>>About a year ago, while driving and listening to the radio, there was a call-in show about the state of the province's education system. There were all kinds of legitimate (in my opinion) complaints.
>>But one guy called in and summed it up nicely, I thought. He simply noted that 'The education system is doing exactly what its been evolved to do and what society needs it to do - teach kids to become compliant consumers and nothing more. At this they are highly successful.'.
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>Graduate couch potatos, that's the economy's driving force.
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>If they were really educated, they may start thinking, and then may even start asking wrong questions, and there goes the system of free explo... trade. My goodness, they may even get to recognize their own interests, and (what would be unbearably worse) get organized to do something about it.

Yup. School does it's part and the media takes care of the rest.
You noted earlier that because of work people 'over there' demonstrated in the evening. Here, of course, evenings are reserved for "quality time with the kids" and to infringe on that is to make one a bad parent. After some extra work hours and parenting/relationship/any-other-have-to-be-taught-what-used-to-come-naturally courses and time with a shrink and..., that quality time is important and there's none left for demonstrating.
A pharmaceutical company tried to invent the sickness of SHYNESS to sell a pill that "helped". They got the traditional media play in your "news" magazines and on the "news" itself, then launched their advertising blitz. This is one that, apparently, didn't work. But we know they'll try again and again.
There is consistently common thread in news/talk/advertising media lasting weeks at a time. A concerted effort by some power somewhere to 'sell' something, be it a product or a point of view. The media, by and large, maynot even know that they are pawns in many of these conspiracies. They've cut budgets and, with present school training, short-cuts like press releases or canned video that's a commercial in disguise is too tempting. Don't THINK about the content - just fill some space with my name in the by-line.

"Globalization" seems at odds with the ongoing (still, I believe) push by different cultural groups around the world to stake out their own territory. Like Quebec or Northern Ireland or Kosovo or Iraq or East Timor or.... (lots in Russia, Africa, Asia). These seem to want to shrink themselves rather than globalize themselves.
Yet I guess these actually feeds globalization. These break-away groups see a means to earn a few dollars FOR THEMSELVES by being free of their "opressors".

The money, of course, only sees that it can pay much lower wages and crap all over the local environment, all the while leaving local labour laws alone (most favourable to them, of course), all out of "respect" for local custom. Local custom almost always involves bribes and payoffs too.
But if that's what it takes 'to spread democracy' then that's OK. Remember, globalization is nothing more than the compassionate spread of democratic principles. Better to win them with "kindness" than to win them through war. "A rising tide raises all boats', and the tide is money. It just looks like exploitation to the uninformed. Just to be sure... if you buy any of this paragraph then I do have a very nice bridge to sell you. In fact, you can pick the bridge.