in the Czech Republic and in Germany. The choice of these two countries enables us to document how the same results could be perceived very differently in diverse country contexts and could lead to a different reaction from policy-makers. In spite of large reforms and numerous policy measures being adopted in Germany in reaction to the PISA results, compared with no response from policy-makers in the Czech Republic, it is argued, that in both countries policy-makers failed to tackle the major problem of their educational systems—its selective nature. In the final section we discuss various mis(uses) of PISA and its supranational and global character influencing local policies.

This article questions the effectiveness of “engagement teaching” when dealing with controversial subjects by exploring the role of fear in contemporary education about the Holocaust in the United Kingdom. It begins by assessing a governmental report about education and a series of related press reports and chain emails, whose assumption that secondary school teachers are afraid of teaching controversial subjects (in particular the Holocaust) triggered an international scandal about Holocaust education in the UK in April 2007. The author argues that three forms of respectful fear or deference are undermined in Holocaust teaching: epistemological (towards historical knowledge); political (towards curricula); and intergenerational (towards teachers). The article further demonstrates that the object of fear expressed by journalists and the public was not the Holocaust itself, but the reversal of deferential relations between teachers and pupils in the school classroom and the supposition that we may not learn from history. Whereas history education is held up by policy-makers as a safeguard of social stability and of the transmission of values, the application of “engagement teaching” to controversial subjects may in fact undermine the authority of historical education and the enlightenment principles on which it is founded.

This paper, based on ethnographically obtained data, discusses German language acquisition at an early age: the discovery of the interconnection between language and corporeality is the key component of the analysis based on videostudies. The body—conceived as an intermediary and content element of education, becomes an essential base for foreign language acquisition. This will be documented by tangible data and subsequent theoretical analysis with respect to relevant terminology of cultural anthropology (Körper and Leib). The principle of corporeality is further used as a means of perceiving German language education in the sense of the so called language propaedeutic concept and as a means of the legitimisation of particular qualification and the role of foreign language teachers in preschool institutions.

The aim of this article is to present empirical findings about language use and attitudes in intergroup contact from one of the European borderlands along the former Iron Curtain more than twenty years after it fell. The data was collected as part of an international research project Intergroup attitudes and intergroup contact in five Central European countries, which concentrates on the interplay of intergroup contact and perceptions between members of neighbouring nations in the border regions of the Czech Republic and each of the neighbouring states—Slovakia, Poland, Austria and Germany. The main data collection method used is an online questionnaire with different attitude and evaluation scales, as well as a feeling thermometer of emotional relations and open statements (N=2900). In this text I use thematic and basic critical discursive analysis only on the open statements from the Czech (N=210) and German (N=152) borderlands about the situations of contact and the following evaluation of the Others. I show how the linguistic competence and also the interest in the language of the Other are distributed very unevenly; the implicit norm almost always being that the Czechs should speak German. Of course, this situation has in some cases strong emotional consequences.

Though its actual nature and content remain debatable, the importance of love in human relations is indubitable. This paper attempts an exploration of the phenomenon of love in the institution of marriage in Esan traditional culture. It questions the reality or ontology of love or its epistemic content within the said culture. In other words, the question is, is there love in the Esan traditional marriage system? If there is none, then it is an ontological issue. And if there is, with what epistemological framework can it be accessed? To this end, the paper employs what could be regarded as a working definition of love which could include notions such as commitment, care, intimacy, and self-giving. With this understanding, the paper interrogates the doctrine of love among the Esan people and sets out how gender is implicated in the conception of love and marriage in traditional Esan society.

This article looks at the mutual relations and links between globalisation and the integration of countries within the European Union. As the economic sphere is undergoing unrestrained globalisation, the position and sovereignty of nation-states is being weakened and politics is becoming harnessed to the economy. The relationship between the economy and politics is thus changing and there is a need to regulate the economy at a supranational level. The European Union has the potential to make positive use of the trend towards globalisation and limit its negative impacts on the economic, social, ecological and cultural levels. This requires, however, deeper integration and further harmonisation of the countries of the European Union in the economic and political spheres. In order for the countries to come closer together, as the current situation requires, a European people (or demos) and a European public space must be created.