Trends and Typologies of Cosmopolitanism in Education

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism in education has been articulated in many ways, potentially making understanding what cosmopolitanism can do or has already done for education confounding. At the same time, seeking to define cosmopolitanism in education runs the risk of pigeonholing an eclectic mix of schiolarship related to the subject. In philosophical and curricular conceptions, cosmopolitanism in education is presented in terms of legacies, trends, and typologies. Typologies include (a) projects and practices, (b) personhood, and (c) phenomena. Projects and practices have tended to explore how human rights and global justice ought to be or have been addressed educationally. At the same time, as a project, cosmopolitanism in education is also argued to be a form of social engineering that is meant to turn unreasonable, “savage” students into reasonable world citizens. Cosmopolitanism in education is also expressed as particular human lives whose individual sense of worldliness and care for the world becomes a curriculum for cosmopolitanism. Conversely, cosmopolitans are critiqued in the abstract as rootless people who care little for the temporary topos they occupy as long as the topos gives them what they need. While still emerging as a trend in education, cosmopolitan phenomena have manifested in the world as boundary-defying, manufactured global risks that threaten a non-excludable plurality of lives. These risks cannot be escaped regardless of identity or affiliation(s). Together, these trends and typologies provide a platform to understand a constellation of cosmopolitanisms in education.