Globalisation And Slovene School System

Dr. Zdenko Medveš

Summary:  In the article, we are analysing globalisation in the area of school system, mainly as a macro sociological and political process. Therefore, we are less interested in pedagogical dimensions of globalisational ideas and projects. Globalisation is understood as world-wide organized processes which transnational organisations (OECD, World Bank, European Committee …) use to spread their visions and »myths« about education. These visions are directed towards countries and cultural environment with big world in.uence. Nevertheless, in the background of these visions, there are always global interests of capital. Globalisation is therefore a way in which individual countries, world political power holders, put into effect their strategies of economical development, strengthening their political role and power through transnational organisations. It is also presented how, with this intention, they develop the strategies of function. Education is the real hormone for strengthening the power of centres. What do these processes mean for local national space? We are developing the thesis that a nation state in any transnational connection, even a democratic one, will get into troubles if it does not have enough of its own professional and political power for critical attitude towards exogenic in.uence as well as for co-modeling exogenic in.uence. We are particularly interested in the question if Slovenia masters these conditions. According to the examples of some globalisation projects of the European Union and the project PISA, I estimate the state pessimistically. The analysis shows that regarding education, Slovenia is included into transnational space passively. As a more or less passive fellow-passenger, Slovenia co­operates in the development of transnational visions, mostly on the technical level. Without suitable consideration, it »accepts« foreign visions into its educational area, which in long term does not represent a danger for school . eld but for Slovene originality in general, particularly culture. These processes are not currently endangering Slovene culture on the »technical » level, i.e. the existence and development of language, cultural institutions etc, but they are undoubtedly fatal on the level of contents, where they endanger our cultural identity.