Students at NYU

BBC -

“The waters of globalisation are rising around higher education - and the university believes that if it remains Italian-speaking it risks isolation and will be unable to compete as an international institution”

Call me a crotchety old preservationist, but this all seems a little sad. And also inevitable.

I can’t complain too much, though. Attending the university that most champions international competition - and probably drives most of it with its insatiable satellisation of the world - I’ve totally bought into the whole globalisation of higher Ed. thing.

Guilt.

“One a recent trip to a poor province in China, he says he saw that schools were often the most impressive buildings. He says in the West, it is more likely to be a shopping centre”.

These findings kind of fly in the face of the whole idea of decentralising education. Although having said that, I wonder how many Uighurs or Tibetans were included in the survey. Pisa doesn’t analyse, obviously, equality and justice in social studies curricula.

Anyway making human rights jibes at China is like shooting fish in a barrel. These are still fascinating findings. When I was teaching in Mexico a few years ago, Pisa data was everything. There was a mad rush to make Mexican schools at Finnish as possible. I wonder if a Chinese makeover will be on the cards next.