Globalization in Finnish and West German Educational Rhetoric, 1960-1970

By using Finland and West Germany as case studies from the 1960s and 1970s, this chapter argues that global actors have been crucial in the development of national education systems and their curricula. At a rhetorical level, new education policies were rendered nationally in a way that was meant to encourage increased social mobilization and equality amongst the Finnish and West German publics, but they also brought everything back to transnational questions on how to rationalize the educational sector as part of the welfare state, optimize economic growth and international competitiveness, and improve the usefulness of individuals. Then, how did Finland—a European hinterland and socio-economically backward nation-state in 1945—develop into a paragon of egalitarian education state? How did West Germany—a European laggard in public education until the mid-1960s, shaken by its immediate past and destitute in 1945—became again known as a respectable education society? These questions have implications for future research in this study field, which has previously been surprisingly silent about globalized realms.