Globalised Economies and Liberalised Curriculum: New Challenges for National Citizenship Education

The focus of this book is on citizenship education in the school curriculum of societies in the Asia-Pacific region. As important as this emphasis may be, it is not a common one in the discourses that have attempted to construct and understand the region. During the last decade of the twentieth century, the Asia-Pacific region—or at least parts of it—became a major focus of attention largely because of the spectacular rates of economic growth that were achieved by societies such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. The so-called ‘Asian miracle’ was brought to an abrupt end in 1997 with the Asian financial crisis. Yet the crisis did not mean the end of economic growth in the region, although it did signal a pause. As will be suggested later, the crisis itself led many societies in the region to focus on micro economic issues, such as education and human capital development, to provide a better foundation for the macro policy settings designed to strengthen their growing market economies. After 1997, change became the dominant motif of education policy since traditional, elitist education systems could no longer meet new human capital requirements.