quarterly review of education - UNESCOunesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000025/002546eo.pdf · quarterly review of education Vol. I1 No. 4 Winter 1972 Contents On educational reform

quarterly review of education Vol. I1 No. 4 Winter 1972

Contents of the preceding issues

Vol. 11 No. I Spring I972

Red Maheu Twenty-fifth anniversary of Unesco Edgar Faure Strategies for innovation 3ean Piuget A structural foundation for tomorrow’s

Lester B. Pearson Reconsidering the place of

Mikhail A. Prokojiev Prospects for education in the

education

educational media

U.S.S.R.

VIEWPOINTS AND CONTROVERSIES 300~~6 de Castro T h e policy that failed Everett Reimer Freeing educational resources

ELEMENTS FOR A DOSSIER: ARCHITECTURE AND EDUCATIONAL SPACE 30hn Beynon Accommodating the education

Harold E. Gores A place to learn D. 7. Vickery High-rise schools Leonard B. Finkelstein and Lisa W. Strick Learning

Richard Marshall T h e Mobile Teaching Package

Ronald Beckman Education under a bubble Birgit Rodhe A two-way open school

revolution

in the city

in Africa

Vol. I1 No. 2 Summer 1972

Margaret Mead A new look at the age of technology Felipe Herrera T h e generation gap and

Bogdan Suchodolski Out-of-school education Arthur T. Porter Future prospects of

international development

education in Africa

VIEWPOINTS AND CONTROVERSIES Paul0 Freire Education: domestication or liberation? Marion Coulon Is education on a treadmill?

ELEMENTS FOR A DOSSIER: READING TODAY A. Markushewich Living with books Frank G. 3ennings The prospect for the ‘book’

as an educational medium 3. D. N. Versluys W h y do you want to read? Chadly Fitouri An experiment in reading

Richard Bamberger The reader passport Kalu K. Oyeoku Integrating the book

motivation techniques

into African development

Vol. I1 No. 3 Autumn 1972

Mahmoud Messadi Education: present and future Wincenty OR& Educational advances and the

Lionel Elvin Institutionalizing educational reform well-rounded man

VIEWPOINTS AND CONTROVERSIES An alternative to universal primary education Marcel Hicter Education for a changing world

ELEMENTS FOR A DOSSIER: ADULT EDUCATION Pierre Furter Adult education: its clienteles Majid Rahnema From functional literacy to

Ruth Lazarus Polyvalent adult-education centres H, C. Wiltshire T h e Open University Unesco and adult education:

lifelong education

from Elsinore (1949) to Tokyo (1972)

25 JAW. 1973

quarterly review of education

Vol. I1 No. 4 Winter 1972

Contents On educational reform in Peru August0 Salazar Bondy Reflections on the prospects of the evolution of the structure of

Education and development Joseph Ki-Zerbo education systems Raymond Poignant

View points and controversies Economics and educational planning in developing countries

Should we abolish the schooling of children? JosB Blat-Girneno Mark Blaug

Elements for a dossier: Education and environment For a human environment Rm' Maheu What kind of man do we wish to be? (Report of round-table meeting of young scientists, Unesco, lMay 1972)

Community environment studies programme Richard Myshak Three approaches to school environmental education as consecutive stages of its practical implementation S. Doraiswami

Eugk Binder

America Matthew J. Brennan

example Sten Forselius

V. M. Galushin and

Teaching of environmental sciences at the university level

Environmental conservation education in the United States of

Environmental education in the school curricula: the Swedish

Trends and cases The development of education in the People's Republic of Albania Educational aids and international exchange: the Algerian experiment

Notes and reviews A significant event: the inauguration of the European Centre for Higher Education at Bucharest; Book reviews; Some recent Unesco education publications; Film; News from international agencies and foundations

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392 410

431 442

446

449 457

464

467

472

477

485

495

Index to Volume 11, I972 501

Prospects is also published in French under the title Perspectives: Revue trimestrielle de I’kducation.

Articles appearing in Prospects express the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Unesco or the editorial board. Requests for permission to reproduce articles published in the review should be addressed to the Editor.

All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Prospects, Quarterly Review of Education, Unesco, 7 Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris.

Published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 7 Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris. Printed in France by Presses Universitaires de France, VendBme. ED.~z/XII.S/A

1972 International Book Year

Price and subscription rates [B] Single issue: U.S.$I; 30p; 4 F. Yearly subscription: u.s.03.50; €1.05~; 14 F.

Augusto Salazar Bondy

O n educational reform in Peru

Augusto Salazar Bondy (Peru). Professor of Philosophy and Education at the National University of San Marcos, Lima. President of the Peruvian Higher Council of Education. Some publications: En torno a la educacih; Didictica de la filosoffa; Para una filosoffa del valor.

T h e reform of the education system in Peru, which recently received official ratification by means of a General Law, represents a profound attempt to change the whole basis of the education system which has been in force in Peru for many years past. Since the colonial era, indeed, and during the country’s political emancipation, it may be said that only slight changes have been made in the essential educational structure. M a n y of the main lines of the education system remained unaltered, and only n o w have they been reviewed and replaced by new principles which take account both of the demands of human progress and of the conditions necessitated by the independence and full development of the Peruvian nation.

T h e educational reform comprises various basic ideas and practical procedures which are of undeniable importance from the social as well as from the pedagogical point of view. T h e main characteristics of the reform are: I. A redefinition of the concept and role of education. 2. T h e redefinition of the aims and objectives of national education. 3. T h e establishment of a new system and the introduction of new

4. Emphasis on participation by the community in education. patterns of educational organization.

Redefining the concept and role of education

Perhaps one of the most important features of the new General L a w on Education, which gives expression to the basic principles underlying the reform, is the broadening of the concept of education so as to make it possible to consider education as including not only the teaching and learning process carried out in schools but also all

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August0 Salazar Bondy

formative activities, to evaluate educational action, and to face up to the many difficulties involved in the training of the human being at all the stages of his development and in all the aspects of his personality. T h e educational reform has brought to an end the exclusive nature of education, of which the schools had, so to speak, the monopoly. T h e educational process is n o w considered as an activity of mankind which extends to all the widely varying circumstances of man’s personal life and which excludes none of the stages in the development of the individual and none of the different aspects of the work of the community.

T h e educational reform in Peru thus represents a crystallization of the various world movements which have called in question the purely scholastic approach to education and have sought to promote, both for economic and pedagogical reasons, an extension of education beyond the schools themselves. Peru, a developing country confronted by acute social and economic problems and possessed of very slender resources, cannot cover the cost of an education in keeping with scientific and technological advances and with the needs of its population, by following the traditional pattern of schooling. Economically, school attendance for all is impossible and runs counter to the concept of mass education as applicable in Peru. T h e reform also stresses the importance of assigning to education a more dynamic role, implying full participation by everyone and the maintenance of a constant interrelation between the school and the community. It is therefore advisable that use be made of out-of-school educational programmes and procedures as a means of opening up the educational institutions and encouraging the population as a whole to participate in the State endeavour.

T h e new concept of education implies, moreover, a lifeloDg educational process. This means, first of all, that, from their earliest years, children must be provided with appropriate instruction, so that development of the personality takes place as it should and access to the various levels of education is ensured. As is well known, in countries such as Peru, where the birth rate and the infant morbidity and mor- tality rates are high, a large proportion of the children less than 5 years old are undernourished and lack adequate psychological, family and social care, resulting in handicaps that are sometimes irremediable and that prevent the children concerned from completing their normal schooling. But, just as at one end of the scale the wider concept of education implies systematic care for the youngest children, so at the other end it means that suitable educational facilities must be provided for all adults, irrespective of their circum-

384


stances, age and sex. Lifelong education means here the provision throughout the whole of life of educational facilities designed to ensure that adults who have been deprived of opportunities for fundamental instruction in their childhood can make up for that loss in later years, and that pre-service and in-service training is available for workers in all branches so as to enable them to attain the requisite scientific and technological levels. This broad and flexible conception of education would lose much

of its effectiveness if there were a failure to approach education through the experience of work and life, or to give sufficient attention to the training of the individual and the family through all the opportunities that leisure time provides for the development of the individual and for the attainment of the necessary psychological growth. Education, as envisaged under the new Peruvian law, therefore comprises not only the more important and positive aspects of the so- called extension or dissemination of culture, but also the promotion of an awareness and a recognition of independent training-that is to say of the education that derives from experience gained in life and in work, as distinct from that provided in educational institutions.

Redefining the aims and objectives of the educational system

T h e educational reform sets out new aims for Peruvian education. In contrast to the former practice in Peru, whereby general educational aims were formulated in abstract and almost metaphysical terms, giving expression to the highest aspirations concerning the education of the individual and the over-all development of the human personality, the new General L a w on Education lays particular stress on the specific aims of Peruvian education. These specific aims, far from running counter to the aforesaid idealistic expression of the purposes of educational action, represent the real and practical conditions for the achievement of those lofty objectives concerning the full development of man. T h e stress is n o w laid on an education that must be conceived and carried into effect as an essential factor in the all-round development of the individual within the historical context of Peru-in other words, an education for work in relation to the development of the Peruvian nation as a whole and of its entire population. Peruvian education must, moreover, be fitted to contribute decis-

ively to the attainment of social change in Peru, implying the removal

385


of the obstacles which prevent overcoming the state of underdevelopment and dependance that is crippling our country. It is therefore explicitly stated in the General Law that education should be directed towards the structural change and the remodelling of Peruvian society. The third specific aim of Peruvian education relates to the assertion of the nation’s individuality and the safeguarding of its independence, which-since Peru is a small and economically weak country-are constantly threatened by the great powers that between them exercise dominion over the world. For this reason, the General L a w states that education in Peru should be designed to foster the self-assertion and the independence of the Peruvian nation.

These aims, characteristic of an education which seeks to reflect the historical circumstances of Peru, do not, I repeat, run counter to, but rather represent the conditions for, the possible achievement of the full development of the human personality among the Peruvian people and the attainment of the finest educational ideals that have been pursued throughout man’s history.

Within the compass of these aims there are the objectives-whether short and medium term or long term-that have been set for the national effort by the educational reform. Within a period of ten years it is hoped, under the Peruvian reform, to eradicate illiteracy; contribute to the social development of the country’s most depressed areas; change the old system into a new one more in keeping with the needs of the population; make the initial fundamental education course, and subsequently the complete nine-grade system, universally applicable; foster the development of a new culture which will express its historisal identity and quicken the creative potentialities of the Peruvian; and, lastly, guide the national education movement along lines similar to those followed by the other Latin American countries. T h e targets which express these objectives in quantitative terms are established in relation not only to the treasury resources available but also to the direct and effective contribution to be made by the national community and by external technical aid.

Establishing a n e w system and introducing n e w organizational patterns

T h e new educational system involves a complete change in the content of, and the direction given to, education in Peru. It is necessary, in this connexion, to bear in mind the remarks made above


concerning the new conception of education, which implies that, in systematizing the activities of the education sector itself, consideration must be given to the whole of the national educational potential. But something more than a change in the scope and direction of education is involved. There are substantial alterations in the form and the methods of organization that will allow of more far-reaching and enduring achievements in the Peruvian educational process. In contrast to the old system which comprised a single type of instruction divided into four main stages or steps (pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher education) in accordance with the most widely prevailing-almost conventional-world pattern, the new arrangement provides for levels, courses and types of education designed to meet more effectively the needs of the Peruvian people.

There are three levels under the new system: introductory (<initial’) education, fundamental (Cbasic’) education, and higher education.

The ‘initial’ level covers all welfare and educational services, in formal and out-of-school education, which are available to children from the earliest age up to approximately 5 years; it also includes courses intended for parents. W e have already drawn attention, in referring to lifelong education, to the great importance in Peru of care for children less than 6 years old, and it is precisely for these children that the initial level of education is designed.

Fundamental (<basic’) education consists of nine grades and is divided into stages. T h e normal type of instruction provided at this level (instruction for children aged from 6 to approximately 15 years) consists of three stages-comprising respectively four, two and three grades-in that order. In the case of pupils over 15 years of age (adolescents and adults), education at this level is termed fundamental vocational education, and it varies in its organization and specific objectives. Apart from providing the educational grounding corresponding to the fundamental level, it takes account of the particular vocational training needs of adolescents and adults, and offers appropriate courses.

Higher education is broadened and given a new direction under the reform. It comprises three stages of study. T h e first of these, lasting for three or four years, is in the nature of an initial higher education course leading to a technical diploma (bachillerato professional). A second stage provides university or equivalent level prs- fessional courses leading to the award of a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree or other specialized qualifications. Lastly, there is a third high-level course, for doctoral degree studies. These require an

387


extremely solid basis of scientific training and will be available only in universities equipped with the appropriate staff and teaching facilities; they will, moreover, be co-ordinated, planned and organized by a new institution established by the reform, the Instituto de Altos Estudios.

T h e system briefly described above would not have the required flexibility and the capacity to bring about an educational development commensurate with the country’s needs if it failed to make provision for varied types of education that make it possible to gear the systematic structure to the range of situations encountered in the educational process. In referring to fundamental education, w e mentioned the particular type of education at this level intended for adolescents and adults. This specific type is precisely one form of fundamental education included in the system. Another very important type is special education, catering for those persons who have difficulty in learning or who are handicapped, as well as for those who are in a special position because they are exceptionally gifted. A further type of education covers special technical training enabling all kinds of workers to bring their knowledge up to date, to change from one skilled occupation to another, or to make good any shortcomings in their training, through the provision of suitable courses of varying length. Lastly, mention should be made of a very important contribution to Peruvian education included in the reform; it is termed, in the General Law, Extensiijn Educativa or educational extension services that cover all operations designed to further the continuing education of the population (particularly through the use of the mass information media) and to make Peruvians aware of the actual situation and the tasks that the country must tackle in order to achieve over-all development. There are, in addition, programmes specially devised for the less-privileged areas, such as the rural zones, or designed to foster a sharper awareness of the need to integrate more closely the efforts undertaken by the Latin American countries. W e should add, in concluding this description of the new Peruvian educational system, that the grades into which the various educational stages are subdivided are very flexible and diversified as regards content and organization, in keeping with the pupils’ circumstances and with the needs of the country’s various regions and zones.

T h e reform also introduces new concepts in regard to the organization of education. Such far-reaching changes understandably entail re-alignment of the whole State administrative and financial apparatus, a process which has already begun. But these measures would be

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On educational reform in Peru

inadequate and out of keeping with the spirit of renewal that charac- terizes the General Law if they did not include patterns of educational organization closely related to the social units that are being developed in the country through efforts in various sectors; such, for instance, as co-operatives in the agricultural sector, and workers’ guilds in the sectors of industry, fisheries and mining.

T h e idea of direct participation by the community in the educational movement was bound to have its place in the reorganization of Peruvian education. Concrete form is given to this idea in the Cnucleation’ of education, consisting in the establishment of communal educational units (nzicleos educativos cornunales); these basic units of educational administration are the points of convergence for action by the local community, State authorities, parents and teachers. The result is a self-governing communal entity which is to constitute the basis of the whole national educational system. One consequence of action by these educational units will be, moreover, the effective rationalization of the use of the financial and material resources directly or indirectly allocated to education.

Emphasizing community participation

The above remarks bring us to the fourth distinctive characteristic of Peruvian educational reform listed at the beginning of this paper: participation by the community. The nzicleo is the basic unit through which the community participates in the educational process. Concern for this community participation is, however, constantly reflected throughout the General Law; it is the source of a number of measures by means of which it is proposed to mobilize the Peruvian people for the task of overcoming the serious educational problems with which the country is faced. W e should mention here, inter alia, the contribution of private education which, freed by the law of its traditional defects such as profit-seeking and discrimination, and directed towards community and co-operative forms of educational organization, will enable the aid provided by the community to be channelled to the educational efforts of the State. But this private education which is included within the reform should not be thought of solely in terms of educational institutions or <formal schooling’. Here, as in other sectors of the educational operation, it is sought to give expression to community action in the daily task, in working life, and in the give-and-take relationship of the people who make up real

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Educational structure Current

Primary day

I L N o qualification

technical level

- - -. - - - - - - skilled worker

Sciences

secondary afternoon 1. and evening classes * Primary ahernoon

More: Entry into skills training is not based on educational level.

Reform proposals

2nd level education (1st level = initial education)

(U

m x

._ L

0 0

0

a Ql

._ - r s

Unskilled level

3rd level education e Higher academic-

scientific functions .h Third cycle (Ph.D)

E of advanced studies National institute

~- - - - - - - Higher professional functions - - - - - - - - - - --

Functions intermediate professional level

L

Basic educational ---- - - - - - - - - - -- - --

Diversified skilled occupations i and functions

/ Semi-skilled

and functions A . occupations

Basic professional (laboral) ~

Nore: Professional out-of-school training is a horizontal modality operating, according to the case, at the second and third levels.

FIG. I. Comparative structure of educational system in Peru, before and after the reform.

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On educational reform in Peru

human society. T h e reform lays special emphasis, therefore, on family education, in the sense of a training given within the family circle and designed to fit the members of the family for more effective and extensive co-operation in the work done by the State, and by society as a whole, on behalf of the provision of education to every member of the nation.

Reference should be made at this point to an essential aspect of the doctrine of the reform-the link between education and work. This is reflected in the principles underlying not only the renewal of the methods and content of education (based on activity and creation) but also the annulment of the distinction (a socially discriminatory one) hitherto made between general and manual instruction. The link is further strengthened by the direct participation of workers in the educational process and the use of working premises and sites as an educational setting. In this way another form of direct commvnication is being established between the community, on the one hand, and educational institutions and programmes, on the other.

T h e constant communication between education institutions and programmes, the family and the rest of the community; the involvement of everyone in the educational movement; the mobilization of resources of every kind to win the great battle against ignorance, discrimination and social exclusion, sponsored by the General Law-all these imply fundamental recognition of the creative ability possessed by individuals and the capacity for independent action possessed by communities and social groups of all kinds. Providing an education in which every individual takes part, within a fully participating society, means banking on the ability of all m e n and women, as individuals integrated in a group, to contribute to human progress. It is for this reason that respect for the culture of each and every group comprised within the Peruvian nation, promotion of their particular creative qualities, and a firm rejection of any kind of imposed culture, are regarded as essential points in the doctrine of the Peruvian General Law on Education. Bilingualism, that is to say the use and cultivation, on the same footing as Spanish, of all the vernacular languages in Peru (established for the first time as an officially recognized principle of education), affords particularly striking proof of the fact that the reform is open to participation by all the groups and all the communal organizations in the country-a situation that would have been impossible had the humanist affirmation of creative freedom and the dignity of all individuals not been a fundamental postulate of the revolution through which Peru is n o w passing.

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Raymond Poignant

Reflections on the prospects of the evolution of the structure of education systems

In 1965, Raymond Poignant published in Paris, on the initiative of the European Institute of University Studies, a work entitled Enseignement d a m les Pays du Marchi C0rnrnun.l This work, which was subsequently translated and published in English and German has become a classic of its kind. The initial idea was to compare the structures and relative degrees of development of the educational systems in the European Econ- omic Community (EEC) countries, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R., in order to see how school and university systems in the EEC countries were adapting to the most pressing human, social, democratic and economic requirements of the modern world. This idea originated in the apprehension that, because of the strength of their long educational traditions, the EEC countries might Jind it more dzjicult than others to make the necessary adjustments. The conclusions of this initial work in many respects conJirmed this apprehension and contributed, at the time, to the development taking place in European educational systems.

Under an agreement between IIEP and the European Cultural Foun- dation, Raymond Poignant is to publish2 a new work entitled L’Ensei- gnement dans les Pays Industrialisis (Education in the Industrialized Countries), which to some extent carries on from theJirst but is motivated by other preoccupations. In this second work, which is set in the general context of the studies

undertaken by the European Cultural Foundation on European education in the year 2000, the point is not so much to emphasize the quantitative

Raymond Poignant (France). Director of the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) (Unesco) . Maitre des requCtes in the Conseil d’gtat. Rapporteur of the Commission for Educational Planning for the Third and then the Fourth Plan in France (1957-61; 1962-65). Main publications: Education and Development in Western Europe, the United States and the U.S.S.R. (1969); Les Plans de Dkveloppernent et la Planification Bconomique et Sociale (1967); Educational planning in the U.S.S.R. (co-author; 1968).

I. Education and Development in Western Europe, the United States and the U.S.S.R. A

2. The English edition is to be published by the Nijhoff Publishing House, The Hague Comparative Study, New York, Teacher’s College Press, 1969.

(Netherlands).

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Prospects, Vol. 11, No. 4, Winter 1972

Prospects of the evolution of the structure of education systems

and qualitative diflerences still encountered in the educational systems of the eleven countries under consideration-Japan and Sweden having been added to the original sample-as to show up some of the most characteristic trends common to their development during the last two decades or the trends of development in the most ‘advanced‘ countries, trends which, by the year 2000, a date so distant and yet so close at hand, may or should develop more rapidly or indeed become general. The author takes the changes noted since 1950 in the eleven countries

considered, which he sees as being of some indicative value for the future, and outlines, in conclusion, the directions in which he feels they should continue in the three decades between now and the year 2000. He points o~lt the forces of resistance of every kind which, in the short term, slow down the transformation of educational structures in the various European countries. He also emphasizes the decisive influence which the trend towards a levelling-out in the attitudes of dafferent social groups towards secondary and higher education is likely to have on the dynamics of the development of European educational systems, of which he describes both the uncertainties and the most likely prospects. The European Cultural Foundation and the Nijhoff Publishing House

have kindly given their permission for publication in the review Prospects of a long extract from the conclusions of this work, which concerns future changes in the structure of European educational systems.

T h e accelerated development of education systems over the last two decades is unprecedented in the history of the industrialized societies. This sudden acceleration is closely related to economic progress and, no doubt, also to certain changes in social relations. Long secondary and higher education, formerly the prerogative of a small Clite, has, like primary education, become ‘mass’ education. From 20 to 25 per cent of the population n o w attend full-time schooling. Education policy, owing to its economic, social and financial, and even political consequences, has become one of the major concerns of the public authorities.

It is at the very moment when and in the very countries where the education systems are expanding in this way, that the future of educational institutions is most severely and most fundamentally challenged. Some writers condemn the ‘oppressive’ school, others demonstrate the need to ‘de-scholarize’ society. M a n y people think that the perennial question, (What is good for the school?’ should be replaced by the question, ‘What is good of the school?’. Paul Goodman concludes that ‘the dissatisfaction with educational establishments

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Raymond Poignant

is so great that there will certainly be extraordinary transformations’.l It will be noted that, in spite of the destructive criticisms of

scholastic institutions, the Education Commission (Bildungsrat) of the Federal Republic of Germany, on the completion of studies carried out in a systematic spirit of innovation, at the same time recommends replacing the German morning school by a longer school and forecasts that by 1980, 50 per cent of the cohorts of young people will reach Abitur level (compared with 9.9 per cent in 1968). In the same spirit, the Education Commission of the Office of the Commissioner- General for the French Plan forecasts2 that in 1985, enrolment will be almost total at the age of 18 and will reach 14.7 million compared with I 1.7 million in 1970. T h e U.S.S.R., for its part, publishes official projections of I million higher-education graduates in 1980, compared with 510,000 in 1969.

Thus, the flood of criticism which assails the schools does not seem to have undermined the belief of those responsible for the education systems in the virtue of their expansion or their conviction that no alternative can be seriously contemplated. In truth, what is really in issue3 is not the institution itself, to which

no alternative acceptable to public opinion and to the authorities is at present proposed; it is, more generally, the content of education and the spirit or methods by which it is imparted. What often seems to be desired is a school which is both more outward-looking on life and on knowledge of the social and economic environment, and which pays greater attention to the Cparallel’ education imparted by the many other information media to which young people have access today. At the same time, other people feel that, in a world where specialized techniques are taking a constantly greater place in education and in professional life, it is largely the responsibility of the school and of educators, by continuous action in depth, to safeguard the specific needs of individual thought and inner life. These two fundamental concerns do not necessarily conflict: they both demand the urgent redefinition of the content of studies and of teaching methods. Within the limits set for the present study w e cannot carry this discussion any further. In truth, over the next few decades, the changes in the look of edu-

cational institutions and the forms of schooling may perhaps come more from the general adoption of new educational techniques, such

I. Paul Goodman, New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conseraatiae, 1970. 2. In the long-term prospects in its report on the Sixth Plan. 3. We do not deal here with the criticisms levelled against very specific national problems.

394


as television, video-cassettes, programmed education by computer or other machines and so forth. It seems highly probable that these new technical means will modify the role of the teaching force, and will compel a change in the conception of educational establishments, and will favour part-time forms of schooling and the continuing education of adults. But, on this point, too, one can only note that the German and French reports referred to above, while giving large place to these innovations and their consequences for the organization of school work, do not lead to any challenge of the institution of schooling for young people. All these new techniques for the transmission of knowledge are regarded as supplementary aids to the teaching force, but not as constituting the education system itself.

These preliminary considerations are merely designed to inquire whether the trends of structures and the development of education systems observed since 1950 may have a certain value as pointers for the future, or whether, on the contrary, w e must expect radical changes, those ‘extraordinary transformations’ prophesied by Paul Goodman. All that can be said, in the present state of affairs, is that there is nothing to foreshadow changes very different from those already recorded with the appearance of cmass’ secondary and higher education and their consequences on the structure of the education systems. T h e curricula and spirit of education will-let us hope-be transformed and the new educational techniques will be introduced into school life, but the inescapable progressive stages of the intellectual development of the child and the adolescent and those of the vocational training of young people will, to all appearances, continue to be organized in appropriate educational institutions. In this connexion, therefore, the major trends recorded for the last

twenty years, the developments of which, as w e have seen, have not affected all European education systems alike, seem destined to continue; w e shall try, very summarily, to analyse the probable lines of this continuance and the alternatives which remain open over the next few decades.

The evolution of primary education

In the elementary classes, the evolution of structures raises the issue of the age of starting studies (6 in general, 5 in the United Kingdom,l

I. The Federal Republic of Germany contemplates introducing the same age.

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Raymond Poignant

7 in the U.S.S.R.) and above all, their duration: three years, under the new Soviet reforms, four years in the Federal Republic of Germany, five years in Italy and France, six years in most other countries. This question of the duration of elementary studies does not seem fundamental; it mainly concerns the date at which what are regarded as %econdary’ subjects are started (foreign languages, algebra, etc.). Now, in most countries the introduction of a foreign language or algebra in the elementary classes is the subject of very promising experiments which will certainly tend to be generally adopted as soon as the teaching force can be given the necessary training. It seems to us to be somewhat idle to allow oneself to be hypnotized

by this problem of the optimum duration of elementary classes, since the future will show, as in the case of Sweden, the need to regard basic general education (nine or ten years or longer) as a whole. T h e logical result should be the end of a quasi-hierarchic distinction between elementary teachers and secondary teachers,l a distinction whose budgetary value is self-evident, but which does not match the reality of educational responsibilities.

T h e fundamental evolution of the elementary classes is to be looked for in the field of teaching, if only in the search for genuine ways and means of eliminating or substantially reducing the repeating whose serious social implications w e have emphasized. T h e future prospects of elementary schooling is the subject of a study in depth by the European Cultural Foundation.

T h e concept of what is nowadays called cpre-school’ education is in fact differentiated across the sample of the eleven countries studied. Some of the biggest among them (United States, Japan, Federal Republic of Germany, etc.) so far seem to have attached little importance to it, judging by the low enrolment ratio at this level. In contrast, enrolment ratios at the ages of 3,4 and 5 are very high in Belgium and France. It seems evident that all the industrialized countries will concentrate

their future efforts on generalizing, in fact, if not in law, this form of education, the importance of which is justified by all specialists from the point of view of the development of the child’s aptitudes and very specially, those of children from the least favoured social surroundings.2

I. At least for the period of the common basic school. 2. The extension of pre-school education undoubtedly constitutes a favourable preliminary to

the ‘equalization of opportunity’, but it does not seem calculated by itself to solve this immense social problem. It is, indeed, somewhat paradoxical to note that in Belgium and France, where pre-school education is particularly highly developed, the repeating rates are also exceptionally high in the elementary classes which come immediately after.

396


It is in this perspective that the German Bildungsrat made preschool education one of the priority objectives in the structural plan which it put forward in April 1970.

The evolution of secondary education

In order to ascertain the broad lines of the most probable future development or the possible alternatives a distinction must be drawn between the first and second secondary cycles.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST CYCLE

At this level three broad types of situation can be distinguished in the sample of countries studied. In the United States and the U.S.S.R. the classes described as first

secondary cycle (the United States junior high schools and the Soviet Union classes 5,6,7 and 8) have long been a part, at least in principle, of the c o m m o n compulsory schooling period; the American pattern was adopted in Japan in 1947. In these three countries, the organization of a c o m m o n first cycle forms part, as w e have said, of a broader strategy, aimed, with variations, at the generalization of complete secondary schooling. In most European countries the existence of parallel streams, with

their o w n specilic field of recruitment, teaching force and purposes has made it very difficult, for many years past, to merge the streams at this level, even though, ever since 1945, this has been advocated by official reports or powerful schools of thought. Nevertheless, after a great deal of polemics, experiments and partial reforms, Sweden, Italy and France have successively opted for this formula, and Belgium and the United Kingdom are moving towards it along even more progressive lines. In the three other European countries studied (Federal Republic

of Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands), the system of parallel streams following the elementary classes has survived up to the present, subject to a few minor modifications introduced by enact- ments subsequent to 1960.

There can be little doubt that the educational, social and democratic factors which determined the decisions of the authorities in the other European countries will sooner or later lead to the same solutions in the three countries where the force of resistance of

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Raymond Poignant

educational traditions and structures has so far prevailed. The proof is that the Federal Republic of Germany, after refusing for twenty-five years to make any substantial change in the education system inherited from the Weimar Republic is n o w planning a reform which seems, in the minds of its promoters, to be highly innovative.

After the presentation of the conclusions of the Bildungsrat, and pursuant to its recommendations, the Federal Government has defined its own conception of education policy in a report of June 1970, with a preface by the Federal Chancellor, and entitled BiZdungs- bericht 70. According to this document, between n o w and 1980, the structure of the German education system should be radically remod- elled. In particular, in the context of ten years compulsory schooling (from 5 to 15’) the six classes of the first secondary cycle (classes 5 to IO) will become c o m m o n (GesamtschuZe2) to the whole of the school age p~pulation.~ T h e fist two years will constitute completely com- m o n orientation classes; gradual differentiations (electives, etc.) will be introduced during the next four years in the light of the interests and abilities of the children. T h e Bildungsrat report also includes recommendations for the teaching methods of the Gesamtschule, especially the organization of studies by <ability gro~ps’.~

T h e project of the German authorities is also highly instructive in many respects as to the transitional difficulties which may be encountered in a country such as the Federal Republic of Germany5 in merging schools so dissimilar as the Gymnasien, the Realschulen and the Hauptschulen, of which the Hauptschulen still took nearly 70 per cent of the school-age population between IO and 14. T h e commission recommended, in the first place, the official continuance of the current Gesamtschulen experiments; it left open for the immediate future the question whether the three existing types of school should confine themselves to co-operating with each other, or whether, in the light of experiments to be carried out over the next ten years, the present differences should be totally abolished. An immediate concrete measure of considerable practical value was nevertheless proposed; in each of the three existing types of school, classes 5 to IO should lead to an examination (Abitur I) offering the same possibilities. In this way,

I. The starting age for compulsory schooling will be lowered from 6 to 5. 2. Integrated school. 3. Subject to special education for children unsuitable for the ordinary forms of schooling. 4. This teaching formula is also being aied out in the French coZZ2ges d’emeignement secondaire

(cf. No. 41 of the publication of the Paris Institut Pkdagogique National, entitled Recherches Pddagogiques).

5. Dadties common to all the rold’ European counaies which we have analysed.

398


before deciding on the merger of the three schools, an effort would be made to equalize as m u c h as possible their curricula and methods of preparing for a c o m m o n examination,l and in the immediate future greater equality of opportunity would be created, in fact if not in law, for the pupils of each type of school. In the last analysis, the decisions of principle adopted by the

German authorities, after mature reflection, clearly show that the generalization of the first secondary cycle in a (single’ or (integrated’ school is, to all appearances, an irreversible trend, but at the same time, the foreseeable delays in transition between the present and the proposed structures illustrated the difficulty of the undertaking. Be that as it may, it is probable that all these problems of the structure of the first secondary cycle will be settled along these lines everywhere in Europe during the 1970s or at least the 1980s. As w e have seen, this nine or ten years (basic school’ need not

necessarily be the same for all children; elective subjects, teaching by ability groups, and individualized teaching will be favoured by the whole arsenal of new educational techniques. Nevertheless, following the example of the last Swedish reform, and subject to disparities in individual abilities,2 on the completion of the c o m m o n basic school, all children should retain the same range of choice for their future school career.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SECOND CYCLE

T h e prospective evolution of the structure of second cycle secondary education does not lend itself to such highly plausible assumptions as that of the first cycle.

After the lirst cycle, reserved in principle for general education, the second cycle has a threefold function: to complete general secondary studies; to train middle executives by technical education; to train skilled and semi-skilled workers and clerical workers by vocational education.

This threefold function is discharged in all the countries which form the subject of the present study, but each of these countries has special characteristics and, in particular, there are very wide differences in the development of general education at this leveLS

I. The same approach has been used in France and the United Kingdom to prepare for the

2. Which is obviously a weighty qualification. 3. The ratio of certificate holders ranges from 9.9 to 76.9 per cent.

merger of secondary schools.

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Raymond Poignant

T h e long-term alternatives which seem to be open to the European countries are as follows: I. Either the second secondary cycle will become solely a general

education cycle and all technical and vocational education will be organized at a post-secondary level, and the end of complete secondary studies will therefore form the first major point of orientation.

2. T h e development of general education will remain within such limits that the secondary-school leaving certificate will retain the ‘pre-university’ character which it n o w has in most European countries and, in consequence, technical and vocational education will continue to be organized at that level.

3. There will be a tendency towards a half-way solution; the number of complete secondary certificate holders will become so large that the technical and vocational education at present described as ‘secondary’ will be mainly recruited after obtaining this certificate, without thereby doing away with recruitment at first cycle level.

The present position in relation to these different alternatives

None of the eleven countries studied has yet reached the last stage of the first alternative, and the eleven countries studied are at present divided among the other two alternatives. In the eight western and northern European countries, and

especially in those which have generalized access to the first cycle, the end of this first cycle constitutes the essential orientation point at which the major objectives of further education are established in those countries which make plans; the examples of Sweden and France are particularly characteristic of this strategy. In Sweden on completion of class g of the basic school, 16-year-olds

should, in 1975, be distributed as follows among the different specialized forms of education: gymnasia, 35 per cent (general sections, 19 per cent; technical and commercial sections, 16 per cent); fackskola, 23 per cent; vocational schools, 40.5 per cent, a total of 98.5 per cent. In France, according to the targets of the Sixth Plan, the number of

places available in second cycle establishments in 1972-73 should lead to the following streaming of first cycle leaved l y c h , 35 per cent

I. Not including repeaters.


(general sections, 22 per cent; technical sections: 13 per cent); vocational schools, 40 per cent; direct entry into labourJ2 25 per cent; a total of IOO per cent.

If one looks at the Swedish objectives, one finds: first, a tendency to limit the development of the general sections of the gymnasia; second, that a large development of the technical and commercial sections of these establishments is envisaged, and that the new jackskola have been given a very important place at second cycle level. In this perspective, the Swedish general secondary school leaving

certificate would retain its present pre-university character. T h e targets of the French Sixth Plan are similar in respect of the development to be given to the general sections of the second cycle. In consequence, the end of general secondary studies, in Sweden

and in France, at present constitutes a second, fairly limited orientation point, at which pupils are streamed almost exclusively to long- term or even short-term higher education.

T h e U.S.S.R. and the United States, subject to certain variations which w e shall note, are in the situation summed up under the third alternati~e.~ At the end of eight years compulsory schooling, Soviet young

people can continue their studies in general classes g and IO or can go to the technicums or vocational schools, both of which are regarded as secondary establishments. But the number of complete secondary school certificate holders is today so substantial4 that the end of the ten years school has become a major orientation point which leads to: higher education (universities and institutes), technicums and vocational training (in a school or enterprise).

Thus, access to training as technician, highly skilled or skilled worker is n o w provided at two levels and recruitment from complete secondary school (ten-year school) is growing fast, owing to the progressive generalization of classes g and IO. In the United States, 76.9 per cent of young people of 17 to 18

obtain the general high school leaving certificate or a vocational education section diploma which, in general, has the same value for access to higher education.

Except for those who go in for long higher education or take a

I. Industrial, commercial education, etc. 2. With compulsory part-time courses. 3. The situation is the same in Japan. 4. Whereas in 1950, the Soviet secondary school leaving certificate (8.8 per cent of an age

group) was still pre-university.

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Raymond Poignant

job immediately, a substantial proportion of high school certificate holders receive short technical or vocational training (technicians, skilled workers and clerical workers) either in post-secondary establishments of the community and junior college or technical institute type, or even in an increasing number of colleges, either under apprenticeship or other schemes organized by business firms themselves, or subsequently in part-time vocational education courses for adults. In the absence of statistics, w e have been unable to assess the exact volume of this education.

The probable direction and pace of future evolution

Is the trend of the United States and the U.S.S.R. towards the situation described under the first alternative irreversible? In the U.S.S.R., in spite of the principle of the generalization of the

basic ten years school, there is no intention whatsoever of doing away with the recruitment of technicurn and vocational and technical schools after class 8,l but it is certain that the importance of this first orientation point will diminish. Must it be inferred from this that all the existing secondary vocational and technical studies will shortly be at a post-secondary level? Such a trend would certainly be facilitated by the shorter duration of the Soviet complete secondary school (ten years);2 it is fairly probable from 1980 onwards. It will, however, be noted that the Soviet evolution does not predetermine what happens in the European countries, where secondary studies last longer (generally twelve years). In the United States it is possible that schooling up to 18 will

become compulsory in all states and that the rate of high school certificate holders will increase even further. But will it follow that the senior high school level will be used exclusively to prolong general education (alternative I)? This solution is possible, but it is by no means evident when it is remembered that, in contrast, vocational education has developed considerably at second cycle level in recent years. Moreover, why should second cycle vocational education programmes be systematically abandoned by young people when,

I. The generalization of complete secondary schooling (ten years school) planned by 1975 could be ensured by: enrolment in classes 9 and IO; enrolment in a technicurn which provides the same level of general education; enrolment in a vocational day-school with general evening classes.

2. In U.S.S.R. the ‘post-secondarization’ of vocational and technical studies would simply result in wansferring them to the level of classes XI and 12.


in general, the certificates awarded also confer access to higher education? In the last analysis, in the light of the apparent fairly low develop-

ment of vocational and technical education for young people in the United States and particularly of industrial training, it is very possible that in future training of operatives and skilled and highly skilled workers as well as technicians, will develop both at senior high school and junior college level. Thus, in the country which is nearest to it today, the generalization, in the next few decades, of twelve-year general schooling does not seem, contrary to a very widespread belief, to be inevitable. Nevertheless-and this reservation is fundamental -second cycle vocational and technical programmes can be maintained or even extended, in the United States only if certificate holders of vocational or technical sections or schools are subsequently entitled, at any stage in their life, to pursue long or short higher studies. In view of their present situation, the evolution of the western and

northern European countries can lead, as a first stage, only to the situation referred to under the third alternative, namely, such an increase in the number of complete secondary certificate holders that the end of the general second secondary cycle will become a much more diversified orientation point than it is at present.

One can try to identify certain probabilities, but it is prudent not to proceed to generalizations, since, as has happened over the last twenty years, it is probable that changes will not take place at the same pace everywhere. T h e fortunes of the education systems of the European countries which are at present completing the generalization of the first secondary cycle (France, Italy, Sweden, etc.) seem the most significant of future trends.l In this connexion, it is particularly interesting to consider the

French medium-term prospects as they emerge from the official forecasts of the Sixth Plan (1971-75). Table I recalls the trend of the intake ratio in the long secondary cycle and the forecasts for 1975-76- As early as 1970-71, the intake ratio into the second class (not

including repeaters) had reached the level (35 per cent) forecast for 1972-73; the growth of the intake ratio into the second class was very

I. Even though the Federal Republic of Germany, after twenty years of stability in the traditional structures, seems to want to follow the line of accelerated changes with a target date of 1980: see p. 394, 398.

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Raymond Poignant

TABLE I

Year General Technical sections1 sections1 Totall

% 18.0 22.4 24.2 21.8 23.2

~ 5 . 2 ~ 23.5

% 7.5 9.5 10.0 12.g3 13.73 I5 .03 16.8~

% 25.5 31.9 34.2 34.7 36.9 38.5 42.0

I. Including repeaters. 2. Not including repeaters. 3. Assuming that all pupils from the new AB sections later go on to the technical sections; in

4. Sixty per cent of the total. 5. Forty per cent of the total.

fact these percentages should be slightly reduced.

-

low from 1965 to 1968 (from 31 to 31.8 per cent); in contrast, from 1968 to 1970, a sharp increase is recorded (35 per cent in 1970-71 compared with 31.8 per cent in 1968-69) both in the general sections and in the technical sections.

T h e Sixth Plan provided for an aggregate intake ratio of 38.2 per cent in 1975-76 (or 42 per cent including repeaters) of w h o m three- fifths in general education and two-fifths in technical education, which would lead to the following ratios of certificate holders for 1976: 18 per cent for the general baccalauriat, and 12 per cent for technicians baccalauriats and brevets. At the same date (1975-76) the intake ratio into vocational edu-

cation should reach 45 per cent (including repeaters1). A high assumption, not officially accepted, fixed the intake ratio into the second class at 40.9 per cent (45 per cent including repeaters); on this assumption, the ratios of certificate holders would be slightly increased.

It will be noted that the forecasts of the French Sixth Plan tend, as in Sweden, to consolidate the orientation of second cycle pupils towards the technical sections; in any event, even if this desired orientation cannot be obtained, and even if the high assumption (45 per cent) was verified, the ratio of general secondary certificate holders would not exceed 21 to 22 per cent of the age groups (including repeaters) in 1975-76; in other words, the general baccalauriat would retain

I. One-, two- or three-year courses.

404


its character of preparation for long and short higher education. At the same date, the situation would be practically identical in Sweden.

T h e 1985 forecasts of the French Ministry of Education Planning Commission do not appreciably change this picture, since if the enrolment ratio should then be close to IOO per cent at the age of 17 to 18, this ratio would include the existing secondary vocational and technical education, including part-time or sandwich courses.

T h e ‘1980 forecastsy1 of the report of the Federal German Govern- ment of June 1970, though highly ambitious compared with the present situation, do not depart from the French or Swedish pattern: 50 per cent of the age group will acquire the Abitur I1 through the second cycle general or vocational sections and 25 per cent will enter the new comprehensive universities, which will integrate present and prospective long and short education.

These official European five-, ten- or fifteen-year forecasts for the development of the second secondary cycle indicate that, at the beginning of the 1980s, the western and northern European countries would still be within the ambit of the second of the alternatives defined above. T h e relatively measured expansion of the long second cycle (Zyckees, gymnasia, etc.) would not revolutionize the character and functions of this cycle, and, consequently of the post-secondary education which follows it. Do these official forecasts, however realistic as they may seem,

perhaps underestimate the force of social demand for general secondary education? Or, more probably, will this demand be manifested only in the longer term?

After the phase of the introduction of the first c o m m o n secondary cycle and the new structures of the second cycle, one might well find, from 1980 onwards, a rapid acceleration of the expansion of general secondary sections and in this way, a repetition in western and northern Europe of the situation described in the United States, Japan and the U.S.S.R. (third alternative); but even this assumption-which strikes us as highly probable-the generalization, in these same European countries, of the twelve-year general school between n o w and the year 2000 seems even more problematical than it is in the United States.

I. This is not yet a ‘plan’ in the strict sense, bur a statement of intentions which are not yet certain to be feasible.

Raymond Poignant

The trend of post-secondary education

In accordance with the limits w e have set ourselves, w e do not propose to deal here with the questions of participation, autonomy and multi- disciplinarity and so forth which have inspired some of the reforms in higher education in the past few years. Neither do w e propose to refer to the transformations which the n e w educational technology (computer-assisted teaching, video-cassettes, etc.) is likely to introduce into educational organization (the open university, etc.) and the mode of action of the teaching force. W e shall confine ourselves to referring, very summarily to the consequences of the possible development of the second secondary cycle on the functions and development of higher education. In the event of the second secondary cycle becoming exclusively a

general education cycle (alternative I), the whole of vocational and technical education would be transferred to post-secondary establishments which would provide a very wide range of training from skilled worker to engineer, from nurse to doctor of medicine, etc., without counting advanced training of all kinds; this is a possibility which cannot be systematically ruled out, but which seems to us to be somewhat improbable. As w e have seen, no country is at present in this position, and, apart

from the U.S.S.R., which is in a somewhat special situation, owing to the short length of complete general studies (ten years), it is improbable that this first alternative will be completely realized in the next ten years, even in countries such as the United States or Japan.

The most plausible long-term assumption, as w e have said, is that of alternative 3, under the second secondary cycle would lose some of its present importance in vocational and technical education to the benefit of post-secondar y education, which would then become more diversified both in level (training of highly skilled workers, technicians, senior technicians, engineers, etc.) and in the different fields of training offered.

It is hard to imagine the structures which would correspond to this change in the functions of higher education. In the United States short vocational education programmes are provided both in colleges and in junior and community colleges and technical institutes. In the U.S.S.R. the generalization of the ten-year general school would no doubt not change the structure of further education (universities and higher institutes, technicums, vocational and technical schools). In the event of the transition from alternative 2 to alternative 3


being slow, as in most European countries, the result would simply be a progressive enlargement of long and short higher education, either in c o m m o n establishments (such as the French institut universitaire de technologic); short education would also progressively absorb part of the preparation at present provided exclusively in the second secondary cycle. In any event, the increase in the number of general secondary cer-

tificate holders should result not only in the development of short higher education, but also in an expansion of long education, certainly unrelated to the needs for higher executives.l

Such a situation might lead in future to a quantitative restriction on access to higher education, such as already exists in a certain number of the countries studied. It is unlikely that a numerus clausus could be generalized in the western and northern European countries, except possibly for certain types of training which are very expensive for the community (engineers, doctors of medicine, etc.) and whose specialized graduates cannot be absorbed into the work force in unlimited numbers. On the other hand, the forms of training which are adapt- able to a wide range of types and levels of job (economic, social, legal, administrative, etc.) should experience a steady extension, the result of which will be the assignment, at any rate at the start of their careers, of part of long education graduates to middle executive jobs.2 This relative ‘devaluation’ of the first university degree might moreover have the unexpected consequence of an expansion of post-graduate education, itself unrelated to research needs, the student simply trying, by obtaining a doctorate, to acquire a more certain guarantee of employment as a senior executive.

A m o n g the new functions of higher education, it is certain that ‘continuing education’ will assume a growing place;3 w e do not propose to discuss this question, except to consider what repercussion it might have on initial education. It is, in fact, often maintained that there would be a gain in cutting short the higher education of young people if they could then periodically come back to complete or adapt their education according to their needs. In practice, on this point, different questions should not be confused. It is certain that the prospect of being able to resume his studies without difficulty may encourage

I. Whatever the rate of growth in higher executive jobs. 2. It seems probable that, unless training streams can be multiplied, long higher education

graduates holding such jobs would need short supplementary adaptation training, either in the firm or at the university.

3. Continuing education would be encouraged by the systematic use of the new educational technology.

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Raymond Poignant

a student to cut them short and go to work earlier if he thinks it is in his interests, and it is also obvious that, for certain forms of training (engineers?) part of the curriculum at present included in preparation for the first degree might usefully be postponed to later states of education, provided that this supplementary training could be systematically organized; on the other hand, the general shortening of the length of first degree studies on the grounds of possible subsequent studies hardly seems realistic for a number of disciplines; should not a doctor of medicine or a teacher, for example, be given the soundest possible initial training-without prejudice to subsequent refresher training-rather than a basic training spread out in time?

T o sum up, the probable long-term trend of the structures of secondary and post-secondary education in the European countries can be outlined as follows: I. T h e generalization, as part of compulsory schooling, of the first

general secondary level; at this level, the partial and progressive diversification of teaching should, in principle, leave full freedom of choice for subsequent studies; owing to the difficulties of all kinds which have been indicated, the implementation of this structure may not be completed in all countries by the end of the 1970s.

2. T h e generalization, in fact or in law, of second cycle schooling from 1980 onwards; general studies should assume a growing place, without existing secondary vocational and technical education being thereby doomed to disappear; in the long run, however, vocational and technical education will retain a substantial place at this level only so far as they accentuate their versatile character and their general education content, and so far as they also provide access to post-secondary studies.

3. T h e extension and diversification1 of the education provided in higher establishments, in relation in particular to the evolution in the functions of the second secondary cycle, and, naturally, to the considerable development of continuing education in all its forms (upgrading, advanced training, refresher courses, etc.).

4. The organization in all countries and the wide extension of post- graduate education.

Finally, in the light of the relatively short time to run to the end of the century, and of the considerable differences in the organization and present state of development of the different national education systems, and in the light of the power of resistance of the education

I. Both in levels and in subjects.


structures and the cultural and political characteristics specific to each of the European countries, it is improbable that w e shall arrive at strictly identical structures and degrees of development by the end of the century.

W e have set out above the main alternatives open, the explicit or implicit choice of which will govern the evolution of each country. This choice will often be dictated by the strength of the demand for education in the different social groups.

409

Joseph Ki-Zerbo

Education and development’

In the economic battle which is thrust upon each underdeveloped country, which of the three principal factors of production-natural resources, capital and men-is decisive as a strategic weapon? W e shall agree that it is the social labour of man, for it is this work which subdues and mobilizes the other elements of progress. Accordingly, I consider that the most significant variable in the development of these countries is indeed the quantity and quality of human labour.

T h e inhuman labour imposed upon certain categories of m e n is mitigated today by machines which have taken the place of physical labour. But in a type of second industrial revolution, the machine has come to take the place not only of physical labour but also of intellectual labour. What better proof for us that education is truly an investment in the strict sense of the word! I have even come to measure the value of this investment by comparing the earnings of an educated m a n to those of an uneducated man. Of course one must take into account the time tied up in people’s education, but one must realize that education gives to those who benefit from it the power of catalysts upon their environment.

Education at the same time also fashions the producer and the consumer, and I believe that even taking into account the amount of time spent in education and knowing that the length of active life is several times that of schooling, I think that one can consider education as a real investment. An American professor by the name of Becker has calculated that the annual earnings of the male population in the United States of America is equal to I I per cent of the total expenses involved in their education. Capital invested in instruction for their

I. This article, originally written for the review Tam-Tam (March-June 1g70), is reproduced here with permission of the author.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Upper Volta). Agrkgk. Deputy in the National Assembly. Secretary-General of the African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES). Member of the scientific committee for General History of Africa ( Unesco) . Author of Histoire de 1’Afrique (1972).


Education and development

education was thus amortized in nine years, which is not bad at all. In other words, brain power is the engine of progress, above all in

underdeveloped countries where the relative difference between the point of departure terminus a quo and the progress achieved is even greater. I think it would be good to assert this forcefully at the start for in many underdeveloped countries the Department of National Edu- cation is considered as a Cbudget-devourer’, never satiated. But can one deduce from this proposition that it will be adequate to educate people in order to ensure almost automatically that development occurs? This is exactly where another problem arises. T h e size of the educated classes grows and yet progress does not always follow, thus leaving us with the question: What type of school for which society? In other words w e believe that it is a product of today’s school which will sketch the design of tomorrow’s society, and the dilemma arises: will w e have a school generating social energy or a cancerous schopl which will grow monstruously over a carrying organism while waiting to destroy it? It is this fundamental problem of OUT times which I should like to examine with respect to the underdeveloped countries in general and with respect to Africa in particular.

The school of underdevelopment

I should like to start out with the following proposition: the school in many underdeveloped countries is a reflection and a fruit of the surrounding underdevelopment, from which arises its deficiency, its quantitative and qualitative poverty. But little by little-and there lies the really serious risk-the school in these underdeveloped countries risks becoming in turn a factor of underdevelopment.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ITS FINANCIAL COST

First, the financial aspect of the present school. In particular, the Con- ference of Ministers of National Education at Yaounde examined this problem of the cost of education. Although certain expenditures fall on local collectivities or upon parents, in the Upper Volta, the annual cost of educating a student in primary school is 16,000 CFA francs. In secondary school, it is 50,000 CFA francs. A n d this in a country where the annual monetary income of a peasant, even a peasant family, does not exceed 8,000-10,000 CFA francs. In other words, a secondary school student for w h o m the State assumes responsibility requires

Joseph Ki-Zerbo

more than five times the annual monetary income of a peasant family. From a more macroeconomic point of view: for every 10,000 million

CFA francs of the national budget, expenditure on national education amounts to more than 1,500 million, that is about 17 or 18 per cent of the budget. Five per cent of the gross national product. For what? T o educate all the children in the Upper Volta it would take several times the national budget. A n d with the rate of population growth which has been verified in the underdeveloped countries, about 2 per cent per year, one asks oneself sometimes if the rate of schooling should not be decreased. One must also keep in mind that the gross domestic product in these countries does not grow more than 1.6 per cent annually.

This is a first quantitative aspect of the problem.

THE WEAKNESS OF OUTPUT

T h e second aspect, that of the school’s output, is likewise alarming: the number of students retained within the limits of the normal course of study. In the Upper Volta, out of 1,000 students who enter the CPI (cours premier), only 600 reach the C M 2 (cours moyen) and 120 pass the entrance examination into the sixth grade. In general, 20 per cent of those who start primary school finish it and 12 per cent of those who begin secondary school complete it successfully. A considerable n u m - ber of students repeat grades, and it has been estimated that in general one-fourth of the total student population are repeaters, a fact which in addition falsifies considerably the academic statistics on the rate of schooling. These losses are mainly due to the poor quality of available materials. T h e over-large size of classes should be discussed equally. There are sometimes more than roo pupils in a first grade. Of course at that stage one is in charge more of a nursery than of a real class. Finally, the cultural environment does not encourage the students’ intellectual progress, at least within the framework which has been determined for them. In particular, school vacations discharge with an important loss of the capital amassed during the academic year.

Thus, despite the efforts made by states, the rate of schooling remains stationary at g or IO per cent-and this after ten years. One can say that the increasein population multiplies illiteracy faster the poorer a country is, and this population growth in, for instance, the Upper Volta makes the student ranks grow each year by 12 per cent although the population grows only at a rate of about 2 per cent. Someone was surprised that illiteracy cannot be wiped out quickly. H e was for-

Educationland development

b 4

getting that these rates are not based upon the same quantity. In the case of the rate of schooling, this is based upon 120,000 children who are educated, but one forgets that there are 5 million people in the countrc consequently the rate of population growth is based upon much more important quantities.

The education of all, dreamed about by many good souls, remains, I believe, an inaccessible mirage for most undeveloped countries. To succeed on a similar terrain w e would have to mobilize resources equivalent to those amassed by the rich nations for ultra-modern weapons. Another dream which w e had better not play with. W e can establish, then, that almost all the nations of Africa and Asia experience a greater and more rapid growth in their expenditures on education than in the growth of their national income and the total of their public expenditures. In Morocco, for example, national education has absorbed 60 per cent of the total increase in the budget. W e are therefore at a critical threshold and very weak economic growth does not all’ow us to go much farther ahead. Private savings are extremely limited in Africa and a lot of effort is put forth for very meagre results.

The analysis becomes even more bleak when w e address ourselves to the qualitative aspect of the problem.

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THE INSULAR SCHOOL

I often say that today’s school is an ‘insular’ school. T h e school in the underdeveloped countries is generally the school of b-a bay that is, of crude schooling without a predetermined, very precise orientation. T o understand that, one must go back to the colonial period when indus- trialization hardly existed or was totally absent, when we were engaged in extensive, subsistence agriculture, and when the agricultural yield, export agriculture, was produced on the basis of communal labour which was very cheaply paid. At that time the school was made to furnish a handful of assistants for the administration, an administration with very Sxtensive links. In other words, I think that the coYionial school was not a Malthusian school in the sense that it squared exactly with the needs of the time. I also think that the colonial school was not so ‘insular’ as the present school. Students were subjected to periodic manual labour; but today the school has sometimes aggravated certain faults in the colonial school without preserving some of its qualities. First, physical insularity. Today’s school has sometimes been

Joseph Ki-Zerbo

compared to a sacred forest into which enter only a certain number of the initiated, charged to perform esoteric rites, escaping from everyone. Even without a fence one senses that there is an invisible enclos- ure which keeps out the laymen, and often even if the classes aTe clean, the yard is a sort of waste ground where one leaves to the sun the job ‘ of burning the weeds. In the same way the building material, the style of construction, is often inappropriate in relation to the local surroundings. It is the temple of knowledge, accessible only to the neophytes, and those who enter from the start go on a type of inter- planetary trip: they meet strange scenery, peasants made up by bro- chures of travel agencies (which, happily, are becoming more and more Africanized). Here it is a beech tree in its autumnal plushness which contrasts cruelly with the hairy, genial Baobab which one sees inadvertently when one looks out of the window. There it is a Breton cow which sits enthroned on a wall with the air of having been the first to be enthroned there. Surely it was Plato, I think, who said that astonishment is the first step toward knowledge, but when there is no more than that, I think the child loses ground. And that is why I speak of the 5nsular’ school.

THE SCHOOL OF UPROOTING r -

* A school also of uprooting. This ivory tower school is a tumour whose diagnosis reveals too often that it is cancerous. First, social uprooting. A child is elected from among thousands of

others. At the reopening of school there are epic squabbles and the teacher must sometimes break through the waiting line which has formed throughout the whole night. People spend the whole night awaiting recruitment. But once chosen, one is considered by one’s own parents as a sort of raw material which should leave at the end of the assembly line as types of very clean, very considerate bureaucrats. And the mentality of the student himself also changes. T w o years ago, we asked young pupils in the Upper Volta who started the sixth form to tell us a little about their first impressions wheqthey arrived in the capital. These were really exquisite morsels of spontaneity, the naiveti of the observations, a sort of wonder before this discovery, as many of these children had never seen houses of more than one storey which they described as houses one on top of the other. The same applies to running water which they had never seen-or electric light. So all this was a considerable displacement for them; but four orwix years later it is routine. This is the point of no return.


I shall also stress the curriculum because there is much to say about it. Great progress has been made in history and geography: you know that for a long time the syllabuses were the same as those in France. I shall ngt remind you of a well-known phrase on this subject, but I consider that history is like the collective memory of people, and as memory is necessary for all the operations of the mind, so if one took away a person’s memory that person would lose his personality since he would recognize neither his father nor his mother, nor his house. H e would completely lose his mind. H e would be, one would have to say, alienated, depersonalized. Likewise, when one deprives children of their historic roots, one risks depersonalizing the peoples. It would be the same for the problem of language, which I shall come back to, and for that of the texts studied by students which still condition success in examinations. Recently a school inspector told m e about the texts of M a d a m e de Sivignk, commented upon in an African country, and he told m e how these texts aroused little enthusiasm, to say the

4 least, from the African student lost in the bush. Indeed, what interest should he find in the gossip, the tittle-tattle of this good lady of the seventeenth century, who talks about a society so far from the Bobo, the Dogon, and the Zulu.

There is a task to be done: I personally remember a competition at ?he technical %cke of Ouagadougou where the subjects were sent from France. T h e subject of the competition at the technical Zycke as well as at the home economics school was the following: ‘To Prepare a Sole Meunitre.’ A n d as there are no soles in the Ouagadougou dam, they were specially ordered by air in order to make the competition possible. T h e result of these aberrations, which no longer exist in this grotesque form, but which persist in other forms, is that the students adopt a defence system and they retreat in actual fact into rote learning. They learn the dictionary by heart. Sometimes a student knows h o w to read the texts of Tacitus but he is not able to chat at home with his own mother.

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ECONOMIC DEAD END AND SOCIAL P O W D E R KEG t

I shall finish by speaking about the last characteristic of this school, that is the school as an economic dead end and social powder keg. In 1967 in the Upper Volta there were 9,580 candidates for the Certificat d’ztudes Primaires (CEP) and 6,268 for the examination in the sixth fmm. T h e capacity of secondary institutions was very low despite the efforts w e had taken toward ‘non-residency’. They went thus from

Joseph Ki-Zerbo

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the dormitory Zych to the classroom Z y c k Despite that, there were only 1,560 places available, and these places were taken by the best students: in other words, by one-fourth of the candidates. Three- fourths were left on the seller’s hands. A n d among these three-{ourths, perhaps two-thirds will be retrieved by their families for work. In the same year there were 1,715 candidates for the Brevet des

Etudes de Premier Cycle (BEPC): only 870 Voltaique students passed. Well, there were only 420 places in the second form. W e began a competition for entry into the second form and the result was that 450 students who held the BEPC were thus rejected. Adding on those who could not repeat the third form, there was a total of 900 young people along in 1967 who were let loose on the job market. A n d what kind of question will they be asked on the job market? They won’t be asked, ‘What do you know?’, but ‘What do you know h o w to do?’ Well, these young people do not know h o w to do anything.

This is a very serious situation. T h e statistics reveal at least 1,000 graduates in 1969 and soon there will be several thousands who F are still mouths to feed. In Dahomey, w e are told, they are beginning to have persons with baccalaureat degrees who, unless they agree to become taxi drivers, are unemployed. W h e n one compares this situation to a committed effort, everything takes place as if one were spending money to give oneself burdens, and I consider that the hand-, ful of academic people who are the upshot of this system neither legitimize nor justify it.

O n e could ask whether the school does not pose more problems than it resolves. It is the school which is at the root of this general exodus which one observes in the underdeveloped countries, particularly in Africa. This exodus derives, I think, from the hardship of life in the countryside, but perhaps also from the students’ ignorance of the countryside. They are afraid of the unknown. Certainly in the eyes of someone who is very well educated, the scholastic baggage of these African students could seem very light, but for them it is the change from zero to infinity. A n d they construct for themselves an idea of the possibilities which are open to them according precisely to the idea which they construct of this infinity.

Thus they compare the salary of even a city orderly, 10,000 CFA francs, to the income of an average peasant which cannot exceed 8,ooo-1o,ooo CFA francs per year. Thus this general exodus: the primary school graduate goes to the

small town. T h e secondary graduate goes to the capital, and the cd- lege graduate goes to the rich countries. T h e rural areas bore the

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expenses of education in order to submit finally to a serious puncture which reduces their strength, their capacity to progress and even to survive. Well, in these cities the people become wreckages; they are uprooted. T h e recent movements of students are nothing, in m y opinion, in comparison to what could happen when the unemployed intellectuals take the leadership of the medinas of Africa.

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THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL

Finally, the school is becoming, in m y opinion, more and more anti- democratic. In fact, the school, seen as source of social ascent, is desired by everyone, but there is a budgetary limit from which arises the monopoly by the sons of bureaucrats, of already educated people. There is a serious disparity in the rate of schooling. According to the region, this rate varies within the interior of the same country. For example, for the Upper Volta, they say that g per cent of the children

+ receive schooling throughout the country, but that varies from 40 per cent in Ouagadougou, 33 per cent in Bobo, to 4 per cent in Kaya and 3 per cent in Titao. As for the school in rural areas, where it exists, it is often reserved for the sons of rural people and this tendency is likely to increase further, in proportion even to the rate of schooling, thus ,creating a social powder keg in so far as the school becomes the preserve guarded by a minority. This is a pretty serious picture which obviously does not take suf-

ficiently into account the flow of innovation which exists here and there, about which I shall talk in a little more detail; but I think that it was not bad to make this horizontal cut which reveals the principal defects of today's system, defects which call for urgent remedies.

Toward an educational 'new deal'

I should like to end this expos6 with a second issue, namely, the 6roblems of a new type of education, a creative school. First, I shall emphasize the urgency of an educational <new deal'.

Given the picture which I tried to paint, one can ask oneself whether it is too late to redress the direction of education in African countries. I think not, but I 40 think that the time is now. Indeed, for several decades the effects of frequently aberrent practices have accumulated, and these practices tend to set up structural imperfections which

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will be very difficult to correct later. Already one experiences difficulties, sometimes considerable, in changing something in education. Although traditions are not as old as in France, there is nevertheless the weight of habit, the ignorance of tomorrow on the part Q€ many people, the lack of expectations. There are also egoistic interests and myths which are nourished but which most of the time are vipers. One arrives at a threshold of tolerance which will soon be exceeded. Indeed, this will take place when the school will have shaken up society in a fundamental way, when it will have unbalanced the econ- o m y without establishing a new equilibrium. Well, this very moment, seems to m e exactly like the most favourable time for a certain amount of innovation, n o w that certain illusions are gone and outmoded.

You may remember that in 1961 Unesco convened a conference on education for Africa at Addis Ababa. That conference had proposed that all these countries reach the goal of IOO per cent schooling by 1980. I had the opportunity of making m y contribution to the work of the conference; I did not emphasize the quantitative aspects + of education, but rather the qualitative problems which I believe were the priority.

T H E T I M E IS FAVOURABLE: M A N Y ILLUSIONS H A V E B E E N S H A K E N O F F c

"

At that time, I remember having said something like this: What is impcrtant to us is to know the direction of the rails before deter- mining the power which w e must give to the engine. Indeed, w e must know if it is leading us to a garage, or toward a station, or toward a precipice. Happily, the present direction has reversed the approach which was envisaged at Addis Ababa, and the Teheran Conference chose the notion of functional literacy, as a function of social progress. For their part, the African State officials did experiments, sometimes bitter, and have come back from them. They touched with their fingers the depths of certain precipices, and certain limits were revealed. I think that the redressing which is in pmcess is genuine. But the process is long and slow. There are opposing currents. I should like to consider n o w the wherefore of this renewal. T h e

main lines of this new mentality have been traced by the African and Malagasy ministers of national education in full during their meetings in which I participated, above all since Yaounde. qfter Yaounde, there was Abidjan and Libreville, and one must also mention the similaz sessions held at Paris.

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CHANGING THE PHYSICAL ASPECT OF THE SCHOOL

T h e aim, then, is to change the school-returning to a word of Alain+to change life’. First, the appearance of the school and the students’ physical environment should be changed. I think that the air-conditioned school in the Brazilian north-east or on the Mossi plateau would resemble more a space station emitting absolutely inaudible and undecipherable ‘bleep-bleeps’ for the poor mortals who are, if I dare use the expression, on dry land. T h e school, which would remain totally detached from the surrounding reality, would prepare for African countries situations which today seem to m e to be totally untenable.

Thus, bringing the school nearer to its surroundings, first by not giving it privileges in terms of architecture, with the qualification that a minimum of comfort is indispensable for the students, the same for furniture and decoration. I believe that that is essential for young people. Because the child reflects much more easily the surroundings than the adult, one must emphasize the local dCcor so as not to uproot the child too much. There are Bamileke boxes, masks, African dances of all types: one could make magnikent castings of busts of Benin art. Above all, one could ask students to contribute to the decoration of

-their classroom by drawing their inspiration from that which they see around them. I think that to live in beauty through one’s own effort is the ftrst step in developing roots.

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CHANGING THE SYLLABI AND THE CONTENT OF EACH DISCIPLINE

As for the syllabus, the methods and the structure, this is a huge subject; it is in primary education that the work began. Quite often reforms were superficial. Certain publishing houses, yielding to easy solutions, thought that in order to Africanize a textbook, it was enough to alternate Mistral and Camara Laye, or else Abraham Lincoln and Soudiata, or that it was enough to replace the apple tree ’kith a mango tree and to put under the tree a little Traore instead of a little Dupont. I do not believe that this is the real way of adapting text books. I should like just to survey certain disciplines which are essential in

this field. First, thy arts. There are now song texts which have been adapted well, such as Young Africa Sings in which there are not only African folk-songs, but also French, European, Hindu, etc., songs. In

Joseph Ki-Zerbo

this field, the churches themselves have already made a choice and have exploited the prestigious capital which is the aptitude for rhythm and melody in African countries. Unfortunately, I think that there still persist in our schools a certain number of European songs which are deviant in relationship to the climate of the tropics. In history and geography, the ministers decided upon considerable

work in secondary education with the co-operation, one must admit, of our French colleagues who helped us create new syllabi in which about 30 per cent of the credit time-table is devoted to the history and geography of Africa. I can tell you that I have lived through this experience: it was a veritable deliverance for our students, African pupils who until then were forced to rack their brains in trying to follow the details of the geography of the Massif Central or the troubles of one Merovingian king or of Louis VI the Fat.

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FRENCH IS NOT THE MOTHER TONGUE b

In French, the renewal has come later, but it is in process, and seems to be well under way. This renewal starts from the following proposition: French is not the mother tongue of young Africans. In that there is an obviousness which even n o w is no longer declared but which can serve as a cornerstone for new methods. Ow can almost. count on the fingers of two hands African students in whose homes an African language is not spoken. Even if the State is French-speaking, the society is not. In African countries, when IO per cent of the school age population receives schooling, one can estimate that 3 per cent of the total population is literate. According to figures which were published at the Conference of French-speaking Peoples at Niamey, one could number I to 5 per cent of Africans who speak French correctly and one out of a thousand Africans who think in French. The colonial solution to this problem was strict and simple enough-it was cultural and assimilationist segregation. African languages were not used in schools. Children were subjected to repetition, to a pedagogy of repetition and automatisms. The fact is that there wawt that time scarce manpower to produce sufficiently good results. Of course the Frencl? which was thus mastered was always a little bookish, a little artificial but it was correct and reliable and some of those who went through classes at that time-the best ones-became writers of well-known talent. But the others? T h e others were bound to a type of servile imitation which went as far as copying the provincial accent of their teachers, whether it was the accent of Lille or Perigord. And, in this


connexion, I think of those Merovingian scribes who copied in Latin, who painstakingly imitated Terence, of the legal writers in the era of Augustus. But today the situation has turned upside-down, and the school

population is much greater. One cannot keep back the quantitative solution, which consisted of creating a contest for the children who are in school, while spreading literacy en masse, because after all that amounted to saying when w e reach 80 per cent literacy, w e are certain that children will have a natural support for their schooling. W e established, as a matter of fact, in the first section of this paper, that massive or total schooling is almost an unattainable objective.

From which w e go to this second matter of fact: the African child is at least five years behind the French peer when he enters school because the French child learned his mother tongue by the most active and most effective method possible, that is by means of life and activity. Thus elements of vocabulary, morphology and syntax fall into place and the basic structures are totally absorbed since they are, so to speak, oozed out with a mother’s milk, including the rhythm and melodic lines which are also very important in the spoken language, the down beats, the rests. But this backwardness of the African child arriving at school is not an absolute void; there is something there, there is a ‘substratum’, an arsenal of words, a network of forms, a small world of linguistic structures; consequently the point of departure is not the same: the incoming rails should not be the same, there must be a requisite shunting, one must reconnoitre the terrain, the substratum. I shall give you an example: you can meet a young African child w h o will come and stand in front of you and w h o will say to you cQue devenir?’ (‘What to become?’). Of course que devenir is not correct. It is simply the transposing of an African syntactic form. There are also contagious phenomena, not just with respect to pronun- ciation. There are phenomena which do not exist or which do exist in the same form in African languages. Thus there is a difficulty which must be taken into account, a preventive measure which must be adopted. Several institutes and linguistic centres like the Centre de Linguistique AppliquCe de Dakar (CLAD) and the Bureau pour 1’Enseignement de la Langue et de la Civilisation Franqaise P l’Etranger (BEL), Paris, are concerned with these problems. In other words, even for the mastery of French it becomes necessary to know African languages. Further- more, I think that French should be considered not only as a language of culture, but also first as an everyday, commonplace tool, which should render routine services to the great majority of the people, as a

Joseph Ki-Zerbo

means of communication, as a living foreign language. From which comes the pedagogical approach which is more and more used, namely: to listen-fkst to listen-to speak, to read, to write, whereas before this method was not followed and they started directly with the written language.

Thus first: learn to speak. And, in this area, the problem of texts and the problem of the spoken expression is much more important than the problem of literature or literary history. And, in saying this, I think that it is not a matter of considering this as an anti-French choice. Far from it. W e have established the futility of the competition for rates of schooling. Thus the alternative is as follows: either one assures the essentials, and at that point one inculcates a practical mastery of the language up to a point where one crosses a threshold of no return in quality, in such a way that the surrounding erosion no longer has a hold on what has been acquired. Or one continues along the path of the automatic patchwork of French methods, and sooner or later will bring about a lingua franca which will also end up by crossing the threshold of non-return, but in the wrong direction, and at the end one will find himself with an autonomous language, a substitute for French.

If I have stressed this problem of the French language, it is because this subject is not so wide off the mark. Indeed, it is concerned with development. W e have already emphasized the interaction between language and thought: when one does not master the idiom, one also does not master the thought, and if w e want our students to have precise, correct, and accurate thoughts, like a good balance, I think it is absolutely necessary that they also master a language which has the same qualities. This is extremely important for future specialists, not only for writers but also for scientists: the case of a bridge and highway engineer who makes his calculations on the basis of confused conceptual ideas, puts the lives of his fellow citizens directly in danger.

USING AFRICAN LANGUAGES

T h e problem of using African languages is considerable. It is not a question here of treating this subject exhaustively. I shall say simply that the handicaps presented by the number of African languages has been exaggerated, by forgetting that very often in each African State today, there are sometimes two, sometimes three, languages, and even one which is spoken by more than half the population. Sometimes

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two languages are spoken by go per cent of the population; thus there is a simplification which is not usually emphasized. It has been said that in certain areas that these languages are poor, but in others, on the contrary, they are rich and can also be enriched by the addition of words pulled from roots c o m m o n to all languages-for example, scientific terms. T h e African languages have enriched themselves a great deal, and they can do more. Nevertheless, there are obstacles. Although these obstacles are not permanent, they cannot be mini- mized: on the political side, because one must all the same have a choice, one must choose one of these languages; on the technical side, one must establish the writing of the languages; on the pedagogical side, textbooks must be reconciled, teachers must be trained, and there of course the difficulties are very serious, because suppose w e choose two languages for a country, it would be necessary to recycle and train a great number of teachers to buckle down to the task.

I think nevertheless that African languages must not be abandoned; they can already be used for adult literacy, because they simplify the difficulty, since the sound and the idea of the object are already blocked in, the only difficulty to overcome remains that of the sign. While in French literacy, the three difficulties are accumulated at the same time: the new sound to learn, the idea of the object and the sign. I think that African languages can also be perfected by studies in university education, as the new syllabus envisages.

Lastly, I figure that even when the choice will have been made for one African language as the language of culture or the official language, this should not signify that languages of principal communication or culture like French will be abandoned, if only because they are bridges to the rest of the world. It is understood that at the Organization of African Unity or the United Nations it will be difficult to have Swahili or Hausa of Dyula adopted. Consequently, French will always serve as the main language of communication, but within the limits set forth by an important French personality at a Unesco conference, who affirmed that no African language can claim to have at its command a wealth such that it can supplant all others. If humanity were suddenly reduced to one language, in m y opinion this would be an insipid and sterilizing monologue, a cultural catastrophe from which the world would never recover. In reality, each language has something incommunicable. This is why African languages which are a part of the c o m m o n patrimony of man must be saved, preserved, stabilized, written and used.

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THE SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS

N o w I should like to pass on to the problem of sciences and technology. I think that a while ago it was suspected that Black African minds, in particular, were practically inaccessible to the sciences and mathematics. Today this prejudice has been erased since w e have physical science and mathematics ugrkgks, students at the &ole Poly- technique, etc. There is moreover a greater and greater percentage of science students among African students. It is m y feeling that the m a n of the twentieth century and even more man of the twenty-first century must have a technical humanism, and I think that in our countries, for each newly recruited bureaucrat, one should have perhaps about fifteen technicians who in short provide a counterbalance in the productive, technical sector.

But a debate has begun on this subject. Does one have to be liable for the creation of numbers of unemployed people while developing technical education as has happened in the preceding phase, where one saw masons and metal-workers, for lack of job openings, turning finally toward other avenues to become clerks, wardens or police- men? I think that it is necessary to train technicians in order to start the economic pump, since while producing producers, by definition one is preparing people who will themselves invent solutions. But clearly all that must be planned, and this too is an imperative for the new school. I shall not press this point, although planning in Africa too often consists of declarations of intention because the verifiable variables are not sufficiently known and because the planner, moving in a complex world that is difficult to test, resembled someone trying to interview the Sphinx.

TOWARDS A MODIFICATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL CYCLES

I think, too, that it is necessary to step in and modify the relative weight of the educational cycles. There is the cycle of six years and that of seven years; is not there a possibility of breaking all this up, anticipating for example an elementary school of four years followed by a Cbasic skills' school of four years, and lastly a formative school, already secondary, of five years? One can also disassociate certain disciplines which are frozen in the French system, or the opposite, which is what the Conseil Africain et Malgache pour 1'Enseignement SupCrieur (CAMES) has accomplished with respect to philosophy,

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sociology and psychology which are separated in the French university system but which succeeded in being regrouped in Africa. W e did not want philosophers who are not at the same time sociologists. The same applies to certain very elaborate specializations such as cardiology or dental surgery which are less needed in Africa than are general practitioners. I believe that specialization should be based on a choice of the party concerned and, moreover, one should perhaps call in specialization after a certain period of positive work. Finally w e must try to enlarge the base of selection while increasing the amount of manpower in basic education in order to functionalize the apparatus afterwards by careful and even rigorous selections.

CREATING A N E W MENTALITY A M O N G PARENTS

T h e mentality which must be created among parents is a totally new mentality which is all the more necessary in Africa because the dis- tance between the world of the parent and that of the school is much greater. It is necessary that parents interest themselves week after week in the work of their children and not just when they are expelled. It is necessary, too, that they follow the guidance of their children: to produce children is not a simple biological act for the perpetuation of the species; w e must develop our children throughout life in order to make m e n of them. Similarly, by interesting themselves in the guidance of students, they are stating at the same time the problem of the general direction of education. Indeed in traditional Africa, the society which seemed withdrawn into itself was organized in such a manner that adults assumed the responsibility for the youngest children for a very long time, until an advanced age. Today, sometimes virulent external influences bring all that back into consideration and w e are asking ourselves even today if w e should not draw on the pedagogic methods used by means of oral transmissions in traditional African society, lessons for today's schools.

INTEGRATING SCHOOL INTO THE ENVIRONMENT

Thus if parents, teachers and the public authority considered themselves all as passengers on the same ship, I think that general guidance would be better adjusted.

What is there to say except that the school should be the concern of the whole village, and the village the concern of the school; it is in this way that w e could put the school back in its place. By that I do not

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mean that w e must drown the school in the complex of vicious circles or of misery which often affect the village. T h e school should remain a leaven, consequently distinct from the mass but invested in that mass in order to act, and there I believe that we should in this way have the antidote of the insular school about which I have just spoken: it is a question of the community school. T h e ComitC pour I'Organisation et le Dkveloppement des Investissements Intellectuels en Afrique et i Madagascar (CODIAM), Paris, has discussed these subjects so well that I would be ungracious to dwell upon them. I think that education without social integration is necessarily muti-

lated and lacunary; and by integration I do not mean a simple going-and coming-between the school and the village, but the establishment of a new pedagogy, the keyword here being the obser- vation of the natural and social milieu and participation in that milieu. The general attitude of the Black African does ncit aim at that. I could have said somewhere that the Black man no w is in the world a little like someone swimming in water but who does not build a boat in order to master the water. There is a type of natural participation. T h e result is that at that moment one has more confidence in rites than in tools and I think that that neutrality should be changed. T h e belief in magic is even more frequently held: it must be removed to give way to an attitude which perceives the forces existing in the world, forces which can be analysed, taken apart, put back together in order to change life around oneself by successive additions, not by a type of immediate and global change which would only be another magical attitude.

Therefore I think that the school must develop in our children critical attitudes, analytical and positive attitudes with respect to their surroundings, an attitude I would almost call aggressive, anyway a rational if not rationalist attitude. Study of the milieu can thus become the axis of every experiment in the rudiments of science, language, reading, mathematics, etc. One can size things up on the spot, and one learns not just with one's eyes and ears, but also with one's hands. W a s it not said that m a n is intelligent because he has hands? Unfor- tunately, this is too often forgotten. I also think that physical education should be developed. There I

believe that the French system left us a not-too-brilliant situation. Perhaps it is not by chance that the civilization which produced Archimedes and Euclid is the same which created the Olympic games. There is in this expenditure of the body, in this body health an element of equilibrium which one recognizes more in the Anglo-Saxon

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system and which in the African case can be adapted, for example, by associating the African struggle with class curricula.

Manual labour, lastly, must create its own environment instead of submitting to it. However, one must not transform the school into an agricultural concern. Madagascar, from this point of view, opted for the solution of a c o m m o n stream for four years at the start of primary school, a period after which there is an evaluation of students. In the Upper Volta, w e chose two up to n o w almost parallel systems: the rural school is a short primary school of three years with one year emphasizing apprenticeship in the rudiments of language, writing, but also practical exercices to prepare modernized peasants. Clearly there would be more to say about this type of rural education, where there is a risk of creating within the same country two types of schools which sooner or later will evolve in an anti-democratic direction. If one wants education to be really national, it must concern itself

with everybody without exception and not just with a successful elite. N e w types of teachers must be created and very often w e want to educate our children in the same manner as w e have been educated. There is an Arab proverb which says that man is more akin to his times than to his father. One should therefore educate children in the ways of their times and not in those of their fathers.

THE SCHOOL SHOULD TRAIN MEN AND NOT IMITATORS

Lastly, w e need a general civic education. Education must teach knowing, that is to say to fight against the illiteracy which otherwise lies in wait for all of us; it must also teach the way to earn a livelihood. Lastly, education in m y opinion must teach self-direction, being. In life, students will have just as much if not more need of character than of algebraic or physical formulae. W e must not make them robots who record a certain number of standard questions to which they furnish replies, or people who can only respond to the meaning of directions given by others, but rather men, that is LO say creators and movers of society. I also think that w e can join other educational methods to the

classical ones. As a matter of fact, school is not the only place for teaching, and in Africa the radio, above all transistor sets, allows the great world news to be known in the most remote corners of the earth.

Films and television also play an important part. I think, moreover,

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that films in particular do not play a positive role in most instances. I believe that, if w e do not watch out, the films will give Africans the false impression that the developed countries became developed with the stroke of a magic wand. There is no historical perspective; they ignore the immense sufferings which were endured in order to arrive at this level. In short, the type of mass education which I can only evoke here is

absolutely necessary because it can serve precisely as a support with reference to the new school. Continuing education is absolutely necessary as a technique, as a strategy below schooling if w e do not want returning illiteracy to sweep away for good the foundations of the school. Mass education allows us to speed up or rather to fall into step with today’s world.

Lastly, a few words about the role of international co-operation in the establishment of such a new school. T h e preceding pages might lead some people to think of a lessening, even a suppression of the co- operative assistance accorded the underdeveloped countries. T h e deception could lead certain parties to withdraw, but today I think the world is too small to make isolation possible. I believe that development will either be interdependent or not at all, development which Pope Paul VI said ‘is the new name of peace’. I think one should not assist the underdeveloped countries in terms

of one’s o w n model of development of the school or of cultural development, but in terms of a model which should be fixed in an independent way on the basis of local realities. On the other hand I consider that this co-operation will require

going outside oneself in order to support the needs of others, since there is no co-operation without a sort of spiritual migration toward the other side, without a certain renunciation of oneself.

Lastly, w e need to help countries to understand better their own needs, to understand the necessary qualitative changes. This is what is called the new pedagogy of the people which is a preliminary to this discovery in the direction of a new school.

Thus it is necessary to concentrate efforts on the qualitative elements which will allow us to leave present structures in order to allure the new course of things: encouraging reform projects, training and recycling of teachers, every n o w and then equipment, because sometimes qualitative equipment leads to a supplementary change. Assistance of this type is extremely beneficial, and to close I shall cite the assistance to bodies which, like the Conseil Africain et Malgache pour l’Enseignement SupQieur, are concerned with regionalizing,

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that is to say, to profit from the regrouping of the efforts of the States, the promotion of the university system.

Thus in the development equation the school is an ambiguous variable. Everything will depend on its content and its orientation, on the task which it has been assigned. M y friend Cheikh Hamidou Kane, author of the book The Ambiguous Adventure, said: ‘Man is born, man lives in a forest of questions, and every civilization is an architecture of answers. ’ If it is true that Africa must telescope two revolutions, the technical

and the cultural revolution, the new school possesses, in m y opinion, a great number of these answers, on the condition that it is not a cancerous school but an original and creative school, founder of progress, a school which, finally, will justify the profound words of the wise man: ‘The child is father of the man.’

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Viewpoints and controversies’

Economics and educational planning in developing countries Mark Blaug

Mark Blaug, professor, research unit in the economics of education, University of London Institute of Education. Author of Economics of Education; a Selected Annotated Bibliography (1966); An Introduction to the Economics of Education (1970); and other articles and books on economic aspects of education.

The economics of education is a young subject: it emerged as a separate branch of economics only ten or fifteen years ago. It would be surprising, therefore, if it were n o w capable of furnishing clear, practical advice to public investors in education. Nevertheless, it is evident that m u c h of the research in this field has been inspired by the hope of providing answers to policy questions and it is also evident that the drift of this research tends to support certain policy positions and to undermine others. M y purpose in this article, therefore, is to derive some of the practical guidelines that have emerged from recent work in the field. At the same time, I will mention some questions to which there are as yet no answers, suggesting lines of inquiry that should be further pursued if the economics of education is to make its maximum potential contribution to educational planning.

The optimum shape of the educational pyramid

The single, most striking presumption to emerge from the bourgeon- ing literature in the economics of education is that almost all less-developed countries suffer from persistent underinvestment in primary education, hand-in-hand with persistent overinvestment in higher education. As is well known, ever since 1950, or thereabouts, higher education the world over has been the fastest growing sector of the educational system, whether measured in terms of enrolments or

I. Articles appearing in this review reflect the opinions of their authors. The editor will be happy to publish, particularly in the following section, contributions and correspondence motivated-favourably or unfavourably-by articles in Prospects. One of the main aims of the review, as we have stated, is to engage a wide-ranging dialogue on the current state of education and on the possibilities for the fume.

Prospects, Vol. 11, No. 4, Winter I972

Mark Blaug

in terms of financial outlays. In the 1950s and early 1960s the principal rationale for the rapid expansion of higher education was the practice of manpower forecasting: all the figures that emanated from long-term manpower forecasts in Africa, Asia and Latin America revealed enormous (shortages’ of secondary and higher educated manpower. In the last few years, however, a sense of disillusionment with manpower forecasting has gradually spread through the world, in part because of the absurdly rigid view which it implied of the capacity of the economic system to absorb school-leavers into employment, and in part because of a growing fear that it constituted an open-ended invitation to expand secondary and higher education without limits. More important than all these, perhaps, was the realization that manpower forecasting leaves the educational planner with virtually no choices to make. Since the forecasting methods employed are held to be inapplicable to the requirements for primary-educated workers, and since the costs of education do not influence the final results, the typical manpower forecast necessarily commits the bulk of educational expenditures to the expansion of secondary and higher education. It is only after this first call on public funds is met that the planner can start thinking about such alternatives as quantitative expansion versus qualitative improvements, formal education in schools versus informal training in induskry, and adult literacy versus schooling for children, but on all these questions he gets no help whatsoever from manpower forecasts. In retrospect, it is all too easy to see why manpower forecasting

swept the world, and its intuitive appeal is such that it will probably linger on for many years to come. The mounting evidence that an amazing variety of manpower structures are compatible with identical levels and rates of growth of national income has still not been adequately assimi1ated.l Similarly, there has been some reluctance to accept the fact that the ability of economists to forecast the future is severely limited. Because of the length of most educational cycles, manpower forecasts that attempt to be useful to educational planning are impelled to look ahead at least five to ten years. N o one is surprised to discover that perfectly accurate forecasting is impossible over such lengths of time. Nevertheless, the wild inaccuracies of

I. Some of this evidence is to be found in R. G. Hollister, A Technical Evaluation of the First Stage of the Mediterranean Regional Project, Paris, OECD, 1966; and OECD, Occupational and Educational Structures of the Labour Force and Levels of Economic Development, Paris, 1970. It is further discussed in M. Blaug, Introduction to the Economics ofEducation, London, Penguin Books, rg72, Chapter 5.

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virtually all manpower forecasts of the long-term variety are such as to render them almost indistinguishable from wild guesses in an upward directi0n.l Fairly accurate predictions can be made for two- to three-year periods and these are undoubtedly useful for an cactive manpower policy’ that provides information for training programmes, labour placement services, vocational guidance and the like. In time, by continuously evaluating these short-term forecasts, w e will learn to predict better in the medium and long term. But over the next decade or so there is little point in arguing whether educational systems should be geared to long-term manpower requirements because it is a simple fact that they cannot be.

Fortunately, there are other ways of doing educational planning even when w e are only concerned with narrow economic objectives. The leading alternative approach is cost-benefit analysis, sometimes labelled rate-of-return analysis. This has its problems too, but it does have the merit of getting us started on the right foot: when w e decide to spend another dollar on education rather than on some other activity, or on one kind of education rather than another, w e do so in the belief that, for a given cost, some stated goal can be more effectively achieved; when the goal is an economic one, w e must be saying in effect that the contemplated action will result in greater economic benefits per unit of costs than any other. Cost-benefit analysis, therefore, is surely the appropriate framework for thinking about educational planning for economic ends. In practice, the benefits of education in rate-of-return analysis are

taken to be the extra income payments that typically accrue to people with additional education, and many commentators have drawn attention to the so-called Cexternalities’ or cneighbourhood effects’ of education which are not reflected in personal income flows. This is only a serious objection, however, if w e are making ambitious comparisons between expenditures on education and expenditures on, say, health or transport; it is much less of a problem when w e are comparing expenditures between different levels of education, unless of course w e have reasons to know that higher education, for example, generates more externalities than secondary education. W e know very little about the externalities of education, and there is not even agreement as to what form they take; it would be a bold planner, therefore, who

I. See B. Ahrnad and M. Blaug, The Practice of Manpower Forecasting, London, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1972, which consists, among other things, of a detailed appraisal of the forecasting experience of eight countries, of which three are developing commies.

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could claim that certain levels of the educational system generate greater neighbourhood effect than others. A deeper question is whether the higher earnings of better-educated

people really reflect their superior productivity; perhaps the structure of wages and salaries is a matter of social conventions, having little to do with the contribution of individuals to national income. But if so, this consideration affects the price of steel as much as it does the economic returns to education, and yet few planners would use it to deny the value of calculating the expected rate of return on a new steel factory before constructing it. It is perfectly true that the rate of return on educational investment in a country is a meaningless figure if the pattern of earnings bears no relationship to the relative scarcities of people with different skills. For that reason, rate-of-return studies in developing countries increasingly couple analysis of the economic value of education with a study of the operations of the labour market.l In other words, a rate-of-return calculation only creates a presumption of h o w resources ought to be reallocated within the educational system, but it cannot by itself prove that they are misallocated. Some sociologists have wondered whether the higher earnings of

better-educated people is simply a reflection of their superior home background, in which case w e are attributing to education effects that are due to social class origins. On the available evidence, it must be said that this is a wild surmise: people with more education earn more on average the world over even when family background factors are held constant. Most of the evidence, to be sure, derives from developed countries but for a few developing nations there is n o w similar data to show that lifetime career circumstances are not rigidly determined by circumstances of birth.2 H o m e background and length of education are of course correlated, but the correlation is nowhere as high as is sometimes suspected. With these caveats, w e can n o w ask what rate-of-return analysis

reveals about investment in different levels of education in the Third World. W e have relevant data for ten developing countries and in most of these (Brazil, Malaysia and the Phillippines are exceptions),

I. See, for example, H. H. Thias and M. Carnoy, Cost-Benefit Analysis in Education. A Case Study on Kenya, Washington, D.C.,IBRD, 1969; M. Blaugl, R. Layard and M. Woodhall, Causes of Graduate Unemployment in India, London, Allen Lane The Penguin Press,

2. The evidence is discussed in Blaug, Introduction to the Econm'cs of Education, op. cit., 1969.

PP. 51-4221-3Q.

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primary education yields higher social rates of return than any other level of educati0n.l As between secondary and higher education, however, the situation is more mixed: in half of the developing countries, secondary education also ranks above higher education, but in the other half the ranking is reversed. The one general lesson we can draw from these results, therefore, is that there appears to be underinvestment in primary education in almost all developing countries; that is to say, given the existing quality of education, too much is being spent on the higher levels and too little on the lower levels of the system. I must emphasize the fact that this is a conclusion about quantities: existing rate-of-return data cannot tell us what would happen if the content of primary schooling were radically altered; they cannot even tell us how far to carry the reallocation of resources because rates of return only provide signals of direction, not statements of actual amounts to aim at. However, the discrepancies in rates of return to the different levels of education are, in most cases, so large that even huge shifts of resources over a period of five to ten years would not suffice to close the gap.2 It is sometimes said that, in so far as the causes of dropouts in primary education are largely a matter of poverty and deprived home background, there is little the educational authorities can do to increase attendance rates in primary schools. But free meals, free uniforms, transport at subsidized rates, etc., can do much to increase enrolment rates, and all these measures would compete for budgetary funds with the rising outlays on higher education. The argument in favour of shifting expenditures towards primary

education is probably strengthened by introducing the vexed question of <externalities’ and it is further strengthened by considering non- economic objectives for education, such as equality of educational opportunity or political stability. The point is, however, that even if

I. See G. Psacharopoulus, The Economic Returns to Investment in Education in the Process of Growth and Development, London, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, forthcoming 1972. For a quick review of the findings, see the same author’s ‘Rates of Return to Investment in Education Around the World’, Comparative Education Review, February 1972. The developing countries in question are: Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Chile and Brazil in Latin America; Malaysia, Singapore, The Philippines, Thailand, India, South Korea in Asia; Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia in Africa; and Greece and Turkey in Europe.

2. For some examples of ‘sensitivity analysis’ to show how rates of r e m in certain countries will change in the future, given spechied changes in enrolments at various levels, see: C. S. Dougherty, ‘The Optimal Allocation of Investment in Education’, in: H. Chenery (ed.), Studies in Development Planning, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1970; and M. Selowsky, The Effect of Unemployment and Growth on the Rate of Return to Edu- cation: The Case of Colombia, Cambridge, Mass., Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1969 (Report No. 129).

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w e take a much narrower view of the instrumental ends of education, there is n o w a nice consilience between the views of most economists and most educators.

The vocational school fallacy

Some years ago, Phillip Foster set a cat among the pigeons with an article entitled ‘The Vocational School Fallacy in Economic Develop- ment’.l Arguing from Ghanaian evidence, he denied that vocational training provided inside formal educational institutions could ever become an effective method of accelerating economic development; he further denied that general education and vocational training are ever substitutes for each other, the former being indeed a necessary foundation for the latter, and the latter being generally more efficiently provided on-the-job rather than inside schools. H e conceded, however, that there was an argument for (special vocational institutes being created in particular cases where their endeavours can be closely meshed with on-the-job training and with the actual manpower requirements indicated by the market for skills’. Since then a good deal of evidence has been forthcoming from other countries that threatens even this slender foundation for a vocational school strategy in educational planning2

T h e problem is essentially that of the degree of inaccuracy that inheres in the art of manpower forecasting. If w e could more or less accurately forecast the requirements for specific skills, there would indeed be a case grounded on economies of scale for training people on a full-time basis to acquire these skills. But even the most en- thusiastic manpower forecasts cannot be expected to do more than to distinguish the needs for people with general academic education from the needs for those with scientific and technical preparation. Since formal educational institutions, either at the secondary or at the ter- tiary level, invariably commit themselves to a two- or three-year cycle, the inability of manpower forecasters to make accurate, detailed predictions of skill requirements over the medium term would seem to be fatal to a vocational-school strategy.

I. C. A. Anderson and M. J. Bowman (eds.), In Education and Economic Development, Chicago, Aldine Publishing Co., 1966; reprinted in: M. Blaug (ed.), Penguin Modern Economics: Economics of Education I, London, Penguin Education, 1968.

2. See E. Staley, Planning Occupational Education and Training for Development, New Delhi, Orient Longmans, 1970.

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Let us be clear what the argument is. Everyone agrees that vocational schools are expensive; that vocational school-teachers ought to be both well-trained teachers and persons with industrial experience, but that such birds are few and far between; that the equipment of vocational schools is liable to be either out-moded or so advanced as to have little relevance to the country in question; and that it is virtually impossible to simulate the actual rhythm and discipline of factory work in the classroom. Nevertheless, if vocational schooling made good sense, these would merely constitute surmountable difficulties. Unfortunately, vocational training in formal educational institutions makes little sense on either educational or economic grounds. It is impossible to accurately foresee the requirements for specific skills in an economy two to three years hence; for that reason, vocational training on a full-time basis must necessarily impart general skills at which point it ceases to be Cvocational’ in the sense in which that term is usually understood.

W e are not denying the case for accelerated training courses provided on a part-time basis after working hours, or even on a full-time basis for several months in the year. Nor are w e denying the case for cvocationalizing’ secondary school curricula if what is meant thereby is the provision of some work-oriented shop courses, combined with take-home projects of a practical kind. But to ask schools to prepare students to take up clearly defined occupations is to ask them to do what is literally impossible. T h e most that schools can do is to provide a technical foundation for on-the-job acquisition of specific skills. It is worth adding that the popular clamour for vocational schooling

among politicians in less-developed countries, much encouraged by the so-called business-like attitude of the World Bank to educational finance, implies a patently naive interpretation of the economic value of education. Schooling makes people more productive not just by imparting cognitive knowledge but also by ‘socializing’ them in various ways: punctuality, achievement motivation, the willingness to take orders and to accept responsibility are no less vocationally useful skills than the ability to turn a lathe or to read a technical instructi0n.l T h e notion that there is one kind of education, called general education, which has nothing to do with the world of work, and another called vocational education, which is firmly geared to the <needs of a

I. For an elaboration of this theme, see M. Blaug, ‘The Correlation between Education and Earnings: What does it Signify?’, Journal of Higher Education, Vol. I, No. I, 1972.

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growing economy’, is part-and-parcel of the rhetorical folk-lore that continues to impede rational educational planning in less-developed countries.

Private costs and social costs of education

Perhaps the only chief merit of rate-of-return analysis of educational investment is to have dramatically emphasized the enormous gap that prevails in almost all countries between the private and the social costs of education. Private rates of return to education everywhere exceed social rates of return despite the fact that private rates only take account of personal earnings after the deduction of income tax, whereas social rates are calculated on earnings inclusive of income tax. T h e reason for this is simply that the total resource costs of education everywhere exceed the costs that students and parents must bear themselves. It is a striking fact, of which few educators were aware before the advent of the human investment revolution in economic thought, that the abolition of tuition fees does not suffice to make education free to students: in almost all cases, indirect costs in the form of earnings foregone while studying constitute a larger proportion of the total costs imposed on students and parents than do direct costs in the form of fees, books and travel. Furthermore, indirect costs are nowhere subsidized by the State. Since the opportunities for gainful employment increase rapidly after the age of 12 in most less-developed countries, the failure to compensate parents for the foregone earnings of their schoolchildren constitutes an effective bias against participation in secondary and higher education for the poorer classes of the community. Given the other built-in educational biases against children from poor families, it is hardly surprising therefore that, as w e move up the educational ladder, the survivors are drawn increasingly from well-to-do families. In the light of these considerations the excessive investment in higher education in most less-developed countries takes on a new significance. Quite apart from the objective of maximizing the rate of growth of national income, the policy of allowing higher education to grow at its own natural rate is steadily undermining the goal of equality of educational opportunity. In short, far from these two goals being necessarily in conflict, I believe there is n o w evidence to show that both economic and social objectives would be served by redirecting resources in favour of the lower stages of the educational system.


T h e brief discussion of costs is sufficient to show that this can be accomplished in a number of ways: a portion of the educational budget could be reallocated from higher or secondary to primary education, leaving the cost structure of the educational system unaffected; alternatively, a larger share of the total costs could be shifted to students and parents in higher education, say, via a system of student loans coupled with a rise in fees, the sums thereby released being devoted to primary education. T h e money could be reallocated to bring about a change in enrolments at the various levels or it could be used to convert quantitative reductions at one level into quantitative improvements at another level; only piecemeal experiments can tell us which is the better method. T h e possible courses of action are much greater in number than is usually imagined and, in particular, there is absolutely no reason to exclude the costs of education as one of the policy instruments.

Cost-effectiveness analysis

T h e tenor of these remarks suggests that rate-of-return analysis or cost-benefit analysis is in fact only a species of a much larger genus which can be used to evaluate any activity, however many objectives that activity aims to satisfy. I label the genus (cost-effectiveness analysis’, but some practitioners of the art prefer to describe it as (systems analysis’ or (managements science’. Whatever it is called, the method in application to a number of alternative cprojects’ consists essentially of three steps: (a) specify each of the multiple objectives in such a way that they can be scaled, preferably in cardinal numbers, but possibly in ordinal numbers; (b) in terms of that scale, measure the effectiveness of all projects per unit of costs for each of the objectives; and (c) choose the (best’ project by applying the planner’s (preference function’, that is a set of weights or order of priorities among objectives without which it is impossible to choose among a series of possible conflicting cost-effectiveness ratios. This is cost- effectiveness analysis but it is also the explicit formulation of the logic of rational decision-making. Its intimate association with programme budgeting techniques should be obvious; programme planning and budgeting (PPB) in fact consists of steps (a) and (b), leaving step (c) to be decided ‘politically’. In principle, all this is no doubt unobjectionable, although in prac-

tice it may be difficult to work systematically through every step.

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Nevertheless, it has the great advantage of showing not only that all educational decisions involve value judgements but of showing precisely where the value judgements enter. Steps (a) and (b) are positive social science, since one does not have to like a country’s objectives in order to formulate them operationally, or to quantify the degree to which its educational system effectively achieves these objectives. Step (c), on the other hand, is obviously normative school science and raises delicate questions about h o w one is supposed to elicit a government’s <preference function’ without actually imposing one’s own.

Educational planning in the round must go beyond cost-benefit analysis to cost-effectiveness analysis. W e know that it is difficult to give an unambigous interpretation of the economic-development goals of a nation. H o w much more so is this the case with social, political and even purely educational goals. The fact that one can still en- counter statements in the literature that profess to advocate something called Cthe social demand approach’ to educational planning-by which is meant either that country A should spend the same proportion of Gross National Product (GNP) on education as other countries do, or that all students in country A who want an education should have it subject to prevailing standards and prevailing costs, leaving unexamined both standards and costs-is proof enough that non-economic goals have hardly begun to be operationally formulated. Radically different educational policies can be justified in terms of ‘equality of educational opportunities’, depending on what we mean by that objective. It would be easy to multiply examples for some of the other goals. Suffice it to say that the concept of educational planning for economic objectives may be an untidy mess but it is a paragon of order compared to educational planning for social, political and educational objectives. Is it perhaps that sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and educationists have lacked a framework of decision-making in which their positive findings may be fitted? If so, cost-effectiveness analysis is such a framework, which would permit social scientists other than economists to make their contribution to the subject.

It would be absurd to pretend that recent work in the economics of education adds up to an impressive list of concrete recommendations to educational investors in less-developed countries. What it does provide is some general presumptions, such as those in favour of investing in primary education and, in general, opposed to vocational schooling. Beyond that, it offers some suggestions resting ultimately

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on the inherent uncertainty of the future and the limited capacity of social scientists to reduce the level of uncertainty by accurate forecasting. Decision-making under uncertainty leads, of course, to different kinds of decisions from those of decision-making under certainty: the irreducible uncertainty of the future argues in favour of teaching general rather than specific skills; of late rather than early specialization; of part-time rather than full-time education; of expenditure on the provision of information, if necessary at the expense of facilities; and, in general, of postponing all lumpy’ decisions as long as possible. In the last analysis, however, recent work in the economics of education warns us to keep rigidly distinct the question of the goals of education from the question of achieving these goals more or less effectively. It offers us, in short, a paradigm of rational planning in the field of education. It must be remembered, however, that w e still know very little

about the learning process in schools and even less about why schooling is so highly rated in the labour market. Indeed, appalling ignorance of the functioning of labour markets in less-developed countries is undoubtedly the Achilles Heel of the economics of education, which continues to sow seeds of doubt about its major findings. It is clearly the problem-area on which future research ought to be concentrated.

This paper was presented at a meeting in May of this year at Bellagio, Italy, sponsored by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and is reproduced here with the permission of the sponsors.

Jose Blat-Gimeno

Should w e abolish the schooling of children?

In this same section Prospects published in its previous issue (Autumn 1972) an extract of a working document presented at a conference held in Bellagio last M a y on education and development under the sponsorship of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. It is obvious that the article in question does not reflect, either in its

spirit or its contents, the position of Unesco. Our purpose in publishing it was to stimulate a dialogue about such

problems among our readers. The following constitutes a contribution to this dialogue, which we hope

will be established in this section among educators and other people interested in educational problems.

Prospects, the education quarterly, published in Vol. 11, No. 3, a text entitled ‘An Alternative to Universal Primary Education’ which reproduces a text submitted to a conference organized in Bellagio last M a y (1972) under the sponsorship of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. The text proposes, in particular, to ‘defer the age of entry into State- funded national schools until I I or 12’, and to ‘use all forms of informal and locally supported education . . . to teach children ages 1-11’.

These conclusions, which bring into question the very necessity for schooling children and the reason for the existence of a teaching profession at the primary level, are such a basic challenge to the principles hitherto generally agreed in this domain that they warrant examination with the greatest of care. In fact, the extension of the primary school is a universal aspiration reflected in the Declaration of Human Rights and confirmed by the recommendations of all the regional conferences of Ministers of Education as well as by the strenuous efforts that all the countries of the world continue to make in order to achieve this objective.

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Should w e abolish the schooling of children?

Must one abolish the primary school? In fact, this question which seems to undermine an institution which, since the nineteenth century, has been adopted by most of the countries of the world as a means of ensuring the universal right to education is not a novelty of our time. What is new, on the other hand, is that such ideas be expressed in a working document intended for a conference organized under the auspices of two foundations which provide support for some educational programmes of considerable importance, foundations whose policy can therefore have a greater influence on agents of decision- making than do more or less whimsical positions of theoreticians who are often unaware of intervening factors in the educational process as well as the changes that lucid schoolteachers try to introduce, in spite of many obstacles, in order to adopt the school to our time.

Could the school, and educational systems in general, have failed? Without denying either the need for a renewal of these systems or the severity of the problems which remain to be solved, one must recognize the fact that the expansion of education at all levels has been the prime factor in the enormous recent progress made by humanity in the areas of science, technology and culture; it was not the illiterates or in most cases the autodidacts who pointed out the way to such a progress. Postponing the entry to formal schooling until the age of 12 would

constitute an inconceivable waste, not only of a whole stage in the life of the child, but also an outstanding opportunity for instruction decisive for his future. In the first place, such an idea seems somewhat paradoxical at a

time when all are agreed on the idea that it is necessary to create and expand pre-primary education; in other words, rather to advance the age of entry into school. T h e arguments in favour of pre-primary schooling are not negligible: psychologists, sociologists and educators all feel that it is important to offer the child very early the climate and means indispensable to his physical and intellectual development, and that it is crucial to make good the handicaps of inequality from which children of deprived social and cultural milieux suffer.

Furthermore, the age of schooling-that is, between 6 and 12-is exactly the one most favourable to the development of the individual. It is the stage Piaget considers to be that of concrete intellectual processes, of the emergence of the consciousness of social and moral co-operation. Not to take advantage of the psycho-physiological structures specific to the child of this age would be to ignore irresponsibly a wide range of precious opportunities and to waste time which can

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never be recovered. In fact, just as physical exercise is essential to the muscular development of the child, intellectual exercise is the prerequisite for mental development and the emergence of higher-order mental functions. T h e acquisition of basic knowledge during this period is a progressive apprenticeship which accompanies the development of corresponding mental structures: there is an age at which to learn to read, as there is one at which to learn to write, at which to reason concretely and abstractly. An educational system does not exist simply to guide the child in

the acquisition of knowledge, but to give him the means by which to learn himself; ensuring and at the same time adapting him to the collective life of his school milieu so that he is capable of entering into a specific society and participating in it, are other fundamental aspects of the task of the educator.

W h o should undertake such a complex task? T h e family? Yes, of course, but however important the family surroundings are in a child’s education, there can be no doubt that the school milieu has an important role to carry out and that family and school are united and complementary in it. In this, the teaching function has specific professional characteristics which could not be conferred, especially in countries which aspire to modernization, upon ‘tribal elders’ or only upon ‘older children’ as the Bellagio meeting specifically suggests. T h e personality of the teacher, his cultural background, his professional training, are decisive factors in the success of the educational enterprise: teaching h o w to learn is much more difficult than simply teaching: truly an educational system is only as good as its teachers.

M a n y other objections could be made to the astonishing Bellagio proposals: could not a schooling which begins only at the age of 12 create considerable barriers to access to other levels of education at a time when the need for continuing education is universally recognized? Would not one risk seeing the application of such a system most often in countries given to prejudice against the least-favoured social classes? Finally, would not there be a danger of aggravating the already enormous gap between the educational profiles and potential in very developed and economically disadvantaged countries?

One last question: would those who are in favour of delaying the entry to school recommend the same thing for the developing countries-from which they come-and would they accept, all the more, to apply the principle to their own children?

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Elements for a dossier

Education and environment

In the long run, what is needed is action on a vast scale in favour of lifelong education, action whereby everybody, from those in the most responsible positions to the humblest labourers, would in all simplicity start to study and learn anew so as to become aware of their fellow men instead of making use of them. Here, rather than in exclusively technical measures, lies the problem of environment, which is ultimately a political problem. Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe

(Proceedings of the International Symposium on Environmental Disruption, Tokyo, March 1970.)

RenC Maheul

For a h u m a n environment

However interesting, and indeed important, Unesco’s activities in the field of environment may be in themselves,* the full sigmficance of these activities can be appreciated only when they are related to the underlying considerations that govern them. First of all, there is the wish to understand the

present-day significance of environmental problems, by which I mean the sudden upsurge of anxiety which in so many countries has brought these problems, almost overnight, to the forefront of governmental concerns. Can this anxiety, which some regard as betokening the ‘great fear’ of the year 2000, be explained solely by the all-too-real deterioration in man’s physical and biological surroundings, which is to be noted practically everywhere and is, indeed, extremely serious? I do not think so. In m y view, what w e call the environmental crisis is essentially one feature-and a major feature-of a crisis in civilization. By this I mean that the alarm, or even horror, evoked by man’s treatment of nature and the enormities of the environment that he has made for himself, out- weigh all other fears, including even those which w e may now feel for the very survival of our species. In other words, what most terrzes men today is man himself: it is what they are dis- covering of his power and even more, of his will to debase himself, and the world with him. Let us make no mistake: in considering the changes and the damage brought about by man’s own

actions in his surroundings, w e are uncovering what is most basic and most inward in modern man. The rejection by the young of certain as-

pects of industrial society, the forecasts of economists who have taken sudden fright at the effects of exaggerated quantitative growth, scientific studies showing the limitations and the precariousness of our planet’s resources, sociologists’ surveys recording the ravages attributable to unbridled and chaotic urban development, the prophetic protest of the arts which is revolutionizing the significant background to daily life-these are the main symp- toms of this state of crisis. In this context, it would be difficult, and even artificial, to dis- sociate questions that are closely linked by their far-reaching interactions. For instance, environmental, population and development problems are inextricably bound up with each other. A round-table meeting of young scientists, recently invited to discuss them at Unesco House, drew attention to the essential unity of these

I.

2.

Excerpt from the address by the Director-General of Unesco at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 7 June 1972. There are special programmes on the theme of the resources and the balance of the biosphere in relation to man; the intergovernmental programme of research on M a n and the Biosphere (MAB); efforts to define environmental education, and training of specialists; the conservation and protection of monuments and sites of historical and scientific interest.

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For a human environment

issues and examined them all in the light of the fundamental and all-embracing question: what kind of man do we wish to be? The form of society and the face of the world tomorrow will depend on the answer to this question. An analysis of this sort suggests certain con-

clusions. The first is probably that the concept of human environment, unless pared down to a great extent, cannot be treated as a particular idea marking off an isolated sphere of man’s life and activity. It can be seen, indeed, that a large number of difficulties met with in regard to the environment are due to the very fact that the aims and the actions of individuals and communities have all too often been determined by a piecemeal approach. It is therefore important to foster a perception

of the problems which will embrace and at the same time transcend a multitude of aspects coming under different disciplines, and will call simultaneously on a whole range of techniques for changing specific situations marked by the complexity of interrelations within them. Ad- mittedly, this interdisciplinary method of study and action is not easy to apply in practice. It presupposes a change in the educational and psychological outlook of research scientists, and indeed a new type of general education. At the same time, if the interdisciplinary approach is to avoid sinking into a slough of imprecision, it must continue to be based on sectoral studies and programmes of action which, in their turn, presuppose a sound body of knowledge in the various branches of investigation. The comprehensive approach is still, nevertheless, a prime necessity and must, ultimately, aim at being completely all-embracing. Above and beyond the problems of the

nations there are problems of mankind as a whole which transcend State frontiers and call for rational international co-operation throughout the world. W e must not, however, on that account, lose

sight of the diversity of mankind, made up, as it is, of many nations, a multitude of groups and

individuals, cherishing different ideas about society and different values and, above all, most unequally endowed with the good things of this shared earth. O n closer inspection, we find that most environmental problems are not really world-wide in character, but, rather, display a multiplicity of regional, national and local features. When considered in their factual context, or in other words against their real socio- economic and socio-cultural background, ap- parently similar problems are found not to lend themselves to uniform solutions. T o put it plainly, legitimate concern with the future of the human race on earth must not blind us to the injustice and disorder at present prevailing or cause us to forget that priorities for action necessarily depend on particular situations and ways of thinlung. How, for example, are we to define the idea

of the ‘quality of life’, to which reference is so often made, if we disregard the profound cultural, economic and social differences that exist between peoples? H o w can we fail to see that, in many cases, a number of environmental problems have their origin in the limited choices available, particularly in the developing countries, for the planned use of land and natural resources? The unity and diversity of the world, the contrasting requirements of these two aspects of one and the same reality, the oppositions between the general necessities of the survival of the species and the particular necessities of justice and the dignity of actual societies as history and geography have fashioned them, are central to the discussion. . . . Unesco is deeply involved in the question

by its mission in the service of humanity and its multifarious intellectual responsibilities. Beyond differences of opinion regarding the causes of, and solutions to, environmental problems, the principal question is that of bringing into harmony man’s diverse activities and aspirations. Essentially, this harmony may be defined as the reconciliation and integration of nature with culture. It is for this reason that Unesco,

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which is dedicated to the study and the service of both, feels itself to be directly and fundamentally concerned. For long the subject of separate-even of rival-study and devotion, nature and culture now appear to be simultaneously threatened with death if they remain separated, and along with them man himself, who can exist

only when the two are combined. Unesco’s Constitution proclaims that wars begin in the minds of men. Environmental problems also begin in the minds of men, and it is in the minds of men that w e must lay the foundations, primarily intellectual and moral, of a truly human environment.

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What kind of m a n do w e wish to be?

Prior to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June IQ7.2, Unesco brought together a smallgroup of young scientists from developed and developing countries to discuss two recent models of the global future, to debate the analysis on which they are based, the solutions which they suggest, and the alternative views of the future which may be equally realistic andlor desirable. These two models were the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologylClub of Rome study, The Limits to Growth, and the United Nations World Plan of Action for the Application of Science and Technology to Devel- opment. In the context of this debate, the young scientists sought to define the environmental crisis, identifr its basic causes and its relation to development, the role of population, if any, in causing the crisis, and the possible roles of science and technology in trying to reconcile the desperate need of two-thirds of the world for development with the problem of maintaining the world's ecological systems in balance.

Therefore, in M a y 1972, fourteen young scientists and ten observers met at Unesco Headquarters to debate the environmental crisis and its relationship to development and population growth. Their discussions were marked by a determination to view the problems in an integrated way, and by a firm refusal to exclude factors which they believed important but which are normally, for political or statistical reasons, left out of such discussions. The result was a series of agreements about the type of

analysis that has to be made when tackling issues of this kind and about the type of solutions that must emerge. In view of the universal importance of the

debate on the environment, brought home by the Stockholm Conference itself but also by numerous previous or simultaneous meetings, in view of the mass of recent writing on the subjects, Prospects wants to contribute to this dialogue by publishing most of the final report of the M a y meeting; the opinions are, however, those only of the participants, who were: Alain Bue (France), Charge' de Cours li la Faculte' de Paris VIII (Vincennes) au De'partement de Ge'ographie, Paris; Milhaly Csako (Hungary), sociologist, Institute of Social Sciences, Budapest; Jan Fjellander (Sweden), science journalist, LASITOC International on Alternative Futures, Stockholm; Peter Harper (United Kingdom), science writer, researcher in field of alternative technologies and the political aspects of ecology, LASITOC International on Alternative Futures, Hove, Sussex; Jaime Hur- tubia (Chile), assistant professor, Institute of Ecology, Austral University, Valdivia; President of the Latin American Youth Federation for Studies on the Human Environment (FEJLA); Milton Leitenberg (United States of America), biochemist staff member, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Stockholm; Olivier Lebrun (Belgium), regional adviser in planning aspects of population education, Unesco Regional Ofice for Education, Dakar; Dr Francis Okediji (Nigeria),

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What kind of man do w e wish to be?

associate professor and acting head, Department of Sociology, University of Ibadan; Ashok Partha- sarathi (India), Special Assistant for Science and Technology to the Prime Minister, New Delhi; Jurgenne Primavera (Philippines) , assistant professor, Department of Biology, Mindanao State University, Marawi City; Alain Rifat (Arab Republic of Egypt), Candidat au Doctorat Li l’lnstitut de Biologie Moliculaire, Universite‘ de Genhe; Landing Savane (Senegal), Chef de la Division de la Dimographie et des EnquZtes, Dakar; John Todd (Canada) , assistant scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; director, New Alchemy Institute, Woods Hole, Massa- chusetts; and V. Vukasovic (Yugoslavia) , research assistant, Institute of International Politics and Economics, Belgrade.

The Club of R o m e model

Essentially, the Club of Rome model attempts to show by computer simulation that there are limits to global growth, imposed by the earth’s finite size, which will be reached sooner or later. The computer model is based primarily on the interactions of five parameters: population growth, pollution, depletion of natural resources, food supply and capital investment. The preliminary findings have been published as a book called The Limits to Growth, 15,000 cop- ies of which have been dispatched to political and social leaders throughout the world. The Club of Rome initiative in making the

study, and in particular in making it in a non- linear form with feedback between all the factors considered, was generally welcomed. Doubts were expressed, however, on two quite separate issues: first, the methodology used in the model; and, second, the political implications of the model, particularly in view of the ‘a-political’ stance claimed by those responsible for the model. The first methodological problem raised was

that of aggregation. In order to simplify the

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model, large numbers of parameters had had to be lumped together, without apparent regard for their compatibility. Thus in the ha1 output there is one curve for ‘natural resources’ although clearly the supply of and demand for individual resources varies widely. The makers of the model claim that if individual resources are considered separately, the crises predicted by the model only come earlier, as some resources are already in short supply. Coupled to this problem is the reliability of the data used in a field where absolute knowledge is hard to come by. The modellers claim here that the model is

robust, and its outcome hardly affected by quite large variations of the data used as input. But the feeling remained that the Club of Rome’s argument would be more scientific if instead of simply labelling the model robust, its originators had carefully defined its limits of applicability in scientific terms. Much the heaviest criticism of the model,

however, was at the political level. Through its selection of five basic parameters which are purely technical, most participants felt that the model was not one which applied to the real world. The breakdowns predicted by the model if current trends continued resulted from the interaction of these five factors whereas breakdowns in the real world which were already apparent in the developing countries and which could be predicted for the future elsewhere could be argued to depend on quite other factors. Why, it was asked, were war, arms trade, colonialism and imperialism rejected as specific factors that might, and indeed already were, causing breakdowns? W h y was the unequal distribution of resources, both between nations and within them, not included in the analysis? H o w could a model of this type, which specifically excludes those factors which are widely believed to be the root cause of global ills, be held by its inventors to be ‘a-political‘? On the contrary, there was considerable agreement that the model was elitist and that all assumptions

What kind of man do we wish to be?

were conditional on an unaltered status quo in world affairs. The effects of the model were also held to be

dangerous. It was described by one participant as a ‘recipe for stagnation’ which would have, and had already had, a counter-intuitive effect far larger than the counter-intuitive effects of the piecemeal approach of the world’s politicians which it had been the Club of Rome’s desire to avoid. Further, it was charged that the model was alarmist without being constructive and utopian in that it implied as a solution a change to some form of world equilibrium without outlining the means by which such equilibrium could be achieved. As the model did not as yet allow for any regional or local variations, it also carried the message of a future tightly con- trolled by a small technocratic Clite and implied, as one critic had put it a few weeks previously, ‘the reassertion of imperial power on a world scale’. The point was repeatedly made that ‘a-political’ scientific initiatives of this kind could be used in any of several different ways; the possibility that global systems models of this type could be misused was very real indeed. And finally delegates from developing countries charged that the model was cculture-bound’ in the sense that it undertook to draw a picture of the world in terms which were essentially Western. Four of the five key parameters chosen reflected things of concern almost exclusively to the industrialized countries. What right, they asked, did a group of people from developed countries have to model a world which was notable mainly for its lack of development? Throughout the discussion the meeting was

somewhat divided between a minority who believed that models could be made on the basis of technical data alone, and the majority who insisted that the analysis must have a political origin, and that the technical data were of secondary importance. The issue was highlighted by a debate about natural resources. Which questions were the most important: how large was the supply of resources and how long would

it last, or who should have access to it and who should consume what? While there was no consensus, the majority view that emerged was certainly that the question of access was of the most immediate concern, and that once that question had been settled in the political arena, the question of limits could be usefully considered-although in the changed political at- mosphere that would result that question might well arise in a context very different from the one suggested by the Club of Rome.

Population

One assumption that lay behind the Club of Rome model was that world population growth was the essential cause of the future breakdowns in society that the model predicts. There was complete agreement among the participants that population was neither the only nor the main cause of the environmental crisis. Other factors involved were economic growth, the type of technology used, particularly in developed countries, the nature of the existing political and economic systems, the high level of consumption in the developed world, and the particularly Western view of man’s relationship with nature which implies dominance and brute control. The political nature of current population-

control programmes in the developing countries was constantly reiterated. Such Programmes bore to them a familiar message of dominance. The economic idea implying that birth control in the Third World was an effective means of maintaining the developed world’s economic superiority over the developing countries seemed to them to be behind such programmes. Similarly a false message was often included in birth-control propaganda which implied, for instance, that families in Latin America could, by restricting the size of their families, quickly attain a Western level of affluence, complete with television set, television aerial, private car


and garage. The reality was greatly different. Often the only means to economic survival in the Third World was through a large family in which every new member was counted not as a consumer-as he would be in the developed countries-but as another potential producer. It was pointed out that in Africa, for example, the large family had a long tradition and fitted into the existing social structure in a complicated but satisfactory manner. If birth-control were introduced, the social system would disintegrate. In view of this and other factors, attempts by

agencies such as the World Bank to link aid to population-control programmes were roundly condemned. So, too, was the Club of Rome statement that no fundamental human value would be endangered by a standstill in world population growth. Most, though not all, of the participants were

prepared however to distinguish the political emphasis behind current birth-control programmes and the possible future predicament to which an expanding world population could give rise. This, however, was regarded as a more distant problem. The view frequently expressed was that there was no hope for, nor any point in, attempts to control population growth until after a country’s population had adequate disease- control programmes, adequate nutrition and had been granted full political independence. The latter, it was emphasized, did not mean a cere- monial flag day in which the keys to the country were handed over to the native population but meant a type of self-reliance which would permit the government to turn its attention to ensuring social welfare services, employment, education and training, balanced development of urban and rural areas, etc. The parallel was drawn between the situation

now and the situation as it had been in the now developed countries. There appears to be a correlation between rate of population increase and level of development even as measured in the purely conventional terms of gross national product per capita. The implication was that

high rates of population growth are a symptom, and not a cause, of underdevelopment which in turn results from political exploitation of the developing countries by the developed. No moral system could be found which would require the developing countries to limit their populations now simply because the developed countries had earlier achieved some population control by exporting their own growth in population to their old colonies. Development-in newly defined terms-was agreed to be the essential precursor to population regulation, and that in any case the basic right of the individual family to determine its own size should always be borne in mind. The idea that population control could in any

case be achieved by technical means alone was severely criticized. In India the ‘perfect’ injec- table contraceptive, even if it could be developed, would not be used by families which saw a viable hture only in terms of large families. In relation to the environment, it was pointed

out that one member of the developed world, due to his much higher level of consumption, had a negative impact between twenty and fifty times greater than one member of the developing countries. Population control, it was argued, must start at home. When those who urged birth control on the Third World had had themselves sterilized, then the Third World would begin to believe that they urged population control for the world’s good, rather than for the sake of the continued dominance of the one-third of the world over the other two-thirds.

Development and the environmental crisis

From the start, nearly all participants agreed that the problems of development, of family planning, of the relationship between the rich and the poor countries and the problems of the environment, could not be analysed as separate issues. There is an interdependence of these

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phenomena which means that the ‘environmental crisis’, as styled by the industrialized countries, is in reality a multiple crisis or a series of convergent crises.

It was pointed out, particularly by the participants from Third World countries, that a planetary disequilibrium had always existed to the detriment of the poor countries, broadly those in the southern hemisphere. The existing structures were weighted against not only development, but also the environment. In this way, the present structures of the global system-modes of production, relationship between man and the means of production, the systems of distribution-all prevented an equit- able distribution of goods and led to surpluses in the developed countries and ultimately to wastage and pollution. It had to be remembered that environmental hazards came mainly from the developed nations at least partly because they used greatly more than their fair share of world resources. This cconcentration effect’ was both politically unacceptable and environmentally dangerous. The nature of the environmental crisis is then

perceived quite differently by those living in the southern hemisphere from by those in the northern hemisphere. The latter are beginning to recognize possible limits to growth, while the former see only the limits of poverty or a continuing crisis of underdevelopment. It was felt that there is a danger that the countries of the southern hemisphere would become hostile to the definition of the crisis as viewed by those to the north. This in turn could lead to a crisis of nationalism and to expressions of racism both within nations between the rich and the poor and at the international level. Such a situation, marked primarily by an

unequal distribution of both power and resources, was bound to lead to an environmental crisis in the broadest sense of the term. The crisis, it was argued, was not one which could be described in the quantitative terms of the Club of Rome, but was primarily a crisis character-

ized by unequal levels of development, both qualitative and quantitative. The whole development debate thus turned towards new defi- nitions of development which went far beyond the simple desire to copy the model, politically undesirable and environmentally dangerous, chosen by the industrialized countries.

A n e w meaning for development

Whereas the debates over the Club of Rome model and the nature of the population problem were marked by some dissent from the prevailing views, those on development reached almost immediate consensus, at least on the need for new patterns of development and often on the reasons why any form of development had been slow or non-existent over the past twenty- five years. The first subject of attack was the use of GNP pm capita as the sole measure of development progress, as had been almost exclusively the case in the First Development Decade. This philosophy had been to some extent carried through into the Second Development Decade and was reflected again in the United Nations World Plan of Action. The latter saw development as a unilinear process in which the object was to close a gap between the developed and the developing nations. As such it was destructive of local variations and cultures and in any case hopelessly naive in assuming that ‘gaps’ of this kind could be closed within a few years by the use of capital intensive technology bought, loaned, hired or copied from the developed countries. As an exercise in Utopian ‘wishful thinking’, the World Plan was chiefly notable for the way in which it avoided the real problems. The prevailing situation was one of ‘Dooms-

day’-and the fact that the Club of Rome model predicted such a situation several decades into the future emphasized its essential unreality. In the developing world, large-scale famine, disease and misery are already common and the

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What kind of man d o we wish to be?

technical utopia promised by city life in those countries was entirely illusory. Towns in the developing countries were described as ‘urban cankers in a rural environment’ whose appar- ently large population was produced only by the drastic reduction in rural jobs made inevitable by the increasing displacement of traditional agricultural practices by capital-intensive West- ern technology. The first requirement for development was

seen as full independence on the part of developing countries. Although in most cases this had been granted in conventional political terms, it did not prevail in reality. All the strings attached to international aid and technical assistance had to be severed before real development could take place. The role of the international company was still playing a large part in preventing land reform and dictating that development took place in the form of a tragic and futile reconstruction of the Western way of life for a minority of the population. Often the problem was not only external but also internal in that governments and industries within the developing countries were in league with those in the developed world who urged a kind of development that benefited only a tiny proportion of any country’s population. In the future, it was agreed, the developing

countries should seek to measure development progress on a more basic level of food, employment and income distribution. The example of the People’s Republic of China, which had ap- parently achieved a relatively high quality of life accompanied by a small GNP per capita, was recommended for further study. The Chinese practices of decentralization, of moving surpluses from centres of high productivity to those of low productivity, and of innovating and im- proving on traditional technologies were also recommended. An over-emphasis on the importance of cash crops was held to be the easy way to fall into the development dilemma, and in its place a national and natural balance was urged in which developing countries looked in-

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creasingly towards independence from the crippling conditions prevalent in the world market economy. Great concern was expressed on the question

of aid. Forms of aid that came free of conditions or of cultural dominance on the part of the West are still virtually unknown. At the present time, it was suggested, the best form of aid was probably any kind of assistance that sought selec- tively to promote radical social change where it was needed-both in the relations between the developed and the developing world, and in the relations between a people and those who were said to represent its government. When that had been achieved, the question of aid might become redundant as developing countries once again found access to the natural resources that were properly theirs but which now were either ‘owned’ or sold to other firms or nations in a desperate effort to earn foreign exchange, provide employment and play some small part in a system of world trade that was weighted in such a way as to preserve the developed countries’ dominance. The new measures of development that were

urged, by participants from both developed and developing countries, insisted on the preservation of traditional social norms and the en- richment of local culture. These were not held incompatible with a healthy and fulfilling life style, whereas the Western form of technical utopia, even could it be realized, was deemed extremely unlikely to bring to the developing countries the kind of future for which they were looking. In this context, the concept of a limit to growth had little meaning. An alternative development for the developing world, in which a rural existence was once more made respectable and organic methods of working the land were the norm, was possible in a way which would play no part in bringing about the environmental catastrophes envisaged by the Club of Rome model. In this sense not only could growth continue but it must do so, and it must do so quickly. The essential ingredient was not a


centralized manipulation of the technical parameters so much as the urgent need for radical social change or revolution, followed by new models of development based on local resources and skills and eschewing the alienating anony- mity of the development path which had been pursued by the rich nations of the world.

The role of science and technology

A unique feature of the May meeting was the common scientific interests of all the participants. Yet, as would be the case in most meetings of the scientific establishment, the issues at stake were debated primarily in their political context and secondarily, or not at all, in their scientific context. The meeting thus expressed an increasingly prevalent view among young scientists that a science which is not politically and morally committed is worse than neutral; that the value of science is measured only by the extent of its ethical commitment; and that the role of science is to be debated only within the political context. This view stands in stark contrast to the attitude of older scientists who have often taken refuge from the stormy political debate by hiding in the alleged neutrality of science. The relationship of science and technology to

the power structure was extensively debated. One secondary reason for delay in development was seen as the fact that the power groups in the developed countries still hold the keys to the financing of research. Thus the two principal objects of research today are ever increasingly destructive and ingenious weapon systems, and the proliferation of useless consumer goods and gadgetry offered for sale in developed countries at ever increasing prices. The waste that ensues, and the kind of ethic to which these two types of science are conducted, are sufficient to ensure that only a bare minimum of research is conducted in areas which are of genuine use to

people, and particularly to people in developing countries. In this context, any over-all quantitative

measure of scientific progress is essentially meaningless. If most of the world’s scientists and their funds are deployed in military research or on consumer-society projects, it matters little to human development whether the volume of science grows or decreases (except to the extent that such research relentlessly increases the chance of technological war or ecological catastrophe from the pollution inevitably associated with the consumer society). The percentage of GNF that any country spends on research and development is therefore as meaningless a measure as GNF per capita is in assessing development. The key question is one not of quantity but of quality-and here participants were unanimous in urging that the sheer wastage of research talent which is currently the hall- mark of contemporary science be brought to an end as quickly as possible. On the macro level, they argued, the main problem was one of re- ordering of priorities and decentralizing the power structure to ensure more ‘science for the people’. This raised again the problem of how to tell in advance which research areas were likely to bring which technical benefits but this was not generally considered as difficult as has been made out. It is not that difficult to see that research into a weapons system of greater concrete penetration is unlikely to help in solving the irrigation problem of the Indian farmer. It was felt important that the people’s confi-

dence in science should once again be restored but only if that could be done by involving people intimately in scientific ideas. This meant a demystification of the ideas underlying science. The Chinese model of a decentralized science and technology was recommended. Much could be done at the micro level, it was argued, lfsmall groups of scientists could be brought into close contact with local people to see if there were ways in which their problems could be eased by the use of the scientific method.

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But technological dominance was held to be dangerous. In many cases it was felt to be better to improve traditional practices rather than introduce totally new technological procedures. The key attitude should be neither a blind cult of technological advance nor a blind subservi- ence to tradition, as exemplified by certain developments in both Tanzania and the People’s Republic of China, for example. An important research programme was out-

lined which would for the first time investigate traditional labour-intensive technologies on a decentralized basis. Local resources and skills should be put to the maximum use and the trend should be to make scientists out of people rather than humanitarians out of scientists (which some participants felt to be an impossible task in view of the myth of scientific neutrality in which contemporary scientists had grown up). There was great demand for the invention of new technologies which were not environmentally destructive, both in developing and in developed countries. It would emerge in the latter with increasing force as more and more developing countries opted out of the world market system, and lefi the developed nations to stand or fall on their own, much more limited resources. An important input to the debate on science

was a widely prevalent fear of the technocracy. The Club of Rome model was also analysed in this context, and the arguments led inevitably to the need for new forms of decentralized science and of (soft’ or biotechnic technology which were both safe from misuse by elitist groups and compatible with long-term survival within a strictly defined ecological ethic.

The M a y debate can be analysed not only in terms of the direct confrontations that took place but also on a broader, more philosophical plane. The Club of Rome model that was the focus of

debate throughout the three days plays an ambiguous and possibly a unique role in the history of Western science and technology. This model, with its elitist implications, its technocratic emphasis on computers, programmes and input data, its Western bias, and its concealed assumptions, its allegedly neutral stance and its eschewal of political motives, epitomize the technocratic system that has been associated with Western science and technology in the twentieth century. At the same time, the results of the study ascribe only a limited usefulness to more science and technology and outline the end to a world view based on continuous and unlimited scientific progress. The crisis in contemporary science is thus highlighted by the Club of Rome model which both epitomizes and may also mark a critical turning-point in a long tradition. In the last analysis, it was this tradition that

was being questioned during the conference-a tradition based on the exploitation of man and of nature by an imperialist technocracy. The basic areas of agreement were that there was no scientific substitution possible for the political debate, that men must once again be counted as men and not statistics, that an obsession with quantity must give way to considerations of quality, and that global analyses must be replaced by regional and local solutions which will once again integrate man with nature and man with his own inventions. The meeting thus insisted on the connexions

that exist between the three problems of development, population and environment. Con- sidered together these problems concern the whole of the world population in what is usually called the environmental crisis but which is, in reality, a series of converging crises which stress the interdependency of all the peoples of the world.

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Richard Myshak

Com m u nity environment studies programme’

Albert Schweitzer once said, <Man has failed to foresee and forestall. And he shall end by distroying the earth.’ Strife, poverty and erosion of the socio-ecological mechanics during this century seem to be fulfilling his prophecy. Man is hellbent on a collision course with nature and himself. W e find man rapidly chronicling his own demise. W e find that water, the blood of all life, has

now become a conveyor of death. It has become polluted and foul with technological and human wastes. W e look up at our sky to find a hazy brown

mantle dimming the brilliant azure of space. This brown mantle, like a shawl, has been draped over major cities in our world bringing death and disability to man. In Los Angeles, it recently brought instructions to teachers to limit physical exertion of their students-no running, no recess. W e look at the landscape, only to see it hor-

ribly scarred by architectural abortions, gaping wounds on mountainsides, ugly cuts carrying the nourishment of all life to the seas in the rush of floodwaters. The foundation of all life has been undercut. W e look to ourselves. W e find death on the

Dr Richard 3. Myshak (United States), Executive Director of Minnesota Environmental Sciences Foun- dation Inc., Minneapolis.

battlefields of unwanted wars and death on city streets. Population, or more appropriately, (popolution’ has placed a very serious drain on the deposits in our resource bank. Our senses are sickened by the vulgarity of noise, ugliness, ath, noxious odours and claustrophobia. W e find politics, at times, to be self-serving. W e find conquest-of man and nature-to be our ulti- mate objective. And then w e read. A student writes, <It gets

pretty depressing to watch what is going on in the world and realize that your education is not equipping you to do anything about it.’ Another asks, (Please help me. Help m e to make a better life for myself and m y children-one you have not made for me.’ Subversive activity seems to be a current way

of life. Is it not now time to make education a subversive activity-one actively aimed at a continuing reassessment of priorities and the development of rational change criteria? People who think for themselves, who can understand problems and grapple with them effectively, will bring about a quality of life in this time of unprecedented and breath-taking change. D r Roger Revelle, formerly chairman of

the United States National Committee for

I. This study, presented at the 1970 Symposium of the Institut fiir die Padagogik der Naturwissenschaften of the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel (Federal Republic of Germany), is reproduced here with the kind permission of this institute.

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the International Biological Programme, recently wrote: ‘In our times of unprecedented change, biolo-

gists are well aware of the rapidly growing ability of their fellow human beings to alter the face of the earth through technology. But they are equally aware that these alterations can bring about far-spreading and often destructive changes in the web of life that is stretched so thinly over the surface of our planet. Our technology has outplaced our understanding, our cleverness has grown faster than our wisdom. ‘Technology produces more than physical

change. With his new found powers man has also radically altered part of his own biology; on a world-wide basis, his average length of life has nearly doubled during the last few decades. In many regions of the earth this rise in life expec- tancy has increased human misery. T o achieve a decent life for the living generation, further change in our biology may be needed: w e may have to reduce fertility as reckoned on a world- wide basis to levels below any previously at- tained. T o meet the needs of human life and human dignity, there must also be a vast increase in productivity, and this will be doubly true for the generation that will be born before the end of this century. ‘Because of our limited understanding of the

relationships among living thmgs, w e are limited in our ability to predict the effects of technical change or to help the technologists conserve the values and utilize the abundance of the world of life. Our goal should be not to conquer the natural world but to live in harmony with it. T o attain this goal we must learn how to control both the external environment and ourselves. Especially w e need to learn how to avoid irreversible change. If w e do not, w e shall deny to future generations the opportunity to choose the kind of world in which they want to live.’ H o w do w e bring about a greater under-

standing that will make it possible for man to respond to opportunity as well as need? Very much to the point here is a conclusion reached

by Sir Julian Huxley in a recent article entitled ‘The Crisis in Man’s Destiny’. H e wrote: ‘The first thing is to reform the curriculum so

that, instead of separate‘%ubjects’’ to be“taken” piece-meal, growing minds are offered a nu- tritious core of human knowledge, ideas, techniques and achievements, covering science and history as well as the arts and manual slulls. The key subject must be ecology, both biological and human-the science of balanced interaction between organisms and their environment (which of course includes other organisms)-together with its practical application in the conservation of the world’s resources, animal, vegetable and mineral, and human. ‘Education must prepare growing human

beings for the future, not only their own future but that of their children, their nation and their planet. For this, it must be aimed at varied ex- cellence (including the training of professional Clites) and at the fullest realization of human possibilities.’ This formula for education emphasizes the

need for an ecological approach to the whole spectrum of human learning. W e therefore submit that education should focus on the whole spectrum of human experience. The learner should be confronted with the real operations of the real interacting world. Disciplines must be the tools of learning and not entities unto themselves. If education is to provide for environmental

quality, then the educational process must provide an environment for the learner, the teacher, the ‘to-be-learned’, and the strategies for learning that will lead to: An ecological awareness-a concern for the total environment.

An economic awareness-a feeling for how costs relate to today’s ecological problems.

A political awareness-an understanding of individual roles as they relate to collective responsibility.

A problem analysis awareness-the ability to define resource problems, bring to bear all

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facts of the situation and all points of view with relation to it.

A realization that man is part of-not apart from-Nature.

Some grounding in the dynamics of communi- cations between men and groups.

The Minnesota Environmental Science Foun- dation with which I am associated has for the past three years attempted to create such an environment. It has been our uppermost belief that the lack of understanding, differences of opinion and the inability to relate man’s actions to his environment can best be harmonized or compromised through education. It is our belief that the educational process needed must provide for active involvement, it must be meaningful, it must cross disciplinary lines, and it must cause man to inquire productively. If w e are to expect awareness and understanding, the learner must be provided the opportunity to experience sensually the interrelationships of his environment. H e must be permitted to get his hands dirty and his feet wet. T o meet these needs w e have developed and

published environmental curricular activities; designed and implemented teacher in-service and leadership paining programmes aimed at strengthening background and methodological techniques; and, w e have conducted programmes and procedures aimed at developing and utilizing the school campus and near-by natural areas as environmental learning laboratories. Our experience indicates that current major

emphasis on curriculum development is often limited to the preparation of guides by teachers. This is usually accomplished without special consultative assistance. By their very nature, these guides are restrictive to innovation in the educational programme. When the teacher has inadequate background training in the social or ecological sciences, classroom performance is substantially a matter of meeting the prescrip- tion of an available guide. Supposition that the aforementioned can be used as functional models to provide for environmental aware-

ness and generate innovative educational programmes is an exemplification of the severity of the problem. For three years, the foundation has served

as a model for other communities and school districts in the development of their own resources for environmental studies. It provides resource personnel, space, curricular materials and equipment in quality and quantity not available in uncoordinated school district efforts. It has undertaken the co-operative planning and implementation of many projects with other educational and special interest groups. All evidence suggests, however, that this has not been enough. The foundation has noted several problem

areas that tend to dissipate current efforts in environmental education: I. There are still strong tendencies on the part

of educators to ‘catalogue’ environmental curriculum materials under ‘science’. This action reinforces the very educational process that has not been effective in the past. It almost always imposes a strong biological emphasis that is not necessarily ecological in nature. It makes the task of developing an integrated curriculum programme all but impossible.

2. There is a lack of strong commitment on the part of educational agencies that suggest (a) more flexible daily schedules, (b) modification and/or integration of curricular subject-matter, and (c) programme planning which implies more freedom and an increased involvement on the part of students or lay citizens from the community.

3. There is a persistence in removing the child from his real environment and transplant- ing him to wilderness areas and/or nature centres to teach him environmental mechanics of a non-social nature. These ventures are costly to the public, not long enough to provide significant attitudinal change, and do not meet the immediate need for socio- ecological understanding.

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4. General lack of cooperation and concern exists between various levels of school and city government.

Clearly there exists a need for education to focus on the socio-ecological aspects of environmental mechanics. Implementation programmes must not suffer the inadequacies inherent in ‘textbooks’ courses of study. They cannot afford the tunnel vision provided in lock-step sequential programmes. They must be flexible and current. Learners must deal with real data on real situations. T o survive, society must be sensitive to man,

his wants and a quality environment. The outcome of learning must be an educated, action-oriented populace that is ecologically knowledgeable. The need, therefore, is for programmes built around a style of inquiry that focuses upon man’s communities and their impact upon the land. W e must employ the strategy of utilizing current, real events in the educational process. Within the past year, this foundation has

planned, developed and partially implemented a ‘Community Environmental Studies Pro- gram.’ It is designed in such a fashion that participation in this programme will promote environmental literacy through continued ex- posure to underlying principles and concepts presented within the matrix of the learner’s immediate experience. Educational experiences focus on ‘mini-systems’ found near the school and/or in the community that demonstrate environmental mechanics on a functional and comprehensible scale. Many current programmes focus on single

strands of the web of environmental relationships. This programme deals directly with real interrelationships of man-land problems. Those involved in the programme are ex- posed to the operative mechanics of their surroundings in a social context. Specific outcomes of participation in this project follow with an accompanying operational rationale.

A n improved, functional, socio-ecological awareness

This foundation recognizes that ecologic and social needs are not value-free. There is some question as to how well an effective social programme of cherishing the environment might complement our preoccupation as a nation with individual freedom. This programme accepts the notion that representatives of society are charged with the responsibility of solving socio- ecological problems. Accordingly, participants are responsible for the development of solutions to problems that are acceptable to society. Student-derived change criteria will, therefore, reflect their consensus about an acceptable solution. Meaningful socio-ecological descriptions of

neighbourhoods in which the learner is located and his relationship to individuals or community institutions would be developed from his data. Conclusions would be contingent upon the community in question and its environmental needs at the time the experiment is done. Local project results would be logically attributable to current and real differences in: (a) the environmental situation, (b) the participants, or (c) some relationship between these two di- mensions (Fig. I).

Meaningful training for responsible community membership

W e accept order and change as important dichotomous attributes of any social system. Today the principle of fragmentation appears to be outrunning the principles of unity. It is producing a higher and higher degree of disorder. There is a disaffection among youth. These partially or totally alienated individuals become an available resource for extreme groups. It is our experience that programmes can and

must be developed to change the status of those


inrater environment

l I

I I I Physical resources Environmenlal relations

Physical 4 environment

1

I Land use I I I I I I

FIG. I. Cyclic interaction-man and land. Schematic representation of the interaction between man, his communities and the environment. It focuses on land use as one method of examining our utilization of the environment. Use of land affects ecological relations which, in turn, affect society. The impact can be beneficial or result in general deterioration of environmental quality.

who now marginally participate in the rights and duties required by their citizenship status. The ‘Community Environmental Studies Program’ is action-oriented in intent. The educational process places the learner in a position to compare systematically rational alternative solutions to significant, real socio-ecological problems (Fig. 2). Participant-derived information is intended

for dissemination to responsible social agents within the community. Any local ameliorative action taken as a result of the aforementioned will tend to dispel the discouraging assumption that change in society only results from the influence, social status and machinations of single elitist groups within the larger community context.

More specifically this project makes provision for developing effective social leadership as follows: (a) it explores channels which provide for rational and sincere expression of diverse opinions as related to the quality of life; (b) avenues are developed through which potential leaders of all types gain access to formal positions of recognition and influence by participating openly with one another in the public arena of environmental affairs; (c) students are caused to evaluate social alienation as related to environmental problems and attempt to derive means to offset this tendency. N e w attributes sought by this project do not

redefine environmental criteria, but rather elaborate them. It is this foundation’s belief that

Richard Myshak

I

Social + environment

FIG. 2. Community decision-making to meet socio-ecological needs. A method of considering least community cost for social action to satisfy community needs. It brings society and ecology together in decision-making. It also recognizes the political process of social compromise.

(a) learners must assume the responsibility of setting forth empirically established relationships of socio-ecological variables, and (b) make them available to members of their immediate society who can redefine these criteria. There is a high probability that they will also use them themselves when they assume that role in society. Students, educators and individuals from the

community at large who become involved in this programme must use integrated materials bridg- ing the several disciplines. Participants accumu- late real data that is used in the formulation of partial operational models of interrelationships found in their respective communities.

Increased emphasis upon inquiry training

As implied by Sir Julian Huxley, a teacher can no longer be viewed as an omniscient focus of learning. Meaningful environmental education programmes lay an additional charge of responsibility at the doorstep of teachers. Their success depends upon teachers’ acceptance of the challenge to re-identify the parameters of disciplines and their relative role in learning. The ‘Community Environmental Studies

Program’ offers no ‘right answers’. Teachers assist only in the formulation of participant- derived alternatives which have the temporal limitations of current technological knowledge and the social situation. They are accepted as such. Change generates new data. Teachers guide the modification and/or identification


of alternative solutions to socio-ecological need(s). In summary, the foundation has pursued the

development of programmes which focus on the socio-ecological aspects of environmental education. Initial feedback on our ‘Community Environmental Studies Program’ suggest that an approach which focuses upon man-land interrelationships is most promising. It is anticipated that fuaher testing of this model will confirm the need for a significant departure from present educational practices. Man, his social institutions and their ecologic impact on the space-

ship earth will become the central theme to a functional, realistic curriculum for schools. W e are confident that current educational

innovations will insure the learner a greater understanding of his world-and the wisdom to interpret and determine his actions. Through an educational process that will not permit technology to outpace understanding-nor allow cleverness to grow faster than wisdom-will come a people that seldom make headlines, but rather, content to make a world fit for life. Rather than ask the question, ‘How can we?’ the question will become, ‘Should we?’

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V. M. Galishin S. Doraiswami

Three approaches to school environmenta I education as consecutive stages of its practical implementation’

No one doubts the need to introduce environmental conservation education into schools. Its basic principles and ideas are fairly well developed, but the urgent question is how to put them into practice. For this purpose, a comprehensive school curriculum for environmental conservation has to be developed which is suitable and, at the same time, acceptable in terms of space and duration within the over-all school time budget. Various approaches exist for the solution of

these problems. They can be roughly grouped into three categories: (a) environmental topics may be dispersed through the entire or major part of the school curricula by certain insertions in the syllabuses of various disciplines; (b) a specially designed nature conservation unit may be a chapter or section within one of the existing school subjects; (c) an integrated course of environmental conservation can exist as a separate discipline equal with other school subjects . Each of the above approaches has its advan-

tages and disadvantages, the general conclusion being that the more valuable and attractive pro-

posals are for introducing the entire environmental concept, the more difficult they seem to be to implement within the school curricula. The integrated approach is very popular.

No doubt this course is the best way to form the whole idea of environment and make the younger generations aware of it. However, implementation requires at least thirty school hours (if one assumes that one period a week is the minimum). Where from? On the one hand none of the school subjects can be easily eliminated in favour of a new syllabus under the existing schedule. On the other hand, nothing can be added smoothly to the present thirty to thirty-six school periods a week. As for the Ctopics’ approach, specialists in

each field can find a little space within respective syllabuses more easily for definite inserts which concern both environmental conservation and a particular subject. However, this approach allows no opportunity to integrate those topics to turn them into an environmental philosophy. The ‘chapter’ or (Unit’ approach is an ob-

I. The articles which follow were presented at the Eu- ropean Working Conference on Environmental Conser- vation Education, organized by the International Union for Conservation of N a m e and Natural Resources (IUCN) in Riischlikon (Switzerland) in December 1971. Prospects reproduces them here with the kind permission of the IUCN.

Dr Vladimir M. Galushin (U.S.S.R.), senior lecturer, Department of Zoology, Lenin Pedagogical Institute, Moscow; Dr S. Doraiswami (India), head, Biology Department, National Council for Educational Research and Training, New Delhi.

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Three approaches to school environmental education

vious compromise between the above. As any compromise it combines the advantages and disadvantages of both the integrated and ‘topics’ solutions. Obviously the conservation chapter should be in line with the subject into which it is included, which imposes certain limitations on the content of the chapter or unit. For instance, some social or technological aspects of environmental conservation would look unnatural inside a biology syllabus and vice versa. Nevertheless we believe that the advantages of this approach prevail upon the disadvantages. Experience shows that it is possible to set aside twelve to sixteen periods (school hours) for the environmental conservation chapter within the biology or geography syllabuses by rearranging and omit- ting some of the descriptive material. Fourteen to sixteen hours is sufficient for presenting the chief aspects of environmental conservation as an integrated idea. If accompanied by a number of environmental tonics incorporated into this and other disciplines, such a combined approach is good enough to achieve the basic goals of school environmental educdtion. Therefore, w e are treating these three ap-

proaches as successive stages rather than alternatives in the practical introduction of environmental education into school curricula. The first stage, which is the easiest to im-

plement should be the ‘topics’ approach. Since at present nearly all school curricula include environmental topics in biology, geography and other syllabuses, w e mention this mainly in order to maintain the sequence of stages. In our view, the time is ripe to concentrate

efforts on introducing the second stage, namely the ‘chapter’ or <unit’ approach, mainly into biology and geography curricula. First, it is much easier to achieve a partial revision of those syllabuses than to carry out a comprehensive reform of the whole school curriculum. Second, there are practically no biologists or geographers including curriculum-makers who object to incorporation of environmental conservation into their subjects. Third, this stage preceded

by the dispersion of environmental topics in fact provides a good opportunity to sum up this scattered knowledge into a coherent whole. The most complete ‘integrated’ approach

should be considered the third and final stage of implementation of school environmental education. W e do not think that favourable circumstances for immediately introducing environmental education, as a discipline, into school curricula exist in many countries for reasons mentioned above. It does not mean one should abandon the idea; on the contrary, a syllabus should be ready for implementation as soon as circumstances allow it. Our preference for the (unit’ approach reflects

our own experience. In the course of developing a new science curriculum for Indian schools w e chose this approach to introduce the environmental conservation concept. It is a natural follow-up to the environmental topics and elements taken up in the courses of general science (primary school), biology, geography, chemistry, etc. In other words the latter are crowned by a special chapter CConservation of nature’ within the first part of biology syllabus for the high secondary school (classes in age groups 14-15).l This chapter covers sixteen periods (school hours) or some 20 per cent of the class g biology curriculum. It contains the following main themes: Vital importance of conservation of nature for the existence of life’, ‘Manage- ment of natural resources in a rational way’,

I. At present in Delhi and some states of India the eleven- year school education pattern consists of the primary (classes 1-5, 5-plus to Io-plus age group), middle (classes 6-8, age group 11-plus to 13-plus) and high secondary school (classes 9-11, age group 14-plus to 16-plus). In other states the ten-year school pattern is established. Teaching of science as separate disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) is running through middle and high secondary schools. For instance, biology is taught for six years (three periods a week, about 500 periods totally). In class 9, biology courses are mostly devoted to ecology. Therefore, the chapter ‘Conservation of nature’ is preceded by the divisions ‘Population’, ‘Biocenosis’ and ‘Biosphere’.

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V. M. Galishin and S. Doraiswami

CConservationof atmosphericair, water resources The new science curricula, including environ- and soil’, ‘The global role of the green cover’, mental conservation in the above-mentioned CProtection of wildlife’, ‘National and inter- form, is being introduced on an experimental national efforts for effectiveness of environmen- basis in all state and Union territories of tal conservation’, etc. India.

Eugkne Binder


Effective measures in the field of the conservation of nature can at present only be envisaged within the broader context of land-use management. Mankind is growing aware of the deterioration of its environment at the very time that it is realizing that space is becoming rare. This space must be properly managed and this means forecasts must be made before taking any action which could affect the environment and its resources. This management of space should combine the physical planning undertaken by engineers, for purposes of land-use management, with social, cultural and economic planning, based on human ecology, and also biological and ecological planning. This demands the co-operation of specialists, working in integrated multidisciplinary teams, who, besides knowledge of their own specific discipline, must share a common grounding in general principles so that colleagues and research workers corning from very different backgrounds can com- municate. There are therefore certain requirements

which no one can afford to disregard any more. Education concerned with land-use management must recognize the proper place of the conservation of nature among the values which are taken into consideration.

Professor Eugsne Binder (Switzerland), lecturer at the University of Geneva, Museum of Natural History.

The organization of university education related to the conservation of nature must therefore be based on the training of land-use management experts. But what is more, university courses are the key to all the other questions of education in the field of ecology: teacher training for other educational levels, education of university teachers not specializing in environmental problems, and education of the public. Universities therefore have several different

responsibilities in this field: (a) to familiarize scientists of all disciplines and the members of other faculties with the existence of environmental problems; (b) to provide ecological training for all students of biological and natural sciences, which includes the training and in- service training of secondary-school teachers who have in turn to educate the coming generations; (c) to train specialists and experts whose role will be to participate in the elaboration of decisions concerning the conservation of natural resources and land-use management; (d) to undertake fundamental research in the field of general ecology and the human environment. Under the pressure of present-day needs in

this field, a number of universities have introduced elementary or more advanced courses in environmental studies over the last few years. But these courses are not available by any means everywhere and even where they do exist they are still too often fragmentary and inevitably

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Eugene Binder

at the experimental stage. There are science faculties in which ecology as such is not even taught, or only taught in passing in some of its aspects, as a subdivision of general zoology or botany, or of physiology or parasitology. This stems from the fact that ecology is a ‘composite’ science, dealing with complex phenomena for which general rules have not yet been clearly formulated and which, therefore, does not enjoy much prestige compared, for example, with molecular biology. Moreover, it demands considerable knowledge in all fields, and real ecolo- gists are therefore rare. Ecology, considered from the point of view of the conservation of nature or the relationship of man and his environment, also, suffers from the general stigma attached to the ‘applied sciences’. W e cannot disregard these obstacles, nugatory as they are in relation to the urgent material need for adequate education in this field.

The ecological training of scientists other than biologists and students from other faculties should ideally have already taken place during secondary education, but in general this is not yet the case. In the meantime, therefore, there must be general courses in this subject, at a much simpler level than those intended for biologists and naturalists, coming closer to the level intended for the education of the general public. These courses should not present any difficulties in universities in which there are already more advanced courses, and they could take the form of a series of lectures.

The training of seconday-school teachers should take place in science faculties, in the context of degree and diploma courses in biology, natural sciences, etc. All faculties teaching biology should include a compulsory course in ‘human ecology’ to familiarize students with environmental problems, and with the interaction between man and his environment. This type of course should not be solely the preserve of specialists, but should be one of the basic sub-

468

jects common to all studies in biology and similar topics. It might also be thought desirable to extend this course to all students in science subjects, by incorporating it in the first year of general studies, in universities where this exists. Unfortunately this is not possible, for a proper understanding of ecology requires basic knowledge of genetic and physiological systems which is only acquired during the first two years of biological studies. The goal should be that all biologists, whatever their specialization, should have a good grounding in ecology, such as they have, for example, in genetics, physiology, comparative anatomy and embryology. Courses for biologists should include at least

the following elements: Basic aspects of general ecology: major biochemi- cal cycles; circulation of energy; relationship of organisms and their environment; stability and evolution of biocenoses.

Human biology: human evolution and adaptation through natural selection; cultural evolution; man’s material (physical) and psycho-social dependence on the environment; human needs in the technological age.

Effects of human intervention: influence of different forms of civilization; consequences of large construction works (dams, motor- ways, etc.); effects of the introduction of an alien species into a biotopic community; degradation and pollution of the natural environment; consequences of town planning; over-population.

Management of resources and the environment: anti-pollution measures and restoration of polluted areas; conservation in all its forms; prevention of over-population.

This should be a minimum objective in any university training biologists. At least twenty- five to thirty hours should be devoted to this purpose, in other words, one hour a week for two semesters, with additional seminars. Prac- tical demonstrations, taking, for instance, the form of excursions, would be very desirable. Owing to the diverse nature of this syllabus it


could not be taught by a single teacher but requires an integrated course, in which a specialist would deal with each point. T o ensure the unity and consistency of the

course, however, it is vital that a single teacher be responsible, organizing a complete and coherent syllabus and providing the necessary integration. Even though this is merely a question of technique, it is vital that the person in charge be an ecologist. If the course is well planned, it must not merely lead students to appreciate the importance of all natural environ- ments and of the earth’s diversity of fauna and flora, in short the necessity of preserving them for man’s survival, nor must it simply give them some idea of the knowledge required to safeguard the planet’s resources. They must also be made aware of the difficulties both practical and political. This is how they can be made to realize that every problem of human ecology leads to a political problem and that owing to their responsibilities, stemming from their knowledge, they are under an obligation to make political choices and exert their influence in this sphere. By politics, we of course mean, in the general sense of the term, the management of public affairs, which is in fact incumbent upon the relatively few who have had the benefits of a university education.

The training of experts in environmental problems must, of course, take place during specialized higher education studies, in other words, at the post-graduate level. The field of relevant knowledge is extremely

broad and there is the same tendency as at the previous level to fall between two stools, with yet more serious results. On the one hand there is the desire to provide as complete a training as possible, and on the other to cater for students whose previous education differs widely and who do not have the basic knowledge required in all the fields involved. If the syllabus of present courses, devised from this point of view, are examined it can be seen that it is difficult to

avoid an encyclopaedic approach which is often too detailed to be grasped in one or two years by most of those taking part. If it is hoped to produce more than Cgeneralists’ with superficial knowledge, topics as different as soil granu- lometry, human diseases, aerial photography interpretation, criminology, geographic distribution of parasites, population trends, pesticide chemistry, etc., as well as the general principles of law and economics must be taught. It is usually the basic areas of knowledge which are taught in too much detail for this level, and which clutter up the curriculum at the expense of the principal subject. The way to remedy this is to subdivide post-graduate courses, from the outset, into specialist fields corresponding to previous university training, which provides a much better solution to the practical requirements, because all environmental problems are far too complex for any one individual to resolve: to do so is impossible, both from the point of view of the knowledge required and from the point of view of the work needed. Conservation and land-use management inevitably require team work; different specialists must be trained and they must be taught to work in teams. Courses could then involve a deeper study of each discipline, based on environmental considerations, which would mean they could, without any difficulty, cater for students with widely differing previous training, not merely biologists and naturalists, but doctors, veterin- ary surgeons, geologists (soil scientists), sociologists, ethnographers, engineers, lawyers and economists, who while remaining specialists in their own field, would be capable of dealing with environmental problems from the angle of their own discipline. Specialist courses should be complemented

with an introduction to the general principles of other disciplines, so as to create a common language and enable specialists to understand each other’s points of view and problems. Original research conducted in teams is vital

to complete this training and accustom those

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Eugene Binder

taking part to joint work. This should lead, for example, to the production of a joint monograph. With regard to conservation, it is essential

that those actually engaged in land-use management should be trained to work in teams and solely in teams. Diplomas in land-use management awarded on completion of studies should be specialist diplomas. No one, particularly if not trained as a biologist, should be able to lay claim to competence in regard to the whole range of environmental problems. It should not be made too easy to produce so-called environmental experts who are not really motivated by a concern for conservation and the quality of the environment. W e must therefore do what we can, at all levels, to promote the very idea of land-use management, in which concern for optimum conservation of nature and of natural resources coincides with concern for efficiency in the general interest. For practical reasons, these post-graduate

studies should be centralized in an institute specializing in ecology and land-use management, as independent as possible, and also responsible for apportioning and co-ordinating research on concrete problems in connexion with specific land-use management projects and to a certain extent for centralizing fundamental research. The very existence of such institutes will increase the influence of rational land-use management on projects already under way and will tend to %ensitize’ the authorities and public opinion. This will, however, only be so if all disciplines are included on an equal footing and provided the institute does not, for example, form merely a component and subordinate part of a polytechnic school. In an independent institute it would also be possible to formulate a system of philosophy and ethics in regard to land-use management. Concern for the general interest must be the

real motive-and not just a pretext-for any action in the field of land-use management. It is therefore vital that the training of the people

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responsible should involve education in the proper sense of the word, in other words that it should convey a moral purpose. A land-use management expert should feel not only the right but also the obligation to make value judgements and, if need be, to intercede (with the employer) in the public interest.

Fundamental research differs from the applied research undertaken in connexion with each specific land-use management project. It is vital in order to increase our basic knowledge and to increase the scope and the accuracy of forecasts on which decisions to be taken with regard to land-use management or conservation activities must be based. Its development is dependent upon the factors which generally affect any line of research the existence of university chairs in the appropriate field-in this case ecology-the available funds and a supply of candidates prepared to devote their doctorates to this field. Fundamental research does not necessarily

involve team work and can be undertaken in- dividually in any laboratory. A specialized institute is not a prerequisite, but it would make it possible to centralize a large amount of research work, which would be facilitated through the pooling of technical resources and encouraged through exchanges of information and ideas by research workers. Here again, the existence of a post-graduate institute would increase the influence of ecological research. The development of fundamental research

into conservation problems is therefore dependent upon the other aspects of university and post-graduate education in this field. In conclusion, there remains much to be done

to achieve an efficient organization of the teaching of environmental studies at the university level. To have a clear idea of the goals to be achieved is a first step. The second step is to take appropriate action. There is no doubt that the reforms needed meet with marked indif- ference, outmoded methods of thinking and vested interests in university circles, as well as


strong resistance either from business or commercial circles which have reason to believe that their financial interests do not coincide with the public interest, or from the authorities which simply have a false idea of what development is. But opinions do evolve, and w e can rely par-

ticularly on the very active support of students, and young people in general, who are concerned about the quality of the world in which they will have to live. Besides, w e all know that the choice is simple: mankind must urgently resolve the problems of the environment or court disaster.

Matthew J. Brennan

Environmental conservation education in the United States of America

It would be fUMy if it were not so serious. Faced with a national crisis of rapid deterioration of the quality of the environment, the people of the United States of America have turned to education for solutions. And education has no solutions. Yet there has always been conservation education, and for the past sixty or seventy years there have been serious efforts by many governments, industry and private organizations to promote a wiser use of the environment and its resources. Today, faced with the demands of scientists,

social scientists and the general public, the race to develop educational programmes in conservation is on. Lacking any plan, we have run off in all directions in our haste to develop an ‘instant’ education programme to match our instant replay of television action, instant rice and mashed potatoes and instant answers to questions with no answers, only possible alternatives for action. Some are naive enough to believe that chang-

ing the name from conservation education to environmental education will bring instant results, success where there was failure, support where no support was available. Hopefully, a plan for conservation education

will emerge from all the diverse programmes which are being developed, and for which at least token financial support is available. In order to understand the new programmes

in conservation education it may be helpful to review briefly the problems and programmes of the past and indicate how they may be used to advantage or modified in the programmes of the future. Bear in mind that an over-all plan for a total education programme did not, and still does not, exist.

Definition of conservation

Basic to the development of any plan for conservation education is a definition of conservation on which all could agree. Until very recently there was no definition. Everyone defined conservation to suit his own interests and needs. However, the definition developed by Dr Paul F. Brandwein and myself at thePinchot Institute, namely, ‘recognition by man of his interdependence with his environment and all of life and his responsibility to maintain the environment in a manner fit for life and fit for living’, was accepted by the major conservation education organizations of the United States1 and has become the basis for the various versions now

Dr Matthew 3. Brennan (United States), Director, Brentree Environmental Center, Milford, Pennsyl- vania.

I. The Pinchot Institute, Proceedings of the Summit Confer- ence on Conservation Education, Milford, Pa, M a y 1967.

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being used. For example, the United States Commissioner of Education wrote, ‘Environ- mental education is intended to promote among citizens the awareness and understanding of the environment, our relationship to it, and the concern and responsible action necessary to assure our survival and to improve the quality of life.’l

It appears that w e can now all agree that conservation education has two goals-development of understanding about the environment, and development of responsible concern. And, w e can proceed with the task of programme development, for the role of education is now clearly indicated.

Approaches to conservation education

The primary aim is to develop an understanding of the environment. Again, w e can learn from past errors and failures in programmes of conservation education. There have been three general kinds of school programmes which might be called ‘Unit’, ‘topical‘ and (special’. In a unit, or chapter, conservation was in a

segregated unit (or chapter in the textbook), usually in science or geography. It could be included, or omitted, at the whim of the teacher or school administrator. Even where included, it usually had little relation to the rest of the year’s work, and did not indicate man as an actor in the ‘conservation drama’. Fortunately, this approach has generally been abandoned, and the idea of conservation as an integral part of the education experience is gaining acceptance. In the topical approach, a topic, such as for-

estry, could be included in the study of plants in science, or in the production and distribution of forest products in geography or economics. While much better than the unit approach, the study of topics has not been generally successful. Teachers’ materials have not been available; and publications of government, industry and private organizations with interest and concern in resource use or protection have been of limited

value. Although useful materials were available for the study of forests, soils, water, wildlife and minerals in the science class, there was overem- phasis on biological problems. Materials dealing with the social, political, economic or aesthetic factors influencing man’s use of his environment and its resources were not available and, therefore, these critical elements of environmental understanding were not included in school programmes. In addition, materials on problems of the

modem urban-technological society were lacking. There is still little help available for the teacher who wishes to include in her teaching topics on the ‘P’ problems, such as pollution, population, pesticides, poisons, power and poverty of the environment. Another serious limitation to full use of the topic approach is the controversial nature of the topics just listed and the general reluctance of educators to discuss controversial questions in the schools. But, once useful and relevant materials are available and teachers have developed programmes for their use, the topic approach is nevertheless promising. The special course in conservation has his-

torically been a part of programmes in vocational education, particularly in agriculture. At the secondary level, the special course is gaining increased support, starting with a few courses in forestry, wildlife conservation, and now being implemented in many schools as a final-year, interdisciplinary course involving teachers of science, social science and the humanities in a problem-oriented experience.

Development of a curriculum plan

Regardless of the approach, the most serious limitation is the lack of a plan of education.

I. Environmental Education: Education that Cannot Wait, United States Office of Education, Washington, DC, 20202.

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What understandings should the environmentally literate man have? Certainly an understanding of the sciences-geology, biology, chemistry, and physics-is basic (although many programmes now being developed ignore this). But decisions regarding man’s use of his environment are not always being made on the basis of his scientific knowledge. W e have the scientific knowledge to solve most of our environmental problems. Yet, increasingly, decisions are being made on the basis of social desirability, economic feasibility or political ex- pediency. Therefore, understanding of the social aspects of environmental use by man must come within the purview of conservation education. And, finally, if the experiences which ennoble man are reflected in his attitude towards the environment, then the humanities must also be a part of conservation education. So, it became evident that conservation in its

new dimension involved all of life, and conservation education involved all of education. What w e are really talking about is a new kind

of education. I call it education for the total environment. It involves understanding not only of the external environment, but also of the inner environment of the person. If we are to accomplish the second goal of conservation education-development of an attitude of responsibility for the environment, a cconservation ethic’-we must first conserve the child. W e know that life styles and attitudes are formed at a very early age, that the reasons people conserve are internal, and that w e are conservationists because of a feeling w e have inside; w e will fail in the kew’ conservation education if we over- look this fact. W h y should the child who has not been conserved be concerned about environmental quality, endangered wildlife and the natural area? There is no plan for development of aesthetics in schools in the United States although efforts are being started in this direction. But w e are still without a plan. What does the

average citizen need to know about the biology

of the environment? The chemistry? The economics? The politics? H o w do the areas of knowledge conflict? What are the conflicts between the biological quality, human use for rec- reation, industrial chemical wastes, and aesthetics in pollution, for example? Basic research is needed to answer these still unanswered questions, and Ccurriculum development’ goes on without the answers.

Infiltrating into the existing curriculum

Lacking the resources to develop a curriculum for environmental education, w e changed our plan of action. If a frontal assault does not work, try guerrilla tactics-infiltrate-get into the curriculum which now exists. There are several ways to get into the existing curriculum. The best is the textbook, which is the ccurriculum’ or course outline for most teachers, unfortunate as that fact may be. So at the Pinchot Institute w e produced the first elementary and junior high- school textbooks in science which used conservation concepts as their basic theme. Next in importance as an entree into a school

curriculum are the teachers’ guides to science, social studies and other subject disciplines, which are used by teachers at all levels of education. In co-operation with the State Depart- ment of Education in South Carolina, and with a grant from the Belle W. Baruch Foundation, w e developed a series of eight teachers’ guides to conservation education, People and Their Environment, a series of over 400 lessons re- lating science, social science, home economics and outdoor activities to the environment, all built around the same basic environmental concepts as the textbooks. The guides, written by eight teams of teachers, are now being widely used in the United States. Next, w e developed model school programmes using the textbooks and teacher guides and emphasizing the use of the outdoor laboratory as the most efficient place

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to give children experience in the environment. So, we are still without a curriculum plan, but

perhaps one will emerge as a result of these efforts. Most important, the work just described does not represent any new materials, programmes or changes in curriculum content. It represents only an attempt to utilize the present curriculum to bring relevant environmental experiences to the child in school or out of school. For example, we could not ask every teacher to teach forestry. Yet teachers in every elementary school I know of help children to learn about soil types, seed formation and germination, re- action of plants to sunlight, effects of crowding and thinning, needs for water, tolerance to shade in some plants, etc. In the ‘topic’ approach forestry would be covered in one period or one day. In the new approach, forestry is not taught at all, but if the teacher uses trees as her species and a forest for her laboratory, every student will have developed all the concepts governing forest management during his years in elementary school. The same curriculum approach can be used for understanding of grasslands, deserts, or any other environment; for understanding population dynamics; for understanding most of the scientific reasons for decisions affecting the use of environment by man. By using the local environment and local

problems, the teacher can make education relevant to today’s environmental crisis. If the elementary school child understands the problems of the schoolroom aquarium, he can understand the problem of the great lakes of the world which are dying.

N e w programmes in the United States of America

There are some interesting and a few exciting programmes in conservation education in the United States t0day.l They all reflect a general trend toward an action approach which is interdisciplinary, problem-oriented and relevant to

the concerns of modern youth. They include the following:

Wave Hill Center for Environmental Studies. The centre, in co-operation with Fordham Univer- sity in N e w York, has developed a programme of teacher training and production of new teaching materials which are being used in classrooms of all elementary schools of one district of the city. Emphasis is placed on loosening of rigid academic routines, experimentation with new techniques and materials, and work with the ‘total environment’ of the child, as I defined it above. Teachers are trained in workshops at Wave Hill and the university, and then receive training and practise in their own classrooms under the direction of the centre staff.

The ‘ Tilton’ project. This project actually developed at the University School in Cleveland, Ohio, and transferred to Tilton School in N e w Hampshire when its director moved there. It has engaged students in the solution of the problems of water pollution, emphasizing problem- solving and the use of teacher-student teams trained together. In practice, teaching is done by both teachers and students, and, in turn, teachers and students become co-learners. All are encouraged to use their senses and to question what they find. The project has now been transplanted to several other areas of the United States, most notably the programme for the five-county area around Philadelphia, Pennsyl- vania, being supported by the United States Office of Education.

‘Man andHis Community, A Programme for Qual- ity Environment.’ This programme, developed under a United States Office of Education grant by the Minnesota Environmental Sciences

I. For a more complete list, see: Martha Henderson, ‘Environmental Education: Social Studies Sources and Approaches’, ERIC Clearinghouse for Education and Social Science, No. Ed 042-062, 970 Aurora, Boulder, Colorado 80302, October 1970.

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Foundation, offers another new approach using community problem inventories to identify local concerns; investigations and activities for students; and suggestions for student action in the community. The components of the programme package fit together via a cKey-~~rt’ system, printed on pre-punched (Key-sort’ cards. Classes preparing to work on a particular local problem can easily sort out all cards re- lating to their problems. The first set of materials on water pollution, plus a teacher’s manual, is ready. Additional systems will deal with problems of land use, consumer use, air pollution, and population. The materials are directed to grades 7-12.

Fort Myers and Lee County programme, Florida. Perhaps the most interesting new conservation education programme is in Fort Myers and Lee County, Florida. It began locally, under the direction of William Hammond, a science teacher who transferred his understanding and concern for the environment to a total community. As a result of the programme, the mangrove swamps and sea-turtle nesting beaches on Sanibel Island have been saved from development, a large wildlife sanctuary has been established and the community has turned to the schools for solutions of its environmental problems. Devel- opment of a centre and curriculum materials for the entire county school system is now being funded by a grant from the United States Office of Education. This project gives every hope for development of a useful curriculum plan for conservation education.

The future

The pattern for the future is clear. Emphasis will be on the development of curricula based on

concepts of environment and designed to take advantage of the high motivation for environmental understanding and action which charac- terize the modern student. Learning experiences will be related to actual problem-solving and environmental improvement in the community. The concept of the school will be expanded to

include the total community, its different habitat areas, its libraries, museums, industries and governments. If w e are to have education for the total environment, then a total environment for education will be essential. In the total environment, learning and development of the cconservation ethic’ can go on naturally. Here the child can become part of the environment. It will conserve him. H e will then want to conserve it. The concept of the teacher will also change.

The teacher can no longer be the dispenser of facts and answers. For some of our environmental problems there are no answers, only alternatives for action. H o w can the elementary teacher answer the questions about pollution, population, man’s use of poisons and pesticides? Even Nobel laureates cannot agree. So the teacher must become the provider of experiences as the child seeks meaning in his environment. And whether he is scientist or social scientist, the teacher must be ready to engage in discussions involving many disciplines. W e can no longer segment our teaching and

learning. Discussions of population, pollution, poisons, pesticides, power and poverty of the environment are by nature interdisciplinary. H o w can we separate the scientific, social, and political aspects of population, of resource use, of preservation of wilderness, vanishing wildlife, and of man’s survival as a species of animal on earth? And, with the emergence of new programmes,

teachers can be trained for the new role indicated for them.

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Envi ronrnental education in the school curricula: the Swedish example

The unanimous recommendations made as a consequence of the previous International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) conferences have stressed the importance and urgency of environmental education on all levels of schooling. There are a number of big and difficult steps to take between recommendations and the actual changes of curricula towards more environmental education as well as the steps to take between curriculum change and the actual implementation of these decisions, i.e. how to carry out these changes in the schools as well as in the teacher-training colleges and in-service courses. In this article I will try to discuss various as-

pects and problems of environmental education in the schools centring m y attention on how curriculum changes can be carried out, and how these changes can be implemented. I will use Sweden as an example, partly because I am familiar with the conditions there, but mainly because environmental education is now in operation in our schools. I will devote some attention to education technological models which can be of help to implement environmental education. It is m y hope by this contribution to present some material for future discussions on various aspects of environmental education, both formal

Dr Sten Forselius (Sweden), staff inspector (Biology and General Sciences), National Board of Education.

and out-of-school. I also refer to D r Pritchard’s excellent review paper on environmental education, its social relevance in North-West Europe (1968). Before we begin to discuss the implementation of environmental education, it is desirable to define the content and objectives of the term: ‘Environmental education is the process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts in order to develop skills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate the interrelatedness among man, his culture and his biophysical surroundings. Environmental education also entails practice in decision-making and self-formulation of a code of behaviour, about issues concerning environmental quality.’ This definition was proposed in I970 by the

Northern Illinois University (United States), and has been accepted and recommended for wide use by all the participants of the international working meeting, ‘Environmental Edu- cation in the School Curriculum’ (Riischlikon, Switzerland, December 1971). The major objectives of environmental edu-

cation, according to William B. Stapp et al. (1969) are to help people of all ages acquire: I. A clear understanding that man is an insep-

arable part of a system, consisting of man, culture, and the biophysical environment, and that man has the ability to alter the interrelationships of this system.

2. A broad understanding of the biophysical

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environment, both natural and man-made, and its role in contemporary society.

3. A fundamental understanding of the biophysical environment problems confronting man, how these problems can be solved, and the responsibility of citizens and government to work towards their solution.

4. Attitudes of concern for the quality of biophysical environment which will motivate citizens to participate in biophysical environmental problem-solving.

Background

T w o conditions are likely to have contributed markedly to the speed and success with which changes in curricula to include environmental education have proceeded in Sweden: (a) the unique structure of the educational administration and (b) the keen interest of Scandinavian people in various kinds of out-of-door activities. The implementation of changes in curricula

depends in each country, among other things, on the education policy of the individual country, and on the degree of centralization of policy- makers. In some countries llke the United Kingdom, almost each head master can form his own curricula for his school; in Yugoslavia each state has a high degree of freedom to adapt the curricula established by the Federal Council of Education in Beograd; whereas in the United States each state and greater cities are completely free to write curricula of their own. In countries like the German Democratic Repub- lic, in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries, there is a highly centralized administration control over the school system. In these countries curricula changes are probably easier to introduce and establish throughout the country within a short period of time than in countries with a highly individualized educational system. In Sweden curriculum development is the

responsibility of the National Board of Edu-

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cation (NBE). Its involvement with research and development concerning the school curricula is direct and explicit and includes the full range of curriculum development from research to decision-making. For example, in the preparation and introduction of the compulsory nine-year comprehensive school in 1969, and in developing and introducing the curricula for the new upper secondary schools (gymnasia) the board has been entrusted with the task of definiug the details of the internal school organization, the general instruction for teaching and the curricula. Whereas in some countries there is clear op-

position between the decision-makers and the curriculum innovators, there are in Sweden many teachers employed as administrators of educational problems such as curriculum development and revision. Of course, there might be danger in such a system, if innovation is too closely linked to the administrative aspects of change. Scandinavia still has extensive areas unaffec-

ted by technical evolution and is densely popu- lated mainly within limited areas in the south and around the capital. It is with the utmost consternation that w e during the last decade have witnessed a most frightening deterioration of the environment, of soil, water and air, caused by technical activities within and without the country. This unpleasant negative evolution of the environment has aroused pronounced interest and motivation for environmental education. The general debate on environmental questions, which mtil no more than a few years ago was mostly concerned with litter and good behaviour in the countryside and the protection of plants and animals, i.e. nature conservation, is thus nowadays concerned on a completely different scale with questions of survival and environmental problems. In September 1968 the National Board of Education decided to appoint a working committee on school environmental education (SMIL) with the task inter alia of revising the curricula.

Environmental education in the school curricula: the Swedish example

Educational technology is gaining favour in many countries in Europe and the new curricula are as much as possible shaped accordingly. The definition of teaching goals and objectives in behavioural terms in environmental education will ultimately focus attention on the essence of the process of learning. T o transform the established objectives into practice, however, is no simple problem. Several factors have to be considered. One goal is to create education for citizenship in a contemporary society with an orientation towards the future. Other goals are ‘to stimulate a feeling of responsibility for nature and respect for all living things and to help to open the pupils’ eyes to the beauty of nature’. CEnvironment conservation is one of the

most critical problems confronting modern society. Urbanization, industrial development and new techniques of agriculture and forestry have caused grave dislocations in our environment. . . . It is therefore the duty of schools to provide pupils with a basic introduction to the nature and scope of environmental problems and to endeavour to arouse in them a sense of their obligation as private individuals and future citizens to help prevent the destruction of the environment and to create a healthy environment for themselves and their successors.’ Environmental education has also been given

considerable scope in the suggestions for projects and assignments contained in the curriculum, in natural sciences, as well as in social studies such as history and geography. Thus the most comprehensive assignment sector proposed for orientational subjects in grades 7-9 goes under the heading of ‘Our Environment is in Danger’. In Sweden there are periodic revisions of the

curricula almost every five years making possible a‘rolling’ adjustment as a result of feedback from reference groups of teachers. These revisions are important to provide for

the incorporation of new discoveries, as well as for implementation of innovation and educational policies as a result of various feedback

processes. It is also very important to build up logical sequences of learning situations which are both vertically and horizontally integrated. A useful model for curriculum development

in environmental education comprises the following steps: planning; pilot study; feedback analysis; construction; extensive field trials and evaluation; production of teaching aids; in- service training of teachers; and established routine. The production of the SMIL material, com-

prising approximately 800 pages of printed text, has proceeded very much along these lines.

Development of a plan for environmental studies

During the autumn of 1968 the Swedish National Board of Education appointed a special committee on environment education in schools (SMIL) with the task of revising the curricula to provide a basis for efficient environmental education at all school levels. This committee was to propose measures for the development and reform of teaching methods, review teacher training and investigate the need for special training for persons who are to work profession- ally with environmental problems (environmental engineers). Attached to the committee is a larger reference group comprising some thirty representatives from government bodies and voluntary organizations. The work of the committee will result in the revision and development of environmental education in schools. During the autumn of 1968 SMIL conducted a questionnaire survey among teachers of biology, chemistry, physics, geography, history and civics, and gymnastics as the first stage of an analysis of current environmental education in the upper grades of the nine-year comprehensive school. The questionnaire was sent to one out of every ten upper-grade teachers in the country. The survey was designed to analyse both en-

vironment education in various subjects during

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the school year 1967/68 and teachers’ opinions concerning the future needs and possibilities of environmental education in their subjects. Special attention was given to teaching methods, the need for teaching materials and additional teacher training. The questionnaire revealed a lively interest in

environmental questions on the part of the teachers, who considered that the time allotted to them should be at least doubled. The questionnaire provided an admirable

basis for SMIL to work on. Among other things, it showed the need for better excursion opportunities as well as for better basic and further training of the teachers themselves. Finally, the results of the questionnaire showed how urgently necessary it was for the scope of environmental studies in school to be broadened and their methodological resources improved.

Pilot study feedback and construction

One of the most important developments since SMIL began its review of environmental education has been the development of a new teaching method in natural sciences. A working party of SMIL, in consultation with scientists and educationists, has compiled experiment descriptions with an accompanying teacher’s manual. Scientific and environment-technical methods have been selected and simpliiied to use the resources which schools have at their disposal. This method has played a crucial part in the rapid development of environmental education. Formerly there were very few suitable school experiments available in this specialized and somewhat novel field. The committee have also devoted particular

attention to the subject of school excursions, which is heightened still further by the new curriculum. The questionnaire showed that teachers considered excursions a valuable feature of environmental education but that there

were several practical impediments encountered by schools when trying to organize them. The National Board of Education has therefore recommended to local authorities that they review land resources to find areas suitable for school excursions and to work for the preservation of well-situated and sufficiently large areas of natural scenery, which can among other things meet the requirements of schools in the future. During development of the SMIL environ-

mental education material, a pilot study was carried out in September 1969 in a number of schools (grades 1-6) in a suburb of Stockholm. Pupils worked together for a week in groups regardless of what classes or selections they are from. A large selection of study tasks was devised for the pupils to choose from, which varied from interviews of responsible persons in society to the compilation of new posters, exhibitions and plays, study visits, experiments, etc.

Field trials and evaluation

The National Board of Education encouraged schools throughout the country in addition to their other activities during European Conser- vation Year to make the care of the environment the subject of a special campaign during the first week of September. Various type schedules for this Project Week were drawn up by SMIL together with teacher’s manuals and a list of teaching aids for environmental studies, according to the following plan: Grade I: study of the environment around the

Grade 2: elementary observations of the need for

Grade 3: study of water; Grade 4: littering and elementary waste man-

Grade 5: study of water somewhat more ad-

Grade 6: study of the air and of the poisoning of

school;

ecological equilibrium;

agement;

vanced than in grade 3;

the nature.


The students of grades 7-9 could choose projects according to their individual interests. Non-graded working teams were formed to study environmental problems on a national or world scale, with most of the facts and observations collected in and around the community where the schools are situated. A number of suggestions for investigations were offered in the various SMIL publications, and from now on environmental education is taking a more definite experimental approach. The degree and kind of pollution of a lake or by a factory is investigated through the collection and analysis of samples in the field and interviews with community officers and ordinary inhabitants of the community. Grades 10-12 devoted time to activities such

as analysis of air, water and soil samples with regard to various physico-chemical factors, but also to problems of decision-making and policy- making on a national and international scale with regard to community planning, national and world economy as a consequence of the need for environment conservation and care. Pam- phlets and newspapers on environmental education and ecology were written and printed, and local exhibitions in museums and schools were arranged, showing for example the degree of pollution of lakes and rivers in the neigh- bouring area. Municipal officers were invited and questioned if the local water or air pollution situation was alarming. Evaluation of the environmental education is

a continuous process, carried out by inspectors and consultants on all levels in the schools. The feedback from this evaluation is taken into account when revising the various SMIL publications.

Production of teaching aids

In recent years a number of important publications on ecology and environmental education have been published in various countries. The

BSCS (Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, United States) ‘green version’ with a predomi- nantly ecological approach to biology and Nuffield Biology texts (United Kingdom) have already affected teaching throughout the world, and the same applies to the Belgian book L’l?cologie, Science Moderne de Synthbe and Ecosysthes et Biosphbre by P. Duvignaud, especially in French-speaking countries. Other programmes include the American

National Park Service, National Environmental Education Development (NEED). Basic to this programme is the premise that environmental awareness requires outdoor implementation of classroom lessons. The SMIL publications have very much the

same objectives. Teaching aids consist of the following volumes: I. A teacher’s guide for environmental edu-

cation. 2. A sound film-strip Project Week on Environ-

mental Education-an Experimental Cam- paign.

3. A list of teaching aids for environmental studies.

4. A teacher’s guide to about thirty experiments in environmental education.

5. Teacher’s guide to analytical field-work. 6. A teacher’s guide to environmental education

in the economic and technical streams of the gymnasium.

In-service teacher training

In connexion with the radical change in the character of environmental education to make it a laboratory-oriented subject, five lab courses have been run each year for the last two sum- mers, open to teachers on all levels. T w o more advanced ones have been open to teachers of grades 10-12 only, and the SMIL lab manual has been the main source of work. There have, however, been approximately twenty times as many applicants to these courses as available

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places. By arranging these courses the implementation of environmental education has been greatly facilitated, but it will take a number of years before all teachers have got training in environmental education with a broad ecological background and a laboratory approach to the investigation of environmental problems. In a somewhat longer perspective, the im-

plementation of environmental education will also be furthered by the use of SMIL manuals at the teacher-rraining colleges and universities. Also, during in-service teacher training study days have been devoted to experimental environmental education.

Programmes and facilities

Lab-oriented environmental education, created in connexion with the European Conservation Year, has by now become an established routine on all levels in our schools. There are many good reasons for repeating every five years an exercise such as the Project Week of 1970. Properly planned, it could provide valuable practical training in tackling a social problem, as well as material for other, more fundamental studies. A distinction has been made in environmental

education between reference material and problem material. Reference material constitutes the most important and weightiest part of environmental studies. Its purpose is to provide pupils with knowledge to understand the functioning of a biological community in equilibrium and the factors which can upset that equilibrium. Thus pupils can see the long-term implications of a disturbance in nature such as the discharge of effluent. Problem material concerns topical questions such as motor exhaust and oil pollution. Without adequate reference material, the

discussion of environment conservation-in school or elsewhere-can easily be characterized by flimsily based opinions and irresponsible at-

titudes. At the same time that one raises a current environmental problem such as fuel exhaust one should also consider the economic side of the matter, i.e. how much it will cost to remove the lead from petrol. The division of the financial responsibility for conservation measures between individuals, industry and the communityis an important topicof debate, which can be discussed in senior classes if not earlier. The economic aspects of environmental con-

servation can be admirably augmented with the aid of a historical perspective. Thus knowledge of the rise of industrialism during the nineteenth century is an important body of reference material with regard to contemporary environmental problems. Equipment and facilities for biology and

science in general are very important. As biology by and by is becoming a laboratory- oriented subject, the laboratory should be highly flexible, and lecture halls should successively give way to localities suitable for experimental work. By giving biology and related subjects two or three periods of forty to forty-five minutes each in a sequence, the more elaborate experiments can more easily be carried out. Further- more, there should be little or no difference in practice between work in the lab or in the field, such as ecological excursions. In Sweden, equipment is abundant and mod-

e m for ordinary biology labs, but equipment for more advanced laboratory studies is often available. The NBE has published standard lists of the kinds of laboratory equipment which should exist in all junior and senior high schools (grades 7-9 and 10-12). The cost of the lab equipment of an average gymnasium school amounts to almost $20,000.

Time-table, scheduling and integration

Whereas the time-table is fixed and changes are not very common even in connexion with the rolling reform as a continuous process, sched-


uling can facilitate environmental education markedly by giving regular opportunities to field trips, cconcentration study days’ and integrated activities with other subjects besides biology, involved in environmental education. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the subject it is natural for many of the subjects taught at school to be involved in examining the problems it entails. Environmental education has not been made a subject in its own right with special periods allotted to it on the time-table. But as the concept of environmental education has widened, it has been incorporated into several school subjects in the new curriculum, such as geography, civics, ethics, history, chemistry, physics, general science and above all biology. Thus a popular project for grade 9, ‘Our environment in danger’, is a team project common to all the above-rnentioned subjects. General science has been introduced in all

groups of the gymnasium except the natural science and technical streams, giving excellent opportunities to deal with ecology and environmental education also for students who will be the policy-makers of tomorrow. At the gymnasium level ecology and popu-

lation dynamics are also closely integrated with environmental education in order to relate the increase in world human population to all kinds of ecological unbalance and world pollution.

Role of the teacher

The teacher’s role has changed markedly in recent years; teaching methods deal less with instruction than with the creation of opportunities for learning, the teacher acting as adviser and conductor of the work. Some of the new teacher roles are to specify the objectives; to diagnose the qualifications, learning process and learning results of the students; to create learning motivation; to control; to provide individual and collective guidance; to organize and mediate information; to plan and organize (steer); and to

further creative thinking, social growth and personality forming. Young students participate in the planning

and implementation of the curricula of the various subjects. In each gymnasium at least two or three students take an active part in the teachers’ planning sessions for the coming term, where they are expected to express their opinions on working procedures, planning, content and changes. The students also present their opinions to the National Board of Edu- cation through their own organizations; and the steering committee of the NBE has a student representative.

Out-door studies

Out-door studies are compulsory in Swedish schools on all levels in biology, general science and related topics. The head masters have to make time available for field trips lasting from half a day to a whole day. In biology and general science the number of such out-door activity days is regulated by the National Board of Edu- cation, suggestions being presented in the teaching planning books published by the board. These days are devoted mainly to studies of ecology and the effects of human activities on habitats and biocenoses, by the collection of water and soil samples for analysis in the field or at the lab. Other studies are of changes in the composition of fauna and flora throughout the year, or adaptation of plants and animals for the strenuous winters. As many teachers are afraid of conducting

biological field trips it is important to provide them with detailed guidelines and to encourage them to formulate goals and objectives of each excursion; and each group of students should be given well-defined tasks. Many good ideas of investigations to be

carried out during excursions can be obtained from the BSCS, Nuffield and SMIL publications among others. A few examples: the effects of

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road salts and lead on animal life; the quantity of detergents, organic material and coli bacteria in drinking water and lake water. Urban and inner city environmental edu-

cation is also a very important part of conservation education.

Out-of-school education

Out-of-school education on environment and ecology is worth all support. In the United States the national and state parks have an extensive and highly developed system with programmed nature trails and guides as well as pedagogically very admirably organized field centres and museums, camp-fire lectures and nature film performances. In Europe, the United Kingdom, the Nether-

lands, Czechoslovakia and other countries have field-study centres which play an important role in environmental education. The International Youth Federation for Environmental Studies and Conservation (IYF) and other voluntary bodies contribute as well. Interest in ecology and environmental conser-

vation courses organized by adult-education movements is widespread and valuable. So far these courses have, however, mainly consisted of lectures and films with discussions, but experimental investigations have been almost nil.

Maybe the SMIL publications will have an influence towards a more experimental approach to environmental education. University courses on environmental education have been arranged which are open to people who are not regular university students. A most interesting --week long post-gym-

nasium pilot course was started in 1967 under the guidance of the National Board of Edu- cation, for twenty unemployed engineers. Its curricula have been modiiied in the course of these four years, and we hope soon to offer this kind of course in other places in Sweden, with the objective of creating specialists in environmental technology. The course, laboratory oriented, includes ten weeks of practice in various industries, and subjects include general and applied biology-specially ecology-lim- nology, applied engineering, air, water and community conservation, planning, landscaping, noise control and legislation. International co-operation is urgent and fun-

damental in environmental education and it is important that feedback from the educational activities in one country be made available to the other countries actively engaged in or preparing programmes in their countries. One possibility is the creation of an environmental education idea bank where the activities of all countries could be collected, evaluated and information made available for use in other countries.

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The development of education in the People‘s Republic of Albania

Immediately following the liberation (1944) the educational and cultural level of the Albanian people was very low. It was essential to take urgent measures to make education and culture universal, but above all it was necessary to eradicate illiteracy, whch amounted to 80 per cent of the population. For this purpose, courses were organized all over Albania, and a huge network of schools set up. The school reform of August 1946 and the law on general compulsory education gave a great impetus to education in the country. Educational establishments were thrown open to all children, schools were given lay status, and work was begun on drafting new curricula and new textbooks with entirely different contents. The subsequent years saw the establishment of the Tirana Institute of Edu- cation, comprising several faculties, and numerous secondary schools such as the technical school, the technical college for finance and economics, the sports school, the school of medicine and so on. In 1957 came the opening of the first Albanian university-the Tirana State University-consisting of a number of faculties. Despite this progress, schooling was, how-

ever, by no means universal. The main concern of the people’s government was to harness schools and teaching to the general education of the young generation whose task it was to build socialism. After the first Congress of the Party (1948)

the road to the building of socialism was opened up in Albania, but socialism could not be built without raising the level of instruction of the workers, and without providing for the training of medium-grade and senior personnel, either in Albania itself or abroad. So measures were taken

to enlarge thenetwork of teaching establishments, more especially of seven-year schools in the towns and countryside, to increase the number of vocational schools and to set up higher educational establishments. In 1956 the number of pupils attending all

categories of schools was 1g0,ooo or 3.3 times more than in 1938. Substantial improvements were made: the harmful survivals of the old schools were eradicated, more ideological work was done amongst pupils and teachers, the number of laboratories and teaching aids was increased and new regulations were adopted. A further stage in the reorganization of

schools dates back in its conception to 1960. This reform, after being fully discussed and then adopted by the fourth Congress of the Albanian Labour Party, was confirmed in 1963 by the law adopted by the People’s Assembly: (The Reorganization of the Educational System in the People’s Republic of Albania.’ This reorganization was carried out on the

principle of linking schools with everyday life, theory with practice and classroom teaching with work in production. Thus important changes were made in the content of teaching and new subjects, based on Marxist- Leninist ideology, were introduced into the school curricula. The reorganization of schools marks an im-

portant stage in the fight against the intellec- tualism inherited from the old type of school. As a result of all the work done so far and all the experiments carried out, it is now possible for schools to move in the direction of the revolu- tionary changes which await them. After the fifth Congress of the Albanian

Labour Party (1960) and the speech of comrade


Trends and cases

Enver Hodja ‘On the Further Revolution of our Schools’ on 7 March 1968, there was wide general discussion of the question of the education of the new generations. The view that emerged was that the problems of school and teaching are not merely pedagogical matters for teachers, but also broad matters of policy affecting the people as a whole. The further revolution of schools is aimed

first and foremost at reinforcing the ideological education of the young. The job of schools is not merely to train people of an appropriate cultural level but, above all, to educate revolu- tionaries loyal to the cause of socialism. The work of our schools should be based on

the tripartite division of time as between class attendance, production work and physical and military training, with Marxist-Leninist ideology forming the basis of the whole system. The application of this tripartite system con-

stitutes one of the principal means of linking schools up with social and political life. The purpose of Albanian schools is, also, to

turn out educated people with a sound cultural, scientific and polytechnical grounding. Another feature of these schools is that they

are accessible to the general public, so that young people, workers and peasants are able to obtain a technical vocational training conducive to the furtherance of the national economy and culture. Lastly, an effort is made to ensure that the

principles of socialist pedagogy prevail throughout the teaching system, and that school life is run on the basis of socialist democratic principles. All this involves sweeping aside the old ideas

and introducing the conception that school is a place to work as well as to study in, that work is part of study and that the purpose of education is not to turn out intellectuals but rather that people ‘niust study since they are unable, otherwise, to serve the people, their fatherland and the cause of socialism’. During the past few years, Albanian schools

have been endeavouring to produce a new intel- ligentsia, drawn form the ranks of the workers and peasants. The number of medium-grade personnel

today is twenty-six times larger than in 1938; and 2.5 times more senior, medium-grade and professional personnel are now being trained than was the case ten years ago. Between 1938 and 1971, the number of school

pupils and students increased as follows: 1938, 56,000; 1950, 176,000; 1960, 312,000; 1970, 661,000; 1971, 780,000. The State now spends as much on education

in four days as it spent on this item for the whole of 1938.

JAVIER MALO Ambassador to France of the People’s Republic of Albania

Trends and cases

Educational aids and international exchange: the Algerian experiment

The Algerian experiment

PRINCIPLES OF ACTION

In the days immediately following Algeria’s accession to independence, the question of educational aids was at once perceived to be one of the major factors governing the quality of education. The Ministry of Education accordingly de-

cided to start by setting up educational services to deal with the problems of (a) primary school teacher training, both cultural and vocational, and (b) the preparation of teaching aids. With regard to the latter, the aims of those in

charge of these services are clearly set forth in the Charte des Moyens Pidagogiques: (First, we wish to bring about a radical transformation in the educrttional system, by making available to primary school teachers an instrument, revolu- tionary in conception, which will ensure the unity of education and multiply tenfold the results obtained in school classes. Secondly, we are determined to ensure that the new, improved education shall be truly democratic, by considerably lowering the manufacturing costs of educational aids.’ Thus, the first stage in the reform of the edu-

cational system in Algeria was characterized by this twofold effort to train primary school teachers and to devise, produce and ensure widespread use of explicit, positive educational aids which would guarantee the quality and unity of the instruction provided in primary schools. However, as the teachers for whom the aids were intended were as yet untrained, and therefore unacquainted with standard routines, it was necessary from the outset to introduce them to the best methods, i.e. those incorpor-

ating the latest findings of educational psychology and the most up-to-date techniques (programmed instruction, audio-visual aids, and so forth). At the symposium on audio-visual aids held

in Algiers in 1965 (Image et Son au Service de 1’Enseignement en Afrique), the use of new educational methods and techniques was presented as a necessary expedient for triumphing over underdevelopment: ‘The underdeveloped countries can oniy catch up by taking historical short-cuts and by moving forward into the present by leaps and bounds. These ccleaps and bounds” are categorical imperatives. If the underdeveloped countries cannot move forward at this pace, they are doomed sooner or later to lose their identity.’ The traditional methods and approaches can-

not lead to truly effective solutions. A long-term view must be taken of the tasks to be accomplished, the stages to be completed and the means to be employed if action is to be truly effective. In the twentieth century, the world trans-

mitted in sounds and pictures is gradually coming to be the familiar world of young and old alike. T o refuse to adopt, in a new context, techniques which are undoubtedly capable of boosting educational output is to renounce the use of uniquely powerful weapons in the fight against underdevelopment. Audio-visual aids certainly offer no universal remedy. It is vital to know their possibilities, their limitations and, indeed, their dangers. If they are to be used rationally, they must be integrated in educational structures in which a wide range of mutually complementary techniques are fused together, in so far as the human and material resources available permit.

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ACHIEVEMENTS

In 1964, teams of educators launched an ambitious programme, first at the elementary level and subsequently at the intermediate and secondary levels. Their activities included devising methods adapted to the new curricula and time- tables for geography and history and to the Arabizatioa of science teaching-here, because of the urgency of coming to terms with the new strucme and with the implications of a de facto bilingualism, priority was given to practical re- sultsrather than to researchin the strict senseand intensification of research on language teaching with a view to devising, testing and introducing modem methods, incorporating the contributions made by linguistics and modem teaching aids (flannelgraphs, sketches acted out with the help of figurines, instructional films). Other research projects less closely tied to

school timetable requirements and focused, for example, on the integrated use of programmed instruction and closed-circuit television; one such project was carried out with a third-year secondary-level mathematics class. In 1965, as mentioned, an international symposium on the use of audio-visual aids was organized in Algiers.

DEVELOPMENT OF STRUCTURES

Until 1968 the educational aid services brought together within a single organization the educational research commissions on teaching aids and the teams responsible for the development of teacher training. This made it possible to draw up complementary, integrated programmes, in the course of which trainee teachers gradually progressed from the stage of learning how to apply detailed, explicit and positive models to that of thinking about the aims of particular methods and the means of implementing them. Backing up the research and training units

were the following technical services: office of audio-visual aids, responsible for devising and

producing such teaching aids as figurines, prints, photographic illustrations, slides, tape- recordings, instructional films; printing services (the printing office of the Institut Pidagogique National possesses equipment enabling it to produce almost 6 million school textbooks); departments responsible for disseminating educational materials directly to schools from a national centre and Mteen regional centres. Since 1968, the structure of these services,

grouped together in the Institut Pidagogique National, has tended towards increasing specialization. The Training Directorate (Direction de la

Formation) set up within the Ministry, is responsible for initial training in institutes of technology, and for on-the-job training, mid- career training and lifelong education. The function of the Centre National d’En-

seignement Giniralisi is to promote out-of- school training for adolescents debarred for one reason or another from the system, and for adults and students requiring refresher or remedial training. The Institut Pidagogique National has, ac-

cordingly, restricted its field of action in one direction, being concerned now exclusively with the production of educational aids. But in so doing, it undertook responsibility for the whole range of teaching materials (textbooks, cards, audio-visual aids, programmed instruction, etc.).

EDUCATIONAL REGENERATION AND THE INSTITUTES OF TECHNOLOGY

In addition, new training structures have been set up, notably in the framework of the four- year plan (1970-73), to meet requirements exactly assessed with regard both to quality and quantity. The institutes of technology, with their carefully planned programmes, have inevitably been led to seek a solution to their problems in the use of technical teaching aids. In view of the objectives defined at the time

of setting up these establishments, it was ap-

Trends and cases

parent that one of the first tasks was to devise a new formula for educational action. This operation, which has been in progress since 1971, constitutes an attempt to integrate all the different features of the educational system (curriculum content, instructors, teaching aids, evaluation, school buildings, equipment and materials), and as the experiment is being conducted in a concrete situation, it provides the opportunity for an objective assessment of needs. This, then, is a major contribution to the task

of educational renewal, and it has already been possible to tabulate an initial series of questions concerning, inter alia, ‘assisted’ instruction.

LIMITING FACTORS

Thus, so far as teaching aids are concerned, Algeria has opted, in its concern to furnish its educational system with the equipment needed to maintain and indeed to raise the quality of education, for the use of modern techniques for transmitting the educational message and has endeavoured to integrate them in the work of education, singling out, for the purpose of testing and applying these new techniques, training institutes for instructors, which are destined to become centres of educational renewal. This experiment gave rise to problems to

which more or less satisfactory solutions have been found. One of these problems is inherent in the very nature of the educational system, whose potential for change is considerably limited by its structures, by the architecture of its establishments, and by its own internal organization. For example, existing school premises do not lend themselves to the introduction of audio-visual aids, and there is a marked reluctance to make suitable provisions for them in school budgets; nor are the majority of practising instructors prepared to make use of them.

The second problem concerns the setting up of educational research departments, whose work has got off to a laborious start owing to the

limited number of research workers available; educational research necessitates the with- drawal of key personnel from service in the field where they can ill be spared. The problem here lies in the choice of priorities-a problem that is not always easy to solve. During the initial stages, a palliative was

found in the form of international (bilateral or multilateral) aid, which was frequently re- sorted to. At this level too the experiment has been most

revealing, bringing to light a series of problems affecting international exchange in the field of teaching aids which call for analysis.

Problems affecting the international exchange of teaching aids

NATURE OF THE EXCHANGES

It should be stated at the outset that we are using the term ‘teaching aids’ in an extremely wide sense, taking it to include all the media through which the educational message can be transmitted, from the traditional means (books, documents, pamphlets, audio-visual aids) to the most complex apparatus which can be used in general, technical and vocational education. Technical aids, in an educational context, are

an integral element of a complex whole characterized by three essential features: (a) educational programmes and structures; (b) users; (c) the technical and economic characteristics of the educational instrument. Their use is closely dependent both on the positive aspects of this complex whole and on the constraints which it entails. So far as teaching aids and auxiliary staff are

concerned, the flow of international exchange occurs from the developed countries to the developing countries. What is exchanged generally takes the form of equipment or technicians.

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Trends and cases

T w o remarks are called for in this connexion: (a) equipment is devised and produced by the industrialized country; it is designed for the situation in which it is manufactured, and imposes its own solution on the problems to which it is applied; this solution may not always be appropriate to conditions in the importing country; (b) the same is true of the foreign technician unless he happens to be creatively gifted, any apparatus which he devises, or helps to devise, during his mission, being precon- ditioned by the prototypes with which he is familiar, is similarly in danger of being ill adapted to the new field of application. The failures that occur in recipient countries

are in fact inherent in the very nature of the system. The scope and the limits of exchange in the fieid of education depend to a great extent on the beneficiary partner whose task it is to integrate such external contributions and who must be trained for the purpose. H e must be thoroughly familiar with his own national circumstances and requirements, and keep a constant check upon developments in the application of imported equipment and know-how.

SHORTCOMINGS INHERENT IN THE NATURE OF EXCHANGE

If, however, we consider the three factors involved in exchange, namely, the external partner (firm or technician), the user and, finally, the level on which the exchange operates, we are confronted by the following facts. On the part of the external partner, a certain

lack of objectivity prevails: this partner is not fully in tune with the area of operation and lacks an adequate objective knowledge of it. As a result, he sometimes tends quite simply to take over from the nationals concerned in carrying out the operation which he is supposed to be promoting. The level of this partner’s scientific andliberal

education is becoming increasingly inadequate. So much so, indeed, that, instead of providing

assistance in tackling the problem, he tends to play the part of an exclusive agent. This is no simple problem: the attempt to incorporate scientific advances effectively in the educational process has so far failed to give wholly satisfactory results, hence the difficulty of making an evaluation. As regards the user, it is primarily in the level

of his development that this partner, struggling as he is to come to terms with problems of self- education and advancement, fails to measure up to requirements. Paradoxically, this brings out all the more clearly the need to call upon external assistance. Moreover, adequate tools for taking stock of

the facts are frequently lacking: problems affecting the instruments of planning, the nature of the socio-cultural integration of the individual himself, hidebound by his own cultural and technical training. . . . Lastly, there is the operational level, the

aspect of this whole problem to which the least time and energy are devoted. In the field of international exchange it is the economic factor which provides the driving force; in order for it to be economic, planning must be centralized; this means developing a prototype on the basis of which industrial production can be embarked on. While operations as a whole are in fact based

on scientific principles, shortcomings are apparent in the specific adjustments and modifications designed to ensure that the apparatus is suited to the particular area in which it is to be used. The process of adjustment in fact raises the problem of operational research, the shortcomings of which, in respect of both instruments and manpower, have already been emphasized. Here again, to solve the difficulty, recourse is had to the imported model, at the risk of its failing to (take’, or having an adverse effect on the recipient environment.

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Trends and cases

For an integrated approach to exchange

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH IN THE FIELD

There is undoubtedly a most interesting comparative study to be made of the experiences of the various international organizations in the field of exchange, taking into account the different parameters used in connexion with these operations. Such a study might give us a clearer idea of the limits within which this type of activity can usefully be conducted. It is, moreover, essential to explore the prob-

lems at operational level where the question of educational research actually arises. Algeria, for its part, is directing its efforts along these lines and has developed a structure and a strategy of international aid in the field of training.

THE OUTLINE PROJECT

The outline project for the study, planning and organization of educational and training activities, for the implementation of which United Nations assistance is requested, opens up a new perspective on the possibility of putting both biiateral and multilateral aid on a sound and profitable basis. The object of this project is in fact to explore

and to set up an educational planning system in Algeria. It has been adopted essentially on account of the important consequences it is likely to bring in its wake. Activities are planned to occur at different

levels: (a) consideration of the general framework to be set up and carrying out of the necessary preliminary studies; (b) devising of machinery to facilitate joint planning and intermediate decision-making as also the carrying out of operations; (c) participation in the preparation of pilot projects. A small, permanent unit of international ex-

perts will be concerned with carrying out the project, and there will be a flexible arrangement

for calling upon the short-term services of consultants and specialists to assist nationals in conducting certain operations (manpower forecasts, standard governing school zoning and construction, simulation models of educational development, and so forth). Clearly, in this approach to aid, responsibility for the actual direction of all operations lies in the hands of nationals, and there can be no question of replacing them. Training provided through this new type of operation is supplemented by the awarding of short- and long-term fellowships and by the organization of study tours for officials occupying key positions in relation to the objective pursued. It is equally clear that this approach requires not only that the country requesting aid be fully cognizant of its problems but above all that it take these problems in hand; in other words, how far aid yields tangible results is governed by the degree of the country’s commitment and the clarity of its objectives.

MUTUAL COMMITMENT OF PARTNERS TO THE EXCHANGE

For this purpose, it is equally vital to establish some sort of (moral code’ governing international exchange, in which the partners commit themselves to clearly deiined contracts. It is particularly important to transcend the problem of the interplay of influences, a factor which is the very antithesis of the scientific approach. Aid should be directed-and this must be one

of its primary goals-towards making scientific information available to everyone, by bringing all the media into play on a massive scale in an effort to disseminate it to the general public. This information is made available at a variety of organizational levels by the international organizations; special efforts should be made to provide general synopses of questions which are approached from different angles by these organizations (e.g. the problem of vocational training as seen by Unesco, ILO, etc.). The second factor governing the effectiveness

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Trends and cases

of exchange, whatever its nature, concerns the training of manpower. It is essential to bring into being at the national level a qualified technical and scientific labour force. The problem of national counterparts is patently the weak point in the assistance process, inasmuch as experts assigned to beneficiary countries are not involved in the working out of solutions but only in their implementation. The expert leaves behind him at best, a situation in which his work can be carried on, owing to his counterparts having been properly ‘drilled’; but this is a long way from genuine involvement. A pre- ferable formula would be to employ scientific advisers who would work alongside national operatives and help them to acquire a sound theoretical grasp of problems, mastery of medium and environment, and a clear understanding of the objectives of the educational system and of how its development should be planned. In any event, the external contribution must be strictly limited to the provision of technical assistance and imply no power of decision- making with regard to its integration and use. In this perspective, it is clear that personnel

working in aid programmes must be more highly qualified and recruited for short periods only.

THE PROBLEM OF COSTS

This analysis will deal lastly with the problem of costs, which must be considered in terms of national resources. These must be sufficient to ensure the continuity of the operations embarked on, with all the material and financial repercussions they entail: in other words, planners must of necessity extrapolate the medium- and long-term consequences of the operations planned. The few considerations outlined above were

prompted by experiments carried out in the context of educational research in Algeria. Their purpose is to highlight the problems resulting from the uncertainty as to what ‘exchange’

really means. Is the aim to initiate exchange between countries with a surplus output of educational aids and countries suffering from shortages in this field? Certain programmes tend to suggest that this is indeed one of the objectives pursued. The temptation is great simply to dispatch

consignments of equipment and materials, without making any attempt to adapt them to the area, or the area to them. All such solutions, the essence of which is to transfer prototypes or to transplant technologies, give rise to phenomena of distortion or maladjustment. In the extreme case, a sort of proletarianization of communication occurs in the developing countries, in the sense that they acquire technical apparatus that is already quite obsolete in the producing country, with the inevitable result that their journey to the stage of full development is indefinitely prolonged. Consequently, it is important to move beyond

the conception of aid as a business or philan- thropic activity and to eliminate as counter- productive any solution to the problem of exchange that leads to the mechanical repro- duction of apparatus doomed to obsolescence. The maintenance of a state of subjection at the conceptual and creative stage of operations indefinitely postpones the solution of development problems, in education as in other fields. Thus, the dialectics of exchange are essentially

governed by men’s actions. It is essential to promote the training and advancement of men and women and to furnish proof that the developing countries are capable of providing themselves with the teaching and learning aids best suited to their purposes. It is for this reason that exchange must be

conducted at the conceptual and research level, which presupposes co-operation among several parties on a footing of equality. Teamwork and scientific methods are essential. Hence it is important to eschew the purely bilateral dialogue, even in the case of international organizations, whose diversity and specialized character inevi-

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tably give rise to a certain compartmentalization. In this way it will be possible to move beyond the particular to the universal, and to satisfy one of the aspirations expressed at the Algiers symposium on audio-visual aids: ‘It is important to stress the necessity of international co- operation, the importance of association between men of good will who, transcending their particular national concerns, transcending frontiers,

believe that the renewal of education, calling into play twentieth-century techniques, is a factor of rapid political, economic and social development, in short, a force for social justice, peace and happiness.’

A. ABDELOUAHAB Institut Pidagogique National, Algiers

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Notes and reviews

A significant event: the inauguration of the European Centre for Higher Education at Bucharest

On 21 September 1972, in Bucharest (Rumania), the European Centre for Higher Education was inaugurated. RenC Maheu, Director-General of Unesco, was

present there and delivered a speech in which he said: ‘In 1967 the Ministers of Education of the Eu-

ropean Member States of Unesco, meeting for the first time in Vienna under the Organization’s auspices, expressed the hope that it would take the necessary steps to facilitate the pooling of experience among university people and to develop co-operation among the European countries in the field of higher education. The Unesco General Conference approved my proposal at its sixteenth session (I970), to set up a regional body to carry out studies and documentation work, which would be responsible for strengthening the bonds between higher education establishments and increasing freedom of movement among university people in Europe. ‘As a centre for higher education, it will contribute

as far as its means allow to the development and improvement of such education, which has, in many respects, an essential part to play. As a European centre, its work will fit into the context of co- operation-limited in geographical extent but of great political significance-which we hope to see developing more and more among the States of Europe.. . . ‘The centre will be responsible for: collecting

documentation on the problems of post-secondary education in Europe and co-ordinating the work of national and multi-national documentation centres in this field; carrying out studies on certain essential aspects of the changes that have come about in European post-secondary education establishments and systems and publicizing the results of such studies; and promoting the free movement of teachers and students in Europe. ‘To promote the reform and improvement of

higher education and facilitate the flow of ideas, it will make use of the latest documentation and communication techniques, taking due account, in order to avoid overlapping, of the work already done or being carried out, on such matters as standardization, by other institutions such as the International Bureau

of Education in Geneva and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. In the case of certain especially complex questions, such as access to higher education or the innovations by which this type of education can be adapted to m o d e m society, the centre will have to serve mainly as a catalyst, prompting the carrying out of studies, rather than conducting them itself; organizing meetings of specialists; and asking appropriate establishments to carry out pilot projects on its behalf. ‘Besides the activities that the centre will be called

on to undertake to stimulate the flow of ideas, it will be responsible for facilitating travel and exchanges for teachers and students. For this purpose, it will serve as a source of documentation and as an inter- mediary for establishments looking for suitable partners, and will assist in the establishment of a system of equivalences between degrees and diplomas. In this respect, it will endeavour to make maximum use of the opportunities afforded by the large number of bilateral agreements concluded between individual States or universities. Indeed, the centre is not intended to act in place of existing institutions, but to help those institutions to develop and enrich their relations with one another.’ On the other hand, H.E. Nicolas Ceausescu,

President of the State Council of the Socialist Repub- lic of Rumania felt that: ‘The setting up of this centre-besides the materi-

alization of the objectives referred to by the Unesco Director-General-will have also an important role in rallying the efforts of the universities and of the m e n of learning in the achievement of security, in the concern for a better world, for seeing to it that Europe should never again witness wars, for it to act towards disarmament, towards the abolition of the military blocs, the removal of restrictions of all kinds which hamper and bar the development of education and science, of co-operation among peoples, the welfare and happiness of men. ‘We attach great significance to this centre and

hope it will really be up to the expectations in relation to education, that it will also be up to the more general expectations linked to the more active participation of the m e n of learning to the attainment of the peoples’ aspirations for co-operation and peace. . . .

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Notes and reviews

Book reviews Planet in Peril: Man and the Biosphere Today, by Raymond F. Dasmann. Paris and London, Unesco and Penguin Books, 1972. $0.30; 4 F; $Can.r.25. (For the United States of America: New York, N.Y., World Publishing, 1972. U.S.$S.gs.)

T h e chief weapons in the battle for men’s minds are words, spoken or written-the latter as books, tracts and encyclopaedias. Planet in Peril has been forged into a tract, for indeed it is definitely not a scientific textbook on ecology and population control, although it conveys a remarkable amount of relevant scientific information in a highly palatable manner-nor is it encyclopaedic in coverage, although its sweep is surprisingly full.

But as a tract-writing that strikes for action by revealing the stark nature of a problem-Planer in Peril falls short of the mark. Its calm, measured prose-perfectly acceptable to scientific textbook writing-makes for smooth reading but lets the beast slip out of sight. The beast, in fact, is never really admitted; we are shown only its tracks in the mud, the feathers and blood of its marauding; but never the beast-human greed, competitiveness, materialism, the insistent right to possess with contemptuous lack of concern for the needs among others or the limits in the total supply. This appears to be a conscious effort by the author to avoid taking a political stance. But in so doing, he neutralizes the very purpose of a tract-to strike for action in behalf of a livable world. Pkanet in Peril presents in excellent prose the

growing precariousness of man in the world in terms of four crucial factors: the runaway growth in population; the lack of control and direction of technology;

misuse of land, such as non-ecological practices in agriculture; and rising levels of pollution. Accent is given to these issues through a large num-

ber of full-page black-and-white photographs distributed throughout the book. The evolution of these issues is traced through human history; anthropo- logical, cultural and technological reasons for their rise as issues are examined. A concluding chapter describes organizational activity by the United Nations to give nations occasion to co-operate in combating these issues. In refusing to identify the beast and to call for an

all-out hunt upon it to capture and enclose it in some fitting manner, this tract is not, in my judgement, a good means by which the average citizen should seek to understand the peril his world is in due to environmental deterioration, and certainly not to fmd out what he might do about it all. I sincerely hope Dasmann, who clearly has a masterful grasp of the technical side ofthis matter of planetary deterioration, can add his voice to those of others who call for man to examine the structures and practices-political in nature and human in cause-which promote this deterioration. Action is apoliticalmatter-andshould and can rest upon sound insight and understanding. If only Planet in Peril could be followed by a forthright statement on ‘Man in Peril’.

ROBERT H. M A Y B U R Y

The Politics of Expertise, by Guy Benveniste. The Glendessary Press Inc., 2512 Grove Street, Berkeley, California 94704, and Croom Helm Ltd, 2-10 St John’s Road, London, S.W.rr, 1972,232 p.

At a moment when planning has lost much of its magic and when the whole concept of planning seems under heavy attack both from the old right and from the new left, Benveniste’s book The Politics of Exper- tise comes very apropos. It tries to explain why so many plans and planners or experts have failed and why some of them nevertheless succeed. The author attemps as well to provide an answer to a problem increasingly considered as the key issue in the new stage of educational planning, namely its link with implementation. ‘The original purpose of this book remains straight-

forward: to understand why and how experts influence public and private policy. In the effort, however, a second purpose emerged: to explain the limits of technocracy and highlight the danger of excessive

496

reliance on accountability and all other forms of rationalization.’

Basically the author’s thesis is simple: the government (the Prince) and the expert (the technocrat, the planner-the pundit) are dependent on each other, and this mutual dependency sharply limits the power of each side. In other words, planning is always intimately linked to the policy formation process. The complexities of this process are the central focus of Benveniste’s book. Or, in different terms still, while Machiavelli ad-

vised the Prince how to behave towards his counsellors, Benveniste recommends to the counsellors how to deal with the Prince. In the first chapters of the book the main and sec-

ondary purposes of planning are analysed. To reduce

Notes and reviews

uncertainty appears to the author as the principal objective of any planner; to legitimize certain actions (often those already decided upon), to serve as operational staff members or to define what is relevant in policy might be and often are their subsidiary functions. The achievement of these objectives takes place within a framework in which the principal actors are not only the Prince and the pundit (the decision- maker and the expert) but also the implementors and the beneficiaries of the plan: it is the interplay between all of these which conditions the outcome of the whole planning process. ‘The major dysfunction of the conventional role definition is that the expert is confused about the relevant political actors. H e does not perceive the difference and relative importance of implementors and beneficiaries, while he pays too much attention to the Prince.’ Another misconception arises from the fact that ‘most models (i.e. plans) do not include the effects of the model itself within the model’. This leads Benveniste to what is possibly the crucial point in ‘the politics of expertise’. ‘Planners and experts are able to have a multiplier

effect on public and private decision-makers when the statements they make about the future are perceived to have a higher probability of proving true. There- fore, the way the experts present their plan or recommendations provides a new source of social power. ‘Two central factors come into play in creating

perceptions of the subjective probability that a plan will be implemented: (I) the apparent rational or scientific basis of the experts’ statement, and (2) the known supportive commitments of a number of im- plementers sufficient to create a belief that the plan will become reality.’ As far as actual plans and types of planning are

concerned, the author defines four varieties (ideal types): trivial, utopian, imperative and intentional. Several other useful and more operational concepts

are introduced in the later parts of the book: the role of coalition formations in planning, the problems of system boundaries (what do w e plan?), the problem of measurement (and of plan distortion by measure- ments); the time dimension in planning, etc. In the course of the analysis of these concepts and of their

practical implications some stereotypes concerning planning break down. Thus for example the idea that planning is necessarily the expression of a progressive or left ideology (in this sense, the author shows, planning is ‘neutral’-it can be, and often is, conser- vative and used by the right as much as by the left), or the notion of ‘comprehensive planning’ as a solution to all weaknesses of partial planning. The Politics of Expertise is not a book on edu-

cational planning but for at least two reasons it is very relevant for those working in this field. In the first place many of the practical examples quoted are drawn from the author’s long experience as educational planner or student of educational planning, particularly in developing countries. Secondly, the book shows clearly that the whole concept of educational planning is but a specific case of a much broader phenomenon, namely the process of policy formation. Consequently, the shortcomings of educational planning and in particular the famous gap between planning and implementation must be studied in this context. T h e book represents only a first step in this direction and contains some weaknesses. Thus, for example, a certain distinction should be made between the terms expert, planner and systems analyst which Benveniste uses interchangeably; also it would have been appropriate to structure the book so as to provide a more operational analytical framework for evaluating the success or failure of certain plans.

Benveniste’s book is a very special mix-with regard to both content and style-of common sense and anecdotal presentations on the one hand and of concepts drawn from organisational theory, systems analysis and policy sciences on the other. As such it will probably be criticized by recognized scholars and experts, but this also might be its most important quality, reflecting the true nature of the planning process which too is a mixture of common sense and scientific conceptualization. T o a large extent politics of expertise means striking an appropriate balance between the two terms of this equation.

LADISLAV CERYCH

S o m e recent Unesco education publications

Guide Pratique d’Alphab6tisation Fonctionnelle

tional literacy which derive from experience acquired UD to now on the basis of different pilot schemes and

170 p., diag., illus., tables, I972 A method of training for development. Presents the

small projects which make up the world-wide experi- literacy programme Of Unesco*

basic principles a n d educational methods of func- $2.50; €0.75; IO F

497

Notes and reviews

It is Time to Begin. T h e H u m a n Role in Development: S o m e Further Reflections for the Seventies By Malcolm S. Adiseshiah, former Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 182 p., tables, 1972

'. . . In this book w e find the idea of lifelong education to which Unesco is particularly attached. . . . By combining various kinds of training, by ensuring that practice in the art of learning is coextensive with life in its many aspects which change at different ages, w e can and must enable the individual to increase his own capabilities and participate more effectively in the collective work of development in his community' (extract from the foreword by Renk Maheu, Director- General of Unesco).

93.50; 21.05; 14 F

N e w Trends in Physics Teaching

Edited for Unesco by E. Nagy, Professor of Physics, Eotvos University, Muzeum krt. 6-8, Budapest VIII, Hungary. (The Teaching of Basic Sciences.) Composite : English/French (twenty-eight articles in English and two in French, with abstracts in French)

This volume is devoted to recent improvements in university introductory physics courses. The articles are grouped under five main headings: I. Course content; 11. Laboratory; 111. Methods and Media; IV. Testing; V. Some new physics courses.

$9; €2.70; 36 F

vol. 11, I970

Planning the Primary School Curriculum in Developing Countries By H. W. R. Hawes. 51 p., I972 (Fundamentals of Educational Planning, 17)

After nearly twenty years of experience in Africa, the author believes that Cdespite the new syllabuses, the new books, the curriculum conferences, the curriculum centres, and the international programmes, relatively little impact is actually being made on the primary school curriculum'. This, Hawes believes, is because the scope of curriculum planning is not wide enough and in this booklet he analyses the main tasks which face those who would attempt to plan changes.

$2; €0.60; 8 F

Rights and Responsibilities of Youth (Studies and Documents in Education, 6) 72 P. I972 This study shows what is, at the present time, in law if not in fact, the status of youth in forty-five countries. Topics covered are: The family; T h e protection of the young; Juvenile deliquency; Education; Work; Public and political life. T h e book is addressed to all who are interested in the problems of contemporary youth and in particular to those who, owing to their positions, are able in various ways to influence the accession of young people to responsibilities in different fields. (The Russian version of this publication has also been issued.)

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The School and Continuing Education 278 p., tables, 1972 Continuing education and the educational system in France. T h e school and continuing education in the United States of America. T h e idea of continuing education in the current reform of educational systems and of teacher training. The current state of continuing education for engineers and in engineering schools in France. T h e studies in this volume attempt to define and to analyse the concept of continuing education and to show its results on educational plans. (In French only; English version scheduled.)

$5; €1.50; 20 F

Les Sciences Sociales dans I' Enseignement Superieur Report prepared by Charles Eisenmann, Professor at the University of Paris, for the International Association of Legal Science. 201 p., rev. and enlarged ed., 1972 (English edition in press)

$5; E1.50; 20 F

Teaching School Physics Edited by John Lewis 416 p., diags., figs., tables, I972 (Co-edition Unesco/Penguin Books) Aims at providing a wide range of ideas and experiences in the teaching of physics for all those working in physics education at various levels. It is addressed not simply to practising secondary teachers, but also to curriculum planners, teacher-educators and school administrators.

$6.50; €1.95; 26 F

498

Notes and reviews

T h e Training of Adult Middle-level Personnel By Armin Gretler., 164 p., tables, 1972 Comparative study, based on an analysis of what is being done and what is planned in different countries

fied.

of the world, grouped according to their level of development. T h e different professional categories of middle-level professionals are defined and classi-

$4; f1.20; 16 F

Film Mass Media and Adult Education. Available in Fnglish, French, Spanish and Arabic versions. Produced for Unesco by Krhtkq Film Praha. Director: Rudolf KrejEi. (16 mm; colour; 26 minutes.)

‘Mass media’-a term which has become a practically universal denomination for a tangible reality of the contemporary world; ‘adult education’, a necessity for every society wishing to provide for its future; ‘mass media and adult education’, a difficult challenge both for ‘educators’ and ‘communicators’. But also new unsuspected vistas for accelerating adult education. Adult education, yes. But rather than ‘educate’

adults, the aim should be to offer the adult the possibility of organizing his own lifelong education based on his own motivations, problems, needs and abilities. T o substitute the art of learning for the art of teaching, that should be the target. It may be an audacious aim, but the technical means at our disposal today permits such audacity. Will tomorrow bring educational and cultural self-service? People everywhere are aware of the development of

the mass communication media. One has only to look

around to become conscious of the even more per- vasive role which mass media play in our everyday life. Radio, television, film, the press and books have become a part of our immediate environment. Cassettes, teledistribution, satellites and other new techniques of information storage, processing and broadcasting will be equally familiar to us before long.

Does this not constitute an enormous potential for the promotion and development of adult education? Media of communication are only media; their role

in adult education will depend primarily on man’s ability (or inability) to use them. W h e n w e define the strategies and the methods of adult education, w e must not forget that an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of our planet are at any moment literally no farther than a hundred metres from a radio, wher- ever they may live.

News from international agencies and foundations

The Ford Foundation American Council on Education, $150, 00, over

eighteen months, for the council’s Overseas Liaison Committee, which co-ordinates application of specialists and other resources in universities in the United States to problems of higher education in Africa through studies, conferences, and counselling.

University of Islamabad (Pakistan), $270,000 over two years, for acquiring a computer and related equipment for the university’s computation centre.

Nigerian Ministry of Education, $IOO,OOO over two years, to help add an education wing to the National Museum in Lagos. The museum’s education programme provides a craft centre; public lectures, films, and cultural performances; and special exhibits for students.

T h e World Bank The World Bank has approved a loan of $12.9 million to assist the expansion and improvement of Iraq’s education system, including the construction and

499

Notes and reviews

equipping of four comprehensive secondary schools, science laboratories, vocational workshops, a new institute of technology, two agricultural institutes, five work training centres and farmer training and dem- onstration facilities in ten schools; equipment for educational television and for Baghdad Institute of Technology; technical assistance for educational planning, curriculum development and staff training and teaching.

The International Development Association (IDA), an affiliate of the World Bank, approved a $9.0 million credit to Cameroon for an education project that will reform and improve the educational system and provide urgently needed trained technicians and skilled workers. The project provides for the construction or rehabilitation and equipping of educational facilities as well as technical assistance for organizing and implementing a training programme.

The World Bank has approved a $23.5 million loan to Greece for a project to improve the quality of education at a variety of levels and types of institutions, to

help modernize the university system and to increase the number of trained engineers, scientists and other specialists. It is intended to help attain several immediate ob-

jectives of the Ministry of Education. These are to upgrade the quality of instruction in primary schools by reforming and consolidating the primary teacher training system, to reorient the university system and to increase the supply of engineers and scientists. T h e project also aims at meeting rapid changes in Greece’s manpower requirements, especially in the crucially important sectors of agriculture, industry, merchant marine and tourism.

The Asian Development Bank recently approved a loan for education to the Fiji Islands. A second loan of $3.7 million to come out of the

resources of special funds has been accorded to the Republic of Korea. It will serve to finance the foreign exchange component of the sum needed to construct four vocational institutes and an experimentation centre. The programme should be terminated in 1974.

Index vol. 11, 1972

NO. I, p. 1-119 NO. 2, p. 121-256 NO. 3, P. 257-379 NO. 4, p. 381-502

Articles

Abdelouahab, A. Educational Aids and International Exchange: the Algerian experiment, 487

Anderson, John. Knowledge and Control: N e w Directions for the Sociology of Education, by M. F. D. Young, 248

Bamberger, Richard. T h e Reader Passport, 214 Beckman, Ronald. Education under a Bubble, 84 Bertelsen, P. Mass Education: Studies in Adult Edu-

cation and Teachinn by Correspondence in Some Developing Countries, by Lars-Olof Edstrom, Renee F. Erdos and Roy Prosser (eds.), 250

Beynon, John. Accommodating the Education Re- volution, 60

Binder, Eughne. Teaching of Environmental Sciences at the University Level, 467

Blaug, Mark. Economics and Educational Planning in Developing Countries, 431

Bouquet, Jacques. National Centre for Educational Research, Madrid, IOI

Brennan, Matthew. J. Environmental Conservation Education in the United States of America, 472

Castro, Josue de. The Policy that Failed, 43 Cerych, Ladislav. The Politics of Expertise, by Guy

Charles, Brother. Letter to the Editor, 255 Coste, Paul. N e w Reformation, by Paul Goodman, 250 Coulon, Marion. Is Education on a Treadmill?, 182 Doraiswami, S., and Gulushin, V. M. Three Ap- proaches to School Environmental Education as Consecutive Stages of its Practical Implemen- tation, 464

Duguet, Pierre. Interdisciplinary Education: Edu- cational and Research Problems in the Universities

Elvin, Lionel. Institutionalizing Educational Re-

Faure, Edgar. Strategies for Innovation, 7 Ferrer Perez, Radl. Innovatory Aspects of Cuban

Finkelstein, Leonard B., and Strick, Lisa W. Learn-

Fitouri, Chadly. An Experiment in Reading Moti-

Foecke, Harold A. Science and Technology Edu-

Benveniste, 496

(OECD), 375

form, 284

Education, 361

ing in the City, 72

vation Techniques, 206

cation for Development, 221

Forselius, Sten. Environmental Education in the

Freire, Paulo. Education: Domestication or Liber-

Furter, Pierre. Adult Education: its Clienteles, 3 14 Galushin, V. M., and Doraiswami, S. Three Ap- proaches to School Environmental Education as Consecutive Stages of its Practical Implemen- tation, 464

Goldstone, Leo. Public Expenditure on Education in the World, 1968, 228 - . Incomplete Primary Schools in Developing Countries, 230 - . Literacy in the World, 353

Gores, Harold B. A Place to Learn, 65 Herman, Josef. The World Year Book of Education

rg7rl72: Higher Education in a Changing World (joint editors: Brian Holmes, David G. Scanlon; associate editor: W. R. Niblett), 373

Herrera, Felipe. T h e Generation Gap and Inter- national Development, 131

Hiaer, Marcel. Education for a Changing World, 298 Jennings, Frank G. Th e Prospect for the ‘Book‘ as an Educational Medium, 198

Kirchberger, A. T h e OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation: an Example of Inter- national Co-operation, 243

Ki-Zerbo, Joseph. Education and Development, 410 Kravetz, N. A Giant Step in Curriculum Devel-

Lazarus, Ruth. Polyvalent Adult-education Centres,

Lourib, Sylvain. Myrdal and the Challenge of World

Maheu, Renb. Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Unesco, 5 - . For a H u m a n Environment, 446 Malo, Javier. T h e Development of Education in the People’s Republic of Albania, 485

Markushevich, A. Living with Books, I93 Marshall, Richard. T h e Mobile Teaching Package in

Africa, 78 Maybury, Robert H. Planet in Peril: M a n and the

Biosphere Today by Raymond F. Dasmann, 496 Mead, Margaret. A N e w Look at the Age of Tech- nology, I23

Messadi, Mahmoud. Education: Present and Fu- ture, 259

School Curricula: the Swedish Example, 477

ation?, I73

opment, 11s

334

Poverty, 370

501


Index

Myshak, Richard. Community Environment Studies Programme, 457

Naraghi, Ehsan. Unesco, Youth and the Regener- ation of Education, 233

Ok6n, Wincenty. Educational Advances and the Well-rounded Man, 274

Oyeoku, Kalu K. Integrating the Book into African Development, 216

Papa-Blanco, F. F. Grounds for the Transition to ‘Open’ Education, 356

Pearson, Lester B. Reconsidering the Place of Edu- cational Media, 28

Piaget, Jean. A Structural Foundation for To- morrow’s Education, 12

Poignant, Raymond. Reflections on the Prospects of the Evolution of the Structure of Education Sys-

Porter, Arthur T. Future Prospects of Education in

Prokofiev, Mikhail A. Prospects for Education in

Rahnema, Majid. From Functional Literacy to Life-

Reimer, Everett. Freeing Educational Resources, 48 Rixhon, Gerard. Letter to the Editor, 256 Rodhe, Birgit. A Two-way Open School, 88 Salazar Bondy, Augusto. O n Educational Reform in

Spaulding, Seth. In the Minds of Men. Unesco 1946

Strick, Lisa W., and Finkelstein, Leonard B. Learn-

Suchodolski, Bogdan. Out-of-school Education, 142 TrCves, E. L’entrde dans la Vie by Georges Lapas-

Versluys, J. D. N. W h y do You Want to Read?,

Vickery, D. J. High-rise Schools, 68 Watson, Curtis B. Unesco Training Programmes,

Wiltshire, H . C. The Open University, 343

tems, 392

Africa, 158

the U.S.S.R., 34

long Education, 321

Peru, 383

to 1971, 247

ing in rhe City, 72

sade, 376

202

Past and Present, 238

Films

The Earth is Round, 116 Open Book, 252 Network for Knowledge, 252 Mass Media and Adult Education, 499

International foundations

An Alternative to Universal Primary Education (Rockefeller FoundatiodFord Foundation Con- ference on Education and Dzvelopment, Bellagio, M a y 1972),295

Unesco

International Book Year, 109 Calendar of some meetings and conferences, 253,378 World Food Programme, 105 Inter-country projects A Unesco Inter-country Project: Educational

Assistance to African Refugees, 369 A Significant Event: the Inauguration of the

European Centre for Higher Education at Bucharest, 495

Publications, 117, 251, 377, 497 Conferences and meetings A Commitment to Regeneration (Conference of

Ministers of Education and Those Responsible for the Promotion of Science and Technology in Relation to Development in Latin Americaand the Caribbean,Venezuela, 6-15 December I97I), 110

The International Conference on Education Takes Stock (thirty-third session of the International Conference on Education, Geneva, 15-23 Sep- tember 1971), IIZ

Unesco and Adult Eucation: from Elsinore (1949) to Tokyo (1972) (Third International Confer- ence on Adult Education, Tokyo, 25 July to 7 August IW), 349

What Kind of M a n do We Wish to Be? (Young Scientists: Population and the Environmental Crisis, Paris, 1g72), 449

N e w s from international agencies and foundations. 254, 378, 499

Miscellaneous

T o the Reader, 3 Population Projections to the Year 2000, 108 Correspondence Courses for In-service Teacher-training at Primary Level in Developing Countries, 377

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In the minds 01 men

1946 to 1971 Contributions by Gian Franco Pompei, Charles Frankel, Lionel Elvin, Victor A. Kovda, Jean d’ormesson, Prem Kirpal, Malcolm S. Adiseshiah, William A. Eteki-Mboumoua, Juan GomCz Millas, Mohi El Din Saber, Atilio Dell’Oro Maini, Hanna Saba, Sarwat Okasha, Alva Myrdal, Red Maheu.

T o celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, Unesco has published a book which traces the Organ- ization’s history over the last quarter of a century and outlines the conclusions which might be drawn from it. The book is divided into three main parts, corresponding to the Organization’s basic activities: International intellectual communication and co-operation; Unesco’s contribution to the economic and social development of its Member States; Unesco’s efforts in the service of human rights and peace. The book opens with a brief account of major events which have marked the life of the Organization and concludes with an interpretation by the Director- General of the intellectual and moral significance of the developments that have taken place in the nature and scope of its activities.

22x 13 cm, 319 p. 1972 $4 S1.20 16 F

Vol. I1 No. 4 Winter 1972

A iqu Salazar On educational reform in Peru

&iLw/JlLd Poignant 130idy

Reflections on the prospects of the evolution of the structure of education systems Education and developmciit

Viewpoints and controversies Economics and educational planning in developilig countries Should we abolish the schooling of children?

Elements for a dossier: Education and environhyeni For a human environment What kind of man do we wish to be? (Report of round-table meeting of young scientists, Uncsco, May 1972)

Community environment studies programme Three approachcs to school environmental education as consecutive stages

Teaching of environmental sciences at the univrrsi ty level Environmental conservation education in the United States of 4merica EL\ ironmental education in the school curricula: the Swedish example

Trends and cases

(Md& BluL4g ft~ic; Bta Gznieno

K& Maheir

R~harrl iW$hak 1’ A 4 Gczbtshin

Dorais7fiarni of its practical implementation

j’- Rrmnrm

Notes and reviews