55 Fragmentation and Subjectification 1 or to fall prey to a sense of meaningfulness that is not helpful when interacting with other human beings. The practical reality of this dynamic is visible in a recent plea for global education (Reimers, 2020). Global education should be given priority by teachers and education leaders for two reasons. First, because it makes what happens in the school more relevant to the world in which students are growing up. Second, because engaging in transformational practices will make teaching more effective and engaging. Both reasons are reflected in the importance of developing a ‘sense of purpose’ (p. 3) in teachers and, especially, their students. To underpin this statement, Reimers (2020) referred to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey from 2019 in which 15 year olds were asked to respond to three questions concerning their sense of meaning in life: ‘My life has a clear meaning or purpose’, ‘I have discovered a satisfactory meaning in life’ and ‘I have a clear sense of what gives meaning to my life’. The outcome of the survey showed that, in the 73 investigated OECD countries, a third of 15 year olds enrolled in school did not think their life had a clear meaning or purpose, nor did they have a clear sense of what gives meaning to their lives. It is interesting to note how, in some countries, four out of five students recognised a purpose to their lives (including Panama, Albania, Indonesia, Macedonia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica), whereas in other countries only three in five students perceived purpose to their lives (including Japan, Taipei, the United Kingdom, Macao, the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Australia). Reimers (2020) concluded that ‘helping students develop a sense of themselves in the world would help them develop purpose’ (p. 26), but failed to observe that at the top of the list were mainly non-Western countries, while at the bottom were mainly Western, individualised countries. In fact, among the 20 countries that scored relatively high on purpose and meaning, only 2 were in Europe or North America, while among the 20 countries with the lowest scores, 16 were European. The OECD statistics seem to support the fragmentation thesis. If fragmentation is considered the intensifying and deepening of the brokenness that is a consequence of modernity and super-diversity, as in Section 1.2.1, these scores are to be expected. The OECD average regarding a sense of meaninglessness is already high, although the trend is even more intense in Western countries. Based on his own Dutch context, the experienced teacher and philosopher Dohmen (2023) endorsed MacIntyre’s (2007) societal
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