Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

CHAPTER 4
Southeast
Asia
PROLOGUE:
ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
DIMENSIONS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Southeast Asia’s diversity and openness offer both opportunities and challenges
for implementing SDG Target 4.7. It is home to a myriad of ethnic, religious and
linguistic populations, making it difficult to speak of a single Southeast Asian
region. As a result of its wide-ranging connections with the rest of the world (Reid,
1988), Southeast Asia has historically absorbed, adapted and hybridised various
external influences (Wolters, 1999). This highly varied cultural and historical
context to some extent implies a corresponding variety in the interpretation of
concepts embedded in SDG 4.7. But here, as in East Asia, essentialist notions
of culture have often been invoked by state elites keen to legitimize a selective
borrowing of concepts represented as inherently ‘Western’. For instance, the
state in Thailand has a history, dating back to the 19 th century, of adapting
borrowed ideas like liberal democracy to align with the imperative of national
self-strengthening in the face of Western colonialism (inspired particularly by
the example of Japan — see Chapter 3). Similarly, the authorities in Viet Nam
have translated foreign terms into politically acceptable local equivalents, often
changing their original meanings. Viet Nam, like China, supplies a prime example
of the hybridisation of communism, which in Asia has tended to develop as a
variant of anti-colonial nationalism distinct from its Soviet or Eastern European
manifestations. The often acute political sensitivity surrounding the borrowing
or adaptation of ostensibly ‘foreign’ concepts complicates the task of integrating
ESD/GCED into school curricula (UNESCO, 2016e).
Partly due to the existence of regional entities such as the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Southeast Asian Ministers of
Education Organization (SEAMEO), Southeast Asia as a region has often
expressed a collective commitment to sustainable development. A tendency to
seek legitimation for national policies through alignment with the UN agenda is
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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