»Canadian Ministries of Education

At least three attempts were made to acquire information about initiatives in global/international education from each of the 50 state departments of education in the U.S. and 13 provincial or territorial ministries of education in Canada. In the end, responses were received from 40 states and all but two provinces and territories. As readers shall see, these responses varied from very minimal to very thorough. An unfortunate conclusion is drawn from these responses. That is, currently there is an inordinate preoccupation with accountability and standards, so much so that in many departments and ministries there no longer are people assigned to be in charge of usual curriculum areas such as social studies education or even science education.  This preoccupation, of course, is caused in the U.S. by the federal No-Child-Left-Behind Law (NCLB) and federal funding and testing strings attached to it.
 
It is assumed that the Canadians have been influenced by NCLB, also. If one were inclined to track this movement back, probably it could be determined that an over- reliance on minimal outcome measurements came from two sources: (1) the Thatcher reforms in U.K. education in the late 80’s and (2) the libertarian economic policies spawned at the University of Chicago in the U.S. and carried forward by the subsequent emergence of neo-right wing politics in the 90s in both nations. Unfortunately, one outcome of this movement has been to limit the ability of states, provinces and territories, school districts and schools to implement badly needed global and/or international education programs for the children and youth of North America.
 
In this environment, three kinds of responses were received from departments and ministries of education, as follows:
 
1. No response (10 states, 2 provinces and territories).
 
2. Responses that indicated that standards (with associated assessment), while mostly focused upon national studies, do include some global/international education content. In addition, they often have web links with global/international education content; and they support the training of teachers in the use of instructional technology (6 states). This is referred to below as the “standard” response (no pun intended).
 
3. Responses that, in addition to what is stated in #2 above, describe additional department global/ international education initiatives (34 states, 11 provinces and territories). These, of course, are of most interest to global/international educators and offer some guidance for state departments and ministries that would like to encourage more of a global perspective in the schools of their states.