An anthropological examination of the impact of globalization on education in the Arab world reveals that education is standing on uneasy middle ground between the Westernization of educational structures and philosophies and the preservation of national and local customs and traditions. The transformation of education from a means to acquire a father's trade to a commodity in the global market system is most obvious among the upper socioeconomic classes. Because today's high-paying jobs require international travel and communications and awareness of technological advances and their application in the workplace, education is losing its role as a national integration machine and becoming a derivative of the global market, which may be characterized as follows: English-based, deterritorialized, and reliant on analytical skill and the problem-solving skills and dexterity needed to react to constant flux and change. Case scenarios of Beiruti teenagers studying at American schools in Lebanon illustrate that, although international schools and universities are increasingly exposing the Lebanese teenagers who attend them to Western culture, these schools cannot transcend their local and national environments, which formulate the "hidden curriculum" for student learning. The case scenarios also demonstrated that students appropriate foreign cultural forms in context-specific ways, which makes them creators of a new culture. (Contains 18 references.) (MN)