Some Heretical Views on Educational Planning

Abstract

This paper assesses the conception, professional preparation, and execution of the International Conference on Educational Planning held at Unesco House in Paris, August 1968. It contends, first, that the conception of educational planning is so broad that it can lead to no coherent body of concepts nor to any definite, "professional" line of training. Exhortations to combine educational with general planning are either illogical or misleadingly utopian. The preparatory document of the conference did not include a representative sample of the operations needed to run an educational system. A "managerial" and even authoritarian tone pervades the discussion. The implications for estimating needs for specialists in the field are not grasped and do not rest on existing programs for training subspecialties. The weaknesses of manpower planning are not faced, and the level of professional competence of applicant-planners is naively overestimated. Most important, the vast body of solid material available to the Unesco secretariat and the staff of IIEP was not effectively used, and academic competence in the field was wholly ignored. If there be a future for the specialty of educational planning, that future was measurably compromised by a poorly prepared conference.