Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

transnational understanding is something that remains insufficiently recognised
across much of Asia.
QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION
The foregoing discussion of what implementing the vision of peace, sustainable
development and global citizenship implies for Asian policymakers and
curriculum developers is necessarily highly generalised, but makes clear that the
challenges are manifold and hugely complex. Designing curricula conducive to
achieving these goals requires not just technical adjustments around the edges
of the existing system, but a fundamental rethink of the nature and purpose of
schooling itself.
It is the purpose of the remainder of this report to examine more closely the
extent to which school curricula across Asia have begun to undertake such a
thoroughgoing rethink. After presenting in Part I the findings of the quantitative
coding of policy and curricular documents, we proceed in Part II to analyse what
lies behind those quantitative patterns. At the most basic level, these chapters
interrogate the understandings of development and narratives of nationhood
that inform curriculum development in different Asian societies, and ask to what
extent these underlying assumptions are consistent with the goals espoused by
UNESCO.
Earlier in this chapter, we identified three broad ‘challenges’ — of instrumentalism
and ethics, of understandings of nationhood and identities and of competitiveness
and regimentation — which confront attempts to realise these goals. The nature
of these challenges is elaborated further in the preface to Part II of this report,
but they relate closely to the problems and issues outlined here in our discussion
of curriculum development and school subjects. Amongst the specific questions
that arise are:
• Do school curricula define ‘development’ in narrowly economistic terms,
as an instrument for maximising GDP growth and fuelling national
aggrandisement? Or do they emphasise a broader vision of development,
consistent with the prioritisation of sustainability and inclusive, equitable
ideas of citizenship?
• Fundamentally, are the skills and capabilities that curricula promote
seen as important primarily for producing a pliant, efficient workforce, or
for nurturing autonomous, critical and engaged citizens with a voice in
determining their own collective future? Or to put it another way, who, as
well as what, is schooling ultimately assumed to be for?
• In so far as schooling is conceived as serving specifically national goals, how
is the nation conceptualised in curricula and textbooks? Is it presented as
a homogenous and totalising collectivity, embodied by a state demanding
unquestioning loyalty? Or is it represented as a diverse community,
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
27