Educational Philosophy and The0 y, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2002 Carfax Publishing @ TaylorhFranrirGioup

Editorial

This special issue of Educational Philosophy and The0 y is largely the result of a brief visit to China that Michael Peters made in 1999. Actually, it originated in the desire on part of the editors and the Society to widen both the range of contributors and the reading audience for the journal, making a conscious attempt to become truly international. If ‘becoming international’ means that we include philosophical and educational content that reflects something more than English-speaking analytic philosophy of education, then we believe that this issue fulfils the criterion. Clearly, true internationalism requires more than simply publishing material from the non- English-speaking world. This question, we believe, will become more pressing as world cultural and economic integration proceeds apace. Such questions pose real issues for philosophy and education: does the discipline of philosophy really tran- scend its national territories and languages or is it more ensconced, institutionalised and territorialised than we ever thought? What are the possibilities for the confluences of national or regional philosophical traditions? Indeed, briefly and straightforwardly, what are the likely impacts of globalisation on philosophy and philosophy of education? Our last issue presented a series of papers touching on this theme.

While in China Michael Peters met with members of the Philosophy Department at Beijing Normal University as well as members of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences, and, in particular, scholars from the Institute of Philosophy. Wang Chengbing and Zhihe Wang, contributors to this special issue, both members of Beijing Normal University, helped to conceive and bring to fruition this special issue on philosophy and education in China. We are very much indebted to them and we thank them for their help in putting together this issue.

Peters also met with Professors Ouyang Kang (Head of Department) and Zhu Zhifang, both members of the Philosophy Department at Wuhan University, who have also contributed to this issue. At Wuhan University Peters also met with Jushan Zhao (and his wife, Junying Guo), a former student who now holds a managerial post and is a member of the Institute of Higher Education. Peters met with other Chinese scholars at other universities. He wishes to thank his Chinese hosts, to extend the hand of friendship, and to encourage other Chinese scholars to contrib- ute to forthcoming issues of the journal.

MICHAEL PETERS University of Glasgow

JAMES MARSHALL University of Auckland

ISSN 0013-1857 print; ISSN 1469-5812 online/02/020133-01 0 2002 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia DOI: 10.1080/00131850120102196