The Expansion of Mass Education in Botswana: Local and World Society Perspectives

Abstract

Since the end of the Second World War, the growth of education is notable for several reasons. First, the institutions of mass education have spread to virtually all countries despite vast differences in political, economic, social, and cultural organization. Second, rates of enrollment around the world are high and represent enormous financial investments by many impoverished states and economies.' And, third, the rapidity of educational expansion across states was unanticipated, its speed catching by surprise both theorists and practitioners alike. Functional theories of the right or the left that stress national factors have conspicuously failed, since educational expansion has spanned state boundaries despite great variations in productive capacity and social mobilization. The functionalist view has generally been replaced by conjuncturalist or historicist arguments that local combinations and conflicts of interest and status groups produced expansion.2 However, historicism, with a focus on local factors, does not explain well a social change that is worldwide.