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quarterly review of education Unesco

Vol. X No. i 1980

Contents Physical education and the intellectual development of children

Antonina Khripkova 3 Towards an African philosophy of education Dent Ocaya-Lakidi 13

Viewpoints and controversies Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning Boris K. Kluchnikov 27

Elements for a dossier:

Mass media, education and culture Communication and education Henri Dieuzeide 43

The two worlds of today's learners Donald P. Ely 48

Mass communication education: from conflict to co-operation Ana Maria Sandi 54

Mass media, education and the transmission of values

Rita Cruise O'Brien 61

Transnational advertising, the media and education in developing countries Rafael Roncagliolo and Noreene Z. Janus 68

Mass media and cultural domination Luis Ramiro Beltrán S. and Elizabeth Fox de Cardona 76

D o mass media reach the masses? T h e Indian experience G. N. S. Raghavan 90

Trends and cases The world literacy situation: 1970,1980 and 1990 E. A. Fisher 99 Use of the Bombara language in training young people: an experiment in rural Mali Guy Belloncle 107

Book reviews 117

ISSN 0033-1538

Authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in signed articles and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Unesco and do not commit the Organization. Permission to reproduce articles must be requested from the Editor. T h e Editor will be happy to consider submissions or letters stimulated—favourably or unfavourably—by articles published in Prospects or by the themes treated within. All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Prospects, Unesco, 7 Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris (France). T h e designations employed and the presentation of the material in Prospects do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Unesco Secretariat concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Antonina Khripkova

Physical education and the intellectual development of children

M a n y researchers in Western Europe look upon physical education as being solely concerned with the development of the child's innate motor capacities and the provision of conditions enabling the child to satisfy his spontaneous demand for movement. It is our view, however, that without special instruction and training, such habits and skills as walking, running, jumping, throwing, swimming, dancing movements and vertical working postures will never develop spon­taneously in children, to say nothing of the great art of controlling one's movements in artistic gymnastics, figure skating and other sports.

Instruction and training m a y , however, be either beneficial or harmful to the child's organism. T o determine the right methods and proportions, the morphological and physiological bases of the devel­opment of movements at different ages must be known.

At the age of 4 to 5 years, children are already capable of performing such complex movements as running, jumping, skating and gymnastic exercises. This is taken into account when physical education is organized in nursery schools, and not only with the aim of ensuring the child's balanced development.

Research by Professor M . M . Koltsova of the Institute for Research into Child and Adolescent Physiology, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (Laboratory of Physiology of the Higher Nervous Activity of Children), has shown that the development of speech in children is closely linked to movements, and in particular to special finger exercises. Finger exercises prepare the ground as it were for sub­sequent speech formation. Furthermore, properly organized motor activity during speech formation has a favourable effect on the child's mental development, assisting such processes as thought, attention and m e m o r y .

3

Antonina Khripkova (USSR). Vice-president of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences; Director of the Institute for Research into Child and Adolescent Physiology. Author of Handbook on Age-group Physiology/ H u m a n Physiology—a School Textbook/ Child Physiology, Anatomy and Behaviour—a Teachers' Textbook/ and Problems of the Extended D a y at School.

Prospects, Vol. X , N o . i3 1980

Antonina Khripkova

T o ascertain h o w movement training influences the maturation of the motor area of the brain connected with speech, workers in Professor Koltsova's laboratory conducted observations on children in their earliest infancy, recording the biological currents of the brain in 6-week-old babies. They then trained the right hand of some of them and the left hand of the others. T h e training consisted in massaging the hand and in passive (i.e. performed by an adult) bending and unbending of the fingers. O n e month and then two months after the start of such training, the biological currents of the brain were again recorded and a mathematical computation was made of the degree of stability in the occurrence of high-frequency waves, which provides an indication of h o w mature the cortex is. T h e findings showed that after a month of training, high-quality rhythms were observed in the motor projection area and, after a mere two months, in the future speech area, in the opposite hemisphere to the hand that had been trained.

Similar research (monthly recording of biological currents of the brain with subsequent mathematical analysis) was also conducted on a group of children of the same age w h o had undergone no such training. These observations showed that finger training for two and a half months speeds up the process of maturation of the speech areas, in the left hemisphere in the case of the right-handed and in the right hemisphere in the case of the left-handed. These data are further confirmation that the speech areas of the brain are formed under the influence of impulses from the fingers.

Recommendations have been drawn up on the development of speech in children through finger training. It is stated, inter alia, that it is best to start the training with infants aged 6 to 7 months. T h e baby's hand is stroked from the fingertips to the wrist; then each finger is taken in turn and bent and unbent. It is recommended that from the age of 10 months the child should be given first larger bright objects to handle and subsequently smaller ones. W h e n the baby is a little bigger, games and toys requiring finger movements are of great benefit to him.

W h a t is more, it has been proved that the structural formation of the hand continues up to the age of 15 or 16 years. Consequently, the development of small finger movements is very important for learning the skills of writing, drawing and playing musical instruments.

T h e h u m a n sciences have made it possible to identify the charac­teristic periods of the receptivity of children to particular motor actions and the stages of formation of various motor qualities. It is

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Physical education and the intellectual development of children

quite clear that the response reaction of the child's organism to the training load differs in different periods of growth and development, and it has a considerable and long-term effect. T h e most substantial changes in the motor function occur in early school age (8 to 12 years). This has been further confirmed by the findings of morphologists. It has been shown that the nervous structures of the child's motor apparatus (spinal cord, conduction paths) mature very early. T h e central structures of the motor analyser attain morphological maturity at the age of 7 to 12 years. That age is marked by full development of the sensory and motor ends of the muscular system. Development and growth of the muscles themselves continues up to the age of 25 to 30 years. This accounts for the fact that absolute muscular strength also increases with age up to 25 to 30 years.

It can n o w be stated with confidence that the main problems of a person's physical education must be successfully solved as fully as possible in the first eight years of schooling, otherwise w e 'miss the boat', letting slip the most productive age periods for the develop­ment of a child's motor capacities. Research shows that school­children aged from 7 to 11 years are comparatively lacking in muscular strength. Exercises involving strength, and particularly static exer­cises, rapidly tire them. Children ofthat age are more suited to brief exercises of a vigorous nature involving rapidly deployed strength. Nevertheless young schoolchildren should gradually be accustomed to holding static poses. Static exercises are particularly important for the development and maintenance of correct posture.

It is c o m m o n knowledge that faulty posture hampers the func­tioning of the heart, lungs and the gastro-intestinal tract, with a decrease in the vital capacity of the lungs, a lowering of the metab­olism, the appearance of headaches and a greater proneness to fatigue. A correct posture is most beneficial for the functioning of the organs of movement and the internal organs, the net result of which is increased working capacity.

T h e work of L . K . Semenova has shown that in children aged 6 to 7 years the sinews and ligaments of the spinal column and the deep back muscles are little developed, and the blood supply to them is deficient, so that monotonous static work (e.g. sitting at a desk for any considerable length of time) m a y also be a cause of faulty posture. O n this and other evidence, the institute firmly recommends that lessons in the first and second classes of primary schools should be cut to 35 minutes.

T h e most intensive period of growth of muscular strength in boys

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Antonina Khripkova

occurs between 14 and 17 years of age, and in girls somewhat sooner. T h e m a x i m u m increase in relative strength, i.e. strength per kilogram of body weight, occurs about the age of 13 to 14, at which age the relative muscular strength of girls is considerably below that of boys. In activities involving adolescent girls and older girls together, particular care should be taken to proportion the intensity and the severity of the exercises.

As regards stamina, which is another motor quality, observations point to low stamina in children aged from 7 to 11 years w h e n it comes to active work. After the age of 11 to 12 years, boys and girls acquire greater stamina. Research shows that good ways of developing stamina are walking, jogging and skiing.

Around the age of 14, muscular stamina represents 50 to 70 per cent, and at 16 years, about 80 per cent of the stamina of an adult. A noteworthy fact is that there is no interdependence between the ability to bear static loads and muscular strength. T h e level of stamina also depends, for instance, on the degree of sexual maturity. Boys and girls of greater biological maturity are also better able to bear loads.

Adolescence is a most important period in which the resources of physical education can be used to bring about a considerable improvement in motor qualities. Nevertheless, the biological trans­formations of the organism associated with puberty call for a great deal of attention on the part of the teacher w h e n it comes to planning the physical workload. As a result of their intensive development between the ages of 7 and 11, schoolchildren adapt themselves very readily to velocity loads and can achieve excellent results in running, swimming, and so on, where speed of movement is the main consider­ation. In turn, young schoolchildren possess all the morphological and functional prerequisites for the development of a quality like suppleness. Owing to the great mobility of the spinal column and the elasticity of the ligaments, there is a big increase in suppleness between 7 and 10 years of age. This factor reaches its m a x i m u m at 13 to 15 years. Between the ages of 7 and 10 years agility develops very rapidly.

Despite the relative imperfection of movement-control mechanisms in small children, they are able at the pre-school age to cope with the basic elements of such complex activities as swimming, skating, bicycling, and so on; but on the other hand children of pre-school age and young schoolchildren find it considerably harder to assimilate skills associated with precise hand movements and the accurate

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Physical education and the intellectual development of children

reproduction of prescribed efforts. A comparatively high standard is achieved in this respect during adolescence.

Around the age of 12 to 14 years, there is an improvement of accuracy in throwing and aiming and of precision in jumping. At the same time, some observations point to a decline in movement co-ordination in adolescents.

All the same, there is every reason to believe that adolescence is a time of great potential for improving the motor organs. This is borne out by clear instances of the achievements of juveniles in such sports as artistic and sporting gymnastics and figure-skating, as well as ballet and dancing, where remarkably developed co-ordination of movements is to be observed.

T h e organism is not completely formed even in 16- to 17-year-olds. In the case of boys and girls not engaging in sport on a regular basis, the workloads associated with m a x i m u m calls on strength and stamina must therefore be suitably proportioned.

A very important matter for physical education is the problem of biological age. It is more and more frequently shown that a child's chronological age m a y in fact not coincide with his level of biological development. Development of the motor system varies very widely indeed in children of the same age. Hence the importance of differentiating physical education, which must take account of the functional potentialities of each person. At the same time, as already noted, account must also be taken of capacities appropriate to the particular age group. T h e child must be taught skills and habits which he has not yet acquired but for the attainment of which he already possesses the requisite morphological and physio­logical capacity. This is also as the psychologists would have it.

W e are convinced that the effectiveness of teaching is considerably increased if it stresses the periods of the natural accelerated devel­opment of the various components and structures of the h u m a n motor system—when there is evidence of sufficiently great reserve potentialities for functional improvement without detriment to the children's health. There is one constant rule to be observed here, which is that teaching must be optimal, without m a x i m u m and extreme workloads.

It must be acknowledged that w e do not as yet have any scien­tifically based recommendations about the best proportions to be observed for m a n y kinds of physical workload for children of various ages, and scientists are still m u c h indebted to sporting practice.

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Antonina Khripkova

Another no less important problem is the setting of standards for the volume of motor activity at the various stages of a child's devel­opment. Workers in the laboratory of physical education for school­children in our institute have come to the conclusion that insufficient movement in children's lives is one of the causes of impaired posture, poor functioning of the feet, surplus weight (obesity), and a lowered functional potential of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

T h e pre-school-age child is on the m o v e , as w e k n o w , almost constantly except w h e n actually sleeping. W h e n children go to school, their motor activity is reduced by half. T h e independent motor activity of pupils in the first three grades accounts as it is for only 20 to 30 per cent of the optimum amount of movement. O f considerable importance at that age are organized forms of physical education and sport. T h e 45-minute physical education lesson represents at the most 40 per cent of the necessary daily volume of movement; but there are only two physical education lessons a week.

Even in healthy, normally developing schoolchildren, so-called spontaneous motor activity and physical education lessons in school cannot provide the optimum daily amount of movement , and the consequence of this is a curb on the development of the motor system.

In adolescents w h o do not go in for sport, the development of a number of motor functions slows d o w n around the age of 14 to 15 years. Restricted movement leads to extra weight and obesity, particularly in girls. Here the role of the psychological aspects of the sound organization of physical education and of the encourage­ment in girls of a desire for sporting activity is considerable.

Surveys of overweight children have, since 1972, been carried out in our institute, under senior scientific worker I. A . Kornienko, and effective ways have been sought of combating obesity, which would help to normalize the children's metabolism, reduce surplus fat and forestall possible complications.

T h e hypodynamia factor in the development of obesity is often decisive (what w e have in mind is first- and second-degree exogenous obesity). Obesity in turn psychologically makes for a loss of interest in physical education, since overweight children begin to drop way behind in the development of basic motor qualities (stamina and speed) and are unable to cope with m a n y exercises in the physical education programme. They have difficulty in apparatus work, rope-climbing, acrobatic exercises, high-jumping and sprinting.

8

Physical education and the intellectual development of children

There are specific requirements for instructing obese children. It is recommended that they should be put into a preparatory medical group for physical education, since their stamina, when it comes to the prolonged performance of a number of exercises, is lower than in children of normal weight. In lessons with this group, provision is m a d e for an individual approach taking account of the state of health and physical fitness of each child.

It is strongly recommended that such children should be given additional lessons in out-of-school hours and individual h o m e assign­ments. Additional activities with overweight children can best start with swimming. S w i m m i n g movements are marked by their consider­able amplitude. Short muscular exertions alternating with frequent intervals of rest make it possible to cope with a considerable physical workload for a fairly long time. S w i m m i n g requires less physical strength than other cyclic types of movement. Furthermore, on our evidence, it is easier in the case of swimming to proportion the physical workload according to the frequency of cardiac contractions, since children with first- and second-degree obesity frequently suffer from cardiac malfunctions.

It is recommended that 45-minute swimming lessons for such children should be provided in out-of-school hours twice a week throughout the academic year. Apart from swimming, activities in general physical training sections are recommended.

It is important in the case of obese children to organize rational feeding. A n d here w e have encountered the need for psychological work, mainly with parents. W h a t has to be contended with here is the force of habit and family traditions, which equate a stout child with a healthy one. There is a certain amount of justification in such traditions. If w e take the change in the fat content in the body during the child's development, it can be seen that at about the age of 5 or 6 months the relative quantity of fat increases sharply. This 'obesity' is as a rule entirely physiological and reflects changes in lipometabolism appropriate to the particular age. Accumulation of fat at that age is essential to the child's further development, so that a certain plumpness in the child is indeed a sign of health. In the year-old child, however, the fat content and the thickness of the subcutaneous layers of fat should be diminishing, and plumpness at this point is an indication of metabolic disruption.

W h a t is more, most parents cannot resign themselves to the natural slimming of the child and a period of forced feeding begins. Sometimes the child 'gets the better o f his parents, even going

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Antonina Khripkova

off his food. But in the vast majority of cases the child is unable to withstand the 'iron' pressure, especially if he is predisposed to obesity, so that, to the parents' joy, he fills out again. T h e child is in fact developing what will subsequently be classified as consti­tutionally exogenous obesity.

In the G e r m a n Democratic Republic, special courses are being organized on a trial basis for parents of overweight pre-school-age children and young schoolchildren. T h e course consists of three lessons. At the first, the parents are told of the causes and dangers of obesity; at the second they are taught sound dietary principles; and at the third, where the children are present, they are shown h o w to prepare dietary dishes. In our view, it is an experiment worthy of attention.

Let us pause to consider the special features of morning gymnastics for overweight children. All exercises should preferably be performed lying or sitting on the floor.

Exercises of this kind help to develop suppleness and muscular strength, especially in the abdominal muscles. A s special investi­gation has shown, abdominal strength in girls with incipient degrees of obesity not only does not increase with age but in m a n y , particularly those with second-degree obesity, even diminishes. In overweight schoolgirls aged 8 to n years, the m e a n indicators of abdominal muscular strength (ascertained by a test involving the raising and lowering of straight legs from the lying position) were thus the same, averaging six to eight lifts.

O n the problem of standardizing the motor activity of school­children, it is noteworthy that the Declaration on Sport, published in 1968 by the International Council of Sport and Physical Education, recommends that between a third and a sixth of the total timetable should be devoted to physical activity at school. For the Soviet education system, with its ten-year period of complete secondary education, these recommendations cannot be regarded as realistic on account of the heavy academic workload and the pressure of the curriculum. A s w e see it, rational ways of increasing the motor activity of schoolchildren should be sought by making the most effective use of the pupils' time out of class, particularly in such ways as compulsory morning gymnastics, physical education breaks during lessons, active open-air recreation during the main breaks, and train­ing in sports clubs and sections. T h e institute has drawn up r e c o m m e n ­dations, based on physiological, health and educational considerations, for the organization of such forms of physical education.

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Physical education and the intellectual development of children

With morning gymnastics at h o m e , gymnastics before lessons at school, active games during breaks and walks combined with active games after lessons, children can satisfy up to 60 per cent of their daily requirement as regards movement . If the physical education lesson and other timetabled physical education and health-giving activities provide over half the opt imum daily requirement in terms of movement for schoolchildren, then out-of-class and out-of-school forms of activity should make good the motor activity deficiency.

Research by a corresponding m e m b e r of the Academy of Peda­gogical Sciences, M . V . Antropova, has shown that eight to ten hours of physical education and sport a week (two physical education lessons, daily physical education and health-giving activities, and training in sports sections) promote physical development, improve the general physiological tone of the organism and its immunity, and represent the m e a n opt imum norm that is necessary to satisfy a child's 'hunger' for movement.

M o d e r n research by psychologists has confirmed the inseparable link between movement and the mind. It is understandable that the founder of the Soviet system of physical education, P . F . Lesgaft, should have included in his Handbook on Physical Education a special section on the psychology of movement. T h e motor act includes perceptive processes and processes of m e m o r y and prognosis, control and correction. M o v e m e n t can be said to reflect the basic features of an individual's personality. This inseparable link between mind and movement recently served as a basis for the planning of psychological tests for the study of various aspects of the personality.

T h e findings of psychology m a k e it possible to devise physical education curricula that are appropriate to the interests and require­ments of children in each age group.

O n e question of current concern in the teaching of physical exercises is h o w to get pupils to participate consciously in the process. It is important that they should understand the aims and objectives of the instruction. Furthermore, the purpose of each activity should m e a n something to pupils individually. This can only be achieved where the instructor bases his activities on the needs of the pupils. A n exercise appropriate to those needs stimulates interest and greater activity, which ultimately makes for a successful covering of the curriculum. Hence the attention paid by specialists to pupils' requirements.

In educational psychology a theory is being successfully elaborated

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Antonina Khripkova

regarding the step-by-step formation of knowledge, skills and habits. T h e central idea is the gradual transition of the motor habit or, to put it more precisely, of the action learned, from the outer to the inner or psychological plane. This means that the successful per­formance of any action, including movement , depends to a consider­able extent on the preliminary basis of the activity. This enables the pupils to programme their activities, to find the best way of reaching an objective and to keep a constant check on movement performance.

In dealing with the problem of the individual approach to pupils in physical education, successful use is m a d e of psychological data regarding the typological properties of the nervous system. It has been established that pupils with a weak type of nervous system m a k e significant mistakes in mastering movements if performance assessment is conducted at the early stages of acquisition of a motor skill. In this connection, principles are being worked out for the selection of subject matter and methods according to the typological features of pupils.

W e should point out, in conclusion, that physical training and sport, though the main item, are not the sole factor influencing the organism in the complex process of physical education. It is also important not to forget the overall rational regimen of work and rest, together with proper nutrition and adequate sleep.

But this is a matter for separate treatment.

Bibliography

K O L T S O V A M . M . Dvigatel'naja aktivnost' i rezvitie funkcii mozga rebenka [The Child's Motor Activity and Brain Function Development]. Moscow, Fedagogika, 1973.

. Rebenok ucitsja govorit' [The Child Learns to Speak]. Moscow, Sovetskaja Rossija, 1973.

K O R N I E N K O , I. A . (ed.). Skol'niki s izbytocnym vesom [Overweight Schoolchildren]. Moscow, Pedagogika, 1979.

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Dent Ocaya-Lakidi

Towards an African philosophy of education

Dent Ocaya-Lakidi Contemporary philosophies of education in Africa can be allied (Uganda). Teaches t Q t w o philosophical doctrines, namely naturalism and idealism. political sociology at Makerere University. Author of several publications on the Naturalism sociology of modernization.

Traditional African education is naturalistic in nature (in other words based on experience rather than books and schools) and continues today side by side with formal Western education. In fact, for the majority of Africans it is still the most important form of education, even where formal adult education, however defined, is in existence.

There are some people in Africa w h o find this form of education and the kind of societies in which it results very attractive. In East Africa the Ugandan poet Okot P'Bitek, especially in his n o w world famous Song of Lawino,1 often talks as if he favours either a return to the traditional ways of life or at least their preservation.

T h e Christian missionaries, too, at the beginning of their activities in Africa saw as part of their role the protection of African naturalness, but only in the restricted sense of protecting those African values considered not repugnant to the European Christian sense of morality. But Christian missionaries were also educational naturalists in seeing their duty as that of preparing m e n to fulfil their natural mission, namely reunion with G o d . In the pursuit of this, however, they ran headlong into conflict with African 'paganism', as they called it, and its associated socio-cultural values, so that in the end Christianity stood in destructive opposition to African culture and was therefore not different from other aspects of the Western impact on Africa.

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Prospects, Vol. X , N o . i3 1980

Dent Ocaya-Lakidi

Finally, in the face of possible threats to African culture from the impact of the rest of the world, especially the West , there has emerged in recent years another form of naturalism. It is based on the idea that a single African country is powerless to protect its culture from such a threat and that therefore there is an imperative for African unity under one government. Such unity having been achieved, Africa should go on to isolate itself from the rest of the world to ensure the purity of her cultural development. Samir A m i n is very close to this position w h e n he argues that

Cultures are destroyed nowadays not by separation and isolation but by participation. Throughout the Third World we are witnessing a fantastic process of cultural destruction—the imposition of a model of consumption which is European and capitalist in origin, but completely degenerate, and reproduced in forms which are merely caricature. W e have also seen that any country which has really tried to modernize itself, and to change its internal social relationship, has been forced to withdraw from the rest of the world.2

Naturalism in Africa has thus cut two ways, the Christian mission­aries' version aside. O n the one hand the conservative version of it has tended to emphasize the tribal community as the context within which the individual can achieve meaningful life. O n the other a more dynamic version of it has looked to pan-Africanism. Both are suspicious of the nation-state and neither is in favour of international values, which they disdain as 'subversive'. Espousing the conservation of culture and its isolation from the mainstream of world civilization as they do, both are to m e unacceptable.

Idealism and African education

Idealism is relevant and important for the future of African edu­cation, indeed for the future of Africa generally, in both of its two basic aspects. First, there is the sense in which the ideal is a model to be approximated; a useful tool in a situation where the path to be followed is either not self-evident on account of several possible alternatives; or because m a n y diverse factors, some of them mutually contradictory, need to be reconciled into a harmonious whole.

If w e look at Africa in a world context, there is the problem of reconciling African culture and African traditional values with Western science and technology, none of which can be used in a 'pure' form, but c o m e accompanied by other Western socio-cultural

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Towards an African philosophy of education

values which m a y conflict with those of Africa. T o take but one example, w h e n Christianity invaded Africa it was not merely a faith; it was what one writer has called 'a complex Western package' of Western 'civilizing' influences.3 T h e same m a y be true of the motor car or veterinary medicine.

But there is also the problem of the context in which African socio-cultural values should be fostered. Should it be at the international, the pan-African, the national, the sub-national or the individual level?

Model-building is a good possible method of answering such questions and, for Africa, Ali Mazrui has offered a reasonably workable one. African development, he has argued, should m o v e in the direction of indigenizing what is foreign, idealizing what is indigenous, nationalizing what is sectional, and emphasizing what is African.* H e once formulated this philosophy in relation to education as follows:

Educational systems in less developed countries should dig deeper into the past for local cultural discoveries and push faster into the future through the sciences. The impact of the developed world on the humanities in African universities, for example, should decrease. But the impact of the developed world on the sciences in Africa should continue to be welcomed, though more selectively.5

But idealism in its more traditional definition is equally relevant. In this context idealism has been defined as the doctrine that emphasizes the mental or spiritual as against the merely material aspect of life. Idealism comes to place emphasis on culture, art, morality and religion, which brings us back to the important place of culture in any scheme of African education, an importance that is derived from the fact that 'culture is the chief instrument in the creation of a people's identity. T h e assertion of a nation's personality corresponds, in the cultural sphere, to independence and sovereignty in the political sphere. A people wants to be itself'.6

But, n o w , just exactly h o w is the 'foreign to be indigenized', the 'indigenous idealized' and the 'sectional nationalized', and h o w is that which is African to be emphasized and enriched?

Value selectors

Those questions raise two critical issues about the strategies for achieving the ideals identified above. First, there is the problem of

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Dent Ocaya-Lakidi

critical selection. W h i c h African values, for example, should be discarded outright? W h i c h should be selected for retention and pro­motion? W h a t Western sciences, technologies and values? Ultimately the issue resolves itself into the question: W h o should do the selecting?

Invariably the answer has been s o m e kind of élite; an educated élite at that. T h u s Smith, having posed the critical questions,

Will a kind of international Western music, reaching every village by some mass system, drown out the gamelans and talking drums? Will the flood of second-rate Western cultural artefacts and the dubious messages of our mass media so clog the channels that local culture will have no chance? Even within one country, will the historic subcultures be buried in a banal national uniformity?7

answers that the African communications élite might act correctly and avert any such possible disaster. All that is of course possible, he says,

but one of the reasons for thinking the disaster m a y not occur is the change of attitude, compared with ten years ago, on the part of Asian and African intellectual leaders. T h e change has been noteworthy in the case of communi­cations specialists w h o run the machinery of publishing, broadcasting and film-making. They have given new encouragement to folk-music, folk-drama, folk-dance, poetry reading in the national language and designed motifs from local crafts.8

A n d w h e n Ali Mazrui talks of the need to dig deeper into the past for local cultural discoveries, he is of course advocating critical selection through research by an educated élite; a viewpoint Okot P'Bitek seems to share w h e n he writes

Y o u scholar seeking after truth I see the top of your bald head Between mountains of books Gleaming with sweat. Can you explain T h e African philosophy O n which w e are reconstructing Our new societies?9

But is the confidence placed in the educated élite as value selectors justified? It would appear not, given the basic nature of this class

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Towards an African philosophy of education

vis-à-vis African culture. In this respect a position which Présence Africaine once took is entirely acceptable. It argued:

O n the whole, the situation of . . . an élite which is culturally cut off from its people and lives outside its own civilization promotes the ascendancy of Westerners (whether Africanists, members of the university or politicians) over the administration of our cultural affairs. Seen and written about through the eyes of a foreign culture, our people can only be the objects—and not the creative subjects—of their history.10

In other words the educated élite, far from interpreting African culture properly, is likely to distort it.

Value promoters

T h e second critical issue has to do with the process of synthesis itself; for to indigenize the foreign, and nationalize the sectional, for example, calls for some sort of synthesis. Take Africa and the West, for example; h o w can Africa utilize Western technology and yet be able to retain, promote and enrich her culture? O r take the ideal of nationalizing the sectional. O n e example will suffice. O f all cultural attributes, language is perhaps singly the most important. A people cannot retain, promote or enrich its culture except through its language. N o w in Africa with very few exceptions, such as Swahili in East Africa, language is an attribute of a tribal culture. Is it ever possible, one might ask, to integrate the tribe into the nation by the use of a 'national language', say English or French, without at the same time neglecting subnational languages and, therefore, cultural development and enrichment as well? Should Western sciences be indigenized by translation into local languages? Is it possible? Is it an enriching of African culture w h e n an African novelist uses English, French or Portuguese rather than his o w n mother tongue?

These are knotty questions, and categorical answers to them are all but non-existent. At the m o m e n t most African countries tend to deal with them pragmatically. O u r main concern here, however, is not with the answers themselves, but with the strategies that are proposed to achieve results once appropriate answers have been identified. Once again confidence seems to be placed in some agent as a means for achieving ideals that have been identified. Invariably this agent is some kind of 'teacher', whether in the schools or in adult education.

Basically the emphasis on the teacher as the proper agent to bring

17

Dent Ocaya-Lakidi

about the correct balance in social change carries with it an assump­tion of the efficacy of expertise and an emphasis on an institutional approach to education. In Africa the emphasis on the teacher has meant an emphasis on the school as the proper agent of change, so that any kind of education that takes place outside the school is regarded as no education at all. For adult education the parallel is to be found in some kind of an extension worker operating from some government department. Such assumptions are, on the whole, questionable.

Educating for critical consciousness

T h e concept of the school and its role in education is only beginning to change even in the advanced countries of the West. For the most part the school is viewed as the place where knowledge is transferred from the expert to the ignorant. T h e general pattern is that of an active teacher and a passive educand w h o must absorb, like a sponge, whatever he is offered. A similar situation obtains between Africa as a whole or an individual African country and the advanced Western countries, the African political élite and the masses, the agricultural experts and the rural farmers, and so on. T h e result is that knowledge is indeed transferred (though in some cases even this is doubtful) from the 'teacher' to the 'educand' but often without in any way raising the independent capability of the latter.

In any case such experts, being products of an essentially Western institution, are largely outside the way of life of the great majority of the people they are attempting to educate, with the results w e have already noted. Perhaps this is w h y A H Mazrui, in search of a more appropriate agent of change that can reflect the African cultural viewpoint, has proposed the military as such an agent. T h e illiterate and semi-illiterate soldiers, he argues, are closer to the rural and peasant way of life than are the educated élite; and w h e n in power are better agents for what he calls 're-traditionalization'.11 A very ques­tionable proposition. But even if workable, w e are still in the main­stream of the élite thesis of change, of one group of people doing things to or for society. W h a t is the alternative? In our view this alternative is to be found in what Paul Freiré has called 'education for critical consciousness'.

Basically, the critically conscious m a n is the m a n w h o is aware of the context of his existence and life, and of the purpose of his actions

18

Towards an African philosophy of education

and their probable or possible consequences. Such a m a n cannot c o m e into being by absorbing d o g m a from experts, whether teachers or extension workers. H e can only c o m e into being in a situation of genuine dialogue in which he is not dismissed as ignorant, but accepted as capable of meaningful contributions. It is this m a n , as part of the people, w h o is critical of the absorption of technology and favours the promotion and enrichment of African culture.

T h e anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits pointed out almost two decades ago that 'the people of Africa . . . have always been receptive to innovations, and have had no difficulty in adjusting their pre­existing habits to them'. Focusing on Africa's recent experiences, he continued:

There is little question that the impact of the recent acculturative experience of the African has been greater than those of earlier ones, which entailed the introduction of innovations on a smaller scale, and at a far more gentle pace. Yet the flexibility which marks the African approach to innovation, and certain elements in African cultures themselves, made the more recent experience far less difficult for them than it was for non-industrialised peoples elsewhere.12

T h e picture Herskovits presented is one in which there is cultural d y n a m i s m , i.e. change through mutual interaction, but without 'teachers' in the broad sense, and mostly unconscious. T h e large-scale changes which are today called for and the speed with which they must be accomplished m a y m a k e this 'laissez-faire' strategy impossible. But there is no need to go over to the other extreme by imposing change from the outside and by 'experts'. W h a t is necessary is that the people should develop critical consciousness and partici­pate fully in their o w n development. F r o m the point of view of cultural reinterpretation, development and enrichment,

It is important to associate the people with the interpretation of their cultural life and not to leave its interpretation and animation exclusively in the hands of the élite, which is culturally dependent on the West and can be more easily manipulated and conditioned by the latter than an entire nation.13

But it must be a critically conscious nation. Otherwise instead of cultural dynamism one might get cultural conservatism.

F r o m the point of view of technology, ' O n e cannot focus on technical capacitation except within the context of a total cultural reality.'14

So w e are brought back to the need for meaningful dialogue

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Dent Ocaya-Lakidi

between the expert and his audience, the teacher and his educand. It is the only educational strategy that can enable the great masses of Africans to utilize Western technology effectively, especially for economic development, while at the same time enriching their o w n particular cultures. It emphasizes, quite correctly, the people rather than the élite. It is people oriented, rather than school oriented; and this is as it should be, for the great majority of Africans are likely to continue to live their lives without any school experience for a long time to come.

African education today

Judging from current official rhetoric on modernization and devel­opment, of all the problems faced by African countries today those relating to education not only occupy a central place but are also extremely urgent. Education, by which is generally meant formal education or schooling, is seen in Africa as the panacea for all pressing economic and social problems. Often, however, it has proved either ineffective or irrelevant to these problems. In some cases it has m a d e them worse and has sometimes created n e w problems where none existed before. Consequently there is today in Africa a general dissatisfaction and disenchantment with education.

T h e single most important factor contributing to this state of affairs is simply the strong link between schooling and paid employ­ment that has always existed in Africa since the introduction of Western-type education. T h e link was somewhat indirect at first, w h e n Christian missionaries set up c a m p and became the first educators, for not only did they emphasize the saving of the soul, but there were not in any case very m a n y jobs for the 'educated' Christian converts to take. But the link was soon m a d e more direct by the need of the colonial services for a corps of suitably trained locally recruited minor officials and clerks. With the coming of independence and the drive to Africanize the civil services, the link was strengthened even further. So strongly indeed that in East Africa, for example, the students' image of education could be aptly captured in the phrases: 'suffering without bitterness', 'arriving', and 'falling into things'.

T h e school system is seen as a pilgrimage to the promised land, a pilgrimage of pain and suffering largely arising out of the need to pass examinations at various stages of the system. These must be

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Towards an African philosophy of education

borne without bitterness to the very end, for to reach the end of the educational ladder is to at long last 'arrive' and to be able to 'fall into things', i.e. secure a comfortable job. Education thus becomes a painful secular pilgrimage towards a paradise of leisure.

It is an image the student shares with his parents, and it echoes very deep-seated African primordial sentiments. T h e African has always ensured his immortality through the production of m a n y sons to inherit and prolong his family line. With the destruction of certain basic aspects of African cultures and the introduction of education as a means to individual prosperity this 'insurance policy' has under­gone a significant transformation. N o w the concern is not for more and more sons to ensure immortality after one is physically dead, but better educated sons to provide for one's old age before death; hence the sacrifice fathers go through to support as m a n y children as possible (especially sons) in school. If some fall by the wayside by failing to pass their examinations, others m a y yet reach the promised land and ensure their parents comfort during old age.

A s long as expectation and reality coincided things moved along fairly reasonably well. But this happy state of affairs was not to last very long. Soon after independence changed circumstances became instantly reflected in an educational crisis from which m a n y African countries today see no way of escape.

O n e of the most serious problems to hit the majority of African countries almost immediately after independence was that of the so-called 'school leavers'; i.e. those w h o drop out before completing a prescribed programme of education or w h o , having completed the programme, are unable to find paid employment. T h e Kenya Education Commission, for example, reported that in 1964 there were roughly 67,000 out of a total of 110,000 children (i.e. roughly 60 per cent) w h o completed primary schooling for w h o m there was 'no prospect for further education or paid employment'.15 Today, sixteen years later, the problem is m u c h worse. In Uganda in 1972 there were 106,000 children w h o completed primary schooling. O f these only a mere 13,000 (i.e. roughly 12.5 per cent) had any hope of further education or paid employment; and here as elsewhere in Africa the situation is worsening. Part of the reason is of course a population that continues to gallop ahead of available social services, including school places and employment. But an equally pertinent factor is the expectation of the 'educated' children and their parents. Education means a certificate to a comfortable job and to leisure. W h e n these are unavailable, there is a crisis.

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Dent Ocaya-Lakidi

The crisis of relevance

While some of the advanced countries of the West are hopeful of the future because of the promises in their educated young people, African countries are increasingly rinding the educated young a source of frustration and a cause for worry. Yet only recently Africa, too, viewed education and the young as the key to future success. W h a t has gone wrong?

O n the surface at least the school-leavers' problem itself has led a great m a n y African countries to lose confidence in Western-style education as inherited from the colonial period. There are three basic reasons for this. T h e first of these was succinctly stated by President Nyerere:

In the past there was a tendency for our young people, including even their parents, to assume that having an education meant leaving the land and taking wage employment. What is more, it was expected that anyone of Standard VIII and above should work in an office. Unfortunately, too many of our people still have this attitude.16

H e laid his hands squarely on the crisis of relevance in modern African education w h e n he pointed out that for the United Republic of Tanzania paid employment of all kinds would for a long time cater for only a tiny proportion of able-bodied Tanzanians, educated and uneducated. T h e question then arose: is an educational system which, at great cost to the country, produces people w h o are unproductive in society, relevant at all?

In response to this question, m a n y African countries are n o w emphasizing practical subjects, especially agriculture, in their primary-school curricula. S o m e others have even gone further and are begin­ning to experiment with an entirely n e w , more rural community oriented, type of primary schooling.17 But in the final analysis the 'back to the land' call to the educated youth and the creation of 'community project' schools can hardly solve the basic problem. A s long as the opportunity exists for a tiny minority to undertake 'higher' education and as long as this is considered the only avenue to top positions in government and society, those w h o are being herded into the special community schools will continue to feel themselves 'cheated' and, not without justification, think of theirs as a poor alternative to higher education. A s long as the cities continue to enjoy social amenities and facilities far advanced and far in excess of the rural districts, those being told to go back to the land will interpret

22

Towards an African philosophy of education

this policy, quite rightly, as amounting to an attempt to debar them from what should rightfully be theirs. Unless, therefore, there is social re-structuring, with less emphasis on the school system, higher education and the certificate, as well on the cities at the expense of the countryside, the basic problem will continue. T o put it differently, African countries ought to consider a shift in educational emphasis from one placed in creating a non-productive or minimally productive minority to the currently most productive segment of society, the peasantry.

T h e second reason for disenchantment with formal education in Africa today is that its products have largely failed to bring about the impact for socio-economic change that was expected of them. Those w h o , by all formal standards, are qualified and employed in the public sector do not appear to have brought the full force of their training to bear on the problems of development. Often this failure has been blamed on their alleged lack of commitment to serve the nation or community, and this is true. But a more fundamental reason might well be the method of formal education, which has tended to be dogmatic, formalistic, abstract and, above all, anxious to achieve certain alleged international standards, in the process of which it has failed to take account of concrete African realities. T h e result is that the educated élite w h o are the technological, scientific, and administrative leaders of society m a y be able to dialogue effectively with their counterparts at the international level, but they do not understand nor are they understood by the great masses of their o w n societies. With them they have tended to carry forward the only method of education with which they are familiar: preaching at rather than dialoguing with. A n d to this the great masses have remained successfully impervious.

Educational formalism, i.e. the meaningless learning of rules and facts, m a y have been a consequence of development in educational methodology per se, for it is only recently that such methodology is being changed through n e w awareness, aspirations, and research in those countries whose educational standards and directions have always guided those of Africa. It is only in the last forty years or so that w e find infant teachers in the United K i n g d o m moving over to a teaching method in arithmetic that will 'foster a process of mental growth engendered by close contact with the material world in which the child will ultimately work'.1 8 At the beginning such a method was called 'revolutionary'. It is only as recently as 1970 that w e find Kenya, for example, moving towards this kind of education in its primary

23

Dent Ocaya-Lakidi

schools.19 In m a n y other African countries the concept itself is yet to become familiar; yet they continue to complain of an education system that is irrelevant to the African environment.

But in the African situation those w h o complain so bitterly about irrelevance are often the very ones w h o are capable of making education more relevant, and yet do nothing. T h e reason for this paradox is political, though it m a y operate subconsciously. It is simply that a relevant education could be far too relevant for the vested interests of the élite in power. A relevant education is one that generates critical consciousness, a concept w e have already defined above. But h o w m a n y of the ruling élite would be comfort­able with a critically conscious peasantry, and h o w m a n y teachers with a body of educands w h o are developing critical consciousness? A n d , in the final analysis, would the advanced countries be comfort­able with a critically conscious Africa? Probably not. A n d this is w h y there must be a radical change in the consciousness of the West to provide the world context in which meaningful African development, including educational development, can take place.

T h e third area of dissatisfaction with modern African education is to be found in its inability to produce people w h o can provide society with moral and cultural leadership. T h e child has become the father of the m a n . Through formal education the young have acquired economic power over those w h o are older, wiser and more k n o w ­ledgeable in African culture than themselves. Merely on the basis of this and their knowledge of things Western (science, technology, the art of writing, Western languages, etc.) they n o w presume to lead society in all its aspects: political, social and cultural. T h e advanced countries of the West too have acquired economic power over Africa, and on the basis of this n e w attempt to interpret for Africa its societies and cultures. If, therefore, modern education in Africa has been antithetical to African cultures, the motive force for this can be traced back to those whose power over Africa through her élite is irresistible.

African education of today must look to the world of tomorrow. It is a world that demands of Africa economic development. In this the advanced technologies that have been developed in the West are instrumental. But in using them Africa needs to be aware of their potentialities for good and for evil. Above all, economic development must not be bought at the high price of loss of African cultures. But such cultures are in the final analysis the property

24

Towards an African philosophy of education

of the people, the majority of w h o m are peasants. Both economic development and the reinterpretation and enrichment of these cultures must be people-centred rather than elite-centred. Education should shift its emphasis accordingly. But this is unlikely to happen until the countries whose influence over the world scene is so great as to be irresistible, change their attitude over basic social values and thereby allow to come into existence a world context in which Africa can make her unique contributions.

Notes

i. Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1966. 2. 'Exchange and Withdrawal: Formulae for Developing the Third World', a discussion

with Léon Boissier-Palun and Paul-Marc Henry, Unesco Features, N o . 707/708,1976, p. 14. 3. Asavia Wandira, Early Missionary Education in Uganda, p. 11, Kampala Department of

Education, Makerere University, 1972. 4. Cultural Engineering and Nation-Building in East Africa, p. xvi, Evanston, 111., North­

western University Press, 1972. 5. Science and Culture in Social Contact: Some Recommendations, Private Draft, Department

of Political Science and Public Administration, Makerere University, Kampala, n.d. 6. Mircea Malitza, Unesco Features, N o . 707/708, 1976, p. 6. 7. Datus C . Smith, Jr., 'Development: T w o Resolutions', Dialogue, Vol. 2, N o . 2,1969, p. 81. 8. Smith, op. cit. 9. Song of Ocol, Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1970.

10. Editorial, Présence Africaine, N o . 83, 1972. 11. 'The Role of Culture-Pattern in the African Acculturative Experience', Présence Africaine,

Vols. 6/7, Nos. 34/35, 1961, P- 10. 12. Herskovits, op. cit., p. 10-11. 13. Editorial, Présence Africaine, N o . 83, 1972. 14. Jacques Chonchol, preface to 'Extension or Communication', by Paul Freiré, in Freiré,

Education for Critical Consciousness, p. 88, London, Sheed & W a r d , 1973. 15. James R . Sheffield (ed.), Education, Employment and Rural Development, p. ix, Nairobi,

East African Publishing House, 1967. 16. Julius K . Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, p . 71, London, Oxford University Press, 1968. 17. Richard Greenough, in Africa Prospect: Progress in Education, Paris, Unesco, 1966,

summarizes this for the Malagasy Republic, Uganda, too, has since started experimenting with community-oriented practical primary schools.

18. E . Bridgeoake and I. D . Groves, Arithmetic In Action, p. 14, London, University of London Press, 1939.

19. D . N . Sifuna, Revolution in Primary Education: The New Approach in Kenya, Nairobi, East African Literature Bureau, 1975.

25

Viewpoints and controversies

Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning Boris K . Kluchnikov

In the past two decades almost all nations have introduced one or another form of economic and social planning, including planning of education. Countries having just gained their independence began to perceive the considerable opportunities opened up by educational planning. Since that time educational planning has been systematically practised in more than ioo countries of the world. S o m e of the countries are n o w implementing their fifth or sixth educational development plan. Unesco has a stock of some ninety-five current educational plans, kindly supplied by the governments. These documents as well as the deliberations of a dozen regional conferences of ministers of education organized by Unesco provide a solid basis for studying the concept and practice of educational planning.

T h e regional conferences constituted a n e w method for promotion of international and regional co-operation. They became an important forum for education ministers to examine educational policies and plans periodically and to meet with ministers of economics and finance. T h e regional conferences clearly evidence the progressive development of educational planning. It was not and it is not smooth. With triumphs came disappointments. T h e bright side was not without a dark side. But on the whole it is justified to conclude that in the highly dynamic development of education in the world during the last two or three decades planning has played an outstanding constructive role. T h e most recent regional conference, which assembled ministers of education of Asia and Oceania in Colombo, July 1978;, stated that 'educational planning is n o w well established in the development of the machinery of most governments of the region' and that cthe mechanisms for educational management and administration are being progressively strengthened'.1 Similar

27

Boris K . Kluchnikov (USSR). Director of the Division of Educational Policy and Planning, Unesco. Formerly Chief of Department of International Organisations, Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, and Chief of Laboratory of Economics of Education, Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Author of Participation in the Planning Process and of articles on educational planning and reform.

Prospects, Vol. X , N o . 1, 1980

Boris K. Kluchnikov

conclusions were drawn by ministers of education of African and Arab States, w h o met respectively at Unesco conferences in Lagos, Nigeria, in February 1976 and in Abu-Dhabi , United Arab Emirates, in November 1977.

W h e n comparing these conclusions with the opinions of m a n y , mostly academic, writers, one cannot avoid an unhappy feeling that some basic misunderstandings and miscalculations are being made . T h e former Director of the International Institute of E d u ­cational Planning, Hans N . Weiler, writes that 'both confidence and consensus have disappeared and given way to considerable doubts as to the utility and adequacy of educational planning'. 'Given the prevailing state of educational planning,' concludes Weiler, those researchers w h o define it as 'an exercise in optimism' are essentially right.2 W h e n reading the articles of Weiler and George Psacharopoulos, which have appeared in this same journal, one m a y be left with doubts as to whether education is 'plannable' in principle and if it is not a method to manipulate 'the Minister of Education w h o has neither the time nor the skill to question and understand the procedure [by which] the figures were arrived at'.3

Academic versus practical approach to educational planning

I propose to analyse the typical arguments of the academic critics of educational planning. W e shall begin with the short history of educational planning. Psacharopoulos opens his fairly ambitious article by claiming that educational planning started with the discovery 'by Abramovits, Solow and others in the United States' of the 'residual' in the 1950s, and that 'before 1955 or thereabouts there was virtually no attempt to plan educational systems'.4 Though it is of no particular importance whether it was Abramovits in 1955 or G . Strumilin in 1925, the fact is that the International Conference on Educational Planning, organized by Unesco in August 1968 in Paris (later the I C E P ) clearly indicated that the first systematic attempt at educational planning dates back to 1923 and the years of the First Five-Year Plan in the U S S R . A number of Western European countries launched educational plans of one sort or another immediately after the Second World W a r . Typical cases are the United Kingdom's Education Act of 1944 and the French National Plan of 1953. Secondly, the above statement of Psachoropoulos tends to equate educational planning with the economics of education

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Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning

or, at least, to reduce it to its manpower approach and component. However, before discussing this basic misunderstanding I permit myself to disagree with another comment of Weiler's concerning historical roots and the origin of educational planning. H e contends that 'educational planning was a 'more or less mechanical reaction to an external demand that some form of planning would be a prerequisite for receiving foreign assistance for educational develop­ment'.5 N o doubt a majority of the developing countries was m u c h impressed by the speed and efficiency with which educational development was performed in more developed countries thanks to planning, primarily in socialist countries. Nevertheless this does not necessarily imply that educational planning was imported and imposed by foreigners. In our view educational planning was born on the local soil by national efforts, and is deeply rooted in the national environment. Planning was taken as a natural process of h u m a n activity and as a n e w element of the national system of management. This fact explains the slow start and increasing diversity of planning practices. Indeed the content, methodology and effec­tiveness of educational planning differ widely from country to country, depending on their social, economic, political and cultural goals. This diversity of educational planning conflicts with Weiler's assertion that it has been imported for purposes of receiving aid and that in most Third World countries implementation of plans depends on outside resources. It is true that m a n y developing countries suffer from a constraint of resources. However, luckily they never depended on foreign aid for their educational develop­ment. Foreign resources at best amounted to some 5-7 per cent of the expenditures on education. Quantitatively aid remains a marginal factor in development and especially in education.

However, the criticism of Weiler and Psacharopoulos contains a number of other fundamental misgivings. Weiler contends that educational planning has a conservative bias, that it is mostly preoccupied with economic growth and h u m a n capital development, that it neglects implementation, that it is of a hirearchical and bureau­cratic nature, and that in general educational planning has ques­tionable assumptions ('an exercise in optimism'). These are fairly typical academic criticisms.

Let us consider the above arguments. T h e reader will forgive us for making frequent references to various educational plans and docu­ments approved by ministers' conferences. In our view these docu­ments represent the opinions of practitioners of educational planning.

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Boris K. Kluchnikov

Conservative bias

Is it correct that educational planning has a tendency to reproduce on an expanded scale the existing educational system? Is it fair to say that instances where it brought major structural changes, redistri­bution of educational opportunities or qualitative reorientations, have been extremely rare?6 W e can hardly agree with such a gener­alization. It is certainly an exaggeration that does not stand up under either empirical evidence or a theoretical test. O n the contrary, educational planning, w h e n properly applied as a method for achieving goals of educational policy, greatly contributed to sys­tematic educational innovations. T h e replies to the Unesco ques­tionnaire sent to ninety-five M e m b e r States in 1968 show that already at that time fifty-one countries included qualitative aspects in their plans. T h e practitioners normally challenge the tendency to counterpose quantitative and qualitative aspects of educational development, because the quantitative expansion of education itself requires a whole range of measures designed to improve the quality and relevance of its structures, contents and methods. T h e evalu­ations of national educational plans, in particular those of the late 1960s and 1970s, clearly evidence their growing preoccupation with quality improvement, innovations and reforms. T h e Third Plan (1965-70) of Pakistan, e.g. envisaged 'at the secondary level, that major emphases be put on qualitative improvement especially in the sciences'. Also, international and regional conferences, on m a n y occasions, mentioned the openness of educational planning to innovations and reforms, even 'in Asia with its deep rooted respect for traditions'.7 Contrary to Weiler's assertion, educational plans are increasingly emphasizing the qualitative aspects, and are becoming more and more an effective means for educational inno­vations and reforms.

Preoccupation with economic growth

Another criticism of educational planning concerns its scope and subject. It is often argued that most approaches to planning edu­cational development have been predicated on the notion of h u m a n capital, which effectively excludes any considerations related to other functions. Psacharopoulos says: 'For nearly twenty years the sole [sic] objective of educational planning has been economic

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Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning

efficiency or h o w to increase national income.'8 A serious analysis of educational plans, I a m afraid, hardly leads to such a conclusion. O n the contrary, as a general rule planning of education after the Second World W a r was a separate exercise having no substantial links with economic planning. Educators found it important to emphasize that education was not only consumption, but that it represented an investment. Naturally enough, economists played an outstanding role in the first phases of educational planning; they already had planning experience and they brought with them a degree of precision, which m a n y educators had been demanding for a long time. Nevertheless, economic development was normally considered as only one of the objectives of education, the others being social, cultural, political, or personality oriented, etc. T h e I C E P , noting that early educational plans disregarded the employ­ment aspect, warned against the fashionable ' h u m a n capital' theory and its possible implications. It has since become increasingly clear that a form of educational planning confined to the single issue of labour demand would be incomplete.

As a matter of fact, this is the reason w h y the so-called inte­grated or global socio-economic approach to the planning of edu­cation in socialist countries was and still is so m u c h the centre of attention of practitioners of educational planning. Planning of technical and higher education in conjunction with estimated m a n ­power needs was the most attractive novel feature of the global socio-economic approach practised in socialist countries. T h e inter­national community has to a great extent overlooked the social and cultural dimensions of educational planning, practised in socialist countries. It was stated at the I C E P that 'in all socialist countries of Europe, forecasts of employment . . . govern the planning of education in its entirety'.9 This was a superficial consideration that unfortunately is still widespread. O n the contrary, in these countries the concept of h u m a n capital was never taken seriously, though the role of qualified manpower was clearly recognized.

T h e predominance of social and purely educational goals in the first national plans, and the often total lack of manpower consider­ations, is evidenced by practically all the regional conferences. For instance, the Marrakesh conference stated that the development of educational planning has been initially limited to the elementary level, in some cases gradually broadened in scope. T h e Singapore conference clearly stated that one of the principal objectives of educational plans was equalization of educational opportunities.

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Boris K. Kluchnikov

Educational plans of developing countries early evidenced a major concern also for the building up of national unity and the fostering of a civic spirit. In addition to fulfilling manpower needs, the edu­cational plans of Nepal are aiming at creating a sense of national unity based on a c o m m o n culture by transforming the geopolitical unity into a realistic feeling of national solidarity, as well as at bringing about uniformity in the pedagogical traditions of the country by integrating all the prevailing systems of education, old and n e w , into one national system.10 T h e Nepalese approach is fairly typical. Nowadays the majority of educational plans incorporate also cultural and non-formal educational activities. At the end of the 1960s the process of branching educational planning began. In some countries special plans for higher, technical and out-of-school education were formulated.

T h e implementation of plans is clearly the major shortcoming. Does it m e a n that educational planning is not feasible? It is also a considerable exaggeration to claim that educational plans or m a n y of their aims never went beyond the paper stage. H a d this conclusion been correct, countries would reject the idea of planning in principle. Fortunately Prospects also published the article by N . F . Lamarra and Inés Aguerrondo. In m y opinion they correctly analyse the recent evolution of educational planning. Planning with all its shortcomings and childhood sicknesses appears as a natural h u m a n activity. They analyse the concrete experience of some Latin American countries in all objectivity, with its weaknesses and achievements. T h e advantage of their approach is that they clearly recognize that 'any attempt to channel and/or change reality—including educational reality—has policy-making, administrative and planning aspects which are inex­tricably bound together'.11

Hierarchical and bureaucratic nature

T h e majority of analysts rightly complain about the minimal and mostly limited involvement of lower levels in the planning process and about its bureaucratic and non-participatory nature. O n the whole this is correct, and it probably constitutes the basic weakness of educational planning of m a n y countries. Recognition of this fact has led m a n y countries to practise educational planning at local levels with a view to ensuring the participation of teachers and their union, and of parents, students and the community as a whole. Paradoxically

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Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning

the countries k n o w n as 'centrally planned economies' in reality are taking the lead in considerably decentralizing planning, limiting it to major targets, consulting lower levels at the stage of the formulation of plans, making them fully responsible for implementation, and providing for a great degree of flexibility, for rolling adjustments in the process of implementation. T h e plan here is, however, a directive, subject to implementation.

Rationale of educational planning

Finally, a few words about the fundamental criticism of educational planning as being an exercise in optimism. This amounts to the invalidation of educational planning in principle. There are variations of this fundamental criticism, ranging from the view of planning as a sin (man can't and shouldn't plan his future) to questioning the feasibility of educational planning, the most c o m m o n argument being the unsuitability of market economies for planning. W e will limit ourselves to a discussion of educational planning.

Let us start from some basic conceptual foundation-stones, such as the relationships between society and education and the definition and hierarchy of educational goals, policies, planning and adminis­tration. There is, after all, nothing more practical than a good theory. T h e roots of the invalidation of planning are m u c h deeper than is commonly realized. They originate in the 'equilibrium concept' of social development. This school of thought, k n o w n as evolutionist, tends to explain social change in general and educational development in particular as an organic progression, as quantitative and qualitative growth in line with social and cultural progress. Education must be in a certain equilibrium with its environment, it must reproduce existing social relations. Development in education is nothing more than a smooth endogenous cumulative change. Change in education cannot be artificially introduced. Recalling Rostow's stages of growth, evolutionists argue that there are certain stages of growth through which all school systems must pass; they cannot leapfrog a stage or a major portion of a stage. T h e point is further developed by the so-called educational anthropologists. According to them the laws of natural history discovered by Darwin extend to social life, including education. Naturally they are bitterly sceptical with regard to the educational innovations that nowadays are taking place in the de­veloping countries. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the

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policy of democratization and modernization of education is for them premature and rootless, exogenous and therefore doomed to failure.

T h e evolutionists recognize planning at the best as a tool for orderly reproduction of existing educational systems on a larger base and as a tool for smooth adjustments of the most obvious imbalances. T h e concept is particularly popular in societies that tend to preserve and reproduce a social status quo. In these societies educational planning is put in a rather fatalistic framework and is of marginal use: linear expansion and occasionally incremental adjustments. Naturally, attemps in this type of society to line up educational planning with educational policy or with its deviation into systematic innovations, not to say profound major reforms, as a rule result in complete failure. M a n y plans are a failure simply because they are unrealistic. They are unrealistic just because too often they faithfully follow unrealistic or demagogic educational policies. This is recog­nized by m a n y conferences. Educational planning should not be preconceived but instead reflect the aspirations of the population as well as national and local realities.

In opposition to the view that education is in a 'moving equilibrium' is the concept of conflict or basic contradiction between societies and education, which emphasizes the inherent instabilities of the social system, and conflicting relationship among its subsystems. A m o n g the supporters of the 'conflict theory' there are two conflicting views on education. According to one, education by its very nature is a major tool for eroding and destroying outdated traditional structures. Another contends that education, or more precisely, school, is by its very nature a conservative institution. This concept serves as a foundation stone for societies undertaking major and comprehen­sive socio-economic transformations. Educational planning normally should be a management tool for achieving policies, goals that are often aimed at a major educational reform. T h e above observations lead one to distinguish various approaches to educational planning: e.g. one for planning for status quo, another for smooth incremental adjustments and yet another for major educational change following radical socio-economic transformations taking place in a given society. T h e context, methodology and technique of educational planning should in each of these cases vary. But in all cases planning is a management process, a variable dependent on educational policy.

Widespread misunderstandings concerning the functions and relationships between educational policy and planning are, as m e n -

34

Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning

tioned earlier, one of the major reasons for criticisms of planning. Educational policy, like policy in general, reflects a country's options and ideally its cultural traditions, values and conceptions of the future. It must be a unified structure of specific objectives, deduced from overall societal goals. It is educational policy that should ensure that educational objectives comply with the objectives of society. Educational planning, being a fundamental component of the modern educational process, should necessarily reflect educational policy. It transcribes policy goals into scientifically justified targets and foresees alternative ways and means for their implementation for short-, m e d i u m - and long-term educational development.

Weakness or neglect of educational administration is another major reason w h y the best plans and reforms sometimes remain a dead letter or quietly degenerate. T h e disillusionment with educational planning which these days is so m u c h propagated, seems to be a result of misinterpretations of its rationale and possibilities. F r o m the beginning there were too high hopes and expectations. T h e Inter­national Conference on Educational Planning has specifically warned that educational planning is not a miracle drug to cure all ills of ailing educational systems. It is not a standardized formula to be imposed in all situations.

Challenges for the future

Careful analyses of confronting points of view on educational planning lead the majority of competent people to conclude that there are no sufficiently strong arguments for discarding educational planning. W e have referred already to the statements of representative regional conferences. T h e introduction in the 1950s and 1960s of educational planning in the majority of the countries of the world was a major prerequisite for establishing national systems of education and for their unprecedented growth. T h e need for modern methods of management is universal. There are no meaningful alternatives to educational planning. Its usefulness is particularly obvious in times w h e n the coherence of educational systems, the co-ordination of multiplying educational activities, and the mobilization of all potential learning resources in the framework of lifelong education, is a pertinent item on the agenda of so m a n y countries. W i d e and wise use of computers considerably increases the capacity of educational planning.

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Boris K. Kluchnikov

As a matter of fact this attitude is reflected in Unesco's pre­occupation with improvement of educational planning, which is one of its major objectives. Educational planning as it exists n o w in m a n y countries is indeed in a stage of infancy or adolescence. Without pretending to elaborate n e w tasks of educational planning, I will concentrate on a few fundamental aspects.

T h e n e w tasks are directly dependent on the emerging concept of development, which recognizes a multiplicity of factors, puts emphasis on social structures, on cultural values and ethical norms. It takes into account the disintegration of the economies in the developing countries, the predominance of the traditional sector, rapid urban­ization, etc. In negative terms, it is a revolt against cultural assimi­lation, against imported and artificially implanted cultures and educational institutions. T h e positive terms which the n e w concept emphasizes are the endogenous character of development, cultural authenticity, self-reliance and sovereignty of nation-states in their educational policies. It is gathering m o m e n t u m . Unesco's programme clearly states: As educational policies evolve, the notion of educational planning must also adapt itself to n e w situations. T h e most promising trend is a gradual improvement of educational planning, its recep­tivity and adjustment to changing needs.

Several dozen educational plans are available, in some cases the entire series of national development plans. Educational plans are often part of development plans. Analysing them, one comes to the conclusion that on the whole the plans are becoming less uniform in subject, content, methods and techniques. They tend to take better care of alternative strategies for achieving plan targets. This in turn leads to considerable diversification of orientations, priorities, ways and means, institutional structures, etc. A n international comparative method is becoming of minor influence. Close ties with national and local realities and self-reliance are considered preconditions for successful planning.

Educational planning is indeed becoming multidisciplinary. Its scope is broadening, its methodologies and techniques are becoming more sophisticated and closely linked to overall planning. A s P . C o o m b s rightly stressed some years ago, educational planning moves downward and outward.

Horizontally it becomes part and parcel of integrated development planning. Educational planners are often members of mixed planning teams. They tend to think of education as a subsystem. T h e branching of educational planning is another major development. In higher and

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Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning

technical education, teacher training and literacy work, special planning methods and techniques are applied.

T h e rapid changes in society, the need for anticipation, the broadened concept of education and the outstanding tasks of mobil­izing additional learning resources are probably the major challenges to educational planning. Until recent years educational planners were mostly concerned with the formal system. Non-formal edu­cational activities were not supposed to be planned just because they were non-formal. This attitude is gradually changing. It is thought nowadays that the laissez-faire approaches to non-formal education are not appropriate, particularly in view of the recognition of enor­m o u s potentials of non-formal educational activities. It is of crucial importance in rural areas, which are the dominant sector of developing countries. T h e task of educational planners in the non-formal field is to carefully promote and organize local initiatives and endogenous efforts, the danger being to over-organize and over-plan.

T h e recent educational plans single out specific programmes of educational development for rural areas and for informal urban sectors, often in conjunction with community development schemes. S o m e of the developing countries have demonstrated success in the planning of various extension programmes; family planning, nutrition and sanitation courses, apprenticeship schemes, various programmes of child care, h o m e economics, training of medical specialists, etc. (Colombia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the United Republic of Tanzania). In fact m a n y educational plans, particularly in the devel­oping countries, are realistic enough to recognize a prevailing multi­plicity of educational patterns. They attempt to embrace, in a systematic fashion, all educational activities, formal, non-formal, informal, with a view to establishing national educational systems.

Reflecting n e w educational policies, the recent generations of plans are multidimensional to the extent that, while continuing to pay attention to quantitative and qualitative aspects, to costs and some economic and social considerations, they tend to take into account, m u c h more than previously, ethical, political, cultural, sociological and organizational aspects of education with due regard to national traditions. T h e best of them seem to be less rigid; they emphasize alternative strategies, the need for rolling adjustments in response to change.

Vertically, the plans attempt to include all organic components: national, regional, local, institutional as well as the preparation of programmes and projects. T h e prospects for decentralization and

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democratization of procedures through participation are particularly bright in the field of educational planning. Participatory planning is the most promising n e w orientation. Participation in all stages of educational planning by teachers and their unions and by c o m ­munities, students, parents, is the best w a y to mobilize local initiatives and channel them into a regular achievement of planned targets. T h e participatory aspects of educational planning occupy a central place in Unesco's programme. T h e latter is aimed at systematic collection, analysis and dissemination of advanced experiences of various countries.

O f particular importance is the interaction between educational planning and research. This is a vast subject. However , some remarks might be useful. Indeed one of the functions of planning is to serve as a laboratory of n e w ideas. It cannot otherwise provide for scien­tifically justified decisions. T h e central danger for educational plan­ning nowadays seems to be a dichotomy between research and planning. This separation of education research from planning too often leads to the inapplicability of its findings to practical problems. Research is of particular importance for reforming educational systems. Nowadays , planning and administration of educational reforms are often considered as a special branch of educational planning.

Reviewing the arguments for and against planning, w e have carefully analysed the experiences of countries with relatively rich planning traditions. Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, said w h e n introducing the Fifth Five-Year Plan, 1974-79:

Sometimes it is said that there is no longer the same enthusiasm about plan­ning as in the fifties. A n irrigation dam or powerhouse is more exciting while it is being built than when it is completed and operating. Planning has become an inseparable part of our life. M y father often said that planning is the application of science to national problems.12

T h e profound changes occurring in society and in educational systems, and the n e w circumstances for the financing of education arising out of the reduction of resources, contribute both to increasing the importance of educational planning in forthcoming decades and to modifying its basis. It is becoming more and more clear that planning methods should be m a d e still more relevant so as to m a k e of them an effective instrument for the systematic application of education policies, especially if funds are to become relatively scarcer. This could m a k e it vital to secure the best possible utilization

38

Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning

of available means, mobilize n e w resources and establish strict priorities. Although not easy, it is vital to secure harmonization with employment policies, and to secure the participation of young people, the principal victims of unemployment in m a n y countries, and their parents in the planning and management of the education system.

M a n y specialists are of the opinion that planning is the discipline of the future. I share this prediction. M u c h of course should be done, particularly in the field of relatively underdeveloped long-term educational planning. Its development will go hand-in-hand with socio-economic planning. T h e latter will in the future mostly be preoccupied not only and not so m u c h with the exploitation of nature, but with its regulation and preservation. T h e relation of m a n to nature is becoming the central issue of planning in general and of educational policies and planning in particular.

Notes

i. Final Report of the Fourth Regional Conference of Ministers of Education and Those Respon­sible for Economic Planning in Asia and Oceania, Colombo, 24 July-I August 1978, p. 64, Recommendation 23, Paris, Unesco, October 1978.

2. Hans N . Weiler, 'Towards a Political Economy of Educational Planning', Prospects, Vol. VIII, N o . 3, 1978, p. 247 and 266.

3. George Psacharopoulos, 'Educational Planning: Past and Present', Prospects, Vol. VIII, N o . 2, 1978, p. 141.

4. Ibid, p. 135. 5. Weiler, op. cit., p. 248. 6. Ibid., p. 252. 7. Final Report of the Third Regional Conference of Ministers of Education and Those Respon­

sible for Economic Planning in Asia, Singapore, 31 May-7 June 1971, p. 12. 8. Psacharopoulos, op. cit., p. 142. 9. International Conference on Educational Planning: A Survey of Basic Problems and Prospects,

p. 46, Paris, Unesco, 1968. 10. Final Report of the Third Regional Conference of Ministers of Education and Those Respon­

sible for Economic Planning in Asia, Singapore, 31 May-7 June 1971, p. 29, para. 136. 11. Norberto Fernández Lamarra and Inés Aguerrondo, 'Some Thoughts on Educational

Planning in Latin America', Prospects, Vol. VIII, N o . 3, 1978, p. 352. 12. Fifth Five-Year Plan, 1974-79, P- vi, Government of India Planning Commission.

39

Elements for a dossier

Mass media, education and culture

Henri Dieuzeide

Communication and education

T h e rapid extension of the various forms of mass communication (especially audio-visual c o m ­munication, together with the more general use of informatics) seems to bring education a n e w dimension.

Communication was quick to develop its n e w vectors (press, radio, television) in most countries at a time w h e n education was emerg­ing as an aspiration of all categories of the population and the ideas of democratization of education, life-long education, equality of op­portunity, were becoming widespread. T h e two phenomena inevitably came into relation with each other: communication is seen as bringing about an 'educational environment', wresting from the school its monopoly of education, getting the school to use modern forms of c o m ­munication for its o w n purposes. Finally, c o m ­munication by becoming a subject of education m a y very well evolve in the direction of n e w forms.

T h e ever increasing volume of information with which the public is swamped and, above all, the extension of the dissemination of infor­mation, especially by radio, then television, to

Henri Dieuzeide (France). Director of the Unesco Division of Structures, Content, Methods and Tech­niques of Education. Former Director of the Department of School Radio and Television in the French Ministry of Education. Author of Les techniques audiovisuelles dans l'enseignement.

n e w social or geographical categories have given the impression that anyone at all could come into direct contact with the very sources of knowledge, that there would no longer exist either social distances or professional secrets.

T h e young have been particularly appreci­ative of this opportunity of direct and effortless access to an adult world previously closed to them. In Europe a io-year-old spends on the average twenty-four hours a week looking at television, that is, as m u c h time as in school. In the United States today a 16-year-old has spent at least 15,000 hours of his life watching television.

This sudden extension of communication was first of all analysed in terms of 'effects' or 'impact' and the direct influence of the ever in­creasing stimulation on individuals and groups, and there was talk of the 'educational action of the media' on cognitive development or behav­iour, using mechanistic terms of psychology. Today, with a more subtle analysis, the impact of communication is considered only with the most obvious aspect of a wider series of trans­formations due to gradual changes in the h u m a n environment. Research shows that the influ­ences of technology are in fact differentiated in accordance with the psychological, intellectual, social and cultural conditions of the individuals exposed to them. F r o m this point of view, interpretation of the non-formal educational action of the media is undergoing the same

Prospects, Vol. X , N o . 1, 1980

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Henri Dieuzeide

changes as thinking on education: emphasis is laid on the role of interpersonal relations and the influence of values c o m m o n to the group, on long-term effects and on the fact that w e k n o w little about them as yet. Interest is moving from the transmitter to the receiver. T h e question is not so m u c h what the message does to the individual or the group as what the individual or the group does with the message.

T h e all-pervasive character of c o m m u n i ­cation is but the sign of the advent of a n e w environment. Ideas such as the 'civilization of visual media', the 'alternative school', the ' com­puterized society', the 'global village', indicate awareness of the fact that the technological environment is creating a permanent means of presenting or proliferating information and gain­ing access to knowledge. There has been talk of the emergence of a n e w m a n w h o m this n e w environment could in varying degrees fashion from day to day as regards his emotional context and his habits of reasoning, his critical attitudes and imagination, his technical skills and his behaviour.

Is this n e w m a n conscious of being so? It has to be acknowledged that young people are n o w normally accustomed to handling a whole series of miniature electronic devices that have be­come a part of everyday life, tape cassette recorders or pocket calculators. W e adults have been brought up to make distinctions between functions (television, computer, telephone) and do not readily perceive the connections that elec­tronic developments have n o w m a d e between these formerly incompatible functions—the tele­vision screen becoming a computer terminal, a notice-board, and a video play-deck as well as conveying film images, the pocket calculator becoming a clock and the radio making the morning coffee.

Here ought w e not see h o w the child, caught up in a technological environment imposed on it by the adult world, has n o w built his o w n ecological niche? It is no longer in school, which should be the place for reflection and the passing

on of knowledge, that he gets to k n o w about the basic concepts c o m m o n to our technological universe—real time, for instance, which indi­cates autonomous transmission, or the control­ling of a process while it is going on; memory, a magnetic trace of data; program, which n o w exists in all domestic automation and which corresponds to an ordered sequence of acts.

Knowledge presented in this way, in abun­dance, and day by day has a 'mosaic' pattern that no longer fits into the traditional intellectual categories. Emphasis tends to be laid on the heterogeneous and even chaotic nature of the information presented, the priority given to the dissemination of superficial or sensational in­formation of ephemeral interest, increasing the 'noise' to the detriment of the actual message. Emphasis is laid, too, on the fact that it is imposed on the user, w h o has the feeling of undergoing this environment rather than ex­ploring or controlling it. In so far as the edu­cation of the individual is concerned, the inco­herence is probably less important than the constraint. Mass communication tends to re­inforce c o m m o n symbolic systems, to eniich, re-express and reinterpret them. In doing so, it flattens out the individuality of groups and builds up stereotypes. It seems to bring about a kind of intellectual standardization. There is nothing, however, to justify us in thinking that this tendency towards standardization, which is a feature of most communication industries today, is inexorable. Communication refers us back to education: h o w can the consumers of information (and also the communicators) gradually be educated to use in a positive and imaginative way these immense n e w resources put every day at their disposal? Will education be equal to the task of preparing people to take on communication, while still preserving their o w n personalities and creative abilities?

T h e question is one of urgency, since in nearly all societies the school must share its monopoly of education with the institutions responsible for communication. This shared

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Communication and education

responsibility is often claimed by the c o m m u n i ­cators themselves. It is sometimes established by statute—for example, in the triad 'inform, educate, entertain' frequently invoked by broad­casting organizations. This situation, and the growing presence of communication in most societies, raise the question of the reappraisal of the functions of the school and perhaps even, to some extent, those of the family. U p until the beginning of this century, even in industrial societies, the school was the first source of knowledge and the educator was its patented distributor through the spoken and printed word. Knowledge of the world and mastery of the skills enabling one to be integrated into it were obtainable from the school alone. T h e role of the family being to strengthen and sup­plement this function, gradually n e w sources of information, cinema and radio, television and soon telematics* have come to upset, contradict and sometimes replace the traditional infor­mation sources of the school and the family environment.

Today, in most societies, either covertly or openly, the two systems are competing with one another, not without creating contradictions and even major difficulties for individual con­sciences, unconsciously subjected to this compe­tition, particularly in the case of the very young.

T o the educational institution, based on values of order and method, curriculum, effort and personal concentration, competition, there is n o w opposed a system of mass c o m m u n i ­cation, geared to the topical, to the surprise element exalting world disorder, to facility and hedonistic values. Is there any way to reduce this competition, implicit or explicit, the wastage of resources and talent that it has entailed for thirty or forty years in the rich countries? C a n it be spared the countries that have only limited resources?

T o find solutions is not easy: the sharing of

* From the French neologism, télématique, meaning i

responsibility between education and c o m m u n i ­cation can take very different forms. S o m e pragmatists hold that the communication media should purvey contemporary knowledge, while education should be responsible for passing on the heritage accumulated by tradition. For the technocrats, the school should concern itself with the most effective social knowledge, the promotion and dignity of the individual, the economic efficiency of nations, while c o m m u n i ­cation should serve for recreation and enter­tainment, but also for exchanges and inter­national understanding. For m a n y concerned to preserve traditional values, the school should provide a protective haven of silence, medi­tation, intellectual exercise and personal inte­gration, in contrast to the proliferation and hubbub of communication. Yet m a n y edu­cationists would consider that the prime func­tion of the educational institutions, henceforth, should be to put in order the 'knowledge' disseminated at random by the communication networks; the education systems would put forward systems of values and methods en­abling the essentials to be picked out, helping to identify the positive aspects, to relate the main facts concerning material already acquired elsewhere, in short, teaching h o w to understand and h o w to learn.

So far, there does not seem to have been any systematic thinking on policy with regard to such a redistribution of functions between edu­cation and communication, the two systems still tending in most countries to ignore one another; any negotiation has been on minor questions or in marginal fields that do not call the prerogatives into question (school tele­vision, children's cinema). This has been called 'the sharing out of the cheap cuts' (Pierre Schaeffer).

It is obvious that any genuine effort of inte­gration would necessitate both a reconversion of all teaching staff to n e w tasks, and a real

ismission of data over a distance.—Ed.

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Henri Dieuzeide

awareness on the part of communicators of the problems involved in education.

T h e need for this basic change should not lead us to underestimate the attempts already m a d e to enlist communication in the service of education. Since the school is a 'communication society', it is tending gradually in a selective, deliberate way to submit most of the modern forms of communication to its o w n purposes: either using communication systems as they stand, in order to provide the usual audiences of these systems with information of educational value (family education programmes, functional literacy teaching, health and hygiene etc.), or utilizing the same communication systems to in­troduce n e w components into formal educational activities (radio, television, school films), or relaying the functions of a traditional system by transferring the educational tasks to a c o m ­munication system (in particular teaching of remote or handicapped pupils by radio and television), or even on occasion, reorganizing the structure, methods and processes of edu­cation (as, for instance, in self-teaching ventures and teaching laboratories based particularly on the use of informatics).

Owing to the number of different media (films, records, audio-visual montages, radio, television, video tapes, video records, portable television sets, computers, microprocessors), owing to the number of types and levels of edu­cation involved (literacy teaching, adult edu­cation, rural development, pre-primary, primary and secondary education, technical and vo­cational education, higher and post-graduate education), owing to the differences in the extent to which the media are used (continu­ously, regularly, partially, occasionally) and owing to the situations in which they are used (in a group, with or without a teacher, for h o m e study), there are several thousand combinations in the use of communication technologies that have been developed with varying success.

Experience today shows that the major edu­cational campaigns by the media have often been

too optimistic, the educators having underesti­mated the difficulties, the complications and the unwieldiness of production and facilities. W h e r e the information environment was poorest, it has taken more readily to educational c o m m u n i ­cation—e.g. radio in rural areas. Today renewed interest is to be noted on the part of educators in the use of less cumbersome technical means of stocking and distributing—local radio trans­mitter, video cassettes, lightweight or portable video tape recorders—which can be handled more easily and better adapted to local needs. However, the absence of any coherent cultural policy and the rigidity of educational strategies in most countries reduce the possibilities of massive, systematic applications of the media to major educational tasks.

W h a t does seem possible, on the other hand, and is desired by most societies, in view of the increasing importance of communication, is the new responsibility of teaching everyone the proper use of communication, the more so since the family, in the majority of cases, has shown itself to be ill prepared to face up to its irruption. W h a t is required here is a more critical education that can point to the dangers of pseudo-knowledge from audio-visual sources and the illusion of the power of information. It is a question of freeing the individual from the fascination exercised by technology, making him less receptive and more exacting, more aware. It n o w seems to be recognized that any improve­ment in the standards of the press and of radio and television programmes is dependent on this trainingof individual and collective discernment.

There are already m a n y forms of education for the appropriate consumption of c o m m u n i ­cation. S o m e are essentially concerned with the individual consumption of information as a product, others with the encouragement of the creative use of communication seen mainly as a social process. In the context of better consump­tion of the product, the last few years have brought about a development in the use of newspapers in schools as texts for study, the

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Communication and education

teaching of the rudiments of visual c o m m u n i ­cation and the screen arts, showing h o w to appreciate and judge messages, to read the author's intentions, to distinguish the real and the imaginary, to organize and select. In some cases it is the content of the audio-visual culture itself (films, television), that is used as a reference for teaching purposes. Sometimes, even, communication provides the basis for a school exercise: production of filmed synopsis or cartoon montages. This amounts to an intro­duction to communication as a process.

Communication is no longer the monopoly of communicators. Inaugurated in earlier times with the school newspaper and printing shop, this 'participatory' approach is n o w leading m a n y schools, clubs or youth movements to have pupils handle portable television or 8 - m m movie cameras and even to dialogue with mini­computers.

In this way, educators are taking their place at the heart of the popular Utopia of a convivial society in which everyone can be at the same time a producer and a consumer of information, as part of a group.

This proliferation of initiatives has not yet found its way into coherent educational strat­egies, and m u c h remains to be done in this

field. S o m e maintain that communication tech­nologies and their use should be a n e w subject of study, even if this means increasing compart-mentalization. Others maintain that it is within each subject in general education as it n o w exists that the pupil must gradually learn to master the media, despite the possible danger of forcing into the school a culture that it m a y be unable to assimilate. But for the time being, neither the audio-visual media nor data processing are sufficiently well established within educational institutions to become an everyday concern there. This makes it clear that the time has come for a more systematic exchange of information, experiences and ideas, within the international community, in a field where the causes are as difficult to control as the effects are decisive. It has become obvious that neither policies nor methods of education, initial or in-service training of teachers nor educational research, can henceforth ignore the n e w set of problems arising from the confrontation be­tween education and communication. A n d the poorer countries even less than the others, inasmuch as their very poverty leaves them directly exposed to the corrosive effects of this information explosion that is going to shake the end of the century.

47

Donald P. Ely

The two worlds of today's learners

O n e of the major anthropological discoveries of the last decade was the Tasaday tribe in the hills of Mindanao in the Philippines. T h e interest generated by that discovery was based on the isolation of the tribe from society. T o find a group of people w h o had lived in isolation for an estimated 2,000 years was so unusual that care was taken to preserve the separation of the tribe from the remainder of society lest some contamination destroy the uniqueness of their situation.

Isolation is an ever-decreasing phenomenon in our world. T h e pervasiveness of c o m m u n i ­cation and transportation technologies virtually ensures movement of people and ideas. It is rare that a person is i m m u n e from daily mess­ages by radio and, to a lesser extent, newspapers and television. W h e r e the more glamorous m e d i u m of television is not available, pressures by the public and visions of modernity by their leaders hasten to bring electronic images to the people. T h e demand for television is often great enough to give it political priority over running water and sewage disposal systems.

T h e Tasadays are unique because they were removed from the mainstream of society. This

Donald P. Ely (United States). Professor of Education at Syracuse University. Director, ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources. Co-author of Teaching and Media: A Systematic Approach and Media Personnel in Education: A Competency Approach.

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Prospects, Vol. X , N o . i, 1980

example highlights the contrast between a group of about 100 people and the rest of the world, which is totally immersed in the technologi­cal age. Global communication systems pro­vide information and entertainment to national and international audiences. Today, even rural people in remote areas press the transistor radio to their ear and become part of a world beyond their o w n village.

The pervasive influence of mass media

T h e ubiquitous nature of communication media in nearly every nation has brought about a significant increase in the amount of information available and a significant decrease in the time for a message to m o v e from a source to thou­sands of receivers. A d d to the usual broadcast media those in print, film and recordings and w e begin to sense the extent to which every person in every part of the world has access to audio and visual stimuli.

It is with thoughts of a media-saturated society that M c L u h a n comments on the way in which media are reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence in almost every aspect of life except education:

There is a world of difference between the modern h o m e environment of integrated electric information and the classroom. Today's television child is attuned

The two worlds of today's learners

to up-to-the-minute 'adult' news—inflation, rioting, war, taxes, crime, bathing beauties—and is bewildered w h e n he enters the nineteenth-century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and struc­tured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects and schedules.1

The separation of schools from society

T h e paradox is that in the midst of a global communications revolution, schools can re­main aloof, rigid and unchanging. In societies that have embraced n e w communication tech­nologies, the tendency is for those technologies to permeate every sector of that society. H o w ­ever, schools have remained walled off from the society of which they are an integral part. This separateness can be observed not only in ad­vanced technical societies but also in developing nations, which have 'succeeded in multiply­ing indefinitely existing monopolistic forms of conventional education, based on the historic, rigid models of the West , thus heading rap­idly toward economic disaster and social bank­ruptcy'.2

Schools will increase their irrelevance as long as they remain separate from the society from which they derive support. Adults w h o missed earlier opportunities for advanced schooling or w h o want to gain n e w competencies are seeking alternative means to achieve their educational goals. M a n y of the n e w approaches of open learning3 and distance education use c o m m u n i ­cation technologies as major elements of in­struction. Younger learners, however, do not have choices when they pursue their education.

Dieuzeide states the basic problem w h e n he says that 'education remains the only major h u m a n activity in which technology m a y not increase man's potential. Voices rise to denounce the strange and pernicious paradox whereby the educational institution is required to change the

world without any concession that it must itself be transformed'.4

For the past fifty years visionary educators have attempted to bring the schools into the mainstream of society by introducing a variety of media into the classroom. A s each n e w m e d i u m was introduced and tried by brave innovators, it was usually treated as an exper­iment whereby the m e d i u m substituted for other stimuli. It was usually additive; that is, almost no changes in the basic instructional process were m a d e nor was the role of teacher substantially changed. Those n e w media that were adopted, such as the overhead projector and audiotape recorders, did not bring about any major changes in classroom procedures. Enthusiasm about n e w teaching methods a m o n g school administrators or among the learners themselves has had very little effect on the ultimate users—the teachers.

The classroom ritual

Historically, classroom teaching has been highly ritualized, and any major change is perceived as an invasion of sacred territory. H o b a n points out that 'Ritualization in teaching is flexible enough to permit idiosyncrasies of personal style, arrangement of the daily schedule, police methods, pacing, etc., but major character­istics of ritual tend to be invariant'.5 T w o in­variants to which H o b a n refers are teacher control of the teaching-testing-grading-reward-punishment processes and face-to-face inter­action with students. A n y substantial reduction of the teacher's dominant status or major change in the interpersonal teacher-learner c o m m u n i ­cation is likely to elicit some teacher hostility and resistance. Such resistance is likely to continue as long as the teacher perceives any m e d i u m as a replacement of teacher perform­ance or as requiring a change from accepted norms of teacher behaviour.

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Donald P. Ely

A problem of change

Most theories of innovation hold that individ­uals w h o will be responsible for installing and maintaining any innovation must be a part of the trial and adoption process. A n innovation that originates outside the system or proceeds from the top d o w n in a hierarchical structure is unlikely to succeed. T h e problem, therefore, is not one of h o w to bring media into education settings but h o w to bring about educational change. A n innovation, such as the use of c o m ­munication technology in education, should be as compatible as possible with the cultural values of teachers w h o use it. Innovation should not be presented so as to threaten the teacher's self-esteem or to jeopardize a teacher's position in relation to professional peers.6 Faure et al. point to the key role of teachers:

The essential problem for such countries is to combat routine, arouse public interest and, above all, to have their teachers co-operate in their undertaking. This latter condition is indispensable, not only in order to tranquillize susceptibilities among certain sections of the population, but in particular because the use of new technologies in education requires them to be integrated into the educational system.7

T h e acceptance and use of communication media in teaching are probably easy innovations w h e n compared to m o r e fundamental changes that must be brought about if w e are to harness the ever increasing influence of media on children w h e n they are outside the schools.

The influence of television

T h e most dramatic influence on children is brought about by exposure to television. A u t h ­orities in the field of television research8 regard television as an agent of socialization and ac­culturation equal to family and peer influence. Forbes points out that

in times past the elders of each society communicated to the next generation through legends and myths

their picture of how the world functions—who holds power, who are the aggressors, who are the victims, what are the appropriate patterns of social interaction, where one might expect danger, and where one might be able to trust and feel secure. N o w T V brings to all children its own myths and legends, its o w n picture of how the world functions.9

In areas where television is inaccessible, radio performs m a n y of the same influential func­tions. Advertising in m a n y formats and local cinemas introduce people, ideas, products and actions that would otherwise never be k n o w n by young people. These experiences are brought to schools, where they are usually considered to be irrelevant, and teachers generally continue to do what they have done in the past. Postman describes the irony of the n e w student facing the traditional educational system. H e says that schools are dealing with a different type of student n o w , one molded by 'the elec­tronic media, with the emphasis on visual imagery,immediacy,non-linearity,andfragmen-tation'.10 Today's learners do not fit into the traditional classroom with its emphasis on 'se­quence, social order, hierarchy, continuity, and deferred pleasure'. It is this type of young person with n e w ideas and attitudes w h o helps to bring about the failure of some of the most intelligent and dedicated teachers.

N e w roles for teachers

If some headway is to be m a d e in creating a rapprochement between experiences gained outside the classroom and learning within the school environment, teachers will have to learn h o w to use the media to enrich learning and to ease the transition from school to contemporary society. T h e introduction of c o m ­munication media into the teaching-learning process is not necessarily the key to bringing the media into the mainstream of education. It is in teacher recognition of the influence that radio, television, recordings, cinema, billboards and

50

The two worlds of today's learners

advertising media have on the students w h o c o m e to their classrooms. It is in teacher under­standing of the media content and context. It is in day-to-day teaching efforts and long-range curriculum planning that teachers can incor­porate ideas, examples and personalities from outside the classroom into concerns inside the learning environment. Med ia should become an integral part of the instructional plan. T h e y should be used as motivational tools that arouse and sustain interest but do not compromise substantive efforts.

T h e suggestion of bringing the classroom and the world closer together is not n e w . Comenius , Pestalozzi, Froebel and D e w e y were advocates of such an approach. Contemporary interpret­ations of their philosophies would undoubtedly call for a closer relationship between media in­fluences and classroom learning. While teachers m a y endorse such an approach in principle, it is difficult to implement, and for some , the very idea appears to be a compromise because popu­lar entertainment media are being introduced in an academic atmosphere. S o m e teachers m a y feel that essential knowledge and skills are not being learned if communications media enter the classroom.

A new literacy for a new time

In addressing this concern, one must remember that the issue is not to adopt one approach and completely eliminate the other; it is h o w to define a literate person in today's world. T h e nature and level of literacy m a y differ from village to village and from rural to urban areas. Literacy, as it is used here, goes beyond the normal interpretation—the ability to read and write. A literate person today is one w h o is able to understand, interpret and use myriad stimuli that are present in a given environment. Written and spoken language, music, sounds, still and moving pictures, natural objects and actions are some of the stimuli that affect

people and hence need to be understood, inter­preted and used. Schools often limit teaching to the traditional skills of reading and writing with some time spent in observation. Such a limited approach is not sufficient for students w h o live in a m u c h m o r e sophisticated world that requires a type of literacy beyond basic primary school knowledge and skills.

The visual literacy movement

Since the early 1970s there has been a growing interest in visual literacy a m o n g some educators in North America. Whether visual literacy, media literacy, or visual communication is the best label, the concept needs to be considered an essential element of today's curriculum everywhere in the world. A s educators consider a broader definition of literacy, it should include the study of symbols, message carriers, n o n ­verbal language, communication channels and effects on h u m a n behaviour. T h e National C o n ­ference on Visual Literacy,11 an organization in North America, suggests the essence of a definition:

W h e n a person has developed a set of visual abilities through seeing and sensory experiences, and when they are able to discriminate and interpret visual actions, objects, patterns and symbols in the en­vironment, then they are becoming visually literate. It is through the creative use of these abilities that a visually literate person is able to comprehend and communicate. A n appreciation of the visual skills of others will lead to greater enjoyment of visual communication.12

Programs in visual literacy have been established in m a n y primary and secondary schools in North America.13 Australian educators are plan­ning and experimenting with 'mental imagery'14

and 'media studies':

'Media studies' refers to mass media communication, e.g. film, television, newspapers and radio, and the way they affect us. It is the exploration of communi­cation through our senses and the development of

51

Donald P. Ely

our perceptions and skills in communicating by util­ising media tools. The primary concern of media studies is with concepts, not media tools.15

A major training programme for adults in North America is Television Awareness Training. T h e goal for individuals w h o follow this approxi­mately twenty-hour course is 'to become more aware of h o w w e use T V , what the teaching messages are and h o w w e can m a k e changes that seem appropriate'.16 T h e curriculum approaches the study of television from the viewpoint of h u m a n values. Another example is the five-session inservice course for teachers, 'Visual Learning', which has been prepared by the N e w York State Education Department.17

Interest in visual symbols is not new. Adelbert A m e s , Rudolf Arnheim, Ernst Cassirer, Charles Morris and others have explored the relation­ships of signs and symbols to h u m a n c o m m u n i ­cation. Those efforts continue today in the work of Marshall M c L u h a n , M . D . Vernon, and Jerome Bruner. Recently visual communicators from India, Iran, Japan and the United States worked as a team at the East-West Center to develop a n e w visual language to convey c o m ­plex concepts about interdependence of nations and peoples, with emphasis on the energy crisis.18 They reviewed existing international symbols and visual languages, revising and refining 70 of more than 700 images.

Entertainment versus education

Historically, visual communication has been primarily identified with entertainment and teachers have been reluctant to use examples from entertainment in the classroom. Education and entertainment are actually poles apart. A test of entertainment is immediate pleasure. W h a t is seen or heard m a y not be remembered. A person usually recognizes entertainment im­mediately, while the test of education m a y come soon or m a n y years in the future. Education is memorable; entertainment is written in the

sand.19 Pleasure usually comes from entertain­ment but education m a y be pleasurable, painful or painless. Teachers should strive to make learning pleasurable but need not avoid the pain that often comes from disciplined thinking. T h e most important questions are not 'Is it difficult?' or 'Is it easy?' but 'Is it clear?' and 'Is it relevant?'. ' T h e enjoyment of an edu­cational experience comes mostly from its clar­ity and design in exposition and the relevancy of the ideas expressed to the life of the reader, viewer, or listener.'20 It is not necessary to m a k e learning fun, but it is important to make the teaching-learning process real, lively and chal­lenging. Like life itself, education can be both sweet and sour.

Developing the relationship

Educators need to look anew at the experiences which today's child brings to school. In c o m ­parison with learners of a decade ago, today's student is certainly more visually oriented and more aware of the world beyond the h o m e . There is probably a higher level of expectation that the school will build on the experiences and skills already gained prior to formal schooling. Teachers need to be ready to meet that ex­pectation.

Teachers first need to understand the multi­media, electronic world that is so strongly influencing children outside the classroom. That means looking at, listening to and experiencing some of the same events as young people are using. They need to try to understand what is attractive about these sensory stimuli and perhaps determine h o w to use them to further school objectives.

Teachers need to know what sights and sounds students prefer, what programmes they seek out, what films they see, what activities have a high priority in their lives. Seels has developed a 'Visual Preference Survey' to be used in association with other questioning tech-

52

The two worlds of today's learners

niques to determine what learners prefer to see and do outside the school.21

Once teachers understand the dynamics of our multimedia world and possess information about the media sophistication of their students, the central problem of transfer must be ad­dressed. H o w can a teacher transfer the k n o w ­ledge and attitudes gained outside the classroom to the school setting? T h e n , in turn, h o w can the learner transfer newly acquired skills back into the world? T h e problem of transfer in this case is not a problem of learning but one of motivation.

Motivation

Keller describes several types of motivational problems in classroom settings:

In order to have motivated students, their curiosity

must be aroused and sustained; the instruction must

be perceived to be relevant to personal values or

instrumental to accomplishing desired goals; they

m u s t have personal conviction that they will be

able to succeed; and the consequence of the learning

experience must be consistent with the personal

incentives of the learner.22

Attempting to relate out-of-school learning to in-school goals must go beyond entertainment and show. Teaching does not have to be dull and uninspired, however. Teachers should learn h o w to relate the knowledge, skills and attitudes gained in the multimedia world to problems and issues considered in the classroom. Content and quality of learning need not be compromised but, rather, enhanced as learners perceive the relation­ships between the two worlds they inhabit.

Notes

i. Marshall M c L u h a n and Quentin Flore, The Medium is the Massage, p . 18, N e w York, Bantam Books, 1967.

2 . Henri Dieuzeide, 'Educational Technology for D e ­veloping Countries', in David A . Olson (ed.), Media and Symbols: The Forms of Expression, Communication, and Education, 73rd Yearbook of the National Society

for the Study of Education, Part I. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1974.

3. See N o r m a n MacKenzie, Richmond Postgate and John Scupham, Open Learning, Paris, Unesco, 1975.

4 . Dieuzeide, op. cit., p . 431. 5. Charles F . Hoban , ' M a n , Ritual, the Establishment

and Instructional Technology', Educational Techno­logy, Vol. VIII, N o . 20, 1968, p . 6.

6. Gerald Zultman and Robert Duncan, Strategies for Planned Change, p . 88, N e w York, Wiley-Interscience, 1977.

7 . Edgar Faure, Filipe Herrara, Abdul-Razzak K a d -doura, Henri Lopes, Arthur V . Petrovsky, Majid Rahnema, Frederick Champion W a r d , Learning to Be, p . xxxv, Paris, Unesco, 1972.

8. See George Gerbner and L . Gross, 'Living with Television : The Violence Profile', Journal of Communi­cation, Vol. 25, N o . 2, p. 173-99; A . D . Liefer, N . J. GordonandS.B. Graves,'Children's Television: More Than Mere Entertainment', Harvard Edu­cational Review, Vol. 44, p. 213-45; G . Comstock, S. Chaffer, N . Katzman, M . McCombs , and D . R o ­berts, Television and Human Behavior, N e w York, Columbia University Press, 1978.

9. N o r m a Forbes, 'Entertainment Television in Rural Alaska: H o w Will It Affect the School?' presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 1979.

10. Neil Postman, 'Order in the Classroom', Atlantic Monthly, September 1979.

11. Roger B . Fransecky and John L . Debes, Visual Literacy: A Way to Learn, A Way to Teach, Washing­ton, D . C . , Association for Educational C o m m u n i ­cation and Technology, 1972.

12. Gillian Sellar, Project Primedia, p . 2 , Perth, Western Australia Education Department, 1979.

13. Roger B . Fransecky and R o y Ferguson, ' N e w W a y s of Seeing: T h e Milford Visual Communications Project', Audiovisual Instruction, Vol. 18, April, M a y , June/July, 1973.

14. Just Imagine . . . Learning Through Mental Imagery, A Guide for Teachers, and Pictures of Ideas: Learning Through Visual Analogies, Salisbury, South Australia, Visual Education Curriculum Project.

15. Sellar, op. cit., p . 1. 16. Ben Logan (ed.), Television Awareness Training, p . 6,

N e w York, Media Action Research Center, 1977. 17. Visual Learning, Bureau of Educational Communi­

cations, N e w York State Education Department, Albany, N . Y .

18. ' N e w W a y s to View World Problems', East-West Perspectives, Vol. 1, N o . 1, p . 15-22, s u m m e r 1979.

19. Edgar Dale, 'Education or Entertainment?', Can You Give the Public What It Wants?, N e w York, Cowles Education Corp., 1967.

20. Dale, op. cit., p. 36. 21. Barbara Seels, ' H o w to Develop Your Visual M a ­

turity', Audiovisual Instruction, Vol. 24, N o . 7 , 1979,

P- 33-5-22. John M . Keller, 'Motivation and Instructional Design:

A Theoretical Perspectives', Journal of Instructional Development, Vol. 2 , N o . 4 , summer 1979, p . 32 .

53

Ana Maria Sandi

Mass communication education: from conflict to co-operation

Mass communication:

a challenge

Twentieth-century educators have been chal­lenged by a fierce and irresistible competition: their pupils are overwhelmed by the information transmitted by mass media. W h e n compared to television programmes, films, comics, coloured pictures in magazines and science-fiction pocket books, the lessons or the math and grammar exercises seem dull and constraining.

Nowadays, parents and teachers are trying hard to break the magic of images and sounds and to send their children back to homework.

There are families w h o avoid buying a tele­vision set in order to maintain their 'cultural purity'. T h e selective attitude that operates in relation to printed matter is readily abandoned as soon as the television programme is involved.

T h e power of mass communication and the fact that it m a y play either a positive or a negative role in individual and social develop­ment have caused m a n y people to view its n e w dimensions with both mistrust and appre­hension.

T h e obsolescence of the printed word was announced, regretfully, with the outset of the

Ana Maria Sandi (Romania). Senior Researcher, International Center of Methodology for Future and Development Studies, University of Bucharest.

video culture; however, world book production has almost doubled in the past ten years.

O n the other hand, specialists in information have established that a twenty-minute television news programme corresponds roughly to three columns of newspaper text. Going even further in the demonstration of audio-visual inefficiency, it m a y be added that the television programme was in fact based on printed texts such as agency news, notes, summaries, written syn­theses. However, any such discussion overlooks the astonishing properties of the moving images, the impact that images from far-off, unknown places m a y have.

T h e mass-communication phenomenon is here, developing in all its complexity and variety of forms, and future forecasts indicate an even greater expansion, largely due to n e w techno­logical advances.

In the 1990s the specialists are expecting a large-scale expansion of video-cassette systems, which are going to invade the world market as the record player did some time ago.

Cable and interregional television and c o m ­munication satellites are also booming. At pre­sent over eighty communication satellites are in orbit; they ensure the retransmission both of phone calls and of television programmes, thus making it possible for a large part of the world population to be directly involved in major events at the very m o m e n t of their occurrence. A typical satellite programme m a y be beamed

54

Prospects, Vol. X , N o . i3 1980

Mass communication education: from conflict to co-operation

around the globe in nine-tenths of a second. T h e developed countries are said to be

undergoing a transition towards the post-industrial phase of development, towards the informational society and the informational economy, based on an infinitely renewable re­source: information.

In this type of society, according to Lars Ingelstam, the citizen must be able to deal with information in order to survive.1

O n the other hand, m a n y developing countries are simultaneously developing their industry and their information and communication capa­bilities, in an attempt to have an equal share in the information process of the modern world.2

Disparities are striking between rural and urban areas: the rural population is submitted to urban-oriented communications and infor­mation.

T h e problem is therefore related not only to the actual channels and effective methods of communication, but also to the content of the material to be communicated and to the irrel­evance of the latter for the masses receiving it. T h e misuse of mass media for commercial purposes, for obtaining large profits by broad­casting advertisements, is unfortunately charac­teristic of a large part of the information network.

Finally, disparities are further increased by such problems as accessibility and the possibility to interpret, understand and utilize the infor­mation received. A m o n g the factors hampering the development of the press as an effective m o d e of communication in the developing countries, U . A h a m e d enumerates 'the high rate of illiter­acy, the number of languages spoken, the lack of printing presses, the high cost of imported newsprint, the poor telecommunications facili­ties for transmission of news and the slow and poor rural communication between the few cities and towns and the larger rural areas.3

T h e social, cultural and economic develop­ment of a country depends to a great extent upon its way of responding to and utilizing mass communication.

Soedjatmoko defines the learning capacity of a nation as the 'collective capacity to generate, to ingest, to reach out for and to utilize a vast amount of n e w and relevant information'.4

Information and knowledge

Education is one of the fields that could fully m a k e use of the increased possibilities of infor­mation and knowledge.

T h e conflicts between the education system and mass communication are often dealt with; their complementarity and co-operation possi­bilities are mentioned far less often. A n d this is a time w h e n television has been called, with reason, the children's 'early window' to the world.5

Promising attempts exist: an interesting pro­g r a m m e called 'Success in Reading', which has been tried in some schools, consists in a system of teaching reading and writing by using news­papers and magazines instead of the classical first-grade handbook.6 Children attracted by the use of interesting things they will deal with the rest of their lives are prompted to obtain better results in learning.

T h e general picture seems, however, to re­flect antagonistic relations and interests rather than co-operative tendencies.

T h e contrast has been theorized about by educators, and thus the mass media have emerged in an unfavourable light. O n the one hand, in organized, formalized school education, knowledge forming a coherent, ordered system is to be found. O n the other there is mass communication, transmitting simple, discon­nected, scattered information. At one extreme is the utmost economy, optimization in the sense of the m i n i m u m of signs used for a m a x i m u m of message; at the other extreme is redundancy, superposition, wastage. At one end is science with its paraphernalia; at the other, amateurism and superficiality.

Nevertheless, if w e were to analyse the sources

55

Ana Maria Sandi

of the knowledge used by our children, the balance would be strongly unfavourable to the school.

The quantity of information

It is a well k n o w n fact that the information that incessantly surrounds us also acts upon us.

Scientists such as H . von Foerster insist upon the enriching character of the 'noise' w h e n it is introduced in self-organizing systems charac­terized by a sufficiently high degree of redun­dancy and reliability.7

But our main interest in the education process is knowledge. T h e essential difference between information and knowledge is the fact that the latter is endowed with meaning. T h e fact that either 'it is raining' or 'the weather is fine' provides information. It m a y eventually be measured. In this case, if the two situations are equally probable, w e have what specialists call a'bit'of information.

Specialists in information theory are especially interested in the quantitative aspect of infor­mation. Starting from the idea that the essence of information is to m a k e a choice, the measure chosen for the quantity of information is conceived so that the more the possibilities of choice, the larger the quantity of information provided. If n possibilities exist the quantity of information, / , should be an increasing function of n. T h e chosen function, owing to reasons connected with its properties, was the logar­ithm: J = log n.

A more refined measure allows for analysis of the cases in which the possibilities are not equally probable. In this case, the lower the probability of an event, the more surprised w e are w h e n it actually occurs.

Learning processes m a y seem at first sight to be governed by a decrease of entropy. In the case of a question permitting more than one possible answer, the entropy is initially maxi­m u m (the answers being equally probable). In

the process of learning, the incorrect answers are eliminated, while the probability of the correct ones is increased and consequently the entropy decreases.

T h e dialectics seem to be more intricate, including both stages of increase and decrease of entropy. Unlearning implies an increase of entropy, and any anti-entropic evolution in a system implies an entropie evolution in the frame of a larger system.

However, the information transmitted by mass media is neither pure, isolated from a certain context, nor value-free, as considered in quan­titative studies. A n d educators are interested exactly in the meaning and value of the in­formation.

Let us remember the childhood game in which a chain of children whisper the same word from ear to ear; to the players' delight, the final version is often completely different from what had been initially transmitted. T h e prob­lem is that very often things distinctly and plainly expressed at emission are wrongly under­stood at reception.

T h e measure of the quantity of information is of no help in such situations.

Context

Influenced by the dominant logical positivist school, w e are used to defining sense (and there­fore meaning) by making reference to a system of rules defining correctness. T h e knowledge provided by the education system is stored in the logical blocks of theories and disciplines; it has a meaning determined by its place in the system of inferences (deductive in the ideal case of the theoretical sciences or inductive in the empirical sciences). But the logical criterion, which is so exclusivist and an enemy of any exogenous considerations and which also over­looks the contributions of psychology and so­ciology, is strongly challenged nowadays.

W e are in a period of ample reconsideration

56

Mass communication education: from conflict to co-operation

of the psycho-social component of knowledge. T h e sense (the meaning) is given by the

context, and the context also helps the process of strengthening accumulated knowledge and m e m o r y recall.

This is also one of the theses of the learning report to the Club of R o m e . 8

In an attempt at designing a hierarchy, G . Bateson enumerates:

The stimulus is an elementary signal, either internal or external.

The context of the stimulus is a metamessage classifying the elementary stimulus.

The context of the stimulus context is a meta­message, classifying the metamessage a.s.o.9

T h e context m a y be considered ca collective term for all those events which tell the organism a m o n g what set of alternatives he must m a k e his next choice'.

In this respect, mass media are a fantastic source of a large variety of contexts, which logical and systematic learning sweeps aside as impurities.

Formal education transmits schematized, ar­ranged, ordered knowledge, while the large mass media sources provide knowledge as it is elaborated, taken out from the production pro­cess even before the latter is completed.

Knowledge is provided within the framework of real problems, not in the narrow one of disciplines.

It is true that the systematic presentation m o d e in school has the advantage of being economical. However , this should be viewed cautiously, and a margin should be left for the diffused communication provided by mass media.

Values

O n the other hand, the information transmitted by the mass media is not value-free; it emerges filtered and interpreted through value systems,

offering a specific image of reality. In fact, the transmission of information implies a selective judgement reflecting a specific scale of values. This is also true for all distortions reflected by over- or underemphasizing news, the presen­tation of isolated or incomplete statements, omissions, creating unfounded fears, etc.

T h e fact that in a children's magazine there is an image alongside the following problem: c h o w m a n y possibilities are there for a little girl and two boys to sit together in a car, given that only the boys can drive?' is certainly the reflection of a specific value system.

Learning m a y proceed within the framework of a value system, by a process of detection of error and correction leading to the improvement of answers. This is single-loop learning; in its framework the values and the norms that lay at the core of the whole process are not ques­tioned.

In double-loop learning,10 the value system itself is challenged. Within its framework weights are modified, n e w priorities or even entirely n e w values emerge.

Value-laden and contextual information trans­mitted by mass media continually offers the potential for both types of learning.

Restructuring

T h e activation of this potential requires an active attitude from the learner. S o m e authors consider that information is not received, but constituted.11

Everyone is familiar with a situation in which a radio is on, but w e fail to hear what is trans­mitted, since our attention is concentrated on some other activity. Moreover, the messages transmitted are not always clear and specific, but vague and ambiguous. A n active attitude of inquiry and reflexive inquiry aimed at attaining the specification and the clarification of infor­mation as well as its completion and simpli­fication is necessary.

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Ana Maria Sandi

Knowledge does not accumulate in a desert; it is inserted in mental schemata belonging to a general thinking framework created in time on the basis of the contextual structure and of past experience.

Specialists in artificial intelligence lately have been paying particular attention to these k n o w ­ledge structures. M . Minsky calls them frames:

a structure of data used for representing a stereotype situation, for instance a type of room or a child's birthday party. T o each frame, indications of various nature are attached: some of them regarding the way of utilizing the frame, others on what we could expect further, others on what should be done in case the previsions are not confirmed.12

O n the philosophical plane these structures represent a Weltanschauung, the images w e m a y have about reality.

K . Boulding makes distinctions a m o n g three possible situations on confrontation with a message: (a) ignoring the message (unaffected images); (b) modification of images by a routine procedure; and (c) revolutionary change of the images (the message reaches the support structure).13

Similarly, in learning, information m a y pro­duce simple modifications of the probabilities to choose the answers from a given set of answers and/or it m a y have a more complex effect, generating restructuring at the level of the general thinking framework, translated by modifications of the set of answers itself (for instance by the creative addition of n e w pos­sible answers). T h e restructuring capacity is specific to living organisms, the autopoietic systems that in a given physical space do not lose their physical identity (and do not, there­fore, modify their organization) as a conse­quence of the permanent renewal of matter and of the restructurings that occur through learning and development.

A s against these systems, in another type of dynamic system, the allopoietic ones, the organizations are maintained the same as long

as the product of their functioning, differing from themselves, does not change.14

In this process, a central place is undoubt­edly played by motivation, but the role played by learning to learn m a y also be added.

This presupposes learning about the previous contexts of learning, learning to restructure, learning h o w and w h e n to apply single-loop or double-loop learning.

Learning to learn implies reflecting on pre­vious contexts of learning in which you learned or failed to learn, trying to identify the situ­ations and the modalities favourable to learning.

This second-order learning, or deutero-learning as Bateson calls it,15 leads to saving the time and effort implied by the usual first-order learning.

Learning processes between school and mass media

T h e two criteria for achieving learning advo­cated by the learning report to the Club of R o m e are participation and anticipation. Let us see h o w they are satisfied by formal education (school) and the mass media.

M a s s communication is generally blamed for the creation of a passive attitude of reception and simple additive accumulation of knowledge. Unfortunately, m a n y of the classical peda­gogical forms are also non-participative (with­out roles, based on reception, absence from choice and decisions).

A s regards the roles, the mass media are a real guide, a permanent introduction, to the world of adult actors, generating models, as­pirations and endeavours.

T h e unidirectional relationship of the unique transmitter and listener audiences, tends to be changed, owing to innovations in tele-data-processing that offer the possibility of dialogue and interaction.

Cable television allows for direct and im­mediate capturing of the audience response.

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Mass communication education: from conflict to co-operation

T h e communication satellites enable the organ­ization of meetings such as teleconferences in which famous scientists at great distances m a y be interviewed or involved in discussions.

As regards anticipation, it is obvious that the mass media are more imaginative, capable of future prospections, based on scenarios that capture the interest of children and youth. They m a y present the latest discoveries and suppositions, while the curriculum and the schoolbooks are strikingly poor, as far as antici­pation is concerned.

School education m a y , however, contribute to a better understanding of the information transmitted by the mass media and to the formation of the capacity for critical judgement by continuous debates and discussions.

Educational television and radio programmes and scientific programmes, are among the first that m a y be coupled into the educational process. It is recommended that pupils read certain books in addition to classwork—why not also that they watch certain television programmes and films? T h e latter m a y rep­resent a bibliography as useful as the books.

In Romania, a successful television pro­g r a m m e that has been maintained for m a n y years is a scientific programme: the tele-encyclopaedia. It is watched by pupils, parents and teachers alike. In school, however, there is hardly any reference to the extremely interesting issues presented in this programme.

A very successful serial all over the world was conceived by a scientist, J. Bronowski. Science presented in a personal, captivating vision aroused prolonged and controversial debates but generally not in school. Dis­cussions in class of articles, programmes or films m a y contribute to establishing connec­tions, interpreting the things that were read or seen, getting full awareness of the value system and of the proposed vision of the world. At the same time, the teacher could stimulate interest for the programmes and journals in an educative context.

T h e interest in watching the scientific-educative programmes is enhanced if they are presented under the form of competitions in front of audiences. These should not be compe­titions of memorization but rather of deduction, imagination, creative thinking. T h e simple questions must be completed with the c o m ­mentaries of specialists and experts in different fields.

Another modality is a television programme such as the one called ' D o Y o u H a v e Another Question?' in which a group of specialists answers questions regarding a specific problem; the questions are put directly through on the phone, which is placed in the studio from which the programme is broadcast.

Another scientific television serial, 'Connec­tions', conceived in a very lively manner by the British journalist James Burke, is watched with great interest not so m u c h for the infor­mation displayed as for the fact that it helps establish connections and understand the way in which science and society have advanced in close correlation over the years. This is a good example of a modern, well-achieved programme making people think, involving them and thus breaking the pattern of passive reception.

Under the conditions of the information revolution, the young should become 'media literate', learning to learn useful things.16

A process of learning to utilize c o m m u n i ­cation is contrasted with the tendency to be used.

Flexible curricula are already including c o m ­munication courses. In the first grade of a school there are already three types of courses: sciences (mathematics, languages), arts (music, drawing, manual work) and library. Thus quite small children become familiar with the great variety of information and knowledge they m a y derive from books and journals other than schoolbooks. T h e obvious attraction of the illustrated storybook facilitates and hastens the pupils' contact with the n e w environment, creating from the beginning the aptitude to

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Ana Maria Sandi

work and become informed in an independent way.

Education in watching, in reading (including fast reading) m a y be achieved by utilizing both formal and non-formal means. T h e train­ing of children in utilizing mass media c o m ­munication has proved to be particularly ef­ficient w h e n the pupils are effectively involved in the process of editing a magazine, producing a radio or television programme or shooting a documentary film. A m p l e evidence in this re­spect has been provided by the results obtained by school cineclubs or the audiences drawn by youth programmes edited and presented by pupils.

T w o conclusions m a y be formulated: in the first place, all authors, script-writers, cartoon­ists, producers of advertisements and editors should assume the responsibility of being educators. Awareness of participation in the learning processes of society should determine the exigency towards the released information and the modalities used, ensuring also an efficient feedback from the public.

A way (which does not fall into the category of technical performance) to enhance the role of public opinion in the control of mass c o m ­munication and of the information process is to ensure its presence in the management of the institutions involved in this process. In Romania public opinion is represented in the collective management bodies of news agencies, papers, journals, television and radio, publishing houses and networks of film presentation.

Secondly, all teachers and the other persons involved in the educative system should culti­vate the high standards of those w h o receive the information transmitted by mass media. They should feel like real authors and script­writers for the pupils and the adults, directors in permanent education.

A s H . de Jouvenel remarks, 'the develop­

ment of everybody's capacity to think, under­stand, criticize, undertake is more important than the transmission of information and k n o w ­ledge'.17

Notes

1. Lars Ingelstam, Feudalism or Democracy? Communi­cations at the Crossroads, paper presented at the World Future Studies Federation (WFSF) meeting in Cairo, 16-19 September 1978.

2. The Fifth Conference of the Heads of States of the Non-Aligned Countries in Sri Lanka in 1976 stated that a new international order in the field of mass communication is as vital as the new international economic order.

3. Uvais Ahamed, Communication, Cultural Identity in Our Interdependent World, paper presented at the W F S F conference, Cairo, September 1978.

4. Soedjatmoko, The Future and the Learning Capacity of Nations. The Role of Communications, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Institute of CommunicationSj Dubrovnik, September 1978.

5. R . M . Lieben, J. M . Neale, E . S. Davidson, The Early Window: Effects of Television on Children and Youth, N e w York, Pergamon Press, 1973.

6. Newsweek, 24 September 1979. 7. H . von Foerster, ' O n Self-organizing Systems and

Their Environments', in Yovitz and Cameron, Self-organizing Systems, London, Pergamon Press, i960.

8. J. Botkin, M . Elmandjra, M . Malitza, No Limits to Learning. How to Bridge the Human Gap, Pergamon Press, 1979.

9. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, N e w York, Bailan tine Books, 1972.

10. The terms of single loop and double loop learning are used for organizational learning in C . Argyris and D . Schön, Organisational Learning: a Theory of Action Perspective, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1978.

11. Valeriu Ceausu, Cunoasterea psihologicä, si conditio incertidutinii [Psychological Knowledge and the U n ­certainty Condition], Bucharest, Militara, 1978.

12. P. Winston (ed.), The Psychology of Computer Vision, N e w York, McGraw-Hill, 1975.

13. K . Boulding, The Image, Ann Arbor, Mich., Uni­versity of Michigan Press, 1956.

14. H . Maturana, 'Strategies cognitives', in L'unité de l'homme, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1974.

15. Bateson, op. cit. 16. Jim Dator, Identity, Culture and Communication Fu­

ture, paper presented at the W F S F conference, Cairo, September 1978.

17. H . de Jouvenel, Quelle question pour demain?, paper presented at the Unesco seminar on the perspectives of educational development, Paris, 1978.

60

Rita Cruise O'Brien

Mass media, education and the transmission of values

T h e rise in the number of radio and television stations in the Third World has been staggering in the past two decades. M a n y of the television programmes shown by these new broadcasting systems are foreign. Therefore, one principal question might begin: W h a t is the power of the media in the transmission of foreign values to school-age children? A n d our second question: Are these values in conflict with those that are fostered in the systems of education? T h e questions are simple, but the answers are necessarily complex.

Through the transfer of media systems and world-wide sale of programmes are w e really becoming a Global Village, as Marshall M c L u h a n suggested some years ago? O r , in consideration of the importance of the power of commercialism in television, are w e becoming a Corporate Village, as some writers on the media would have it? Looking at the transnational ownership structures of the media and consider­ing the absorptive capacity of newly established media systems for foreign material, a simple

Rita Cruise O'Brien ( United States). Mainly interested in French-speaking Africa, and recently in problems of mass communication in developing countries. Teacher in the Development Planning Unit at the University College, London. Among her publications are: White Society in Black Africa: the French of Senegal,- T h e Political Economy of Underdevelopment: Depen­dence in Senegal.

answer might be affirmative and raise the concern of educators and parents throughout the world.

Programmes, values and impact

W e have a basic problem trying to get under­neath some of the ephemeral tendencies of the global media. While it m a y be startling to turn on Kojak in places as culturally diverse as India, Jordan or Brazil, w e really have no comparative studies to guide us as to the effects of such programmes and the values they contain on people of diverse cultures and social back­grounds within those cultures. A n d without such studies w e cannot judge the transfer of values to any group in the population. W e don't know, for example, what is the potential conflict of values contained in programmes of foreign origin compared with those of local origin. In television particularly it is tempting to argue that the conflict is not so great because of the imitative nature of m a n y programmes m a d e in the Third World, which follow the skilful technical formats in terms of sequence, timing and characterization that were developed par­ticularly in American media. Sometimes pro­grammes on national cultural history are even di­rectly derivative of the formula of the American Western, a formula that is popular and will be understood and appreciated by audiences.

Prospects, Vol. X , N o . I, 1980

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Rita Cruise O'Brien

Directors k n o w that and proceed accordingly. Whenever one tries to argue that television

reaches a very small minority of the largely ur­ban affluent population in developing countries, the image of television serials in the shanty towns of Latin America (and elsewhere) returns to trouble one's knowledge of the real statistics. Broadly speaking, however, the impact of the values of television programmes on middle-class children w h o have an opportunity also to read comic books and magazines and buy records from similar foreign sources would only serve to reinforce a set of influences with which those of television would not seriously conflict.

T h e impact of television and therefore its capacity to change the values of impressionable young people could, in the absence of surveys in different cultures and different groups, be partially enlightened by the results of surveys in Western countries. Early work focused on the impact of violence on television on the attitudes of children.1 M o r e recently, surveys on the adult population seek to examine its important impact in social and political terms.2 W e have derived two important lessons from this work. First, the direct impact of television is minimal unless the values it contains are reinforced by other forms of learning in the society—social­ization in the family, the peer group and at school. It can be safely assumed that if the values implicit in television programmes are seriously at odds with other cultural and social influences, it m a y first be regarded as an u n ­usual spectacle. Take, for example, the different impact of American serials on Latin America's urban youth, w h o are influenced by the domi­nant culture of North America in so m a n y other ways, and compare it with the impact of Mission Impossible on a Sudanese audience, for which this imported cultural artefact must be m u c h more exotic. In the programme context itself, Latin American television contains a high proportion of American material and locally m a d e programmes that fit into a similar cultural m o d e . In the Sudan, by contrast, the rapid pace

of an American serial might be followed by a long programme of Arabic poetry with the performer sitting in front of the camera. T h e impact of each must be different. T h u s , while it it possible to dissect the values implicit and ex­plicit in such programmes, their effective trans­fer will be different in cultural terms, and also according to the age, education and life-style of the viewer, as well as the regular television diet.

Second, television as an influential m e d i u m is directly related to the frequency of viewing. In high-density television cultures in North America and Western Europe, w e do have studies that indicate that some children (usually of low-income groups) spend more hours watch­ing television than going to school and that school performance is low.3 Apart from Latin America, where there is a greater number of broadcast hours on television than anywhere else in the Third World, this kind of high-density viewing would not be possible. Most television stations in developing countries broad­cast only a few hours in the evening, which cannot begin to replicate the potential effects of continued viewing among children in rich countries. This, combined with cultural differ­ences, must necessarily minimize its effective­ness. W e cannot ignore, however, the impact on material values fostered by commercialism in the media and its potential effects on life-style and buying patterns. This particular feature m a y be considered under the rubric of taste transfer. There are two forms of influence: the first is the commercial itself, which is selling a given product, the second is the influence of clothing, material objects, and the general life­style in the programmes themselves. Most American programmes reflect a very high stan­dard of living largely beyond the capacity of the potential viewing audiences, especially in the Third World. O n e must carefully differen­tiate between this form of materialism, however, and its effect on a more coherent, deeply held value system. T h e danger is obvious: it encour­ages people to emulate standards that m a y be

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Mass media, education and the transmission of values

beyond their capacity to fulfil, thus generating personal frustration. But in social terms the revolution of rising expectations m a y only par­tially be attributed to material values derived from television or radio. M a n y other forms of influence contribute to it.

Structures and global television flows

W e have dealt thus far with personal impact. It is perhaps important to underline some of the structural factors that have contributed to foreign media influence in the Third World. T h e largest international market for worldwide sale of television programmes was developed by United States exporters.4 O n domestic network programming and content advertising agencies are pre-eminent. Sufficient profits are m a d e on the domestic market so that programmes are sold internationally at 'what the market will bear'. Based on the number of receivers in each country, programmes are sold very cheaply to developing countries at a fraction of the cost of making local equivalents. In the early years of the establishment of television stations in m a n y Third World countries, in the 1960s, few of them had a sufficient stock of programmes to fill even the few hours of broadcast time they had. T h e problem was resolved by importing programmes of any kind. This situation was further exacerbated by the demand for more and more hours of programme time from those w h o had television receivers (the more affluent and articulate members of the urban population). Thus , further imports were the obvious answer.

In the early 1970s, several countries in Africa and the Middle East adopted policies of reducing foreign imports by establishing a per­centage ceiling, largely owing to a consciousness of cultural imperialism. T h e Arab States, in particular, objected to sex and violence, which they felt were at odds with the values of Muslim society. Pressed to produce programmes as

rapidly as possible, overworked production staffs tried with great difficulty to comply with quantitative norms established often for politi­cal reasons. O n e means of defraying the cost of local productions was to invite advertising even in m a n y state-run broadcasting systems, the executives being only too happy to see a suf­ficient rise in the number of receivers in order to attract advertising agencies.

Television is a complicated, costly and some­what brittle m e d i u m for adaptation to dif­ferent forms of cultural expression. T h e growing rise in cost was further complicated in the early 1970s by the m o v e to colour equipment and the phasing out of black-and-white pro­duction and transmission equipment by the larger transnational firms. T h e promise of m a n y broadcasting stations was high: their charters raised m a n y high-minded aims about national, developmental and cultural goals. Performance has been m u c h more disappointing.5 O n e is tempted to ask, with all the will to the contrary, will television in the Third World become just like television elsewhere?

Whither radio?

Radio remains a m u c h more powerful mass instrument of information, entertainment, edu­cation. It is m u c h less influenced by foreign material, apart from music, than is television. T h e reason is simple: radio programmes are m u c h easier and cheaper to make . They have for a long time been well within the professional capacity of local staff, and m a n y programmes in the Third World are in vernacular languages. This, combined with the ubiquity of the cheap transistor receiver, means that it reaches a m u c h larger audience and, above all, those of limited income and far from major cities. So obvious, yet in statistical terms the estimation of its importance per capita of the population eludes even the most assiduous quantifiers at national and international level.

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Rita Cruise O'Brien

Radio has been used very effectively for edu­cational campaigns.6 Radio m a y be used to explain rather than promote debate on the parameters of national development policy. Radio is an effective way of reaching illiterate groups in the population. It has been used successfully for school broadcasting in different contexts. Yet two cardinal problems arise: the relationship between radio programming and school curriculum has often been very formal-istic. First of all, while great strides have been m a d e and exceptional examples m a y be cited,7

there remains m u c h to be done by both edu­cators and broadcasters to share the experiences of other developing countries in formal and non-formal educational programming and to rely less on the traditional models of school broadcasting developed in rich countries. I sometimes wonder if knowledge and evaluation of these systems is not more effectively shared on the international circuit of specialists rather than getting to those on the spot w h o must develop and enlarge this important area.8 Sec­ondly, although radio is so important, it has in recent years been starved for professional and financial reasons by television. For young pro­fessionals it has had a less exciting and glamor­ous image in comparison to jobs in television, and despite its renewed vocation and importance in the rich countries, the reverse is true in m u c h of the Third World. Partly for reasons of prestige and partly because of the sheer cost in­volved in making programmes for n e w television stations, radio is constrained by its more at­tractive sister m e d i u m . This particular problem is one for planners and professionals, w h o might consider more seriously the lesser opportunity cost of increased investment in radio: in prac­tical terms it is sometimes necessary to resist political pressures for the expansion of tele­vision for prestige reasons, perhaps most evident in the least developed countries, which need most to try to marshall all available resources for education.

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Professionalism under scrutiny

Optimism about the contribution of the media to education and development, which was pervas­ive in the 1960s, has n o w given way to consider­ation of the inequality of access to information and communication, which reinforces other growing inequalities in developing countries.9

Optimism has also been tempered by the trans­fer of values herein discussed. T h e process of re-evaluation is based on a consideration of the effects of transnational ownership in the media and programme flows and on the transfers of models of professionalism in broadcasting. Each of these trends has created a hiatus between national broadcasting and the experimental use of the media in formal and non-formal edu­cation, literacy or development campaigns and 'narrowcast' systems and appropriate tech­nology. T h u s , while 'small is beautiful' perhaps and is relevant to appropriate circumstances, big media became dominant in institutional terms, using considerable resources yet raising questions about its cultural or developmental relevance.

All questions of this kind are based on an underlying, perhaps prejudicial assumption that the maintenance of cultural identity (or ident­ities) in developing countries is a means of containing transnational influence and of pro­moting economic and social policies more rel­evant to the needs of those countries. T h e transnational influences carried through the mass media operate at two distinct levels: first, the direct influence on consumption patterns and life-styles of foreign programmes and ad­vertising: second, the influence on standards and norms of training, professionalism, models of organization and media production, which causes various occupations to identify with their metropolitan counterparts, and ultimately draws the media away from the cultural base and resources of a poor country.

For an electrical engineer trained in a metro­politan university and with close professional

Mass media, education and the transmission of values

contacts with his counterparts throughout the world (through professional meetings, journals and, above all, a positive attitude towards the most sophisticated technology that is most im­portant to his 'transnational community'), the system he would most like to have installed in his country reflects not necessarily local needs but reference to outside standards and norms. Engineers in broadcasting are as impressed as other members of the scientific and technical élite in developing countries with the ingenuity and sophistication of very expensive 'gadgets'. In addition, a source of their claim to authority as an occupation or profession m a y be based precisely on the sophistication of the equipment with which they work, and on which they have become dependent because of certain objectives of training or socialization in the wider sense. Considerations of this kind engender the choice of complex system design and costly equipment while placing a heavy burden on the local ser­vice, which m a y have originally been intended to achieve low-cost national coverage. Such a problem is indicative of the fact that the reorien­tation of cognitive categories achieved in the process of socialization m a y be at odds with the realities of local economic capacity.

It is, on the whole, m u c h easier to focus on the external features of dependence and cultural imperialism, about which there has been m u c h discussion in recent years, particularly by poli­ticians and government ministers from the Third World. These pronouncements have served to call attention to some of the apparent characteristics of dependence—television pro­g r a m m e imports, dependence on a few Western agencies for the circulation of news and infor­mation. M o r e subtle processes that are essen­tially structural and technological, however, are hardly questioned. Such processes are, of course, less apparent, but no less penetrating. Thus while the percentage of locally produced pro­grammes in proportion to imported television series is improving in m a n y countries, thus satisfying at least the ephemeral characteristics

of the battle against cultural imperialism, the quality and relevance of local production re­mains heavily constrained by the organization, technology and professional assumptions that go into its production. In m a n y instances the percentage improvement in local production is just a reflection of a form of 'cultural import substitution' or imitating the formula of the imported programme locally. A critical attempt to confront the tendencies of the 'Global Vil­lager' begins at h o m e with a m u c h more serious reconsideration of the aims of broadcasting, its integration with other sectors in planning, m a n ­agement and programming terms, a critical evaluation of finance and n e w expenditure in this traditionally high-technology sector. T h e form of sterile materialism contained in the consumer values circulated by television pro­grammes and commercials is a genuine 'culture of poverty' compared to the richness and variety of values contained in local cultures in develop­ing countries.

Schools and screens: texts and alienation

Having m a d e some progress towards answering the first question set out in the introduction about the transmission of values through the media, I n o w tread somewhat more hesitantly into the professional territory of most of the readers of this journal in trying to relate these tendencies to the educational process. First, in most of the Third World the school will remain for several decades to c o m e a m u c h more powerful instrument of socialization and there­fore transmission of values than the media. Although some emphases m a y conflict, it can be fairly safely assumed that the school environ­ment will remain paramount.

Second, even in the high television viewing cultures that I described, there are and will remain serious limitations on changes in values being promoted solely by the media. Measuring

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Rita Cruise O'Brien

its effects in diverse cultures and a m o n g differ­ent social groups is something w e can anticipate in social analysis in the years to come.

In this last section, however, I wish to draw attention to the cultural values contained in a particular textbook published in 1975 a n d n o w fairly widely used for teaching French to African school children at the primary level. T h e authors of the text claim in the note for teachers that they have 'adapted it to African needs'. T h e analysis of its content is necessarily limited since it is abstracted from the educational context in which the book is used, mediated naturally by the curriculum, teaching methods and teachers' interpretations.10 Yet the values it contains are very dramatically outlined, m a k ­ing implicit assumptions about the superiority and inferiority of cultures, the promotion of Western values, particularly consumerism, and above all raising concern in the mind of a sceptical observer about the vehicle of language teaching and alienation.

T h e preface tells the children that they will be presented with the daily life of French people (cooking, school, song, etc.) and urges that they m a k e a comparison of this with what happens in their o w n countries. They are told: 'Reflect carefully on the differences, which will show that which is characteristic of your culture and those of the French.' Another rubric covered by the text is languages, in which the child is urged to reflect on the use of French and African languages. T h e next phrase refers to the importance of the use of a dictionary, a clear oversight by authors w h o must be aware that there was until very recently no transcrip­tion for vernacular languages in francophone Africa. It is precisely the primacy given to French in the language policies of these countries that has until n o w precluded this possibility. Dictionaries of African languages would not be available to school children.

T h e layout of the book is skilful, while inexpensive, but there is a striking difference in the use of illustrative material. All the grammar

lessons are illustrated with block drawings of instances of African life, wherein the boy or girl visibly grows in situational use of French, emphasizing in part the difficulties of studying in Africa. Each section of the book has an excerpt of an African story, including Sembene O u s m a n e , Cámara Laye and other well-known authors. T h e illustrations for these stories are ex­ceptionally dreary and stylized. Contrasted with each of these stilted representations of'authen­ticity', the information about France or French culture is presented through cartoons, well repro­duced photographs and attractive line drawings.

T h e content conveys an even stronger m e a n ­ing. Articles on the circulation and world trans­lations of Tintín and Asterix (most well-known French strip cartoons), the competition between them for international popularity encourages a positive identification with French—centered youth culture. A small culturally-specific quote from the very upper middle-class education of Simone de Beauvoir, taken from the first volume of her autobiography, is followed by a few lines of dialogue from Zazie dans le métro (Raymond Queneau), a highly sophisticated Parisian play on words. It would be hard to k n o w h o w most African teachers would put this into context. It is followed by a quote of exceptional misery from The Black Docker, by Sembene, entitled ' T h e Illiterate W o m a n ' . T h e cultural contrast is so remarkable, the difference in life-styles and use of language so marked that the effect on a child must be very peculiar.

A section on music and instruments is highly culturally specific, with the traditional African d r u m presented in stark contrast to the range of classical instruments and forms of music in European society. Nowhere is a cora (an African string instrument of considerable sophistication) or a flute apparent. A n d some space is devoted to a Greek singer of enormous popularity in Europe with reviews of her performances from French dailies. M o r e a reflection of current urban European tastes exported to francophone African cities for those young people w h o can

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Mass media, education and the transmission of values

afford her records (at £6-8 per album in West Africa) than of traditional French culture.

A section on shops and markets uses an African w o m a n to describe the 'decline' of use of the traditional market, and even of small shopkeepers, in favour of supermarkets: 'Larger surface areas sell products cheaper than else­where . . .' While true in Europe, the opposite is the case in Africa, where supermarkets are a luxury of the urban middle class. T h e traditional market for economic and cultural reasons is still used by the large majority. T h e section on housing portrays a distinct historical evolution from thatched hut to large apartment block as a natural feature of modern development. T h e accompanying grammar lesson is presented with a four-sequence line drawing in which a young African builds a cement house and in the last drawing of the sequence closes himself inside by building himself into it (the stupidity of Africans, their incapacity to deal with modern life—despite h o w desirable?)

T h e geographical and artistic reality of the provinces of France are contrasted with the romantic 'placelessness' of African locations; travel to Timbuktu, a place that presumably has a school that might even use this book is presented by the historic unreality of a nine­teenth-century French explorer (René Caillié). A n d in the final sequence, the children are told of Tibet by the recent travels of a Parisian writer, whose interpretation of this exotic place is done with typical Western urban sophistication.

Looking at this startling material, its 'adap­tation' and its obvious cultivation of values, one is tempted to pose a dramatic suggestion. W h e n African children repeated to the tapping of a ruler in French colonial schools. 'Nos ancêtres, les Gaulois', the clarity and absurdity of that p h e n o m e n o m must naturally have generated a m u c h more strident reaction of national and cultural pride. T h e dialectic has become more fuzzy n o w , and the result a m u c h more pen­etrating form of cultural alienation. H o w m a n y other textbooks still contain such material?

B y drawing attention to the difficulties of inter­preting the transmission of value through the media and outlining some of the structural and professional influences that underline external media influences in the local context in devel­oping countries, suggestions for changes go m u c h further than limiting foreign exports. Measuring its impact in relation to the cultural or social differences found throughout the Third World m a y serve as a catalyst, by drawing attention to some of the political and planning changes that are necessary. But the manner in which individual young people are able to observe with an open and questioning spirit messages and influences from the media and other cultures depends directly on the integrity of the educational system in promoting genuine motivation and self-fulfilment and a pride in local culture and values.

Notes

1. H . L . Himmelweit et al., Television and the Child: An Empirical Study of the Effects of Television on the Young. London, Oxford University Press, 1958.

2. G . Gerbner and L . Gross, 'Living with Television: The Violence Profile', Journal of Communication, Vol. 26, N o . 2, Spring 1976.

3. P . J. Arenas, Learning from Non-Educational Television, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Graduate School of Education, 1971.

4. K . Nordenstreng and T . Varis, 'Television Traffic—a One-Way Street?' Unesco Reports and Papers on Mass Communication, N o . 70, 1974.

5. E . Katz and G . Wedell (eds.), Broadcasting in the Third World, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1977.

6. The Tanzania ' M a n is Health' campaign and rural educational radio in Senegal stand out.

7. D . T . Jamison and E . McAnany (eds.), Radio for Education and Development, 2 Vols.,Washington,D.C, The World Bank, 1978.

8. See, for example, the recent report for Unesco, Div­ision of Methods, Materials, Structures, Techniques, R . Postgate et al., Low-Cost Communication Systems for Education and Development Purposes in Third World Countries, April, 1979.

9. See several articles in W . Schramm and D . Lerner, Communication and Change: The Last Ten Years and the Next, Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii, 1976.

10. I shall not cite the specific text in question, for I do not wish to single it out for criticism but to raise questions contained in it that may appear in other texts of the kind.

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Rafael Roncagliolo and Noreene Z . Janus

Transnational advertising, the media and education in the developing countries

It has become c o m m o n practice to look upon the relationship between education and the mass media as being a question that is confined to determining ways and means of using the media to extend the scope of formal education. Discussions on the subject have accordingly centred on the planning and cost-effectiveness problems involved in using the mass media to transmit educational messages. A vast amount of research has been conducted into such variables as audience profiles (age, sex, geo­graphical location, etc.), the media themselves (type, and the range and duration of broad­casts, etc.) and the operational aspects of teach­ing (use of the med ium alone, with teachers, or with written supporting materials, etc.).

Even in instances where such research, and the experiments that usually go with it, m a y be instrumental in significantly raising standards of education and training, the fact is that re-

RafaelRoncagliolo (Peru). Researcher at the Centro de Estudios y Promoción del Desarrollo (DESCO) in Lima and at the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Trans­nacionales (ILET), which has its headquarters in Mexico City. Has taught in several Peruvian univer­sities and has zuritten on education and communication.

Noreene Z. Janus (United States). Specialist in communications problems. Currently research co­ordinator at the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET). Author of several studies on women and mass media and on transnational structures of mass communications.

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lations between mass communication and for­mal education range over problems of far greater complexity and importance than those involved in the mere use of certain media slots or time for educational purposes.

A s Ivan Illich has said, 'the relationship of schooling to education is like that of the church to religion'.1 Like the church, the school is merely the institution that by general consensus is formally responsible for education. T h e school can hardly be said to be one of the media capable of being used for educational purposes. Moreover, the school as an insti­tution displays anachronistic features and short­comings that stem from what Paolo Freiré calls 'banking educational'2, a vertical, passive pro­cess whereby teachers deposit knowledge in the student without any give-and-take relation­ship being established.

T h e criticisms which Illich and Freiré have levelled against the school system—and which also partly apply to the mass media—are wide­spread in Latin American thinking and can be regarded as one of the starting-points or premisses of this article, although this is not the place to deal with them at length.

T h e parallel school

T h e crisis of the school as an institution is certainly not entirely due to the intrinsic limi-

Transnational advertising, the media and education in the developing countries

tations of present-day schools, nor can it be solved by bringing the mass media into the school system. W h a t has happened, in fact, is that the media—which share some of the fea­tures of schools but also evolve forms of c o m ­munication of their own—have come to display a high degree of socializing efficiency and have partly supplanted the functional hegemony of the school. This is due, a m o n g other things, to the extent of the penetration by the mass media into private life,3 to the illusion of free­d o m they produce (for it is possible to change newspapers or television stations), the variety of programmes they offer, their entertainment rather than pedagogical function, and their permanent character—since their influence extends throughout life instead of being con­fined to the period of schooling.

In view of these and other factors, there is no doubt that the whole mass of messages delivered by the media represents an effective form of instruction. It is indeed so effective that it is easily capable of undoing the results that m a y be achieved through a few hours' educational broadcasting on radio or television. It is for that reason that the mass media are n o w regarded as being literally a 'parallel school',4 and for the same reason that a factor of greater importance than the educational use of the media is their educational nature—in other words the educational impact achieved by their transmissions every day. It is this aspect which it is absolutely essential to take into consideration in establishing national edu­cation systems and policies.5

T h e universal existence of such a parallel school would not be a source of concern to educators if the contents of the two schools, and above all the results obtained, were similar or convergent. However, such concern exists, and it derives from the fact that, in most countries, and particularly in the developing countries, the mass media are introducing a model of education of values, behaviour pat­terns and personal and collective aspirations

that bears little relation to the goals explicitly laid d o w n for national education systems. A s a result, a 'Cain and Abel' relationship6 grows u p between school and the mass media. In the hostility between them, there is always a danger of the mass media emerging as the victor and thus of educational policies being effectively and systematically sabotaged.

Whenever societies and countries are faced with these two 'parallel schools' and the grow­ing antagonism between them, the response they m a k e is fraught with contradiction. O n the one hand, no one nowadays questions the need to draw up educational policies, or the right to do so. In mass communication, on the other hand, resistance is still opposed to any attempt to spell out explicit communication policies.

Nevertheless, in practice every country has a national communication policy of some kind, but whereas education policy is formulated by society as a whole and there are authorities and officials w h o have to report on its appli­cation and results, communication policy is a private matter that is decided on and applied exclusively by those w h o exercise a monopoly over the media, i.e. the ruling classes and transnational forces that have become deeply involved in the communication systems of the developing countries, especially in Latin America.7

These privately controlled communication policies are frankly incompatible with edu­cational policies. T h e declared humanist goals of education are national development and the affirmation of national sovereignty and culture. Privately controlled communication, on the other hand, is interested more in the sale of goods than in h u m a n beings. It sets out to boost compulsive consumption, without any regard for the rational needs of development, and it disseminates a transnational culture that threatens and undermines all native cultural traditions. In the n a m e of the 'global village' postulated by M c L u h a n , present-day c o m m e r ­cial communication aims at creating a 'global

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supermarket'. This approach is diametrically opposed to the principles and objectives on which national education systems and policies are founded.

Advertising as the dominant cultural speech-form

T h e mass media themselves cannot be blamed for this outcome. T h e media do not function independently of a social context and do not have the freedom of action to decide for them­selves what their content will be. In point of fact, the mass media everywhere reflect dif­ferences that have always existed and still do to-day. Indeed, the struggle against the exist­ing state of affairs is largely being waged by alternative media—in the form of journalistic ventures which, with surprisingly limited re­sources and at some sacrifice, sprout up in one place or another and set out to restore the true cultural, educational and consciousness-raising functions of mass communication. T h e fact that, in the conditions of monopoly capitalism, the mass media have fallen into private hands has caused them to be enlisted in the service of alien causes that run counter to true mass education.

T h e origins of this phenomenon can be traced back to the middle years of the last century, w h e n the alliance between the press and adver­tising was established.8

F r o m that time onwards, the mass media became increasingly commercially oriented. Actual communication and news itself have n o w become commodities governed by the laws of supply and demand and by the maxi­m u m utility factor, which determines the guide­lines for communication policies at the cor­porate and national levels. Furthermore, the media have been turned into producers of potential audiences and markets that are sold as commodities to advertisers w h e n they con­clude publicity contracts. As the media are

drawn into this mercenary process and ally themselves with advertising, they become in­creasingly divorced from the objectives of education.

T h e subordination of the media to advertising is immediately apparent from the media content. In Latin America, for instance, the leading daily newspapers contain more advertising than news features. T h e space bought for advertising purposes accounts for between 50 and 70 per cent of the total space.9

However, the growing presence of adver­tising in the mass media plainly cannot be reduced to a problem of apportionment of space, which is only a symptom or indicator. Underlying the problem is the control which the financial power of the advertising agencies and their clients wield over the media. A s Alex Schmid points out, since as m u c h as 80 per cent of newspaper income is obtained from advertising rather than from sales, adver­tising agencies and advertisers are in a position to make or break newspapers. T h e history of the press in Latin America is rich in examples that go to illustrate pressures and power of this kind. T h e situation is even more serious in the case of commercial radio and television, since they are totally financed by advertising. As far as advertising is concerned, the media are nothing more than vending machines, which are good w h e n they attract large numbers of readers with sufficient purchasing power and bad w h e n their news content interferes with the status quo in which business and sales expand. T h e leading private newspapers are therefore as free as the main advertisers and their advertising agencies allow them to be10

and the universally accepted principle of the freedom of expression eventually becomes, in practice, a mere appendage of the freedom to do business, in other words the freedom to be used exclusively for the purposes of the major economic interests.

T h e fact that advertising has succeeded in subjugating so powerful an instrument as the

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Transnational advertising, the media and education in the developing countries

media, and in enlisting the so-called 'Fourth Estate' to work for it, is due to the pull exerted by advertising in the conditions of monopoly capitalism. W e are completely immersed in advertising; advertisements invade every sphere of life and are a fundamental part of everyday culture. Advertising has succeeded in penetrat­ing people's lives to such an extent that, even if they do not buy the product advertised or do not pay attention to a particular advertise­ment, the overall impact cannot be escaped.

Advertising has taken on a dimension of its o w n that marks it out completely from the commercial publicity of the last century in which its origins lie. Present-day advertise­ments bear no relation to the standard which Émile de Girardin suggested be set a hundred and thirty-five years ago, w h e n he said: 'Adver­tisements should be concise, straightforward and frank, should never be of a covert nature, and should not be ashamed of driving h o m e their point.'11

Nowadays, there is no semblance of frank­ness, concision or objectivity in advertising. It has evolved its o w n language and its o w n linguistic and iconographie codes. It has no effect unless the messages it generates reflect imaginary psychological values and are incor­porated in complex symbologies of the social statuses at which the products are directed, regardless of their actual utilitarian value. Since advertising has become an essential link in the workings of the economy, the problems it generates extend far beyond the ethical criti­cisms that have quite rightly been levelled against it. Advertising has become so over­whelming a feature of contemporary capitalism that it has been regarded as being the 'dominant cultural speech-form', the economically based cultural effusion superseding manifestations of the past whose sources lay in mysticism, phil­osophy or science.12

Advertising and education

T h e strength which our system of economic organization has conferred on advertising is so great that the interests it represents and the styles it has developed are succeeding in influencing the actual formal education system to a marked degree. Advertising is even pen­etrating into schools and, with the support of the mass media, is capable of successfully renovating styles of schooling.

A good example of the penetration of adver­tising interests into schools is provided by the education programmes on nutrition sponsored by the leading food manufacturers in the United States for classroom use. In 1978, one C o n ­gressional subcommittee stated that these pro­grammes were nothing more than 'product promotions', in other words, they consisted of advertising directed at children w h o , as a result, were turned into captive audiences for such messages. T h e chairman of the subcommittee gave a warning that 'there is a distinct danger that classrooms will become the n e w frontier of advertising'.13

At the same time, however, advertising has managed to introduce n e w forms and styles of education, and well-known examples of these are Sesame Street and The Electric Company in the United States. Sesame Street has been translated into several languages and is broad­cast in more than seventy countries. Joan G a n z Cooney, the president of the Children's Tele­vision Workshop and producer of the pro­g r a m m e , has explained that it was designed after the manner of advertising 'spots', with the specific aim of using the attention-holding devices developed by advertisers. According to Kenneth O'Bryan, the child psychologist, these devices are so powerful that they m a k e a thirty-second commercial advertisement the most effective teaching tool ever invented for instilling into children's minds any relatively simple idea, including the idea that a particular product is desirable. It has also been pointed

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Rafael Roncagliolo and Noreene Z. Janus

out that television advertising is especially ef­fective among children w h o are still too young to understand the sales purpose of advertise­ments.14 Other research has confirmed that children become loyal to specific product brands from a very early age.15 All this points to the existence of an advertising culture in the social­ization of children alongside school, and some­times prior to school. Against this background, programmes like Sesame Street condition chil­dren, among other things, to be receptive to the hundreds of thousands of commercials to which they are exposed throughout their lives.16 W e have reached the stage where, instead of edu­cational policies and instruments being designed to help children develop 'cognitive filters' to protect them from the distortions of adver­tising, the reverse is the case and the way is being opened up for the penetration of adver­tising culture as an acceptable and desirable form of education.

The situation in the developing countries

These complex relationships between adver­tising and education are even more alarming in the developing countries, in which, as a result of the low school attendance rates, the educational role of the media and advertising is even more overwhelming. Suffice it to say that for a very large proportion of the popu­lation of Latin America, radio is virtually the only m e d i u m and at the same time the only school to which it has access. Not only are the media in those countries under the control of advertising, but that advertising is becoming increasingly transnationalized. This pattern started to emerge in the 1960s, w h e n the adver­tising markets in developed countries, and par­ticularly in the United States, were relatively saturated and were showing signs of slug­gishness. T h e widespread transnationalization of economies that took place over that period

was accompanied by the incipient mass pen­etration of transnational advertising agencies into the countries of the Third World.17

A s a result of the presence of advertising, the developed countries have to contend with problems of national sovereignty and the sur­vival of national cultures. Transnational adver­tising18 has succeeded in gaining control over national communication systems. In Mexico, out of the 270 commercials which the popular X E W radio station broadcast daily in 1971, 84 per cent advertised transnational products. Furthermore, out of the 647 commercials broad­cast daily by the five Mexican television chan­nels, 77 per cent were also for transnational products.19

In regional terms, some thirty transnational companies, most of them from North America, control almost two-thirds of the advertising revenue for the Latin American press.20 Close on 60 per cent of the advertising in the w o m e n ' s magazines circulating in the region is trans­national,21 and the same can be said of every one of the media. All the evidence suggests that the private control of the mass media in the developing countries works to the direct advantage of the transnational corporations, not only in terms of growth in sales22 but also of the penetration of a transnational ideology which lays claim to being a contemporary universal culture.

Admittedly, this purported universal culture is the natural outcome of the market-oriented style of thinking rather than the product of a deliberately subversive strategy towards native cultures. Standardization of production de­mands standardization of consumption and cultures. Global marketing techniques are a reflection of the need to create a universal consumer community that drinks, eats, smokes and uses the same products. Global marketing accordingly creates global advertising, as ex­pressed in the image of one brand of perfume, the population of Latin America being pre­sented with the same picture of a blond

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Transnational advertising, the media and education in the developing countries

American w o m a n strolling d o w n Fifth Avenue in N e w York as is used for viewers in the United States. T h e message is the same in every case: 'Consumption is the key to happi­ness and the global corporation has the products that m a k e life worth living.'23 T h u s , the image of the perfume in any developing country has the effect of associating it in viewers' minds with its relevance to the universal consumer society already mentioned, even though such relevance is only imaginary and is unattainable, and even though it implies standing aloof from one's o w n country. T h e educational impact of the imposition of such a culture on people cannot be underestimated, since it is diametri­cally opposed to the objectives of any national education policy. Such basic ideas underlying the development of national education systems in the underprivileged countries as the assertion of national culture and sovereignty, the linking of education with the development process, and the affirmation of democratic awareness, are all directly undermined by the values, ideas and behaviour patterns disseminated and inculcated by such transnational advertising.

There is abundant evidence to show h o w the inroads m a d e by transnational advertising sap people's sense of national identity and esteem for their o w n culture. Eduardo Santoro, for example, analysed the representative content of programmes and commercials on Venezuelan television and then put a questionnaire on them to a broad sample of schoolchildren, in which he asked them what had taken place, where and for what reason, and w h o the 'goodies' and 'baddies' were. T h e following stereotypes re­peatedly emerged from the children's replies: T h e 'goodies' are from the United States, while

the 'baddies' are from other countries, chiefly from Germany and then from China.

T h e 'goodies' are whites w h o are rich and are usually policemen, detectives or soldiers.

T h e 'baddies' are black and poor, and they work chiefly as labourers or peasants, or in offices.

Santoro's conclusion is that 'the hero is a rich, elegant white American, w h o goes about the world dispensing peace and justice'.24

In terms of national development, whatever the political leanings of the regimes in power in the developing countries, there is general agreement as to the need to encourage collective and private savings and to gear production to the social needs of each country. T h e fact is that transnational advertising runs directly counter to those aims. It need only be observed that the products most widely advertised, in developing and developed countries alike, are perfumes and cosmetics, cereals and pro­cessed foods, soap, beer, mineral waters and tobacco.

Similarly, consumer culture, individual rivalry, the unification of the international consumer community at the expense of the eradication of national realities, in short the whole set of values which adversiting promotes, have in practice, an anti-democratic content. Values such as these are the very antithesis of a sense of c o m m o n purpose, participation, criti­cism, tolerance and indeed of all the qualities that go to m a k e up the democratic ideal. Fur­thermore, the brainwashing and psychological compulsion characteristic of advertising m o ­tivation techniques are the reflection of an authoritarian outlook which is opposed to the democratization of communication and societies.

Countless other examples could be cited of the contradiction between educational goals and the consequences of surrendering control to transnational advertising. However, the in­stances already mentioned are sufficient to bear out and illustrate the existence of such con­tradictions and the need to resolve them if the undermining of education systems and policies in the developing countries is to be avoided.

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Rafael Roncagliolo and Noreene Z. Janus

H o w can w e contend with advertising?

T h e purpose of this article is not to outline a programme of action for coping with the edu­cational—or rather the anti-educational—im­pact of the mass media and present-day adver­tising. However, the seriousness of the problems involved, their proven ability to wreak havoc with educational programmes, and the enor­m o u s amounts spent on advertising are all such as to call for urgent action, both nationally and internationally. Individual countries are becom­ing increasingly conscious of the need to switch existing inexplicit communication policies, in which control of the mass media is in private hands, to explicit policies, in which the views of all sectors of society are elicited and rational and social use can be m a d e of the power of the mass communication. It is with this in mind that a variety of forms of grassroots participation in media management has been tried out in Latin America—particularly in Mexico, Chile and Peru—which could serve as a precedent for embarking on a more systematic effort to democratize mass communication. T h e auth­orities responsible for educational and cultural policies in every country would necessarily be expected to play an important part in draw­ing up such policies and in setting standards aimed at protecting the public from the anti-educational effects of advertising. T h e state should likewise give financial support to the media in systems that are not under government control—for which there are precedents in a number of European countries—so as to ensure that advertisers do not take them over c o m ­pletely.

At the international level, Unesco's action in setting up two special commissions in recent years has been of the utmost significance. T h e first of these was the Faure Commission on the problems of education, while the other is the MacBride Commission on communication issues. With the findings of these two c o m ­

missions, the international community will be well equipped to participate in a special confer­ence, convened under the auspices of Unesco, with a view to analysing the existing conflicts between education and advertising and to seek­ing an answer to them and to the serious prejudice being caused to national cultures by the growing invasion of transnational advertis­ing. This idea has been put forward on other occasions25 and appears to be an excellent way of channelling and responding to the concerns that are n o w so widely felt by educators and parents and by all those w h o are committed to the task of culture and education*.

Notes

1. Ivan Mich, Alternativas, p. 113, Mexico City, Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, 1977.

2. Paolo Freiré, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, N e w York, Herder & Herder, 1970.

3. There exists a considerable amount of research d e m ­onstrating the considerable time given up to the media. In Europe alone, for instance, more than half the total number of children watch television every day; in the United States, children in the 4- to 8-year age-group watch it on average for two and a half hours a day and those in the 10- to 16-year age-group for four hours a day. See George Comstock, et al., Television and Human Behaviour, p. 178, N e w York, Columbia Uni­versity Press, 1978.

4. Louis Porcher, L'école parallèle, Paris, Librairie Larousse, 1974.

5. This subject of the mass media and the role they play in the field of education is discussed at length in Fernando Reyes Matta, Communicación masiva: la escuela paralela, Mexico City, I L E T . (In press.)

6. M a x Ferrero, 'L'école et la télévision: les sœurs enne­mies?', Éducation 2000 (Paris), N o . 7, September 1977.

7. O f the thirty-one in the world with private commercial television networks, sixteen, more than half, are in Latin America. This is the result of imitating and importing the communication system of the United States. See Elihu Katz and George Wedell, Broad­casting in the Third World, Cambridge, Mass . , Harvard University Press, 1977.

8. Bernard Cathelat, Publicité et société, p. 33-7, Paris, Petite Bibliothèque Payot, 1976.

This is, of course, the authors' opinion and does not commit U n e s c o . — E d .

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Transnational advertising, the media and education in the developing countries

9. However, studies in which this type of measurement is included show significant variations. In Costa Rica, four newspapers were analysed and were found to consist, on average, of 42 per cent of advertisements, while the figure for one of them was as high as 66 per cent(JoséM. Fonseca, Communication Policies in Costa Rica, Paris, Unesco, 1976). In Peru, in 1968, 'a m o r ­phological analysis of newspapers with the largest circulation figures . . . showed that the seven leading newspapers included no less than 35.5 per cent of advertisements and that the newspaper devoting most space to advertising included as m u c h as 58.4 per cent' (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Peru, Investigación de los medios de comunicación colectiva, Lima, 1961). Even higher figures are quoted in Alex Schmid, The North American Penetration of the Latin American Knowledge Sector—Some Aspects of Communication and Information Dependence, a document presented to the Seventh Conference of the International Peace R e ­search Association, Oaxtepec, Mexico, 1978 (mimeo.), p. 13 and 14. O n this question, see also Noreene Janus and Rafael Roncagliolo, 'Adversiting, Mass Media and Dependency', Development Dialogue (Uppsala, Sweden), N o . 1, 1979.

10. Schmid, op. cit. 11. Quoted in Cathelat, op. cit., p. 36. 12. ibid. 13. Adversiting Age, 6 February 1978, p. 2. 14. Federal Trade Commission Staff Report on TV Adver­

tising to Children, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, D . C . , 1978.

15. Scott W a r d , Daniel B . W a c k m a n and Ellen Wartella, How Children Learn to Buy, p. 189, Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1977.

16. Armand Mattelart, 'El imperialismo en busca de la contrarevolución cultural, Plaza Sésamo; Prologo a la telerepresion del año 2,ooo", Comunicación y Cultura, p. 146-223 (Santiago de Chile), N o . 1, July 1973.

17. Janus and Roncagliolo, op. cit. 18. T h e term 'transnational advertising' as used here

refers to advertising contracted out by corporations that are owned or controlled by foreign interests, for the purpose of promoting their o w n products. With regard to the transnational concept in the c o m m u n i ­cation field, see Juan Somavia, 'La estructura trans­nacional de poder y la información internacional', in Fernando Reyes Matta (ed.), La Información en el Nuevo Orden Internacional, Mexico City, I L E T , 1977.

19. Quoted in Victor Bernai Sahagún, Anatomía de la publicidad en Mexico, p. 117, Mexico City, Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1974.

20. Schmid, op. cit. See also Magdalena Brockmann, La publicidad y la prensa: análisis cuantitativo de una semana en los diarios latinoamericanos, Mexico City, ILET, 1979.

21. Adriana Santa Cruz and Viviana Brazo, Compropolitan: el orden transnacional y su modelo informativo femenino, Mexico City, I L E T , 1979. (October 1979, in press.)

22. A sample of television viewers in Indonesia, w h o were asked which advertisements they remembered from the previous week's broadcasts, mentioned only transnational brands in their replies. Alfian, ' S o m e observations on television in Indonesia', in Jim Richstad (ed.), New Perspectives in International Com­munication, p. 58-9, Honolulu, East-West Centre, 1979.

23. Richard Barnett and Ronald E . Müller, Global Reach, P- 33) N e w York, Simon and Schuster, 1974.

24. Eduardo Santoro, La televisión venezolana y la forma­ción de estereo-tipos en el niño, p. 279, Caracas, Edi­ciones de la Biblioteca, 1975.

25. Juan Somavia, How to Go about Basic Needs: the Inter­national Perspective, address to the Plenary Session at the International Development Conference, Washing­ton, D . C . , 8 February 1978 (mimeo); Janus and Roncagliolo, op. cit.

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Luis Ramiro Beltrán S. and Elizabeth Fox de Cardona

Mass media and cultural domination

Nineteen years after his first visit to the N e w York headquarters of the United Nations, the Prime Minister of Cuba , Fidel Castro, was back at the General Assembly and asked: ' W h y should some people go barefooted so that others m a y ride in expensive cars?' H e said it is a moral obligation of the developed countries, which in his view profit from underdevelopment, to help substantially and readily the poor countries, lest there shall be no peace in the world. Thus he proposed to discuss and determine for the next development decade a strategy that should include a contribution of no less than $300 billion in donations and soft-term credits from de­veloped to developing countries.

The old international economic order

W h y a request of such magnitude? W h a t had happened to the 'development mystique' of

Luis Ramiro Beltrán S. (Bolivia) and Elizabeth Fox de Cardona (United States). Specialists of communi­cation in developing countries, particularly Latin America, they work in the Latin American office of the Canadian International Development Research Center, in Bogotá. Have both written widely on problems of communication and development. This article is a shorter version of a paper presented to the Symposium on the Role of International Broadcasting sponsored by Radio Nederland at Hilversum, the Netherlands, October 1979.

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Prospects, Vol. X, N o . I, 1980

the previous twenty years? H a d foreign aid to development been useless? T h e end of the period wishfully labeled by the United Nations as the Second Development Decade is n o w close on the horizon. A n d the sad reality is that, just as it was at the end of the First Development Decade, not m u c h development is in sight except in those countries that all the while were already quite developed. T h e great disparities traditionally prevailing between these countries and those in the Third World have not disap­peared, and in several aspects they rather tend to increase. Not unrelatedly, inequalities within each so-called developing country between the élites and the masses have also either remained stationary or become more acute.

T h e hopes entertained by visionaries such as Lester Pearson and Jan Tinbergen have not materialized so far. T h e mighty ones show no inclination to yield. W i s d o m and generosity are scarce virtues as usual. Thus planet earth, for all the developmental rhetoric that permeates the last quarter of the century, appears as unkind a h o m e as ever for most of its inhabitants.

S o m e 800 million h u m a n beings survive under conditions of extreme poverty that de­prive them of decent standards of food, housing, health and schooling, while minorities indulge in irrational overspending. Malnutrition and subemployment affect almost two thirds of the population in m a n y 'developing' countries while industrial nations concur in wasteful use of

Mass media and cultural domination

resources, environmental degradation and the arms race. A baby born in an industrial country comes to the world with a life expectancy of 72 years while one in a non-industrial country can count only on 44 years (World Bank, 1978). A n d income comparisons produce, to say the least, astonishment.

T h e early catastrophic predictions of the Club of R o m e m a y not have become full re­alities, but neither have several corrective efforts attained encouraging results so far. T h e 1976 and 1977 Conferences on International Econ­omic Co-operation and the series of U N C T A D meetings failed to produce tangible results that would at least alleviate the consequences of the unfair economic treatment that the industrial­ized nations give the non-industrialized ones. T h e North-South dialogue is stagnant, if it ever truly began. Science and technology remain the privilege of the few and mighty.

Neocolonial conditions of exploitation still prevail in international economic relations. T h e distribution of labour between nations has not been substantially altered by decolonization. T h e terms of trade exchange between metro­politan and peripheral countries have shown no correction of the characteristic imbalance. Most countries of the Third World are still con­demned to the role of primitive providers of raw materials, which they have to sell cheap, and consumers of manufactured goods, for which they have to pay dear. For instance, about 80 per cent of Latin American exports are primary goods whereas about 60 per cent of the imports are manufactured products (Perry, 1977). T h e resulting deficit fouls up develop­ment plans, hits national economies hard and consistently increases the chronic foreign debt of the less developed countries, which often has to be served at high interest rates and short repayment schedules. For instance, in a period intermediate between the two Develop­ment Decades (1965 to 1967), Latin America's yearly average loss due to such imbalance was $1,300 million (Unión Panamericana, 1969).

A n d in a single year, according to the United Nations, the loss was ten times greater than the credits received in the same period from the United States and from international organiz­ations (Castro, 1969).

Increasingly, most developed countries im­pose high tariffs to protect their markets from imports from the Third World while bringing d o w n their financial aid to them. S o m e metro­politan centers would seem to be moving from indifference or compassion to reluctance or hostility about the wants and claims of the so called developing world.

A s stressed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in its most recent gathering, in April 1979 in Bolivia, the effects of recession and inflation in the United States and other Western industrial countries are affecting the economies of this region to a point making uncertain the immediate future. A n d likewise, in its 1978 report the World Bank concluded that progress over the past twenty-five years in accelerating growth, modernizing economies and raising the standards of living has not been sufficiently fast and broad-based to significantly reduce poverty.

In summary , external economic dependence still accounts for m u c h of underdevelopment. In 1979 justice appeared no less a mirage than in 1969 or 1959. A n d , if nothing else, the Third World countries have learned that in struggling to build a better future they can no longer rely upon the development model devised by the industrial powers. Thus 'another development' begins n o w to be autonomously envisioned.

Towards a new international economic order

Discontent with the old international economic order so far prevalent can be traced back to the decade of 1950. However, the public and official expression of intent to change it did not occur until 1973. In that year, in their summit at

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Algiers, the heads of states of the countries in the non-Aligned movement produced a first formal statement of the need for a N e w Inter­national Economic Order ( N I E O ) . In 1974 they took the notion to the sixth extraordinary session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. There, in spite of reservations from the United States of America and other countries, this United Nations body approved by majority vote a declaration fostering the establishment of a N e w International Economic Order (Resolution N o . 3201) and a program of action addressed to pursuing the attainment of such goal (Resol­ution N o . 3202).

Other similar statements adopted included the Cocoyoc Declaration (Mexico City, 1974) and the 1975 Dakar Declaration and Action Programme of Developing Countries on R a w Materials.

T h e Third World statements seeking to define the nature of the N e w International Economic Order included this set of basic concepts: T h e sovereignty and equality of states. T h e full and effective participation of all states

in international decision making. T h e right of all states to adopt appropriate

economic, political and cultural systems. T h e full permanent sovereignty over national

resources. T h e right to regulate the activities of foreign

entities (such as transnational corporations) in concurrence with national goals and priorities.

T h e right to formulate a model of autonomous development geared toward the basic needs of the population.

T h e right to pursue progressive social trans­formation that enables the full participation of the population in the development process.

T h e statements on the N I E O claim that (a) the prevailing international economic order is in­compatible with the Third World ambition of total emancipation and contrary to its interests; (b) the theory that development will trickle d o w n from the industrial to the non industrial nations is neither valid nor fair; and (c) devel­

opment in the Third World countries should not be an imitation of Western models but a product of their sovereign decisions.

Along with sovereignty, interdependence is a basic concept within the N I E O ideal. This is reflected in the following definition of N I E O by Dutch communication researcher Cees Hamelink (1978, p. 9): c A n organization of international economic relations in which states, which develop their economic systems in an autonomous way and with complete sovereign control of resources, fully and effectively par­ticipate as independent members of the inter­national community.'

Together with attempts at definition, some concerted actions have taken place to promote the N I E O . For instance, at its Nairobi 1976 meeting, the IV U N C T A D attempted to elab­orate conceptually and operationally the basic features of the proposed n e w order. A m o n g other initiatives, it started the design for an international code of technological transfer. Another example is given by the attempts of countries in the Group of 77 to explain to de­veloped countries that N I E O can be deemed convenient to them as well. A leader in a developed nation with this conviction is Jan Pronk, former Dutch Minister for Development. After clarifying that the N e w International Economic Order could only be detrimental to the developed countries in terms of short-term economic considerations, Pronk (1978, p. 2) perceptively noted that:

If left to the charity and goodwill of the traditionally powerful industrialized countries, a N I E O will not be brought about. Requests on this basis have tradition­ally received a negative answer. O n e m a y deplore it, but powerful nations will only co-operate in the building of a n e w order if they view it as being in their interest to do so. T o a certain extent this n o w seems to be the case. T h e oil crisis, the growing awareness of overall scarcities, the international recession, characterized by inflation, unemployment and monetary instability, the growing unity of the Third World, the unstable political and military situation in various parts of the world (e.g. the Middle

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East and southern Africa) and the proliferation of nuclear knowledge together have shifted some of the power of the traditionally rich countries to the Third World. It is therefore in the interest of the rich countries to solve world problems in close harmony with the Third World.

It is to be hoped that such realistic voices will be heard. However, changing the structure of international economic relations in the direction of balance—the aim of the N I E O proposal—may not by itself be sufficient to help emancipate the developing countries from the external domi­nation that keeps them underdeveloped. Thus they must also seek structural changes in other equally important relations with developed countries.

Cultural domination: the other side of underdevelopment

'It is an established fact that the activities of imperialism are not confined solely to the economic and political fields but also cover the cultural and social fields, thus imposing an alien ideological domination over the peoples of the developing world.' This statement signaled the public and formal realization of such re­lationship by the Heads of States of the M o v e ­ment of the Non-Aligned Countries at their fourth meeting held in Algiers in 1973. It took them only a short additional step to identify the mass communication media as the chief agents of such cultural domination, since they are 'the legacy of the colonial past and have hampered free, direct and fast communication between them' {Development Dialogue, 1976).

T h e president of the Caribbean Development Bank, William D e m a s (1975, p. 4), described the situation as follows:

W e find that in m a n y Third World countries, par-ticularily in the Caribbean and Latin America, the electronic mass media, especially television, play a role which is destructive of national cultural identity

and of autonomous and independent economic and social development. This role arises not only from the advertising of imported goods but also from the actual content of the programs which brainwash the population into accepting and wanting the w a y of life of the affluent societies.

A Third World cultural leader, Rex Nettleford (Ï9795 P- I 2 6) , pointed out the alien origin of such noxious communication influence:

Jamaica and the Caribbean, therefore, are the victims of the effects of cultural domination and dependence fostered by most of the prevailing information patterns said to be c m u c h more penetrating than those of purely economic domination and dependence'.

These statements are representative of the criti­cal stand taken by all kinds of leaders most everywhere in the Third World. In fact, compar­able opinions are abundant all over Latin America, as well as in the underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. In m a n y of them, researchers have found evidence clearly sup­porting such contentions, as has been reported by, among other analysts, the United States scholar Schiller (1971, 1973, 1976e, 1977 an^-1979) and the Belgian critic A r m a n d Mattelart (1973a, 1973e, 1976e, 1977 and 1978). (A recent reader on this subject, covering various media and several regions of the world, is that edited by Nordenstreng and Schiller (1979). Beltrán and Cardona (1977) reviewed a large number of pertinent studies documenting the domination of Latin American mass c o m m u n i ­cations by United States transnational interests. American researcher John Lent (1972 and 1979) is a main analyst of alien communication influ­ences on Caribbean media. Other Caribbean studies are those of Cuthbert (1976 and 1978), Hosein (1976), Nascimento (1973), White (1976), and Brown (1976).) A few of those indicators will be reviewed subsequently to illustrate briefly the situation, emphasizing Latin America and broadcasting (radio and television) wherever the available data permit.

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Mass communication as a key tool for cultural domination

T h e developing countries comprise almost two thirds of the world's population. As a rule, mass media distribution is, however, strongly skewed in favor of the developed countries that consti­tute the minority portion of this population. O n e half of the total daily newspapers in the world are published in the developing countries, their circulation being one sixth of that of the developed countries, which use 90 per cent of all newsprint in the world. Whereas in these countries there is one copy of a daily newspaper for every three inhabitants, in the underde­veloped regions of the world there is one copy for every thirty inhabitants.

In the United States and in other developed countries there are more radio receivers avail­able than inhabitants; in Africa, instead, there is one for each eighteen inhabitants.

There is one television receiver for every two persons in North America and one for every four persons in Europe and Russia; by contrast, there is one for forty in Asia and the Arab States. (International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, Unesco, 1978.)

N e w s , especially as reflected in their use by daily newspapers, is an area in which research has frequently found evidence of another type of imbalance disfavoring the developing countries. T o begin with, as was pointed out by the co-ordinator of the Ministers of Information of the Non-Aligned Countries, Tunisia's Moustafa Masmoudi (1978), five agencies produce 80 per cent of all international news that gets printed. They—UPI , A P , Agence France Press, Reuters and Tass—devote less than a third ofthat total output to the developing world, which, as has been stressed already, accounts for two thirds of mankind.

In Latin America news trame in all direc­tions—towards the world, from the world and within itself—is controlled at least 60 per cent by U P I and A P . Certain significant events are

not reported at all or get little coverage, whereas other, usually trivial, bizarre or scandalous ones, are played up. (A precursor study of these problems was conducted in Venezuela by Diaz Rangel (1967) and an early analysis of main Latin American dailies revealing foreign domi­nation in news was contributed by C I E S P A L (1967). In recent years, the Mexico-based Latin American Institute for Transnational Studies (ILET) had developed a dynamic leadership in this area of inquiry. See pertinent writings by Juan Somavia (1976 and 1977), an<i Fernando Reyes Matta (1974, 1976, and 1977), among other I L E T members.)

Deliberate distorsion of news is effected through several procedures and becomes par­ticularly severe and noticeable whenever the transnational news agencies are referring to events expressing a will for social transformation in the region. (Several scholars have documented the negative behavior of their country's inter­national and national mass communication sys­tems about major social revolutionary move­ments in Latin America such as those of Bolivia, Cuba and Chile. These are some of those writers: Knudson (1973); Hester (1971 and 1977); Kipp (1967); Lewis (i960); Francis (1967); Houghton (1965); Bethel (1966); Barnes (1964); Bernstein and Gordon (1967); Kunzle (1978); Pollock and Pollock (1972); and Fagen

(1974)0 'Wire information', noted a Venezuelan news­

paperman, 'depends on the United States as our economies depend upon it. A P and U P I have the decisive weight in opinion formation in the average Latin American country about the most important world events.' (Diaz Rangel, 1967, p . 43-4.)

A s for American magazines, an American researcher concluded that their coverage of Latin American reality was superficial, negative and stereotyped. (Whitaker, 1969.) M a n y United States magazines are translated into Spanish and Portuguese and somewhat adapted to Latin America and, along with comic books, flood the

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region, stemming mostly from subsidiaries or partners of United States firms in Venezuela and Mexico. Researchers Dorfman and Mattelart (1973) noted that comics such as those of Donald D u c k m a y not be innocuous, inasmuch as they express consistently the ideology of capitalist society. M a n y Latin American re­searchers, mostly in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, have expressed similar concerns about all kinds of United States inspired popular magazines circulating in their region. (For instance, Fein-silber and Traversa (1972), Go ldmann (1967), Habert (1974), Michèle Mattelart (i97o),Piccini (1970) and Steimberg (1972).)

Broadcasting: no exception to imbalance

T h e influence of the main developed countries on broadcasting is slightly different, but it has no less serious implications for the developing countries, especially those of Latin America, where radio and television are eminently private and commercial.

Television is being increasingly found by research to be a decisive tool for developed countries to exert cultural domination over the developing ones. Nordenstreng and Varis (1974) conducted a study covering m a n y countries of the world through which they found that television was indeed, as suspected before their verification, a 'one-way street' running from a few developed countries to m a n y of the under­developed ones. These researchers demonstrated that national programme structures were domi­nated in most countries by transnational pro­ducers and that the international flow of tele­vision programme materials was essentially controlled by huge United States sales, of which one third corresponded to Latin America.

In his book about the impact of United States television in this part of the world, American researcher Allan Wells (1972, p. 194) acknow­ledged that:

The dominance of North American over other in­fluences on the developing countries is most apparent in the case of television, particularily in Latin America, the internationally recognized sphere of influence of the United States.

This dominance comes to the region through several avenues. Canned materials are more evident than equipment sales, which—as has been noted by Cruise O'Brien (1974) and other analysts—carries, along with training, the ideol­ogy of the country of origin. This has a strong multiplier effect by which locally produced materials are often hardly distinguishable from their foreign models.

S o m e researchers, especially in Venezuela, Brazil and Peru, have studied television content, especially in tems of 'adventure' programmes (soap operas, crime and spy stories and other comparable serials), most of which are imported essentially from the United States. (SeePasquali (1967 and 1972); Colomina de Rivera (1973); Mattelart (19736); Pérez Barreto (1973); Rincón (1968); Santoro (1975); Tapia Delgado (1973); and, inter alia, Marqués de Meló (1971).) In addition to finding grounds for the familiar preoccupation with violence induction, these researchers were able to identify in such m a ­terials the fostering of stereotypes of the set of values of the United States consumer society proposed as the natural and necessary course of mankind. Three main factors were identified in the messages—conservatism, materialism and conformism—while two types of noxious effects on the audience were deemed pos­sible: exciting/energizing and narcotic/analgesic (Beltrán, 1978).

Radio is the most pervasive and ubiquitous of the mass media all over the world, but the basic imbalance of availability favoring the developed nations also is true of this m e d i u m .

T o start with, the developed countries control 90 per cent of the frequencies in the spectrum. S o m e 75 per cent of all radio transmitters are concentrated in North America and Europe,

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which also have about 75 per cent of all radio receivers. T h e United States alone has more radio transmitters than those in all the devel­oping countries. There are n o w a billion re­ceivers, or—in principle—about one to every four inhabitants of the planet, but their dis­tribution not only strongly favors the developed nations, but the urban élites in the developing countries themselves.

W h e n compared with the rest of the mass media, radio has a wider penetration among the lower strata of the masses and in some rural areas of the Third World countries. However, in spite of their unusual potential for servicing development, 'radio messages still do not reach large portions of mankind in isolated areas and m a n y of these messages w h e n they reach mass audiences convey alien content and false images'. (International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, Unesco,

1978, p. 34-) Both terms of this statement apply quite

accurately to the Latin American situation. First, even radio fails to reach about one half of the total population of this region, which n o w clearly exceeds the 300 million figure. Second, the great majority of stations are indeed concentrated in urban areas and do not reach beyond them. Third, although radio demands far more production of local programs than television, m u c h of its content is still dominated by foreign influence, interests and paradigms. United States music is often predominant over national and other through the power of the transnational record industry. Patterned after traditional United States models, soap-opera is a staple of radio fare. Development-oriented materials and cultural-educational programs are scarce, whereas entertainment and sports domi­nate scheduling in competition only with ad­vertisements.

In 1962, with a 7.5 per cent of the world's population, Latin America was k n o w n to have some 1,700 radio stations already, 22 per cent of the world's total, but only 9 per cent of the

total radio kilowatt power of the world. A c ­cording to Pasquali (1975), the trend has been confirmed. Around the middle of the 1970-80 decade, the region was estimated to have some 4,500 radio stations, with more than 80 per cent of them operating equipment below 5 kilowatts of power. Caracas, a city with about 3 million inhabitants, had eighteen stations, which trans­mitted a daily average of 8,500 commercial advertisements. Radio services have grown very rapidly. T h e number of receivers per 1,000 in­habitants increased from 52 in 1950 to 208 in 1975-

Thus , what seems to take place through radio is 'an enormous daily transfer of tastes, ideol­ogies, ways of life, language, behaviour patterns, problems and expectations to peoples of another cultural historical and cultural origin without the knowledge or ability to put up an effective resistance' (Pasquali, 1975, p. 64-5).

Unlike most of the rest of the world—de­veloping and developed—Latin America is a region where radio broadcasting is fundamen­tally private and commercial: at least in 90 per cent of the cases, according to Kaplun (1973). For instance, Colombia—a country populated by 25 million people—has today some 400 radio stations of which only one is state-owned. A s such, their chief source of revenue is advertising, a significant proportion of which comes from transnational firms, whose content preferences influence programming.

Venezuelan researcher Antonio Pasquali (1975, p. 67), assessed the consequences of such a situation in these terms:

Latin America is the supreme living illustration of the fact that the system of handing over broadcasting to private enterprise is, without any doubt, the one that produces the worst results in cultural and social terms. In almost half a century, in fact, privately operated Latin American radio broadcasting has not succeeded in serving all the inhabitants of the countries in which it operates; it has become the overt instrument of compulsive, commonplace trans-culturation; it produces hackneyed programs of poor

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quality because it has small economic resources; it disregards the real issues of public interest to the people it serves.

A pioneer step in Latin America: communication policies

Empirical verification substantiates the griev­ances of the Third World countries about the international communication situation. It re­mains only to note that, concomitantly, the situation of mass communication at national levels achieves deplorable characteristics in Latin America. Internal domination in matters of communication is coincident with external domination in this area. Thus the struggle for reforming the international and the national communication structures is not really one between developed countries in general and underdeveloped countries in general. It is a struggle between persons and institutions in each country of either type, w h o either wish to keep the communication system as is or aim at changing it. A n d this is not unrelated to the confrontation between those w h o in the under­developed countries favor the status quo and those w h o wish to change the overall structure of society and attain a democratically balanced state of genuine development.

T h e Latin Americans were precursors in the struggle for reforming communication and reaching the highest level of official and inter­national sanction: that of an intergovernmental conference on communication policies. In prep­aration for it, two meetings of experts were held: one on general policies, in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1974 and the other on news exchange in Quito, Ecuador, in 1975. Both gatherings condemned the prevailing circum­stances of mass communication operations in the region and recommended the adoption of several changes in it, among them the creation of autonomous regional news services (public, private and mixed) and the formulation of

policies relative to the behavior of private and commercial mass media institutions, native and foreign. This was proposed to be done through national communication policy councils incor­porating representatives of all social sectors concerned with the problem. Neither state monopoly of media ownership nor censorship of any kind was advocated.

Nevertheless, the experts' recommendations were readily taken as threats to the 'free flow' of news by media owners and managers grouped in two large organizations: the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) and the Inter-American Association of Broadcasters. Both attacked as totalitarian the experts con­sulted by Unesco and their recommendations. They organized a massive transnational cam­paign to boycott the intergovernmental confer­ence, which was regarded as an undemocratic threat to freedom of information. A s reported by Capriles (1977) more than 700 articles were published against the pro-policy movement by dailies in Latin American between February and August of 1976. According to Salinas (1978, p . 22), the campaign was actually successful in several respects: the site of the conference was changed several times, the meeting was held m u c h later than was first decided and the document produced by the experts in Bogotá was prevented from inclusion in the agenda of the conference.

In spite of the enormous pressures so exerted against the conference and the violent attacks conducted against Unesco, the historic meeting took place in the capital of Costa Rica and worked essentially under the leadership of the Venezuelan Minister of Information, Guido Grooscors (see Grooscors, 1978), strongly backed up by President Carlos Andrés Pérez, w h o shortly before had told a general assembly of I A P A :

In the democratic regime, which accepts and fosters freedom of the press, liberty of information faces dangers, and grave ones, if information is in the service of certain interests. This endangers the very

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freedom that it defends, or that it pretends to defend, breaks the rules of the democratic game and threatens the legitimacy of the institutions on which is founded (Pérez, I975, p . 7-8).

Overcoming the burning atmosphere created around it by the media, the conference approved a set of thirty resolutions containing initiatives to alleviate or solve the problems of communi ­cation determined by internal and external domination. As seen in Unesco's report of it (Unesco, 1976), the conference advocated a balanced circulation of information between nations, recommended the creation of national and regional news agencies, proposed the estab­lishment of national communication policy coun­cils and recommended the establishment of alternative and supplementary communication media, including those of state property ad­dressed at providing mass education for de­velopment.

International news coverage of the conference provided in itself a demonstration of h o w those w h o claim to defend press freedom and objec­tive journalism can manipulate information to suit their biases and interests. A study by Raquel Salinas (1977) 0I" coverage by the Associated Press shows in detail h o w information was handled—quantitatively and qualitatively—by this agency to play up the I A P A position and disfavor the proposals of the Latin American governmental representatives, especially those of Venezuela, the leader.

Application of the m a n y recommendations approved has been slow and will remain a difficult task to be fully accomplished. T h e Costa Rica Conference cannot be taken as a full war w o n by the democratic progressive forces in Latin America. But it was indeed a successful fundamental battle that gives them hope and encouragement. A s such it also constituted inspiration for a similar conference in Asia and a major step towards the construction of a world­wide ' N e w International Information Order', which was also formally proposed in 1976.

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Towards a N e w International Information Order

' T h e evident injustice which characterizes the present international structure of c o m m u n i ­cation has forced the need for a n e w inter­national information order as integral and complementary to the N E I O . O n e cannot hope to modify the economic order without modify­ing the information order.' ( ILET, 1979.)

W h a t is the N I I O ? W h a t is this n e w order, so integral and complementary to the N E I O ?

T h e non-aligned countries have played a key part in denouncing the failure of the present communication system and in the design of instruments that could begin to lead towards a n e w international order of communications. W h a t elements, however, might constitute this intended order?

T h e non-aligned movement has already pro­duced a number of modest but tangible results in the area of communication. In January 1975, the Third World pool of n e w agencies of the countries was created. T h e Yugoslav news agency Tanjug and eleven other news agencies from the movement began to transmit news with a view to strengthening the information flow towards the developed world and intensify the news exchange among the members them­selves. A similar step was taken in the field of radio and television. At the first Conference of Broadcasting Organizations of Non-Aligned Countries, in Sarajevo, October 1977, an action programme of four lines of activity of the organ­izations was adopted, including the encourage­ment of co-operation in the exchange of radio and television programmes.

These activities, and similar actions in Latin America and other areas in the world such as the imminent establishment of a Latin American news feature service, A L A S E I , are significant first steps.

However, a N e w International Information Order is far more complex than improvements

Mass media and cultural domination

of the imbalance of the flow of information. A s denned by a Venezuelan researcher, a N e w International Information Order is:

T h e replacement of the principal parameters that have traditionally governed the circulation of infor­mation and the content of the mass media by a n e w structure based on negotiation and directed toward a free and balanced international exchange and cir­culation of information. (Capriles, 1979, p . 2.)

Martelanc (1978) proposes that some elements of this n e w order could be these: T h e establishment of more equitable two-way

or multi-way communication in place of the existing imbalance.

T h e modification of the present prevailing principles and values that subject the main­stream of information to the laws of a market economy and the imposition of the political values of the stronger countries.

T h e modification in the international flow of information based on the full sovereignty of states, and a due concern for their realities, needs and aspirations.

T h e mobilization of the mass media towards national development objectives, and the pro­cesses of economic and cultural decoloniz­ation and emancipation of all countries.

T h e strengthening of national communication capacities on the basis of the most appropriate technology.

A s yet, no international consensus has been reached on a blueprint for the N e w Inter­national Information Order. In fact, the m a n ­date of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, set up by the Director-General of Unesco, in pursuance of Resolution 100 adopted by the General Conference at its nineteenth session in 1977, was precisely:

T o study the current situation in the field of communication and information and to ident­ify problems which called for fresh action at the national level and a concerted overall ap­proach at the international level.

T o pay particular attention to problems relating to the free and balanced flow of information in the world, as well as the specific needs of developing countries.

T o analyse communication problems, in differ­ent aspects, within the prospective of the establishment of a N e w International Econ­omic Order and of the measures to be taken to foster the institution of a ' N e w World Information Order'.

T h e Declaration on Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to StrengtheningPeace and International Under­standing, to the Promotion of H u m a n Rights and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement to W a r , is certainly another of the most important initiatives adopted, after two years of strife and intense world-wide dis­cussion, by an international forum in the direc­tion of a n e w international information order. Indeed, in the preamble appears the phrase 'conscious of the aspirations of the developing countries for the establishment of a n e w , more just and more effective world information and communication order'. (Unesco Declaration, 1978.)

After years of bitter opposition and denunci­ation, the position of the developed countries towards the possibility of a N e w International Information Order has been modified from an initial across-the-board rejection of the concept on the basis of the idea that it went against the principles of free flow of information and free­d o m of expression. T h e approval by the m a ­jority of the developed countries of the Unesco Declaration referred to above, in particular Article I X , which states 'it is for the inter­national community to contribute to the cre­ation of the conditions for a free flow and wider and more balanced dissemination of infor­mation', marks this change in position. (Unesco Declaration, 1978.)

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Do mass media reach the masses? The Indian experience

In any country, education for citizenship, or social education, goes on well beyond the stage of formal schooling. T h e process continues in a variety of ways: through the mass media, through participation in the political system and through religious, neighborhood and vo­cational associations.

In a developing country, where social edu­cation must have a development orientation, both formal schooling and the reach of the mass media are limited. T h e modes of social edu­cation mentioned above have therefore to be supplemented by organized non-formal edu­cation: by wide networks of agricultural, health and other extension services, and by the tra­ditional media that have served for centuries as carriers of a community's cultural values from one generation to the next.

This article attempts a critical survey of the process of formal and non-formal efforts in India to educate citizens in their rights and duties, and to mobilize them for economic de­velopment and the attainment of equality of

G. N. S. Raghavan (India). Professor of Development Communication in the Indian Institute of Mass Com­munication, New Delhi. After eleven years in newspaper journalism, worked for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in the Press Information Bureau and Publications Division and as Director of Field Publicity. Author of Introducing India.

opportunity. S o m e aspects—both positive and negative—of the Indian experience are likely to be of interest to other developing countries, even though they differ from India in size and in their political and social structure.

Limited reach and role of mass media

Like the economy, which is a mix of private and public ownership, the modern mass media in India are partly in the public and partly in the private domain. Newspapers and feature films are in the private sector; on the other hand, radio and television are operated exclusively by the central government. T h e Films Division of the Central Government has a virtual monopoly on documentaries and newsreels.

Communication planning is undoubtedly dif­ficult, but is inescapable for rapid progress, in a country of continental dimensions and diver­sity—religious, linguistic and ethnic—whose population of about 650 million (548 million at the 1971 census) is spread over 575,936 villages and 2,643 urban centres, which include nine cities with a population of more than a million each.

T h e need for decentralized, two-way c o m ­munication in support of development—as dis­tinct from mere publicity for the government's achievements and intentions—was recognized

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very early. T h e document on the First Five Year Plan (December 1952) said:

It is only in terms of local programmes that local leadership and enthusiasm can play their part. T h e Plan has to be carried into every h o m e in the language and symbols of the people and expressed in terms of their c o m m o n needs and problems with the assistance of creative writers and artists, which has to be specially enlisted. If obstacles are encountered, and things go wrong anywhere, it would be helpful in every sense if information is imparted candidly and the people are acquainted with the steps being taken to set things right.

T h e 1969 document on the Fourth Plan ac­knowledged the problem of a serious infor­mation imbalance within the country:

In the spread of information facilities, the imbalance in favour of urban concentrations and prosperous areas continues. There is need for a deliberate attempt to inform the people in the rural areas, and in particular those in backward regions, about the specific schemes in agriculture, forestry, road construction, marketing, the supply of credit and other inputs, so that the benefits of these pro­grammes are more widely spread.

Unlike the Minister of Railways, w h o receives policy advice from a Railway Board consisting of railway officials with long experience of construction, traffic, finance and other aspects of work of the railways, or the Minister of External Affairs, w h o is advised by permanent officials w h o are experienced diplomats, the successive Ministers of Information and Broad­casting since independence have followed the system of relying for policy advice on generalist administrators rather than communication pro­fessionals. Liable as the generalist officers of the Indian Administrative Service are to frequent transfer from one central ministry to another, or from the centre to the states, their rate of turnover in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has been even higher than that of the ministers, w h o are subject to the vicissitudes of political fortune.

A s for the communication professionals, they tend to ask in each successive Five Year Plan for expansion of the activities and staff of the particular organization they run. There has been, as a result, an indiscriminate and in­cremental growth of each communication m e ­dium, and not a truly planned development based on studies of relative cost-effectiveness of the different media vis à vis different sections of the population.

Hence, to cite two examples of the waste of scarce resources, there is the misplaced e m p h a ­sis on print material and the persistence of mobile film vans to screen documentaries of little local relevance in rural areas, notwith­standing the escalation of petroleum prices since 1973.

There has been no experimentation with small-gauge, portable, low-cost film and video technology for local production and dissemi­nation of locally relevant and useful messages or to promote participatory in place of one-way, top-down communication.

In the absence of communication planning worthy of the n a m e , the modern mass media have developed mainly as purveyors of infor­mation and entertainment for the urban popu­lation and the rural well-to-do; their role as vehicles of non-formal education for improving the material conditions and quality of life of the rural masses has been marginal.

This could not perhaps have been avoided in the case of newspapers, since they are published by diverse interest groups in the private sector, ranging from big business houses to the C o m ­munist parties. Daily newspapers increased in numbers and circulation from 330 and 2.5 million respectively in 1954 to 875 and 9.3 million in 1976. But the consumption of newspapers has remained overwhelmingly ur­ban, for the reason that literacy and purchasing power are concentrated in the cities and towns.

Newspapers can address themselves only to their largely urban clientele. Radio and tele­vision, which are not constrained by the literacy

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barrier, are publicly owned and their growth has been funded in the n a m e of social education. However, these media have also developed as providers of information and entertainment pri­marily to the 20 per cent of the population w h o live in cities and towns.

It is the urban dwellers w h o o w n 80 per cent of the estimated 25 million radio receivers in the country (the last precise figure of licenced receiving sets, as at the end of December 1977, was 20,091,450). T h e actual access of rural people to radio is far behind radio's technical reach: the signals from All India Radio's eighty-four broadcasting centres n o w cover 80 per cent of the area and 90 per cent of the population. T h e spectacle of the farmer carrying a transistor set to his field—what has been called the transis­tor revolution—is confined to areas like Punjab and Haryana, where there has been a Green Revolution. Elsewhere, radio listening in rural areas is negligible.

There are about 576,000 villages in India and almost as m a n y schools, but rural community listening sets number less than 50,000—more than half of them might be out of commission at a given time—and radio sets in schools n u m ­bered 30,766 at the end of 1977. This being the case, the educational and rural broadcasts have m a d e a token rather than substantial contri­bution to non-formal education. Most of the school sets are located in secondary schools in cities and towns, whereas primary schools in rural areas need help the most. T h e effort to popularize n e w high-yielding varieties of seeds through rural broadcasts has had some success, as for example in the well-irrigated Tanjore district of South India, where, in the 1960s, farmers took to what they called 'radio rice'. But the total number of rural listening-cum-discussion groups organized so far is less than 45,000, and only a small percentage of them are active.

Before turning from radio to television, it will be useful to consider the state of the use of short films (documentaries and newsreels) for social

education, since it shares some c o m m o n prob­lems with television.

T h e 9,000 cinema houses in the country are required, under a law, to show one or two short educational films along with each screening of a feature film. T h e documentaries and news-reels supplied by the Films Division to this commercial theatrical circuit are m a d e mostly in urban locations. T h e same short films are used by audio-visual vans of the central and state governments for free-screening in villages, though few of them have relevance in rural areas. A documentary on family planning, for instance, shows a father of six children standing while the kids pester him for school fees and pocket money. W h e n such a film is screened in a village, the audience is likely to regard the father not as the harassed head of an unduly large family but as a rather lucky urbanité, draped in several yards of white clothing, w h o can afford cigarettes in contrast to the beedi or cheroot of the rural poor.

Again, a film m a d e in one part of rural India cannot evoke audience identification in another region. I once met a group of extension workers engaged in fertilizer promotion in the state of Andhra Pradesh. I asked them whether they had audio-visual vans for screening films on ferti­lizer use to villagers with little or no access to cinema houses. But, they said, the films were m a d e in locations in Maharashtra and therefore did not click with Andhra Pradesh audiences. Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh are not widely separated parts of the Indian Union but are adjacent states.

Problems of language

T h e language of the commentaries in the documentaries is often not followed by villagers, because the short films are dubbed in the correct literary form of the major languages of India as spoken by the urban educated. Vil­lagers, on the other hand, use the locally preva-

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lent dialectal variant of an Indian language. Take for example Hindi, which is the most widely spoken language of India. It is not one language except in its literary usage. Spoken Hindi is m a n y dialects and languages, such as Garhwali, Haryanvi, Rajasthani and Braj Bhasha.

In some areas where qualified personnel are not locally available for recruitment, the language barrier affects also the person-to-person communication of extension workers in the field. O n a visit to Rajasthan as m e m b e r of a study team on family planning communication, I found that a large percentage of the female extension workers (known as Auxiliary Nurse Midwives) were drawn from the far-away Kerala State. These young w o m e n knew Hindi but not the distinctive local variant, which is Rajasthani. They could make themselves understood, but could not follow what the local w o m e n said. In family planning, as in other spheres of develop­ment communication, it is necessary to relax educational standards to the extent necessary to ensure the recruitment of local personnel for work at the grassroots level. T h e lag in formal education can be m a d e good through intensive functional training. A beginning has been made in strictly local recruitment in the scheme of Community Health Workers, which was launched in 1977.

Television

T h e higher costs of programme production and receiver sets required that, even more than in the case of radio, television should be organized as a medium of social education for social consumption on a wide scale. This has not been the case.

T h e first television centre was established in Delhi in 1959. Though the next centre did not come up till 1972, the die had been cast in 1969, when the government entered into an agreement with the National Aeronautics and Space A d ­

ministration of the United States for a Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). After 1972, terrestrial television centres came up in rapid succession in six cities: Amritsar, B o m b a y , Calcutta, Lucknow, Madras and Sri-nagar. N e w centres are to be opened during the Sixth Plan (1978-83) in three more cities: Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Trivandrum.

There were 676,618 licenced television re­ceivers in the country at the end of 1977. Most of them are in the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, B o m b a y , Calcutta and Madras. There is no question of private ownership of television in rural areas except by a few wealthy families.

T h e other n o n - S I T E city-based stations also put out some programmes on improved agri­culture and other aspects of rural development. But they account for a small percentage of total transmission time, the bulk of which is applied to entertainment, news and discussions of cur­rent affairs. T h e most popular television pro­grammes are the screening of feature films. M a n y among the middle class and the rich w h o o w n sets have undertaken the investment as a wholesale purchase of movie entertainment; it is cheaper in the long run to see films on tele­vision, and it obviates the discomfort of queuing for tickets.

There are 921 television sets in schools, 538 of them in Delhi and 272 in and around Bombay . Educational television thus augments the already high level of information and edu­cation in the urban areas, instead of benefiting those whose need for non-formal education is greatest.

It will be evident from this survey of the four modern mass media that, except for S I T E , they have been in no position to reach the rural masses directly. T h e social education messages carried by them can travel only indirectly to the weaker sections of the population, w h o consti­tute the majority, through extension workers and opinion leaders such as the village teacher, chairman of the Panchayat (village council), organizers of industrial trade unions and unions

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of agricultural workers, teachers at adult edu­cation centres and other social workers.

T h e modern mass media can play their largely indirect role in social education more effectively if they disseminate information of relevance to the poor more systematically and thereby increase the two-step flow of infor­mation. M a n y information officials and extension workers are recruited from an urban middle class background, and have inadequate knowledge for various agricultural and industrial occupations and the lower rates which actually prevail in m a n y areas, or the availability of bank credit at concessional interest rates for the poor.

The pluses and minuses of SITE

T h e Satellite Instructional Television Exper­iment (SITE), which was conducted for a year from i August 1975, was the first occasion on which the government concerned itself not only with the production of rural-interest television programmes and their transmission, but also with their wide-scale social consumption.

Direct reception sets with 24-inch screens were installed in 2,330 villages in backward districts of six states with programmes in four languages: Oriya for Orissa; Hindi for the states of Bihar, Raj as than and M a d h y a Pradesh; Telugu for Andhra Pradesh; and Kannada for Karnataka.

S I T E utilized A T S - 6 , which was m a d e avail­able and put into geostationary orbit by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States. T h e Indian Space R e ­search Organisation (ISEO) was responsible for all technical operations of the ground segment, including the maintenance of the direct recep­tion sets. Doordarshan, as the Indian television organization is k n o w n , was responsible for the software.

There was a morning transmission of one and a half hours for school children, with pro­

grammes of twenty-two and a half minutes each in the four languages. T h e programmes covered science education, biographies of great Indians, health education, current affairs and entertain­ment. T h e evening transmission of two and a half hours was intended for the rural adult pub­lic (though children turned up in the evening too and accounted for well over a third of the audience). It carried news; entertainment pro­grammes, m a n y of which served also to portray the unity underlying India's cultural diversity; and instructional programmes on agricultural improvement, animal husbandry, health, hy­giene and nutrition, and family planning. A news bulletin formed part of a half-hour 'national segment' in Hindi, which was telecast in all the six clusters.

In addition to the six clusters served via satellite, a low-power terrestrial television trans­mitter at Pij, in Gujarat, telecast a one-hour programme each evening. About 500 conven­tional television sets were installed in 355 vil­lages of Kheda district, with more than one set in several villages. T h e Pij transmission c o m ­prised the half-hour national programme of S I T E in Hindi, telecast through rediffusion, and a half-hour Gujarati programme prepared at Ahmedabad under the auspices of I S R O . In several programmes the Charantari dialect prevalent in Kheda district, instead of standard Gujarati, was employed.

While the experiment was an unqualified success in terms of hardware and technical operations, S I T E was only a qualified success as an exercise in social education for the rural population.

T h e software operations presented a more varied and continuous challenge during S I T E than the installation and operation of hardware. T h e main reason for the limited social impact of S I T E was that there were only three base production centres (HPCs) to make the bulk of the programmes for villages with varied agro-economic and cultural backgrounds, m a n y of them more than a thousand kilometres apart.

94

D o mass media reach the masses? The Indian experience

Area-specific programmes were therefore mini­mal. A n d it is a truth apparent to c o m m o n sense that decentralized and area-specific pro­grammes, employing the local dialect and de­picting the local agro-economic and h u m a n landscape, are necessary in any attempt to persuade people to change their attitudes and practices in agriculture or hygiene or, even more so, in family planning.

T h e commonsense view on the need for area-specificity and the employment of local speech in development communication is borne out by the findings of a research study undertaken by I S R O . It entailed holistic studies by anthro­pologists in seven villages: one each in the six clusters served by the satellite and, in addition, one village, served by the Pij terrestrial trans­mitter. T h e anthropologists lived for about a year and a half in the respective villages for data collection and continuous observation prior to, during and after the conclusion of S I T E . Their findings have been written up by D r Binod Agrawal in a report that says:

T h e linguistic profile of these villages shows a higher use of dialects than the standard language of the region . . . N o n e of the languages spoken in the villages were used on T V except in Dadusar where Charautari was utilized to some extent. Furthermore, the use of English-sounding technical names (in programmes on agriculture and animal husbandry) compounded the problem . . . If the programmes were entertaining enough in terms of songs and dances, language did not become a barrier. D u e to this reason, recreational programmes of other clusters were viewed with enthusiasm in all the villages . . . T h e Hindi c o m m o n news was almost ineffective in all villages . . . T h e problem of lip synchronization affected the credibility of the T V medium to an extent (in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka which used one video and two audio channels).1

T h e last observation is at variance with the claim m a d e in the foreword of a report2 based on a study in the two states that cour experiment conducted in the Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka

clusters has had encouraging results. This find­ing has wide potential for application in most of the developing countries'.

Opposite opinions on the efficacy of S I T E as a communication exercise (as distinct from the success of the hardware operation) have been expressed by the authors of the reports on the in-house survey3 conducted by I S R O and of the Planning Commission survey that has been referred to already. T h e first entailed the inter­view thrice of about 6,500 respondents in twelve experimental and six control villages in each cluster: for base-line survey prior to, and for assessing impact during and on the conclusion of S I T E . T h e Planning Commission survey, also in three rounds, covered a smaller sample of 1,600, divided between five experimental and five control villages from each of the six clusters.

T h e two surveys differ not so m u c h in the actual findings of positive and negative changes in levels of information or in attitude—both cite some instances of greater gain in the control villages!—as in the interpretation of the data,, and in the resulting verdict on S I T E . Whereas the I S R O survey tends to be self-congratulatory,, the Planning Commission survey is skeptical.

Impediments to research

Unfortunately, all the research studies conduc­ted during S I T E , including the above two, were vitiated by the prevailing atmosphere of fear of the government on the part of Indian citizens. S I T E began a little over a month after the establishment of emergency by the government.

Even in normal times Indian villagers are suspicious of all strangers—officials or re­searchers—who approach them for information on the extent of their landholding or income, or their attitude towards government-sponsored programmes. It was unrealistic to expect them to respond candidly to questions put to them,, specially by interviewers identified with the government, during the emergency.

9S

G. N. S. Raghavan

In the circumstances, the holistic study ap­pears to be the most reliable guide to the social impact of S I T E . T h e anthropologists—unlike the visiting interviewers—lived for a year and a half in the respective villages and could continuously observe at close range the nature and extent of impact of television viewing in the seven villages.

T h e impact of the telecasts from the terres­trial transmitter at Pij, which put out part of the programmes in the local speech, comes through m o r e impressively from the holistic study than that of the telecasts via satellite. However, interesting cases are also reported of the adop­tion of improved agricultural and health prac­tices—but not of family planning—as the result of television viewing in villages in the six S I T E clusters.

IN SAT-1

In the absence of conclusive evidence of S I T E having proved effective in terms of social impact, the planners have not so far included any financial provision in the Five Year Plan (1978-83) to utilize for telecasts the first Indian-owned satellite ( INSAT-I ) , which is expected to be put into orbit in 1981.

T h e satellite, which is being purchased from the Ford Aero-Space Corporation of the United States, will be multi-purpose: it will have twelve transponders for telephony; a second payload for collecting meteorological data; and a third payload consisting of two transponders that can be used for telecasts and radio networking.

T h e only use of the third payload firmly planned so far is for strengthening the sound broadcasting network. All India Radio does not have a network of cable, microwave, M W and S W transmitters of sufficient strength and interference-free reliability to provide nation­wide delivery of signals of satisfactory quality. I N S A T - I will strengthen the radio network, to transmit programmes of national interest—mu­sic, or running commentaries on Independence

D a y or Republic D a y celebrations or on sports events or broadcasts to the nation by the President of Prime Minister.

Apart from providing the radio networking facility as an incidental benefit, the two tran­sponders to be fitted on I N S A T - I will have the capacity to telecast one video and one audio channel each. T h e experiment with one video and two audio channels during S I T E has evidently been deemed unsatisfactory. Whether, w h e n and what use will be m a d e of the two transponders for telecasts is an open question.

T h e best way to utilize the telecast facility of I N S A T - I would be, it seems to this writer, to serve certain parts of India that are sparsely populated and where terrestrial television trans­mission will be forbiddingly expensive. A d ­ditionally, the satellite can be utilized to enable the simultaneous telecast throughout the country of events of national significance whose cover­age would be predominantly visual rather than verbal, such as the Republic D a y pageant. There will be problems of language even in the marginal use of I N S A T - I suggested here, as there will be in any use of a satellite for c o m ­munication in a polyglot country.

For the rest of India, there should ideally be a large number of low-power terrestrial trans­mitters to provide localised programmes in the local speech, based on formative research and responsive to feedback. T h e next best course would be to have a dozen or more high-power terrestrial stations, with the necessary number of relay transmitters, to provide programmes for, and produced in, each of the major linguistic-cultural regions of India.

All this, however, presupposes the availability of abundant resources to expand television as a means of social education. That is not the case.

District-level broadcasting

A government-appointed working group studied and m a d e recommendations in 1977 on the

96

D o mass media reach the masses? The Indian experience

future pattern of growth, and the appropriate form of autonomous organization of radio and television.

Their report urged the establishment of a chain of local radio stations at district level and, similarly, television stations with low-power transmitters for providing programmes of local appeal and relevance. T h e report ably sums up the principles of sound social education:

Instructional broadcasting presupposes specific small audiences in terms of age (for example, school broadcasts) and in terms of agro-climatic and socio-cultural variables including language. Decentralised and participative development from below suggests the need for decentralised messages through local radio and television. W e would envisage the Station as something more than a single studio-transmission complex, distant and seemingly exclusive, or even inaccessible to the people it is intended to serve. Instead, w e envisage at the local level a small and relatively simply equipped 'mother station' with a cluster around it of small recording units and programming facilities which will help bring broad­casting to the people and the people to broadcasting. This consideration applies both to radio and tele­vision.*

They stressed that the station manager should not only have the responsibility of running his station but of organizing listening or viewing groups within the range of his transmitters. This is a far-reaching recommendation. W h e n implemented, it will provide rural access to radio and television for the first time on a large scale. However, in view of the resources constraint, the group recommended first priority for providing local sound broadcasting at district level. T h e number of districts is 392.

A great advantage of decentralized broad­casting is that it can help to preserve the tra­ditional and folk forms of communication and apply them for contemporary purposes. T h e Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has a Song and D r a m a Division, and m a n y state governments also m a k e use of troupes of tra­ditional media performers. But live perform­

ances are difficult and expensive to organize, and therefore have been few in relation to the scale of the need to reach the minds and hearts of the rural population through their o w n c o m ­munity media. District-level broadcasting will enable a quantum jump in the utilization of the community media for social education.

These media include ballads, folk drama and various forms of stylized narration, of which every cultural region of India has a rich heritage. They bear witness to the fact that entertainment versus instruction is a false antithesis. Depend­ing on the content, entertainment can be the best form of social education, even as formal education can lead to alienation.

Policy unmatched by performance

T h e initiatives described above are laudable but the follow-up action has not been impressive. A n example of administrative slackness is the easy and lazy prescription of the availability of electricity as a condition for the installation of community viewing television sets in the cover­age area even of the post-SITE terrestrial stations, though S I T E had demonstrated the workability of battery-operated television re­ceivers.

A second example is the failure to provide local studio facilities for post-SITE telecasting. T h e six post-SITE 'rural stations' are—except in the case of Hyderabad—merely transmitters, which are fed by the same three Base Production Centres of S I T E . T h e Delhi B P C continues to prepare programmes in Hindi for transmission in the three widely separated states of Bihar, Rajasthan and M a d h y a Pradesh. All three B P C s have extremely limited facilities by way of O . B . vans and portapacks.

Out of the six post-SITE 'rural' stations, two—Jaipur and Hyderabad—are state capitals. There, a large number of middle- and upper-class residents acquired television sets in the

97

G. N. S. Raghavan

hope of adding this latest amenity to the range of their entertainment. However, these stations are required to put out programmes of pre­dominantly rural interest. This has left the well-to-do television families disappointed and angry. Ironically, it has brought negligible benefit to the intended beneficiaries because of the lack of viewing facilities on any large scale in villages. About 1,800 of the S I T E direct reception sets have so far been converted for terrestrial reception and installed in the area covered by the post-SITE transmitters. T h e central government is handing over to the states the responsibility it had undertaken during S I T E for community viewing. It will hereafter be for the state governments to maintain the community viewing sets and augment their number . This implies the likelihood of the rural population in the backward states, w h o need television most for adult education and agri­cultural extension, having the least exposure to it.

In respect of sound broadcasting the 1978-83 Plan provided, for the first time, for the estab­lishment of five low-power radio stations for operation at district level on an experimental basis, each station broadcasting in the locally prevalent dialect instead of the literary form of the regional language. This radical experiment in local broadcasting is yet to be launched.

Again, from all accounts available so far the National Adult Education Programme has got off to a feeble start both quantitatively in terms

of number of adult education centres which have started work, and qualitatively in terms of the social education they provide. T h e pro­g r a m m e has worked well only where it has been taken up by dedicated voluntary workers.

Altogether, the performance has thus been poor in follow-up of the promise held out in 1977 of n e w beginnings in the multiple directions of formal schooling, adult education, decentralized and participatory broadcasting, and improved political participation.

Though this has caused disappointment, it is clear that there can be no better strategy of social education for the 1980s. It is to be hoped that the n e w central government will give more concrete shape to, and implement with vigour, the four-pronged strategy for im­proving the quality of life of the economi­cally deprived millions of the world's largest democracy.

Notes

1. Binod C . Agrawal, 'Television Comes to a Village: A n Evaluation of SITE', I S R O , Ahmedabad, Octo­ber 1978 (mimeo.).

2. 'One Video-Two Audio Transmission in SITE' , Audience Research Unit, All India Radio, Hyderabad; November 1976 (mimeo.).

3. Binod C . Agrawal, J. K . Doshi, Victor Jesudason and K . K . Verma, 'Social Impact of SITE on Adults', ISRO, Ahmedabad, September 1977 (mimeo.).

4. Akash Bharati: National Broadcast Trust, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, N e w Delhi, Fe­bruary 1978.

98

Trends and cases

The world literacy situation: 1970,1980 and 1990

E . A . Fisher

In discussing the literacy situation, statistical analyses have invariably treated the concept of illiteracy as though it were a simple dichotomy so that a person could be classified either as literate or as illiterate, with no shade in between. However, it is easy to visualize that no one is completely literate, although some persons are more literate than others. By implication, liter­acy should have been viewed as a continuum and the statistical measurement of literacy should have been in terms of the level of lit­eracy attained by a person rather than by categorizing him as completely literate or as completely illiterate.

But literacy experts have not agreed on exact definitions of a scale of levels of literacy, and the statisticians have not yet developed tools that are precise enough to measure literacy by levels. Until such tools are developed, w e will inevitably continue to deal with literacy in terms of two categories, literate and illiterate, with the understanding that the dividing line between the two categories continues to shift towards higher levels.

S o m e examples of the levels of literacy follow. Various researchers have used parish registers

and other documents requiring personal signa­tures as the source of data on literacy. T h e presence of crosses instead of signed names on such documents would be interpreted as evi­dence of illiteracy. Clearly, the ability to sign one's n a m e is a very low level of literacy.

A m u c h higher level of literacy is functional literacy. Recent studies in some of the more developed countries, where universal primary

education has been in force for decades, confirm that significant proportions of school leavers are functionally illiterate in the sense that they cannot engage in all those activities for which literacy is a prerequisite. Thus they are unable to function effectively as individuals or as members of a community. This situation can be explained partly by the fact that n e w literacy-based activities, which are unfamiliar to them, have since been added in the society and partly by the fact that at least some of these activities require skills of literacy that are higher than the school leavers ever acquired.

National population censuses provide data on an intermediate level of literacy. Although the criteria used in censuses to determine whether or not a person is literate often differ from country to country, there is a growing tendency to adopt the definition contained in the Revised Recommendation concerning the Inter­national Standardization of Educational Stat­istics (Unesco, 1978), which states: C A person is literate w h o can with understanding both read and write a short simple statement on his everyday life.'

In the present article w e will examine the world situation with respect to the intermediate level of literacy with reference to the years 1970, 1980 and 1990. In doing this, w e will draw extensively on the statistics presented in a recent publication of the Unesco Office of Statistics: Estimates and Projections of Illiteracy, C S R - E - 2 9 , 1978. It should be noted that these projections are based on an extrapolation of trends in enrolment ratios of children aged 6-11, on literacy rates of previous censuses, and on the medium variant of the demographic pro­jections m a d e in 1973 by the United Nations

99

E. A . Fisher (Canada). Office of Statistics, Unesco.

Prospects, Vol. X , N o . I, 1980

Trends and cases

Population Division. N o provision was m a d e for the effects of mass literacy campaigns or inter­national migration.

Adult illiteracy in the world

T h e illiteracy situation in the world for the years 1950 to 1990 is illustrated in Figures 1 and 2. It can be seen that the adult population (aged 15 years and over) is projected to more than double over the forty years from 1950 to 1990. During this same period the number of adult literates would nearly triple (from 879 million to 2,560 million) but the illiterate population would also increase (from 700 million to 884 million). T h e illiteracy rate is projected

% 50

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

F I G . 2 . Decrease of adult illiteracy rate.

¡SS"

[TOO till

F I G . I . G r o w t h of adult (15+) population and increase of literates and illiterates.

to drop from 44.3 per cent in 1950 to 25.7 in 1990. At the present m o m e n t (in 1980) it is estimated that there are 814 million adult illiterates, representing 28.9 per cent of the adult population.

F r o m Table 1 w e can see that in all three years the number of illiterate females exceeds

T A B L E I. World estimates and projections of illiteracy for age-group 15 and over (numbers in millions)

Population

Literates

Illiterates

% Illiterate

Source: C S R - E

Sex

M F M F M F M F M F M F M F M F

-29, op.

1970

2,290

i>i34 1,156

1,548 832 716 742 302 440

32.4 26.6

38.1

cit.

1980

2,818

1,400

1,418

2,004

1,078

926 814 322 492

28.9 23.0

34-7

1990

3,444 1,716

1,728

2,560

I,37i

1,189

884 345 539

25.7 20.1

31.2

IOO

Trends and cases

Millions of illiterates aged 15 and over

9 0 0

700

600

500

400

300

200

100

0

Rest of the world

63

Africa

139

Asia

540

—

Rest of the world

59

Africa

156

Asia

599

—

Rest of the world

62

Africa

168

Asia

654

F I G . 3. N u m b e r of illiterates aged 15 and over in Asia, Africa and the rest of the world, 1970, 1980 and 1990.

that of illiterate males. Furthermore, the dis­parity in terms of numbers between male and female illiterates is increasing, for whereas in 1970 this disparity was of the order of 138 million, by 1990 it is projected to reach 194 million. O n the other hand, w h e n the disparity is measured in percentage points, there is a very slight drop, from 11.5 percentage points in 1970 to 11.1 in 1990.

In terms of the geographical distribution of illiterates, Middle South Asia accounted for 38.6 per cent of the world total in 1970, and would account for 43.5 per cent in 1990. Asia as a whole had 73 per cent of the world total in 1970, and would have 74 per cent in 1990. T h e respective figures for Africa are 18.7 and

19.0 per cent and for Latin America 6.1 and 4.5 per cent.

In 1970 nine countries had each more than ten million adult illiterates. B y 1990 the number of countries with more than ten million adult illiterates would have risen to eleven. These countries are listed in Table 2.

In 1970 these eleven countries accounted for 51.5 per cent of the total adult illiterates, but by 1990 they will account for 55.3. In India, the number of illiterates is several times greater than in any other country, and every decade the net increase in their numbers is greater than the total n u m b e r of illiterates in any other single country. T h e number of adult illiterates is also projected to increase in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Sudan. Only in Indonesia and Brazil are they projected to decrease, but in Iran they are projected to start to drop after peaking around 1980.

Let us n o w examine the illiteracy rates in individual countries. O u r first observation is that illiteracy rates appear to be falling in every country. In 1970 there were thirty-four

T A B L E 2. N u m b e r of illiterates aged 15 and over (in millions)

Country

1. India 2. Indonesia 3. Bangladesh 4. Pakistan 5. Nigeria 6. Brazil 7. Ethiopia 8. Egypt 9. Iran

10. Afghanistan 11. Sudan

SUBTOTAL W O R L D TOTAL Percentage

Source: CSR-E-29, op.

1970

208.I 30.3 25.8 24.9 23.1 18.4 13.2 II.O 10.9 8.9 7-3

381.9 742.2

5 1 . 5

cit.

1980

243.1 29.2 26.9 29.8 27.6 18.1 16.7 11.7 11.1 10.7 9.1

434.0 814.1

53-3

1990

286.8 26.8 28.6 33-8 29.9 159 20.0 12.8 10.4 13.4 10.8

489.2 884.O

55-3

IOI

Trends and cases

countries with adult illiteracy rates of over 70 per cent. Twenty-four of these countries were in Africa, nine in Asia and one (Haiti) in the Americas. B y 1990 only 13 of these thirty-four countries (ten in Africa and three in Asia) would have illiteracy rates of over 70 per cent.

At the present m o m e n t (in 1980), the countries where more than 70 per cent of the population aged 15 and over are illiterate are as follows: Eastern Africa: Burundi, Ethiopia, Mozambique

and Somalia. Middle Africa: Chad. Northern Africa: Morocco and the Sudan. Western Africa: Benin, Gambia , Guinea,

Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Upper Volta.

Caribbean: Haiti. Middle South Asia: Afghanistan and Nepal. South West Asia: Saudi Arabia and Y e m e n .

Illiteracy in the age-group 15-19

for age 15-19 is considerably lower than the present rate for age 15 and over.

Finally, the illiteracy rate of the 15-19 year-old cohort can be considered as an indicator of the performance of the regular school sys­tem at the primary level. It can be used in educational planning to determine whether higher priority should be placed on adult lit­eracy classes or on regular primary education in order to bring about a reduction of illiteracy.

In terms of the number of illiterates, there were twelve countries that had a million or more illiterates aged 15-19 in 1970. B y the year 1990, the number of such countries would have increased by one. These countries are listed in Table 3.

It is obvious from Table 3 that most of the illiterates aged 15-19 are found in these thir­teen countries. They represented 74 per cent of the world total1 in 1970,79 per cent in 1980, and are expected to reach 81 per cent in 1990. This table also shows that in India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Egypt and

It is interesting to look at the figures projected for the age-group 15-19, for various reasons. Firstly, they provide a useful indicator of the number of n e w illiterates w h o have been added to the total stock of adult illiterates in the previous five years. A g e 15 is generally regarded as a suitable threshold for the measurement of adult illiteracy, since relatively few persons would become literate through the regular school system after they have attained the age of 15 years. Consequently, the illiterate popu­lation aged 15 and over will have to turn to special literacy classes for adults (if they are available) for a second chance to learn to read and write.

In the second place, projections of the per­centage of illiterates in this age-group give an indication of what changes can be anticipated in the total adult illiteracy rate. T h u s , relatively large reductions in the adult illiteracy rate will occur in countries where the projected rate

T A B L E 3. Numl

millions)

Country

1. India

2. Bangladesh

3. Pakistan

4. Nigeria

5. Brazil

6. Ethiopia

7. Indonesia 8. Iran

9. Afghanistan

10. Sudan

n . Egypt

12. Nepal

13. Morocco

SUBTOTAL

W O R L D T O T A L 1

Percentage

1. Not including

Der of

China,

illiterates

1970

26.4

4.1 4.0 3-4 2.5 2.4 2.3 1.7 1.5 1.3 1.0 1.0 0.9

52.5

71 .4 73-5

aged 15-

1980

31.7 3.6 4,4 4.1 1.2 2.7 2.3 1.0 1.7 1.3 1.2 1.0 I.4

57.6

73.I 78.8

the Democratic Peopl

•19 (in

1990

36.3

3.1 4.2 3-2 0.4 2.9 1.4 0.5 2.2 1.4 1.2 1.0 1.2

59.0

72.9 8O.9

e's R e -public of Korea and the Socialist Republic of Viet N a m .

102

Trends and cases

Morocco the number of illiterates aged 15-19 will be higher in the year 1990 than in 1970. T h e net increase of about 10 million in India alone would be more than six times that in the world as a whole (1,5 million) during the same period. However, the figures would be declining from a peak around 1980 of 4.4 million in Pakistan, 4.1 million in Nigeria, and 1.4 million in Morocco. O n the other hand, in Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia and Iran marked decreases are anticipated.

But what is particularly striking is the pre­dominance of India, which by itself accounted for 37 per cent of the world total2 in 1970, and is projected to account for 50 per cent in the year 1990. It is evident that in spite of relatively high and increasing enrolment ratios, the pri­mary schools in India are failing to reduce the flow of illiterate youth into the ranks of the adult illiterates. Clearly, any international action to reduce illiteracy in the world must pay special attention to India.

So far w e have concentrated our analysis on the number of illiterates. W e will n o w turn our attention to those countries that had the highest illiteracy rates for the population aged 15-19 in 1970.

There were thirty-eight countries in 1970 where more than 50 per cent of the cohort aged 15-19 were illiterate. Twenty-six of these countries are in Africa, eleven in Asia and one (Haiti) in America. Four countries (Bhutan, Ethiopia, Niger and Somalia) had illiteracy rates of over 90 per cent. By the year 1990 all countries will have illiteracy rates lower than 80 per cent, and only nine (Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burundi, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Upper Volta) will have rates higher than 60 per cent.

In all thirty-eight countries the illiteracy rates will be less in 1990 than in 1970, and in some cases remarkable reductions are antici­pated (Angola, Botswana, East Timor, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the People's Republic of Y e m e n ) . H o w is it then that the number of

illiterates is increasing in such countries as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, India, Morocco and Nepal? T h e explanation lies in the population explosion that is foreseen for m a n y countries. Thus in Afghanistan the population aged 15-19 is expected to rise from 1,7 million in 1970 to 3.1 million in the year 1990, while the illiteracy rate will drop from 88.7 to 70.1 per cent over the same period. Clearly 70.1 per cent of 3.1 million is greater than 88.7 per cent of 1.7 million.

Recent data on a few mass literacy compaigns

It should be remembered that the estimates and projections shown in the preceding pages do not m a k e specific allowance for literacy campaigns. In a few countries, these campaigns have been so massive that the adult illiteracy rate has been reduced m u c h faster than would have been the case by the mere replacement of older, largely illiterate cohorts (through m o r ­tality) by younger, mainly literate ones (as they reach the age of 15). W e will n o w examine the possible effects of mass literacy campaigns in five countries for which sufficiently detailed data are available.

In order to appreciate better the expected impact of these mass literacy campaigns w e will present Unesco's estimates and projections (which do not m a k e any specific allowance for mass literacy campaigns), and compare them with the projections m a d e by the national auth­orities (projections which do take full account of mass literacy campaigns). W e will start with Brazil, and then treat India, Iran, the United Republic of Tanzania and the Socialist R e p u b ­lic of Viet N a m in turn.

BRAZIL

Table 4 exemplifies the tremendous contri­bution of literacy classes in accelerating the reduction of illiteracy rates. According to

103

Trends and cases

M O B R A L ' s estimates, there are only 7.4 million illiterates in 1980, as compared to 18.1 million if no classes had been held on a mass scale during the 1970s. Furthermore, the illiteracy rate is estimated to be 10 per cent in 1980, that is to say, 14.5 percentage points lower than the Unesco projection, which makes no specific provision for the contribution of literacy classes.

INDIA

Enrolment in literacy classes in India during the past twenty years has been quite high in absol-

T A B L E 4 . Literacy estimates and projections for Brazil

Number of illiterates

aged 15 + (in millions)

Percentage

illiterate

of population

aged 15 +

N u m b e r of new

literates

from mass literacy campaigns

(in millions,

cumulative

since 1970)

Year

1970

1979 1980

1990

1970

1971

1973

1973

1974

1975 1976

1977 1978 1980

1990

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975 1976

1977 1978 1980

Esti­mate1

18.4

18.1

15-9

33-8

24-5

15.9

Esti­mate2

18.I

8.5 7-4

33-6 30.7

26.6

25-5 21.9

18.9 16.4

14.2 12.4

10.0

0.17

1.25

3.29 5.07

6.99 8.65

10.07

11.26

12.25

13.95

1. Unesco, Office of Statistics, Estimates and Projections of Illiteracy. C S R - E - 2 9 , Paris, 1978.

2. Mobral, Evoluçào do Indice de Analfàbetizaçâo no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 1978.

IO4

ute terms (for example, between i960 and 1967 the lowest annual enrolment was nearly 1.5 million persons). However, even these high enrolments were not high enough to reduce the net number of illiterates, which was increasing at an annual rate of about 3.5 million during the 1970s. In 1978 the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare launched an ambitious adult literacy programme aimed specifically at the 100 million illiterates between the ages of 15 and 35. T h e objective of this programme is to provide literacy and environmental and social education to 100 million illiterates by the year 1983-84. Assuming that at least half the target students become literate by 1984, the number of illiterates will have fallen below the 1970 figure, and the percentage of illiterates aged 15 and over will drop by an additional 10 percentage points. T h e data for India are presented in Table 5.

IRAN

In Iran a national literacy crusade has been launched with the target of reducing the illit­eracy rate of the age-group 7-50 years to 15 per cent by the year 1988. Although estimates for recent years are not available for this particular age-group, the relative importance of this target can be inferred from Table 6.

UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA

T h e latest census data on literacy available for the United Republic of Tanzania refer to the year 1967, w h e n there were an estimated 5.4 million illiterates aged 10 years and older. By the end of 1977 more than half this number had been m a d e literate. Thus seems to be well on the way to achieving its target of reducing the illiteracy rate from 67 per cent in 1967 to less than 15 per cent by 1980. A truly remark­able performance! Estimates and projections are presented in Tables 7 and 8.

Trends and cases

TABLE 5.

Literacy estimates and projections for India

Year Estimate1 Estimate2 Estimate*

N u m b e r of illiterates aged 15 + (in millions)

1970 1971 1976 1977 1980 1981 1990

208.1

243-r

286.8

N u m b e r of persons to be enrolled in literacy classes under the National Adult Education Programme (in millions, cumulative since 1978)

1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983

223.4 232.7

229.9

209.5

226.6

Percentage illiterate of population aged 15 +

X970

1971 1976 1977 1980 1981 1990

66.6

59-7

54.0

68.3 61.9

53-1

65.9

62.0

1.5 6.0

15.0 33-0 65.0

100.0

1. C S R - E - 2 9 , op. cit. 2. K . B . Rege, National Council of Educational Research and Training, Magnitude of

Illiteracy in India 1961-1981, N e w Delhi, 1971. 3. Government of India, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, Summary of the Report

of the Working Group on Adult Education for the Medium Term Plan 1978-83, N e w Delhi» 1978-

T A B L E 6. Literacy estimates and projections for Iran

T A B L E 7. Literacy estimates and projections for the United Republic of Tanzania

Year

19701

19712

19801

19883

19901

Age-group

15 + 6+

15 + 7-50 15 +

Illiterates (in millions)

10 .9

14.1 11 .1

1 0 . 4

% illiterate

7 0 . 4

63.1

53-4 15.0 36.O

Year

19671

19702

I9751

1980a

19801

19902

Age-group

10 + 15+ 10 + 15+ 10 + 15+

Illiterates (in millions)

5-4 4.6 3-9 5.0

4.8

% illiterate

67 63.1 39.0

52.5 10-15

36.6 1. C S R - E - 2 9 , op- cit 2. Unesco Office of Statistics. Statistics of Educational

Attainment and Illiteracy, STS-22, Paris, 1977. 3. Unesco Regional Office for Education in Asia, Country

Report, Iran, National Literacy Crusade: the First Year. R O E A - 7 7 / R E M L A / 5 - I r a n , Bangkok, 1977.

B . N . Singh and E . P. R . Mbakile, Tanzania-UNDP-Unesco Functional Literacy Curriculum, Programmes and Materials Development Project, Final Evaluation Report, July 197¡-June 1976, Mwanza, 1976. C S R - E - 2 9 , op. cit.

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Trends and cases

T A B L E 8. Enrolment and graduation from literacy classes in the United Republic of Tanzania (numbers in millions)

Year

1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1977

Age-group

10+ 10+ 10+ 10+ 10+ 10 +

Number enrolled in literacy classes (cumulative since 1971)

0.91

I.51

2.99 3-3 5.18

Number made literate (cumulative since 1967)

I.91 2 .72

Sources: for 1971-751 Singh and Mbakile, op. cit., Table 7; for 1977) the National Literacy Centre, M w a n z a , Tanzania Pilot-test. Final Report of the Pilot-testing in Tanzania of the Unesco Document 'Proposals for the Collection of Statistics on Literacy Programmes', Paris, 1978.

SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIET N A M

Finally, a few words on the Socialist R e ­public of Viet N a m communiqué received by Unesco in 1978 from the Ministry of E d u ­cation2 presents a few statistics on the mass literacy programme that is being undertaken in former South Viet N a m . According to this communiqué , there were more than 3 million illiterates in South Viet N a m in 1975. Less than two months after the reunification of North and South Viet N a m (which took place on 30 April 1975)5 the authorities established a mass literacy campaign to m a k e 1,405,870 adults literate in specific target groups in the south, namely, males aged 12-50 and females aged 12-45 in the plains, and all persons aged 12-40 in the highlands. B y 1978, 1,323,670 of these per­sons had been m a d e literate (94.15 per cent of the original target population). Although adult illiteracy rates in the world will continue to fall, projections based on enrolment ratios indicate that the number of adult illiter­ates will show a net increase of about 7 million a year until 1990.

T h e highest rates of illiteracy are to be found in African countries (and, in particular, in West African countries), but the countries with the largest number of adult illiterates are those in the Indian subcontinent.

Primary-school enrolment ratios are increas­ing, but in m a n y countries the increase is not sufficient to reduce the number of illiterates in the age-group 15-19.

Although in most countries the impact of literacy classes on reducing illiteracy is fairly negligible, the mass literacy campaigns being undertaken in Brazil, India, Iran, the United Republic of Tanzania and the Socialist Republic of Viet N a m seem destined to reduce the illit­eracy rate considerably, as well as to m o v e some of these countries very rapidly towards the complete eradication of illiteracy.

Furthermore, if the campaign just launched in India is successful, it could arrest any further increase in the total number of illiterates in the world by the mid-1980's. This would be an important turning point in the international struggle to eradicate illiteracy. Countries which have been successful in conducting mass literacy campaigns are typically those where a strong political commitment has ensured that the liter­acy campaign was given a very high priority in national development plans. This appears to be the case in India, but the real challenge will come in the early 1980s, w h e n the target enrol­ments in literacy classes are to reach their peak.

Notes

1. Not including China, the Democratic People's R e ­public of Korea, and the Socialist Republic of Viet N a m .

2. See preceeding note. 3. Ministry of Education of the Socialist Republic of

Viet N a m , Directorate of Complementary Education, Liquidation de l'Analphabétisme au Sud du Viet Nam (mimeo.). April 1978.

TOÓ

Trends and cases

Use of the Bambara language in training young people: an experiment in rural Mali

G u y Belloncle

Background

Before describing the actual experiment, it would be appropriate to say a few words about its context, as this will m a k e it easier to grasp the experiment's significance.

In 1973, after a preparatory Unesco mission, the World Bank decided to make an initial loan available to Mali for the development of its education system. T h e various projects financed by the loan included a sort of preinvestment study or so-called survey of basic education, the purpose of which was to assist the Govern­ment of Mali to develop and introduce n e w education systems that would provide a certain type of basic education for a greater number of people. O n e possibility suggested by the study's terms of reference was that, given the encour­aging results of literacy work in Mali, the n e w education systems ought very probably to be developed as an extension ofthat training

T h e team to study basic education was set up at the beginning of 1975, and one of the first things it had to do was to evaluate in a system­atic way what the literacy programmes had achieved. This was something that had not been done before.

After several fact-finding tours, it was clear that the greatest progress had been m a d e in the regions of Bamako and Kayes, and it was

Guy Belloncle (France). Long experience as a teacher and researcher in Africa working for Unesco and the World Bank. Author of: Santé et développement en milieu rural africain; Coopératives et développement en Afrique noire sahélienney Jeunes ruraux du Sahely Quel développement pour l'Afrique noire?

therefore decided to carry out a careful evalu­ation of the achievements of the literacy cam­paigns in those two areas. W e cannot go into details here about the methods used;1 the only point that concerns us at present is that the literacy centres were shown to attract primarily young people. For instance, it was found after evaluating the 1976 campaign that 70 per cent of those enrolled were under 25 (and 19 per cent under 15). T h e same trend was observed after the 1977 campaign, in which the 10,617 par­ticipants 'evaluated' were distributed as fol­lows: under 15 years: 2,313, 22 per cent; from 15 to 25 years: 5,320,50 per cent; from 26 to 35 years: 2,259, 21 per cent; from 36 to 50 years: 629, 6 per cent; 50 and over: 96,1 per cent.

It was clear from this that for all these young people w h o had m a d e the effort to become literate, learning the three Rs should by no means be the ultimate target but, on the contrary, a starting point. This led to the idea of devising a form of 'advanced' training for these newly literate young people, a second level of education, as it were, to follow on from the first level which had consisted of learning to read, write and do elementary arithmetic.

It remained to decide what precise form this advanced training should take. Obviously it was absolutely essential to keep that daily involve­ment of the young people in the life of their villages and their normal participation in pro­ductive work that the literacy campaigns had so successfully managed to preserve. This led to the idea of organizing the advanced training in the form of short one-week courses, held in the villages themselves and dealing with subjects which the villagers themselves considered to be

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Trends and cases

important. Our basic premise was that, by organizing four six-week training sessions, it should be possible to provide the young people with the ' m i n i m u m level of education' that is the aim of basic education.

Provision was thus m a d e for instruction in agriculture and animal husbandry, health, tech­nology (mainly with a view to making better use of the dry season), economics and civics. Each of these six subjects was to be dealt with by a training course lasting one week. T h e project was scheduled to be carried out in three stages.

THE EXPERIMENT

T h e experiment consisted of carrying out what had been called the 'prototype courses'. A teaching team had been set up for that purpose, consisting of the co-ordinator of the survey of basic education, six educational psychologists and a specialist with a doctorate in biology. H e was a lecturer at the Rural Polytechnical Insti­tute in Katibougou, and he joined the team during the school holidays, which coincided with the training periods, i.e. February-April.

T h e team came under the D N A F L A (Di­rection Nationale de l'Alphabétisation Fonc­tionnelle et de la Linguistique Appliquée) and, more specifically, the Division of Linguistic and Educational Research, of which it was, in fact, the education unit.

T h e prototype courses had three aims: T o check the accuracy of the basic premises

regarding the training of young people in their villages.

T o compile the Bambara versions of the teach­ing materials to be used subsequently on a large scale.

T o train the Malian team and prepare it to carry on the work on its o w n .

Still as part of the experimental stage, it was provided that as soon as one prototype course had been completed, the Malian team would, on its o w n , run what was termed a 'first series' course in another village. This would widen the

field of observation, provide a testing-ground for the teaching materials used during the first course and, lastly, allow the teaching team to gain further experience.

FIRST EXTENSION

This stage consisted of training the national field team to enable it gradually to extend the courses to all the villages where there were literate young people. T h e same method was to be used as in the experimental stage and consisted of running a first course under the responsibility of the national team, with the participation of the field team (the latter being the area team responsible for a zone with a population of approximately 100,000). Sub­sequently, a second course was run under the responsibility of the field team but with the participation of the national team, and ulti­mately the change-over took place to large-scale application.

It should be pointed out that during this so-called 'first extension' stage, the project was to concern areas that were ecologically and linguistically different. Consequently, various teams were to be set up in 1979: a team working in Peul as part of the Mopti Rice Operation; a team working in Dogon in the Koro district (Mopti Millet Operation); a team working in Bobo in the Tomignan district (extension zone of Operation Groundnut); a team working in Minyanka and Bambara in the Koutiale and Sikasso districts ( C M D T zone: Compagnie Malienne de Développement des Textiles).

WIDESPREAD APPLICATION STAGE

This stage was to follow the spread of literacy, the assumption being that 'advanced' training for young people should take over from literacy work. It so happens that there are literacy training campaigns at present in six out of seven regions in Mali and a literacy component is n o w being systematically incorporated into

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Trends and cases

all 'integrated rural development projects'. It is fair to suppose, therefore, that if an effort is m a d e to provide literacy programmes with the staff they lack, the ground will be m a d e ready for 'advanced' training for young people. But there are already hundreds of young people in areas where official or private literacy training exists, waiting to be able to use the basic knowledge they have acquired. For instance, to take the O A C V operation alone, the 1977 evaluation showed that there were 4,000 'fully' literate out of the 10,000 people tested. Seventy-two per cent of them were young people, which means that there are some 3,000 young rural dwellers waiting for the 'advanced' training already in existence in this area, and it is to be expected that with the successive campaigns there will be more and more of them. Similarly, another careful inquiry showed that in the Koro district alone, of nearly 3,000 literates w h o had been taught by the Protestant missionaries to read and write in D o g o n , half were under 25. There is thus n o shortage of candidates.

Operational aspects of the experiment

H o w far have w e got with the experimental stage? So far, six prototype courses and four 'first series' courses have been completed out of the twenty-four scheduled. Three of them were related to agriculture and three to health. T h e ten courses have nevertheless given us good cause to think that w e are on the right road and that this is the direction Mali should take in order to give its young people the training that will enable them to make a real contribution to development or, in other words, to transforming village life. Let us consider this first series of courses and see what lessons can be learnt from the experiment.

AGRICULTURAL TRAINING

Three courses were held in two separate vil­lages, prototype courses in Suransan, to the north of Kita and first-series courses in Torodofolo, to the north of Kolokani.

These villages were chosen for three reasons: (a) the evaluation had shown that there were at least ten young literates there; (b) to help meet the cost of running the literacy centres, the two villages had cultivated land which it was hoped could be used for practical work; and (c) the two villages were centrally situated in the two sectors where progress in literacy work had been greatest and it was therefore to be expected that it would be easier to work out­wards from there.

T h e first course was held at Suransan at the end of April, and at Torodofolo at the beginning of M a y 1977. W e chose that time of year so as not to let slip the advantage of a rainy season. O u r plan was to work in the following order: a course on soils, a course on plants, and a course on the basic principles of sound agri­cultural practice (working the soil, types of manure, germination and growth of plants, crop rotation, etc.), with, as a conclusion to the courses, the cultivation of a trial plot by the young trainees. Another premise was that there should necessarily be adult involvement in the experiment, meaning that they should be per­suaded to accept the fact that the young people would, in a sense, become the 'envoys of inno­vation' for the whole of the village. O n e of the major problems (if not the major problem) encountered in any external agricultural train­ing is that w h e n newly trained youngsters return to their villages, they cannot put what they have learnt into practice because the adults did not give their prior consent. W e were therefore strongly in favour of first discussing with the adults the problems that arise in the villages and then asking them to agree to our giving the young people a training that would be directly relevant to those problems. A s a logical

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Trends and cases

corollary to this, the adults were then asked to let the young people put what they had learnt into practice. This in fact is the course w e followed. O n our very first day in the villages, w e organized a discussion evening with the adults (or to be more precise, the heads of the important families) around the very open-ended topic of cwhat is amiss in agriculture'. I ob­viously cannot go into the details of the dis­cussion here, but to confine myself to the crux of the debate, it was quite plain that the cold folk' (to keep to the vocabulary w e used during the courses) were all aware of the fact that the critical problem for the vil­lage was the constantly declining fertility of the soil. They further understood perfectly well that the reasons for the decline were population growth and the greater land area given over to groundnut cultivation.

T h e whole issue therefore revolved around 'whether it is possible to cultivate land con­tinually without it losing its goodness'. W h e n w e explained to the 'old folk' that the whole point of the training w e wished to provide for the young people was precisely to enable them to answer that question, they could only en­courage us to carry on. So the training sessions began the very next morning in the 'kalanso', or literacy classroom. Here again I cannot go into details, but the important thing is that w e used the most active teaching methods possible and m a d e it a matter of principle for the young participants, before w e continued our discussion with the 'old folk', to go back every evening and tell the 'old folk' what they had learnt during the day. At the end of this first course, w e had m a d e an enumeration of traditional knowledge relating to the soil and had also introduced a certain amount of sup­plementary information concerning the chemi­cal composition of the soil and the importance of the micro-organisms living in it.

T h e second course focused on a knowledge of plant life. Naturally, w e had prepared the course before going to the village and the

team had already discussed the question of botanical terminology in Bambara. Although there were no difficulties over the designation of roots, stalks or leaves, w e did not know if there were any equivalent terms for pistil, stamen, pollen, ovary and ovule. W e agreed, therefore, that before w e coined any neol­ogisms, w e would go and ask the 'old folk', this time in the afternoon so that they would be able to see more clearly.

Great was our surprise and greater still that of the nationals among us, to discover that the old people were not only capable of ident­ifying the various parts of the plants but also of naming them and describing their functions. T h e highlight of these terminology sessions was undoubtedly the session on flowers. W e had chosen a Senegalese Erythrina and I can still see the village chief disecting it in front of us, naming all the parts: the corolla and its sepals, the calyx and petals, the stamens and the pistil, the pollen and the ovary. T h e ovules were the only part he knew nothing about. 'I have never looked inside the denso (literally 'the house of the fruit'),' he said.

B y the end of that second week, w e had completed a whole botany course in Bambara and the trainees had acquired the basic k n o w ­ledge they needed to understand w h y and h o w a plant grows.

They n o w had to apply what they had learned to the soil and to plants, and this was done by way of a third course on the principles of sound agricultural practice, culminating in the cultivation of a trial plot by the young trainees. N o difficulties were raised on this account either by the 'old folk' w h o , in both villages, agreed to give the young people the two and a half hectares they needed to begin with, or by the young people w h o were very enthusiastic at the thought of working a 'modern' farm together. There were difficulties, however, and they came from the most unexpected quarter, i.e. from 'Operation Groundnut'. T h e objec­tions were not to the principle of the course but

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Trends and cases

to its content. O u r plan was to 'try out' the most recent findings of agronomical research with our young people, whereas the Operation wanted us to keep to themes that had already been widely covered by extension work, even though there was evidence from recent research that they seriously jeopardized soil fertility.

In fact, irrespective of the situation peculiar to the O A C V , this raised a fundamental prob­lem. T o the mind of the teaching team, the trial plot was to be a sort of foretaste of what the farms would—or should—be like once the young people reached adulthood themselves. T h e trial plot ought therefore to be fully 'integrated' into the extension scheme so that the villagers could see, before their very eyes, the kind of results they could themselves expect from using the same farming techniques. In short, w e felt there should be no hesitation in setting one's sights higher with the young people, as a forerunner to large-scale extension work.

T o avoid friction with the 'Operation', w e had to agree to work this year on the basis of the technical subjects they proposed.

T h e important thing was that work had begun and that there were two groups of young people actually working together on trial plots in the two villages. Subsequent training was, of course, to be based on what was achieved on those two trial plots, and the experimental network that was also set up.

HEALTH EDUCATION COURSES

T h e course on health education was developed with the help of D r Hubert Balique of the Centre de Formation et de Recherche en Santé Rurale at Kolokani. In this way, w e were sure that our training would be technically sound and that it would be followed immediately by practical action.

Furthermore, w e had elected to work in two villages where onchocerciasis was the main health problem, the aim being to prepare a

larger scale campaign in conjunction with lit­eracy work, to combat the disease. T h e three prototype courses were accordingly held in the village of Fasa, situated on a tributary of the Baoulé, in the Kolokani district. Here too, w e began with a participatory survey on dis­eases requiring priority treatment in the villages concerned. In addition to onchocerciasis, m e n ­tion was m a d e of bilharziasis, hernias, malaria, measles, etc., but what w e found most interesting was the fact that the villagers instinctively m a d e a distinction between men's , w o m e n ' s and children's ailments, which gave us the idea of organizing three one-week courses on each of these themes.

W e began with a course on men's ailments (which affect w o m e n as well but not because they are w o m e n ) and dealt with the three ailments which had been named as the most important, namely onchocerciasis, bilharziasis and hernias. Here again, I cannot enter into details but would, however, like to m a k e two comments.

T h e first concerns the spontaneous or e m ­pirical knowledge of the country people. W e found here another instance of h o w broad and h o w accurate the knowledge of some of the adults can be. T h e person w h o acts as village chief in Fasa (and w h o has been blind for several years) was familiar with the carriers of onchocerciasis (a small insect called a m u s o -musolen) and bilharziasis (a tiny water-snail) even though he was unaware of the connection between the carriers and the disease. T h e purpose of the course was, in fact, to explain this connection. T h e second remark concerns the part that might be played by literate m e m ­bers of the village community in protecting the villagers' health. In the course on onchocerciasis, for example, w e had the young trainees draw up a list of all the people with cysts, those afflicted with 'night blindness' and those w h o were completely blind. W e were thus able to calculate the rate of infection and do the groundwork for the medical team which came after us, the

in

Trends and cases

measures to combat onchocerciasis consisting of removing the cyst and giving regular doses of Notezine. W e followed the same process for the prevention and treatment of malaria, with Nivaquine. In one afternoon, with the help of the young trainees, w e m a d e a list of all the children, by age, w h o should be taking Nivaquine regularly. T h e young literates were subsequently to keep the registers on the days when the Nivaquine and Notezine were distributed to check that everyone had taken their medicine.

A word should be said on the last course, concerning women's ailments.

Quite naturally, the villagers put in this category anything to do with pregnancy and the female physiological make-up as a whole. O n e subject of particular concern to the people of Fasa is the problem of sterility and repeated miscarriages. W h e n w e arrived in the village with a very experienced gynaecologist in our team, w e had another meeting with the adults to explain to them what w e were going to teach the young people during the course, and es­pecially that to understand about women's ailments, it was important to understand what m e n and w o m e n did to have children. This caused some embarrassment in the audience, and shortly afterwards the adults asked whether they could go off and discuss it among them­selves. W h e n they came back, they suggested that before w e went and explained all these things to the young people, w e should first explain everything to them, the adults, m e n and w o m e n . F r o m that m o m e n t on, the whole village joined in the training session, with the m e n and w o m e n in the mornings in separate groups and the young people in the afternoon. T h e result was a complete change in the re­lations between m e n and w o m e n in the village. * W e did not know' , said the w o m e n when the time came for our evaluation, 'that when a w o m a n could not have children it might also be the man's fault. Nor did w e know that there were so m a n y reasons w h y a w o m a n could not have children.'

Another result of the course was that a series of lessons on h u m a n reproduction was compiled in Bambara, proof that it was a subject that could also be taught in Bambara.

This, then, is an outline of these initial prototype courses, although unfortunately so brief a description cannot do justice to the variety of subjects covered. Meanwhile, by way of a conclusion, it might be useful to recap­itulate the lessons learned from the experiment.

A few basic principles for the training of young country dwellers in Africa

W e have tried to draw from this experiment a number of basic principles which might serve as a guide in the education of young country dwellers.

TRAINING IN AND FOR THE VILLAGE

T o repeat what has been said before, the main drawback of conventional education systems, whether involving schools or agricultural train­ing centres, is that they cut young people oft" from their environment. A n d then there is general discussion about the need to facilitate their reintegration in society; but experience has proved that reintegration is virtually impos­sible to achieve and the best thing would no doubt be to avoid any break in the first place. Hence the importance of giving the training in the villages themselves, in the very environment in which it will have to be put into practice.

But the training should not only take place in the village, but also for the village. In other words it should be deliberately aimed not at promoting individuals separately, but at promoting the group as a whole, that is to say the village community. This is w h y e m ­phasis should be placed on what w e have called 'self-examination', that is to say an examin-

112

Trends and cases

ation, by all the heads of families meeting as a village assembly, of the problems which they regard as important and which the training given to the young members of the community should, in fact, help to solve. W h e n the starting point has thus been an examination, with the 'old folk', of the village's problems, the young people are quite naturally seen as the village's 'envoys of innovation', as it were, responsible for taking the risks that the whole village cannot take at the same time. O n e can see here h o w greatly their position is changed by this. In the first case, when training is given away from the village, the young people meet with distrust and hostility from the adults w h o are afraid that any innovation will be a threat to social cohesion in the village. In the second case, however, the young people enjoy a higher status as the village's delegated innovators.

TRAINING SHOULD BE PROVIDED

FOR ALL THE Y O U N G PEOPLE

IN THE VILLAGE

W e did not ourselves follow this principle, but gradually came to realize h o w important it was. For example, w h e n w e were clearing the land which was to be used for the trial plot, w e discovered that there were other young people w h o had followed no literacy course but w h o were extremely interested in practical agri­cultural training. W e then realized that w e should have involved all the young people be­longing to the ton (the traditional association), if need be keeping a special role of village ' m e m ­ory' for the literate, w h o , with their writing skills, were able to take notes. T h e inclusion of all the young villagers in our scheme, without discrimination, would undoubtedly have been appreciated by the village community and the training would have had a greater impact. W h a t is more, the fact of associating non-literate young people with the training scheme could only have been an encouragement to their enrolling in the courses.

ALTERNATING THE TRAINING COURSES

There is a practical reason for this. W h e n training is to be given in the villages by a finite number of instructors, the time spent on each village is necessarily limited. There are also excellent educational reasons for alter­nation as it is the best way of linking school with the environment and training with change. Between two weeks of intensive training, a certain amount of practical work is left to be done. If this work is actually carried out, it means that the training has really become the concern of the whole village. If not, there must be some obstacle somewhere that must be sought out before attempting to go any further.

STARTING WITH W H A T PEOPLE

ALREADY K N O W

BEFORE INTRODUCING

N E W KNOWLEDGE

In The Savage Mind, Lévi-Strauss wrote a very cogent account of what he calls the 'science of the concrete', showing that there was already some rational scientific thinking behind e m ­pirical knowledge, which also progressed with the discovery of 'relationships', sometimes purely coincidental but occasionally correct. This was true to such ah extent that Lévi-Strauss does not hesitate to claim that empirical knowledge is a forerunner of sciences and is even in some respects ahead of it, for it estab­lishes between certain phenomena relationships about which there can be no doubt but which are still not accounted for scientifically.

W e endeavoured to start systematically with what the villagers knew already, both for edu­cational and for scientific reasons. W h e n w e came, for instance, to making a list of the food crops that grew naturally on the land belonging to the village, w e learnt as m u c h in one evening as w e would have done in months with a survey team. It is also extremely important from a psychological point of view,

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Trends and cases

because the villagers are proud to show that they, too, k n o w things and, in some respects, k n o w even more than educated people. A s the Bambara proverb says, dow be do don, dow t'o don; dow tè de don, dow b'o don, which means some people k n o w things that others do not, but the latter m a y k n o w things that the former do not know.

PROVIDING SCIENTIFIC OR EXPERIMENTAL TRAINING AND NOT BEING CONTENT WITH STEREOTYPED FORMULAE

I have often heard extension workers saying: 'Country people do not need to understand. Let them do as they are told and they will see the results for themselves.'

T h e problem is that h u m a n nature being what it is, people will often want to understand before they do something. W h a t struck us most during these ten courses was that w h e n it came to the final evaluation, the participants were always most interested in the observations or experiments. These included dissecting a ram to show h o w a hernia occurs, or dissecting a goat to look at its genitals, or observing under a microscope the minute filarial w o r m s that cause onchocerciasis, or bilharzia eggs or explaining an infant's weight chart, or, in the agricultural sphere, explaining a simple or complex exper­imental set-up.

LINKING SCIENTIFIC AND GENERAL TRAINING

T h e courses also showed that the motivations they aroused were potentially the best way of reinforcing general education. In addition to calling upon the basic knowledge required for the courses (the trainees were often telling us that in one week they had done more writing and arithmetic than in a whole year at the literacy centre), w e would also try, between two courses, to find every possible opportunity

to encourage the young people to use the knowledge they had acquired. But sadly, at that level, there is absolutely no literature available. T h e equivalent of the Labour Library, dear to Freinet's heart ought really to be created some day.

LINKING EDUCATION AND ACTION, TRAINING AND CHANGE

This is by far the most important principle. T h e fact that education or training cannot change a situation unaided can never be e m ­phasized too strongly. They can only make a contribution—a decisive one certainly, but still just a contribution—to technical action. In fact, one should go even further and say that edu­cation and training, left to themselves, can be terribly frustrating. Imagine, for instance, our going along to the two villages and explaining the causes of onchocerciasis and the possible ways of eradicating it (or at least checking the cause of the disease before it causes blindness) without there being any medical follow-up.

T h e first thing the educator must do, there­fore, is to make sure that the training is duly followed by technical programmes. However, one must admit quite frankly that there are situations in which any training action is absol­utely impossible.

This, then, sums up our experiment, which no doubt had its limitations but is, I think, extremely promising. I should like to conclude with three more remarks.

I a m a firm believer in the system of proto­type courses being run in situ by highly qualified staff, because only such staff are capable of finding technically viable solutions to the prob­lems encountered by country dwellers. Instruc­tors or nursing personnel can only dispense cure-all formulae, whereas the people expect answers to specific problems. Obviously, the highly qualified staff cannot be responsible for training in all the villages, but the longer they stay there, the better they will be able to

114

Trends and cases

understand the real problems involved and give the middle-grade personnel some grounding in h o w to solve them.

M y second remark is that it would not, as w e have come to realize, take very long to pass on the knowledge that might bring about a total change in village life. This is particularly true as regards health. In the village of Fasa, for example, if practical effect is given to the whole scheme, the entire health situation of the village will have changed within the space of a few years.

This is also true in agriculture. It is perfectly possible, in five or six one-week courses, to convey the essential facts and ensure that they are taken in by the whole village community. W h y , then, opt for cumbersome, lengthy sol­utions that 'uproot' the people?

In the final analysis, and this is m y last

remark, one of the essential factors of success is, beyond doubt, the language in which the training is given. T h e whole training system w e propose assumes that without exception, the language used will be the language of the environment. This is w h y it is important, where it has not already been done, to make all African languages written languages. I reject the argument that it is an expensive process, for even in strictly economic terms, it would not be hard to demonstrate the very high profit­ability of the investment.

Note

I. Readers interested in this aspect can consult the Rapport final de l'évaluation de l'alphabétisation fonc­tionnelle dans l'opération arachide et cultures vivrières (OACVJ, March 1978. Roneo 309.

"5

Book reviews

The fiftieth anniversary of the International Bureau of Education

Bogdan Suchodolski, G u y Avanzini, Rosiska Darcy de Oliveira, Eugen Egger, Samuel Roller and Rodney Stock, The International Bureau of Education in the Service of Educational Development, Paris, Unesco, 1979, 152 p.

T h e International Bureau of Education, which after á long and productive career as an independent organization became an integral part of Unesco in 1969, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in Geneva last July. For an international organization, fifty years of uninterrupted work, even during the most bitter of wars, is indeed too rare an achievement to pass unnoticed. O n the occasion of this anniversary, commemorated by a ceremony of sober dignity, Unesco published a collective work entitled The Inter­national Bureau of Education in the Service of Edu­cational Development. A brief review of this work is given here.

Because it is a collective work, the six authors, all of different nationalities and from different back­grounds, naturally do not share the same views or put the same construction on events or trends, and as a result the historical or critical presentation of facts is at times repetitive and even somewhat dis­jointed. But then might it not be argued that diversity is what is wanted in education? This booklet supplies a wealth of facts and ideas, shedding interesting n e w light on the past and offering stimulating prospects for the future.

It begins by retracing the early origins and more recent development of the I B E with, in the back­ground, an excellent summary of the evolution of ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from William James to Claparède, from Herbert Read to Alaria Montessori, from Ferrière to Lunaczarski and from John D e w e y to Jean Piaget. F r o m this melting-pot of theories and experiments, a single aim emerges, that of a 'new education' based on a better under­standing of children and on one and the same deter­mination to ensure their independence and provide for their happiness. This is followed by an account of the part played by Geneva in launching the I B E and, in particular, the founding of an Institute of the Sciences of Education, which was to be given the highly significant n a m e 'Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau'. A n d finally, the maturing of a long-nurtured plan with the setting up , under the aegis of this Institute, of an 'International Bureau of E d u ­cation', thanks to the combined efforts of Adolphe Ferrière, Pierre Bovet, Robert Dottrens, Jean Piaget, Pedro Rosselló and a few others, with the active support of the Geneva authorities. It m a y be noted that the statutes adopted on 10 June 1926 stipulated

that the membership of the Bureau was to consist of international unions, national or local institutions and individuals. There was no question, therefore, of admitting governments. T h e function of the new organ which was to work 'in a strictly scientific and objective spirit', was to co-ordinate information and research, convene meetings and encourage exchanges between educators and psychologists from various countries.

In 1929 the first major change took place, and at the instigation of Pedro Rosselló, the I B E assembly decided that an intergovernmental structure would be adopted, the first M e m b e r States being the Republic and Canton of Geneva, Poland and Ecuador. T h e effects of the change were impossible to foresee. Although participation by the various States provided the I B E with more reliable resources and better opportunities for concrete action, was there not also a risk of it being diverted from its original aims? Whereas it had, in the minds of its founders, been set up as a means of promoting the 'new education' throughout the world, would it not, by coming under the influence of political powers, forego some, and perhaps even a great deal, of its intellectual indepen­dence and vitality?

A n d yet for the n e w I B E the ten years between the acquisition of its n e w status and the Second World W a r , and then again the period between 1946 and 1968, were extremely productive ones. T h e prestige and genial authority of Jean Piaget, its Director, and the tireless and competent efforts of Pedro Rosselló, his Assistant Director, w o n for the I B E the esteem and confidence of all its M e m b e r States. It was not looking for glamour or publicity; the prevailing tone was one of simplicity, modesty and discreet but effective action. Its studies of comparative education, the publication of the Year­book, the work of the then yearly International Conference on Public Education, and its recommen­dations, the Library and the Permanent Exhibition were all highly appreciated contributions to inter­national co-operation.

W h y , then, did the I B E have to take the decision to join forces with Unesco, to the extent of becoming an 'integral part' of that Organization, giving up in so doing its status as an independent international organization? T h e fact is that for several years, the Bureau had been struggling to emerge from a crisis to

117

Prospects, Vol. X , N o . 1, 1980

Book reviews

which there seemed to be no solution. It was in the first place a financial crisis. Since 1929, there had been no increase in its resources, which came from contributions by M e m b e r States, for most of the older m e m b e r s refused to augment their payments, while some had even fallen into arrears, and the agreements concluded with Unesco m a d e it practically unthink­able to recruit n e w members . Compelled to resort to pitiful stopgaps, the I B E was only just surviving with the help of subsidies from Unesco.

Apart from the critical financial situation, another apparently legal but in fact political crisis had already arisen at the 1963 Conference over Portugal, with the African countries demanding that it be excluded from the Organization. T h e crisis came to a head the following year, w h e n the 1964 Conference broke d o w n in mid-session with some of the participating States recalling their delegations and the Director-General of Unesco withdrawing Unesco personnel. It became clear that, like all the other intergovern­mental organizations, the I B E had entered into a period of tension and conflict in regards to which it was in no way responsible but was nevertheless severely hit by all the after-effects without any means of countering them. Both politically and financially, it n o w depended heavily on Unesco which provided the funds and took the most important decisions.

It was for these reasons that France m a d e the proposal, which was initially misunderstood, but subsequently supported by Switzerland, the host country, and eventually adopted by all the M e m b e r States, to integrate the I B E into Unesco while making sure that it would continue to enjoy considerable intellectual and functional autonomy. Once it was free from its financial worries and political tensions, the Bureau could pursue its work undisturbed. T h e positive effects of this reform, carried out under the firm supervision of the Bureau's Director, Leo Fernig,

are quite rightly recalled in the chapter entitled ' T e n years within Unesco'.

T h e book ends with a chapter which is remarkable for the ambitious prospects it opens up and its decidedly doctrinal tone. It is, in fact, a report on a recent symposium on the theme 'Where is education going?' If one were looking for really novel ideas and proposals in it, one might be disappointed, but it does give a perceptive, coherent description of the main indictments levelled at education and society in recent years: pollution of our natural surroundings and debasement of the social environment, inequality, violence, the crisis of science, society and education. A n d it ends with a prophetic anticipation of the future, in a rather similar vein to Ivan Illich, with the announcement of a different type of education, society and life in general.

Coming as they do at the end of the book, these ideas might be regarded as a conclusion, or alterna­tively an insight into the future role of the I B E . But in fact nearly all the questions dealt with here are already to be found, obviously in a less polemic form, in the Unesco programmes and M e d i u m - T e r m Plan. It is only natural that a great international organiz­ation, the United Nations Specialized Agency for education, science and culture, should tackle the major problems of our time. But surely it is presump­tuous and even unwise for the I B E as well to be launched into such ambitious undertakings, which, moreover, are quite evidently outside its scope. If the I B E is to continue to c o m m a n d the confidence it has hitherto enjoyed, consistent with the 'strictly scientific and objective spirit' prescribed by its founders, is it not better for it to be encouraged to carry on work in its o w n specific field, namely infor­mation, documentation and studies? Let it therefore follow the path traced out for it, provided it is, as always, the path of progress.

JEAN T H O M A S

118

Book reviews

Gaston Mialaret (ed.)> Vocabulaire de l'éducation: éducation et sciences de l'éducation, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1979, 457 P-

G . Terry Page, J. B . T h o m a s and A . R . Marshall, International Dictionary of Edu­cation, London , Kogan Page; N e w York, Nichols Publishing C o m p a g n y , 1977, 381 p .

T h e appearance of a n e w work of reference in edu­cation is a rare event—and this for obvious reasons. T o gather the essential material, terms, names and addresses, titles of publications is a demanding pro­cess because of the wide range in the theory and practice of education, subject also to the process of rapid change that characterizes our time. T o select, classify and check this material requires moreover a strictly scientific approach based on a consistent and adequate set of principles. Yet with advances in research, changing practices and newly stated con­cepts to justify them, the educational field particularly requires the constant renewal of its reference works. Both the difficulties and the need apply with force to the area of lexicography.

T h e n e w Vocabulaire de l'éducation edited under the direction of Gaston Mialaret is a welcome addition to the instruments available in French: an appropriately modern work designed both for practical use and for helping to define 'in this latter part of the twentieth century the contours of what is meant by the word education'.

H o w can one describe or appreciate the qualities of a dictionary? Perhaps the best course is to scan it, driving in shafts of inquiry here and there, with three questions in mind: the public it serves and its likely usefulness to such people; the field it covers, its apparent adequacy; and the authority on which it rests, the quality of the defining apparatus.

T h e Vocabulaire attempts to meet the needs of French, French-speaking and foreign publics, in other words an international set of users w h o are concerned with or interested in education. T e r m s are chosen from current usage not only in France but also in Belgium, Switzerland, French-speaking Africa and especially in Quebec where indigenous developments and the impact of American English combine to pro­duce an extensive n e w vocabulary in education. In m a n y cases, although not all the way through, the origins of terms are traced and equivalents given for English, G e r m a n and other modern languages. But it is especially in the clear and direct definitions pro­vided, with quotations from authoritative sources w h e n necessary, that the needs of a wide public of users are met. In these respects, the Vocabulaire is a model of dictionary making.

It is, too, easy to consult. T h e series of entries under École illustrate this point. A first heading in

bold type, École (généralités), provides a proper dictionary definition. Under École (historique) appear accounts of earlier models in French history. T h e unit Écoles caractérisées describes a number of types of schools distinguished by their organization, such as the comprehensive, the modern school of Freinet, and so on. Under Écoles (nom d') w e find types of institutions, and finally Écoles particulières (quelques) gives a select list of important establishments.

Within this logical framework, there m a y be room to argue about the final selection of terms. T h e Vocabulaire in fact comprises a fair amount of institutional data—a list of acronyms, descriptions of organisms carrying Bureau, Centre, Conseil, etc., in their titles. T h e increasing complexity of educational organization has led to a proliferation of these terms, and the user of the book will no doubt frequently turn to it for such information. T h e problem arises rather in the mix of general and specific entries, the latter having inevitably to be sampled on some subjective basis. A dictionary of acronyms and proper names in education, accompanied by addresses, might be justified in its o w n right and could be more comprehensive. Moreover, the cross-referencing of the Vocabulaire, while sound, could have been extended. T h e hierarchic structure exemplified by the École entries seems to call for added entries, where terms in alphabetic order would appear in smaller type to refer the reader to the spot where the full definition is given.

A s a second point of inquiry, the field covered by the Vocabulaire is education in its wide French sense. Professor Mialaret explains that the classic and encyclopedic Dictionnaire de la Pédagogie of Ferdinand Buisson still stands for etymological and historical purposes; just as specialized works like Lafon's Vocabulaire de psychopédagogie et de psychiatrie de l'enfant deal sufficiently with neighbouring domains. T h e terminology of educational research has been largely left aside, since G . de Landsheere has just completed a work on it. With these definitions by exclusion, the Vocabulaire sets out to cover all aspects of formal and nonformal education from the point of view of modern developments in administration, organization and teaching. Both the practising teacher and administrator and the interested student or parent should thus find the book a valuable source of information on precise questions.

II9

Book reviews

I consulted it at two points. T h e most basic cluster of terms are those relating to the very substance of education: éducation, enseignement, instruction, péda­gogie: at times somewhat confused or unnecessarily juxtaposed by French speakers, always confusing to the less skilled foreigner. T h e definitions clearly distinguish meanings and uses of these terms, show the relationship between them, and thus lead (one hopes) to more precise usage. At the other extreme, the modern areas of education appear to be well covered both in choice of terms and of definitions: planification, budget, coût, analyse, the concepts de­rived from the economics of education; alternance, animation and other terms attached to the idea of lifelong education; and a good set of definitions under the term égalité clarify our understanding of the various facets of equal opportunities in education. T h e fields of sociology and psychology are equally well represented, and considerable space is given to the vocabulary of international cooperation in education. It would seem, then, that the compilers' intention to trace the contours of contemporary education has largely been achieved.

T h e authority of the work springs from the team responsible for its preparation. Mialaret is an edu­cator of international reputation and he worked especially with a staff group in the Institute of E d u ­cational Sciences in the University of Caen; to these were added other collaborators from universities, administration and schools in France and abroad. Y . Brunsvick of the French National Commission for Unesco and Jacques Hallak of the International Institute for Educational Planning m a d e considerable contributions in their fields of specialization, just as Rachèle Desrosiers (University of Quebec, Montreal) and J. Burion (University of M o n s , Belgium) pro­vided for the geographical extension of the Vocabu­laire. T h e author of each entry is identified and a bibliography draws together the list of works cited.

For the most part the authority of the Vocabulaire is evidenced by the work itself—the choice of terms and the devising of sound, original definitions point to a vigorous and youthful team. There is, in all lexicography, some part of what D r Johnson referred to as 'harmless drudgery', but still more of a higher intellectual function, that of setting standards, of exercising a normative influence. This latter aspect is present throughout the work in the positive nature of the definitions, and occasionally in the negative warnings issued about the use of anglicisms especially in Quebec (such terms as enrichissement for example, from the English enrichment, have satisfactory French equivalents—renforcement in the example cited). But

even with such warnings, the source in each case is a specialist or a scientific publication from the region concerned.

O n the whole, then, this is a useful and valuable book which is likely to establish itself as an essential tool for all w h o are concerned with the theory or the practice of education.

This review provides an occasion also to call attention to an English work, International Dictionary of Education, prepared by G . T . Page, J. B . T h o m a s and A . R . Marshall in the United K i n g d o m . First published in 1977, it is already in a second impression.

T h e book is designed as a work of easy reference for British and American users. T h e 10,000 or so entries carry brief and clear definitions. T h e terms represent a merging of several different files which m a y be separately described and assessed. T h e largest set are the technical terms that m a k e up the special­ized language of education, derived from psychology, sociology and economics as well as from the organ­ization of teaching and learning. A comparison with older dictionaries, such as Carter G o o d , shows that the authors have selected their terms for current usage and have developed sharp, original definitions. This is apparent at such groups of entries as 'intelli­gence', 'job', 'perception', 'performance'.

A second set of terms comprises the proper names associated with the education systems of the United K i n g d o m and the United States: the major reports and laws, institutions and organizations (with ad­dresses). T h e Dictionary thus contains an extensive directory apparatus, which is broadened to include the names of outstanding educators—from Plato and Erasmus to Husen and Peters. T w o appendixes deal with c o m m o n acronyms and American honor societies and fraternities.

T h e third component is what m a y be termed the international element—built up of terms for school types and certificates from a number of languages and the names and addresses of institutions. T o some extent this is biased naturally to Commonweal th or English-speaking countries (e.g. for the titles and addresses of Ministries of Education) and as it spreads more widely to Europe and other continents the sample of terms is more restricted; one could, too, find room to question some of the choices and definitions.

This said, the International Dictionary of Education succeeds in condensing a surprising amount of information in a practical and workmanlike fashion. It fills an essential place among reference works by its eclectic character and ease of use.

LEO FERNIG

120

Building Community Schools: an Analysis of Experiences

By Margrit I. Kennedy

Margrit Kennedy is an architect and urban planner w h o has designed community schools in Africa, North America and Europe. The book is based on the materials she has collected, her observations and her experience.

The author hopes to demonstrate that education and the community can be brought closer together, that each community working with its national authorities has to forge its o w n solutions to meet its o w n needs.

1979 155 p. 45 F

Museums and Children B y Ulla Keding Olofsson, General Editor

Illustrations, Gerard Teichert

Ulla Keding Olofsson, from the International Council of M u s e u m ( I C O M ) , has assembled fourteen country studies written by m u s e u m education specialists. She analyses the role m u s e u m s should play as out of school educational instruments, because m u s e u m s are very important cultural resources. Their activities should complement school programmes by developing in students a deeper sense of their national heritage.

1979 195 p. 28 F

INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF EDUCATION

UNESCO INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION HAMBURG

X X V /197 9 / 4 GENERAL NUMBER

MA1NARTICLES

E D M U N D KING: AN EDUCATIONAL W A Y A H E A D FOR SOUTH AFRICA?

HANS STROHNER ETAL: BEHAVIOUR THEORY IN THE NURSERY SCHOOL: PROBLEM SOLVING A N D TEACHER TRAINING

R O D N E Y S K A G E R :

PEDRO T. O RATA:

SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING A N D SCHOOLING: IDENTIFYING PERTINENT THEORIES A N D ILLUSTRATIVE RESEARCH

B A R A N G A Y HIGH SCHOOLS FOR COUNTRY­SIDE DEVELOPMENT

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INDIA: Orient Longman Ltd., Kamani Marg, Ballard Estate, B O M B A Y 400 038; 17 Chittaranjan Avenue,. C A L C U T T A 13; 36a Anna Salai, Mount Road, M A D R A S 2;. B-3/7 Asaf Ah Road, N E W D E L H I 1; 80/1 Mahatnuu Gandhi Road, BANGALORE-560001; 3-5-820 Hyder-guda, HYDERABAD-500001. Sub-depots: Oxford Book & Stationery Co. , 17 Park Street, C A L C U T T A 700016;; Scindia House, N E W D E L H I IIOOOI; Publications Sec­tion, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, 511.. C-Wing, Shastri Bhavan, N E W D E L H I IIOOOI.

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T O G O : Librairie Évangélique, B.P. 378, L O M E ; Librairie du Bon Pasteur, B.P. 1164, L O M É ; Librairie Moderne, B.P. 777, L O M E .

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L O N D O N S E I 9 N H ; Government Bookshops: London, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester.

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U R U G U A Y : Editorial Losada Uruguay, S.A., Maldo-nado 1092, MONTEVIDEO.

V E N E Z U E L A : Librería del Este, A v . Francisco de Miranda, 52, Edificio Galipán, Apartado 60337, C A R A C A S ; La Muralla Distribuciones, S . A . , 4a, Avenida entre 3a y 4a transversal, 'Quinta Irenaüs' Los Palos Grandes, C A R A C A S 106.

Y U G O S L A V I A : Jugoslovanska Knjiga, Trg Republike 5/8, P . O . Box 36, 11-001 B E O G R A D ; Drzavna Zalozba Slovenije, Titova C . 2 5 , P . O . B . 50-1,61-000 L J U B L J A N A .

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Contents of preceding issues

Vol. IX, No. 2, 1979

A. N. Leontiev and D. B. Elkonine T h e child's right to education and the development of knowledge of child psychology

W. E. Searles T h e state of inquiry in science education

Viewpoints and controversies Bernard Dumont After literacy, teaching:

paradoxes of post-literacy work

Elements for a dossier: Learning about interdependence Lester R. Brown Learning to live together on a

small planet David C. Smith Conflict studies and peace

education Ingrid Classen-Bauer Education for international

understanding Robin Richarson Learning in a world of change:

methods and approaches in the classroom József Margócsy Education for peace and

international understanding in the training of teachers

Kamma Struwe T h e Danish Unesco schools project Helena Allahwerdi Development education in

Finland: a tool to global citizenship Teruo Sato Education for international

understanding in Japanese schools Glenn D. Hook Japan: political or apolitical

education for peace?

Trends and cases: International Year of the Child Fay E. Saunders Discrimination and inequality

between the sexes at school Ana Vasquez Children of exiles and immigrants

Vol. IX, No. 3, 1979

Wincenty Okoñ All-round education and development of the personality

Kjell Eide Education and communication in a future perspective

Viewpoints and controversies Jean Dresch Reflections on the teaching of

geography Olivier Reboul Slogans and the educator

Elements for a dossier: Mathematics for real life Max S. Bell Teaching mathematics as a tool for

problem-solving Hans Freudenthal N e w math or n e w education? Rolf Hedrén H a n d calculators and maths in primary

school Zbigniew Semadeni Mass media in the mathematical

training of Polish primary teachers George S. Eshiwani The goals of mathematics

teaching in Africa: a need for re-examination Ricardo Losada Márquez and Mary Falk de Losada

Mathematics programmes: first aid Manmohan Singh Arora Whither secondary

mathematics? T h e Indian experience

Trends and cases Shalva Amonashvili Teaching: the problem-solving

approach Gustavo F. Cirigliano A n example of educational

transformation: Venezuela

Vol. IX, No. 4, 1979

Budd L. Hall Knowledge as a commodity and participatory research

Viewpoints and controversies George Psacharopoulos Academic work and policy

formation Georgi Lozanov Accelerated learning and individual

potential

Elements for a dossier: Physical and sports education Mohamed Mzali T h e Olympic spirit and education José María Cagigal Education of the corporeal m a n Arvid Bengtsson Children's play is more than

physical education Eleutheria Koussoula-Pantazopoulou T h e

requirements of physical training and sport in female education

Jean-François Brisson Sport and study sections in France

Alberto F. Dorta Sasco and Aixa Duran Lopez Physical education and sport for handicapped children in Cuba

Trends and cases James and Mary Olsen Towards a model of early

childhood education in the Caribbean Olav Holt T h e democratic university and regional

development