teaching through giving knowledge and skills to pupils to understand and cultivate
one’s own community and nation state—its traditions, language, music and art
(Herder, Humboldt, Schleiermacher) and the political institutions, laws and con-
tracts of society (Rousseau, Kant). This rhetorical agency needs to encourage the
use of personal judgment, rationality and speech in respect and relation to a
national, common cultural, public or political sphere. It is relevant to see how this
might be a vital ingredient today in glocal teacher agency. This refers to an idea of
an agency of preserving the variety of culture and traditions among nations in a
global age, and also inspiring and training pupils for public life. It means an
obligation to take care of well-functioning institutions and functions of the nation
state, intrepid in the face of new challenges, and to develop them.
In a globalised age we are not only inhabitants of a nation state, but live also as
world citizens in a globalised world. The teacher, therefore, must be an agent of the
world citizen, ready to educate pupils of the common nature of the human being
and his or her potential. A glocal agency must recognise common global threats and
challenges, and create connectedness and understanding between personal, eco-
nomic, cultural and national boundaries to develop mankind in a common respect
for each other. This form of agency must be grounded in humanity and in the
universal human condition.
The individual and the local can be found in the universal. In between nations
and the state, we canfind universal or commonly desired political or economic
conditions or solutions. And in the global, the particular and the local can be
focused on.
The glocal teacher, in the light of a bildung tradition and the globalisation era,
must teach students the personal and the local, the polis and the common culture,
and the global and the universal, to create a harmonious and balanced education. It
means viewing the public, pupils and students positioned in a multitude of over-
lapping meanings and texts, technologies and messages implied in the personal,
local and global, at the same time, empowering them to be meaning creators and to
use their judgment in all spheres.
References
Anderson, B. (1983).Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.
London: Versto.
Bauman, Z. (1998).Globalization: The human consequences. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Blair, T. (2000).Tony Blair’s Britain speech, Guardian 28.03.2010.http://www.guardian.co.uk/
uk/2000/mar/28/britishidentity.tonyblair
Hernes, G. (1992).Læreboka fra godkjenning til forskning. Fra godkjenning til forskning. Oslo:
NFF Seminarrapport.
Hernes, G. (1995). Innledning ved statsråd Gudmund Hernes. In H. Gundersen (Ed.),Den digitale
revolusjonen. Oslo: KUF.
KUF. (1993).Core curriculum for primary, secondary and adult education Norway. Oslo: The
Royal Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs.
370 T.A. Trippestad