Education and development

Abstract

persons whose formal education began from fifteen to fifty years earlier. They rely upon expensive capital equipment which often becomes outmoded before it is outlived. Inherent in these systems is the time-gap which elapses between a child's entry and leaving which, in itself, causes a minimum six- to ten-year pause before the need for and the consequences of new changes can be assessed. But not all rigidity is due to these restraints. There are many others that can be overcome once the need to remove them has been perceived. The organization and movement of the labour force in the educational system, the content of the curricula, the methods used, and most of all the attitudes adopted towards change, are all subject to alteration. During a period of gradual social change, these frictions in the educational system are less apparent. A child from a peasant environment, where traditional practice and social convention are well-established, will not be greatly disturbed, socially or psychologically, on returning to that environment after a few years spent in school acquiring, or failing to acquire, out-of-date and irrelevant information.1 The slowness of change in society, and the clearly-defined limits of his society, combine to help him in his adjustment to the status quo. There are today however, few regions in which social change is gradual. In both the developing and the developed parts of the world change outpaces the adjustments being made: the failures of the educational system are in evidence in the unsatisfied demands for skilled workers and in the growth of frustrations amongst people who have expectations of better educational, and therefore social opportunities. Young people are reacting in various anti-social ways to a situation in which they find themselves ill-equipped to cope with the needs and pressures of their environment. Alterations in the educational system to meet social demands are all the more important when societies are moving out of a period of stability and certainty about the future, into a situation where innovation and uncertainty are part of their development. The connection between the 1 An interesting investigation into the effects of social change on a peasant community is reported in J. Gay and M. Cole, The New Mathematics and an Old Culture