A time to live...
USSR Hands that learn
In recent years, the need to strengthen the links between education and the world of work has become a
major concern of educators. One objective is to enable students to move freely into professional activity
and thus to contribute to their countries' economic development. An advantage of a closer liaison is that
it arouses interest in manual work which too often has little appeal for young people. Above, a school
workshop in the Soviet Union where more than 2,000 technical centres have been established, each serving
a number of local schools.
The
UnescoCourierA window open on the world
MAY 1983 36th YEAR
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A selection in Braille is published quarterlyin English, French, Spanish and Korean
Published monthly by UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization
Editorial, Sales and Distribution Offices
Unesco, Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris
Subscription rates
1 year: 58 French Francs
Binder for a year's issues: 46 FF
Editor-in-chief: Edouard Glissant
ISSN 0041 - 5278No. 5 - 1983 - OPI 83-1 - 398 A
page
4 EDUCATION FOR ALL
by Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow
EDUCATION IN A CHANGING WORLD
by Sema Tanguiane
STEMMING THE TIDE OF ILLITERACY
by Le Thành Khôl
13 MILESTONES TO THE LEARNING SOCIETY
by Torsten Husén
20 ROBINSON CRUSOE GOES TO SCHOOL
Six pioneers of modern education
by Hermann Rohrs
24 THE EDUCATION GAP
A hard look at the plight of the world's rural areas
by Hamidou Lailaba Maiga
31 THE MEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM
by Michel Souchon
34 IN BRIEF
2 A TIME TO LIVE...
USSR: Hands that learn
riDUCATION is one of Unesco's
#y major concerns. For reasonsJL^J of space, a single issue of theUnesco Courier would not have been suf¬
ficient to approach this vast subject, and
consequently the Editors have decided to
devote two issues, appearing at a two-
month interval, to an examination of
some of the educational problems facing
the modern world.
The present issuefocuses on the current
outlook for education. In introductory
texts, Mr. Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, the
Director-General of Unesco, and Mr.
Sema Tanguiane, Assistant Director-
General for Education, chart some of the
major trends which will be decisive for
education in the coming years. The
historical origins and evolution of these
developments are retraced by Torsten
Husén, while Hermann Rohrs evokes the
thought and action ofsome of the educa¬
tional thinkers who have shaped modern
approaches to educational questions.
In spite ofall the efforts that have been
mobilized over the years, illiteracy re¬
mains one of the most serious social pro¬
blems of our time, and, for the interna¬
tional community, a major challenge
which Unesco is committed to tackle. In
this issue articles on literacy teaching by
Le Thanh Khôi and on education in rural
areas by Hamidou Lailaba Maiga, assess
what has been achieved so far in this
sphere and analyse the conditions for
future progress. Lastly, Michel Souchon
shows how informatics and the mass
media, if wisely used, can help educators
at every level and in every country to at¬
tain the ambitious and legitimate objec¬
tives which are theirs.
Our A ugust issue will be devoted to cer¬
tain strategic aspects of educational
policy. Articles will examine promising
approaches to problems in such fields as
lifelong education, science teaching,
education provided in the Qur'anic
schools, the education of women, the
teaching of aesthetics, peace education,
and the education of the handicapped.
We hope that ideas and information
presented in these two issues of the
Unesco Courier will signpost for our
readers some of the ways in which educa¬
tion can beset on a more equitablefooting
and foster a wider measure of under¬
standing in the world today.
Cover : A primary school at Simla, northern
India
Photo © Claude Sauvageot, Paris
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DUCATION fulfils the twin functions of social
reproduction and innovation. It helps to
ensure the transmission of the sum of know¬
ledge, experience and values of each society while
at the same time it inculcates the individual and col¬
lective aptitudes necessary to social progress. Thus
its purpose is to encourage social renewal while
respecting the unique features of each society.
Nowadays education must also face up to two
fundamental challenges posed by the realities of our
time: to match itself to the world-wide scope of the
increasingly complex problems of today, and to
achieve the democratization necessary to enable it
better to respond to the needs and aspirations of
people of all ages.
The future of each community is henceforth be¬
ing shaped in a planetary context. Reciprocal in¬
fluences are becoming ever more numerous, accen¬
tuating the interdependence of our destinies, the
mutual interpénétration of our cultures and the
of our problems. At themultidimensional nature
same time there is a universal need to adapt to pro¬
gress in the sciences and i
and their application
variety of activities. Education must become more
and more in tune with these decisive aspects of
contemporary reality.
Furthermore, education has to respond to one of
the major developments of our time: the universal
recognition of the equal worth of all individuals,
whatever their social situation or their views, and
therefore of their absolute right
benefits of education
we speak of education for
primarily, therefore, offering each
Hence the prime
universalization of primary
:cess of elong education offering adults the
possibility of completing their studies, coupled with
vocational retraining throughout the different
stages of their lives, thus opening up to them an op¬
portunity of constant self-enrichment in every field
of knowledge and skill, particularly in the case of
the elderly, the handicapped and the most disad¬
vantaged workers.
In addition, real equality must be afforded to girls
and women; there must be an extension of educa¬
tional facilities for the inhabitants of rural areas,
who are far less well provided for than city-
dwellers. In fact, the majority of the world's 824
million illiterate adults and the 121 million children
of school age who do not attend school live in the
rural areas.
Finally, education for all means
succeed offered to all, not only within the educa-
n modern technologies
an increasingly wide
to e
When all, we
individual
are
the
possibility of access to education
importance of the^IPeducation and the fight against illiteracy.
inThe enrolment of children and adolescents
school must necessarily be accompanied by a pro-
tional system itself, but also in society, in other
words, a real possibility of professional and
advancement.
Unesco takes particular pride in the fact that, in
conformity with its Constitution which enjoins the
Organization "to advance the ideal of equality of
educational opportunity", it has opened up many of
the paths along which education has begun to travel
in the service of all mankind. The democratization of
education, which is the common denominator of
Unesco's activities in the educational field, now has
a consistent programme devoted to it within the
framework of the Organization's Second Medium-
Term Plan for the period 1984-1989.
It is to be hoped that this issue of the Unesco
Courier will give readers throughout the world a
broad overview of the efforts Unesco is making in
this field and contribute to the strengthening of the
ideal of justice, peace and individual and collective
progress, which is the aim and finality of all
ecf
AMADOU-MAHTAR M'BOW
Director-General of Unesco
i
iäEEEää^ä0&g&
The development of primary education is a prerequisite for the permanent eradication of illiteracy, yet, today, 121 million children
of primary school age do not attend school. This is why Unesco is making the development and renewal of primary education one
of its main priorities over the next ten years. Above, pupils at a mission station school in Queensland, Australia.
Education in
a changing world
THE conception, aims and orien¬
tations of education are deter¬
mined by society, but education
itself greatly influences the evolution of
society, and the task of preparing it to
meet the demands of the coming decades
should be undertaken now.
With all due prudence, and without
seeking to impose norms, any considera-
SEMA TANGUIANE is Unesco's Assistant
Director-General for Education. He was a
director of research at the Academy of
Sciences of the USSR beforejoining Unesco in
1975.
by Sema Tanguiane
tion of the future development of educa¬
tion should take account of observed
trends and problems and try to identifythe factors that may influence its
evolution.
Examination shows that in recent
decades there has been a considerable
growth in the numbers of pupils and
teachers and that this growth has been
particularly rapid at the secondary and
higher levels. It also reveals, however,
that some 121 million children of
primary school age do not attend school
and that many countries have failed to
achieve the target of primary schooling
for all by 1980 which was set in the early
1960s by the different regional in¬
tergovernmental conferences on
education.
This analysis highlights the vast and
persistent problem of illiteracy. From
700 million adult illiterates in 1950 to 758
million in 1970 and 824 million in 1980,
the number of illiterates is likely to ex¬
ceed 900 million before the end of the
century if present trends continue. This
problem, one of the most dramatic facing
both educationists and governmental
policy makers, is also a problem that con¬
cerns the entire world community.
Because of its importance and the need to
solve it before the end of the century it
has engaged the attention of all regional
conferences of ministers of education
organized by Unesco as well as of the 2 1 st
session of the Unesco General Con¬
ference. The General Conference ap¬
proved a strategy whose aim is to solve
this problem by trying to achieve a higher
rate of school enrolment, so as to attack
the problem at its source, and by adult
literacy teaching.
The democratization of education,
which derives from the concept of the
right to education as being one of the
basic human rights, is essential to all
social progress as well as to the develop¬
ment of the individual. It is not only a
matter of eliminating quantitative
disparities and of correcting qualitative
inequalities, but also of providing
everyone with an education that fulfils its
essential function by giving to all a com¬
mon body of knowledge, skills and
know-how that meets the needs of both
individuals and of different social
groups.
This imperative of meeting different
aspirations and needs is linked to another
problem, that of the relevance and ade¬
quacy of education to the various roles
and functions it is called upon to fulfil. It
should contribute to the full, harmonious
development of the personality, to the
preparation of individuals for the
responsibilities they will assume in socie¬
ty and for their full and active participa¬
tion in economic, social, cultural and
civic life. It should also take account of
increasingly rapid social changes and
contribute effectively to progress.
The development of education does
not take place in Isolation. It is subject tothe often decisive influence of phen¬
omena, processes and factors which
distinguish societies, their evolution and
the changes which occur in them. These
include demographic trends, the
economy, science and technology, the en¬
vironment, social, cultural and political
factors, and international relations.
The acceleration of scientific and
technical progress, and the growing
aspiration of all social categories to ac¬
tive participation in economic, cultural
and political life, create an imperative de¬
mand for the democratization of educa¬
tion. It is essential to guarantee to
everyone the full exercise of his or her
right to education, and thus to enable
each individual to participate in the
changes which are taking place in an in¬
creasingly complex society and to ensure
the exploitation for society's benefit of
the reserves of human intelligence, talent
and energy.
Consequently, increased pressure can
be expected in many countries for real
democratization and equality of chances
in regard to education, especially for
workers and underprivileged classes,
both in town and country. In this
perspective, it can be presumed that, in
places where mass illiteracy exists, grow¬
ing stress will be placed on efforts to
eliminate it by expanding children's
school attendance and intensifying adult
literacy programmes.
Socio-economic changes and the speed
of technological progress call for greater
professional and social mobility. This de¬
mand is evident not only in developed
countries; it is also felt in developing
countries. It will undoubtedly influence
not only education policies and the fixing
of the initial level of pre-employment in¬
struction, but also the nature of educa¬
tion. Education will have to be
polyvalent and in many cases its content
will have to be re-defined in depth. Here
the link between education and the work¬
ing world and particularly the introduc¬
tion of productive work into the educa¬
tional process as an element of our con¬
temporary general culture and an essen¬
tial factor in preparing for active life and
mobility, acquire their full significance.
Likewise, it can be expected that this
trend will demand the introduction of
permanent education on an ever greater
scale.
The growing role of science and
technology in the development of
societies is another factor which will cer¬
tainly influence education policies and
the evolution of educational systems at
all levels. These systems will very prob¬
ably be obliged to give increasing priority
to the training of higher and intermediate
level personnel and also to introducing
the masses, via general education, to
science and technology. It will be
necessary to foster the receptivity needed
for an understanding of the role and ap¬
plication of science and technology, in
order to prepare people to live and act in
societies in which the most advanced
technologies are entering more and more
into the most varied aspects of profes¬
sional and daily life, and indeed to make
them an organic part of the national
culture of every people.
The tendency to assign more impor¬
tance in development policies to cultural
problems will probably become much
more marked than in previous decades in
the educational policies of many coun¬
tries. At the same time, the intensifica¬
tion and diversification of cultural action
on the one hand, and the development of
extra-scholastic forms of education both
One of Unesco's main tasks for the period 1 984 to
1 989 is "to help pave the way for the widest par¬
ticipation by individuals and groups in the life of
the societies to which they belong and in that of
the world community". The persistence of il¬
literacy is a major obstacle to such participation
and its elimination is one of Unesco's main objec¬
tives. Right, the nation-wide literacy campaign
launched in Nicaragua in 1980 has reduced the
country's illiteracy rate from 50 to 1 3 per cent (see
the Unesco Courier, June 1980).
In recent years the educational scene has been marked by a constant search for
new methods, ranging from the redefinition of syllabuses to structural reform and
the establishment of experimental schools, like the one shown above in the USA.
All these initiatives are aimed at ensuring the full development of the individual andat making possible his or her smooth integration into society.
Who needs paper when there is vellum to write on? For those who thirst for
knowledge, any moment of the day, any surface on which to write, even one as
unusual as that used by the Vietnamese boy in our photo below, affords an oppor¬
tunity to learn. The aim of the democratization of education, which is a necessary
consequence of the concept that the right to education is one of the basic human
rights, must be to ensure "equal opportunities for all" by offering the "best oppor¬
tunities to each".
Photo © Claude Sauvageon Pans
for children and adults, on the other,
show that educational action and action
in the cultural field are drawing closer
together. It may be supposed that this
trend will become more marked and that
it will call for ever closer co-ordination of
educational and cultural policies, with
obvious consequences for the planning
and organization of educational systems
that integrate school education and
education outside the classroom within a
coherent global framework.
Consideration of the future develop¬
ment of education cannot fail to take into
account the effects that the spectacular
development of the communications
media and their growing importance in
society have for education. Contrary to
what some people may think, this will not
reduce the role of education. Indeed, it
may conceivably become more impor¬
tant. At any rate, it is evident that educa¬
tional systems will have to take account
of the phenomenon to an ever greater
degree, and they will have to be clearly
defined in the light of this development,
which will undoubtedly continue. How
can education enhance the value of the
countless messages and items of informa¬
tion dispensed by the media, how can itutilize and control them, making them
truly educational? Will this problem be
solved in the coming decades?
Finally, it is obvious that international
relations provide a framework that tendsto favour the development of education.
They influence not only the
psychological climate in which education
is dispensed, but the resources available
finance it. These will vary considerably
depending on whether the world moves
towards disarmament or towards the
arms race. At the same time, it is clear
that a function of education is to pro¬
mote an improvement in relations bet¬
ween peoples, thus contributing to the
establishment of a spirit of international
understanding and peace, and thereby to
the advent of a new international
economic order based upon justice and
solidarity.
Indeed, the ever more intricate inter¬
connexions between education and other
elements of social life make it increasing¬
ly difficult to draw a distinction between
the internal and external problems of any
educational system. One of the
challenges of the future will be to
preserve the specificity of education as a
process and domain in its own right
while, at the same time, placing it in¬
creasingly at the service of society.
Moreover, it is only by remaining
faithful to its specificity that it can make
its full contribution to society.
The democratization of education as
well as its role in the service of the na¬
tional and international communities
both demand and justify the mobiliza¬
tion of all available financial, material
and human resources and their optimal
utilization. Clearly there is room for im¬
provement in the distribution of
resources, in a reduction of unit costs and
in recourse to new sources of financing.
But the fact remains that education is
costly and, as far as unit costs are con¬
cerned it is impossible to go below a cer¬
tain threshold without impairing the
quality of education.
The fact is that the democratization of
education cannot be conceived solely in
terms of quantitative expansion, even if
this is more than ever necessary. In many
cases, a rapid increase in the number of
pupils has been followed by a decline in
the quality of education. More than
anything else, this would impair the ef¬
fective equality in chances of success
which is a condition for genuine
democratization and which demands a
form of education that can contribute ef¬
fectively to the full development of
everyone, compensating where necessary
for the physical, social or cultural han¬
dicaps from which certain underprivileg¬
ed individuals or groups suffer. Now cer¬
tain experiments prove that it is possible
at the same time to generalize education
and to improve its quality. It is no doubt
along these lines that solutions should be
sought, no matter how the economic
situation evolves and no matter what the
size of the financial resources that
governments allocate to education.
The link between the permanent tasks
of education and its new responsibilities
should also be determined in the context
of foreseeable developments. It is univer¬
sally recognized that, in addition to its
permanent tasks, education should
prepare young people not only to live in
a changing society but to lead it, and
should help adults to come to terms with
it. It is also unanimously agreed that,
although education cannot by itself or in
a decisive degree resolve the major prob¬
lems of the contemporary world, it can
8
and should contribute to this goal. All
agree too that education can and should
contribute to the maintenance and
strengthening of peace in a world which
lives under the permanent threat of a
nuclear catastrophe. All rightly believe
that education is called upon to make an
important contribution to development,
to reducing intolerable disparities bet¬
ween countries, to establishing an inter¬
national order based on greater justice
and on respect for the equal rights of
peoples, as well as to protecting the en¬
vironment which is humanity's common
heritage.
Because it has failed to change as
quickly as its social and technological en¬
vironment, education sometimes seems
to be lacking in realism, and this may give
rise to scepticism and disaffection
amongst young people. To ensure the
necessary coherence and continuity bet¬
ween education and society, many prob¬
lems have still to be solved in order to
achieve better co-ordination between the
roles of the different educational agents:
the school, the family, the work environ¬
ment, the various extra-scholastic
organisms which propagate messages,
knowledge or information or which pro¬
vide training in skills.
One of the most striking technological
advances is the means which radio and
television, electronics and micro-
informatics make available to education.
But the development of what is
sometimes called "parallel education"
which dispenses information of very une¬
qual value, in which the ephemeral and
the fortuitous often take precedence over
what is essential and permanent, also
raises many questions which point to
lines of investigation. One of them is
related to the measures to be taken in
order to ensure that education prepares
the child, the adolescent or the adult to
select, interpret and arrange these items
of information in order to transform
them into knowledge. The other one, less
frequently mentioned, is the effect which
the use of certain new technologies in
education has on the development of the
personality.
These new problems will serve to
underline the current evolution of the
teacher's role. The importance and com¬
plexity of their initial and further train¬
ing, which is universally considered to be
an essential factor in educational pro¬
gress, will be increased. In this connex¬
ion, it is also well to remember that the
future educationists who are now being
trained will be teaching children who will
not embark upon adult life until the next
century.
In any reflection of an international
character, it is important to deal with
problems differently according to the
country or group of countries. Never¬
theless, it seems desirable to bear in mind
that there is a certain continuity in the
concerns of the international communi¬
ty. This is an added reason for exploring
the possibilities of international co¬
operation with a view to furthering the
development of education and seeking
solutions to foreseeable common
problems.Sema Tanguiane
"An illiterate is like a blind man for
whom failure and adversity lie
everywhere in wait" reads the cap¬
tion to this 1920 poster from the
Soviet Union (bottom right). With the
promulgation in 1919 of Lenin's
decree making it a duty for everyone
between the ages of 8 and 50, as part
of the revolutionary process, to learn
to read and write and the launching of
the "Down with Illiteracy" campaign
in 1923, the Soviet Union was
transformed into a gigantic school. Il¬
literacy dropped dramatically from 75
per cent in 1917 to 43 per cent in
1 926, and to 1 1 per cent in 1 939. The
Soviet experience influenced to some
extent every subsequent literacy
campaign. The notion of individual
fulfilment through the active par¬
ticipation in society that literacy
makes possible comes across clearly
in the poster from Ecuador (top right)
whose message reads: "to become
literate is to discover our world". For
the Brazilian educator Paulo Freiré,
men and women, whether literate or
not, are creators of culture. For him
learning to read and write is a political
act and constitutes a step towards full
participation in the life of the com¬
munity. Freire's method of adult
education involves the creation of
"Circles of Culture" whose members,
aided by a series of ten pictures (one
of which is reproduced far right), are
encouraged to analyse the realities of
their lives, using carefully selected
"keywords" as the point of departure
for discussion, a process he calls
"conscientization". Once the par¬
ticipants have gained confidence and
pride in their culture they are strongly
motivated to learn to read and write.
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Stemming
the tide of
illiteracy
by Le Thành Khôi
THE number of illiterate persons throughout the world isincreasing. From 700 million in 1950, the ranks of the
illiterate rose to 758 million in 1970 and reached 824million in 1980. If the present trend continues, there will be 884million in 1980, excluding China, the People's Republic ofKorea, and Viet Nam.
Paradoxically, however, the rate of illiteracy is decreasing. In1950, 44 per cent of the world's adult population over the age offifteen were illiterate. By 1970 the figure had dropped to 32.4 percent, and in 1980 it stood at 28.9 per cent.
Illiteracy affects women more than men (34.7 per cent as op¬
posed to 23 per cent in 1980), and rural communities more thanurban centres (the former are on average three times harder hit).Even industrialized countries are discovering, or rediscovering,the problem, not only among their immigrant worker popula¬tions but within certain social strata which, because they readand write infrequently, are tending to regress into illiteracy. j>
LE THANH KI10I, of Viet Nam, is a professor at the Sorbonne
(University ofPans V). He was a consultant to the International Com¬
mission on the Development of Education (1971) and rapporteur for
the expert group on the evaluation of the Experimental World Literacy
Programme (1975). He has carried out missions to 32 countries and is
the author of many published works including L'Industrie de
l'Enseignement (1967), L'Enseignement en Afrique Tropicale, (1971),
L'Education en Milieu Rural (1974), Jeunesse Exploitée, Jeunesse
Perdue? (1978) and L'Education Comparée (1981).
Yet development cannot be achieved unless workers reach a
certain level of education. Some observers have claimed that
literacy is not indispensable to growth. England and France, they
point out, began to industrialize in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries with illiterate populations.
This theory does not exactly correspond to the facts. For one
thing, the percentage of illiterates in both those countries did not
exceed 60 per cent. Furthermore, technology then was far less
complicated than it is now, and industrialization took place over
decades. If the historical record does not permit the conclusion
that schooling led to industrialization, it at least shows that there
is a parallel between economic growth and the decline of il¬
literacy. No country has ever attained the former without causing
the latter to diminish.
In the twentieth century the problem has been defined in new
terms, for it now has a political as well as an economic dimen¬
sion. Teaching literacy to adults has been theorized and closely
linked to social change.
An initial concept emerged in the wake of the Russian Revolu¬
tion of October 1917 and was to have world-wide repercussions.
The struggle against illiteracy became an integral part of the
revolution at every level: political, social, economic and cultural.
To bring literacy to the masses was to awaken their political con¬
sciousness and mobilize them in defence of the new régime.
Adult literacy was seen to be even more important than the
education of children, for adults were at once citizens, soldiers,
producers and parents. As early as December 1919 Lenin pro¬
mulgated a decree making it a duty for everyone between the ages
of eight and fifty to learn to read and write either in his native
tongue or in Russian, depending on the choice of the individual.
In 1923 a voluntary organization known as "Down with Il¬
literacy" was created and launched a vast campaign to raise the
necessary funds and to mobilize teachers, students, secondary
school pupils and clerical workers. The country was transformed
into a gigantic school. Gradually literacy came to be associated
with the teaching of basic industrial and agricultural technology.
Illiteracy dropped from 75 per cent in 1917 to 43 per cent in 1926,
and 11 per cent in 1939. Since 1932 all the nationalities in the
Soviet Union have possessed a written language, and can do their
studies in their native tongues.
All subsequent socialist revolutions have drawn inspiration
from this feat. In Viet Nam, immediately after the revolution of
August 1945, Ho Chi Minh called on the population to perform
three basic tasks: to conquer famine, foreign aggression, and ig¬
norance. The three were interdependent: as long as a nation is
underdeveloped and uneducated it is at the mercy of imperialism,
while conversely imperialism perpetuates underdevelopment and
lack of education. A country cannot achieve its economic and
social revolution without promoting a cultural revolution. Na¬
tional and social revolution is the driving force behind the
development of education which, in turn, bolsters the revolution
because education increases the political awareness of a people
and fosters its active participation in the revolutionary process.
It was from political and military directives that the peasants
learned to read. When the agrarian reform was launched in 1953,
literacy teaching became a part of the class struggle in the coun¬
tryside. It aimed to make the peasants understand how the social
and economic structure was the root cause of their deprivation.
It also showed the advantages they would reap from the over¬
throw of their landlords. Illiteracy was wiped out in the plains of
North Viet Nam in 1958, and three years later in the mountain
areas inhabited by minorities most of whom owe their ability to
read and write to the revolution.
The literacy campaign in Cuba in 1960 was also conceived as
a vast revolutionary movement. An army of young
volunteers 268,000 workers, students and teachers taught
over 700,000 illiterates how to read and write in one year. They
used a text-book, Alfabeticemos, which in addition to a section
on general approach consisted of texts on twenty-four themes
connected with the revolution, the land, the economy, im¬
perialism, and democracy, in conjunction with the fifteen lessons
in the primer Venceremos which also dealt with questions
; »ir
'
Adult education in India is aimed
primarily at the illiterate population
between the ages of 1 5 and 35. The
instruction given covers basic
literacy skills, functional develop¬
ment and the promotion of social
awareness. A number of Rural Func¬
tional Literacy Projects have been
launched which are financed by the
central government but ad¬
ministered by the authorities of the
individual States. In Bihar State
priority has been given to women's
education and in rural districts local
women are responsible for the
supervision of the women's adult
education centres and the teaching
given. Right, women workers in
Bihar State; in the background is the
Tata steel plant, the largest in India.
Photo Unesco
In 1979, Ethiopia launched a
massive campaign aimed at
eliminating illiteracy by 1987. In
two years 34,000 literacy centres
had been opened, 10 million people
had received literacy instruction and
20 million books had been printed to
maintain the literacy effort. These
initial successes earned for Ethiopia
the 1980 literacy prize of the Inter¬
national Reading Association. But
additional funds were needed and in
June .1981 the Director-General of
Unesco . launched ah international
appeal for material and financial aid
to complement the massive effort
being made by Ethiopia itself. Below
left, an adult literacy class in
[ progress.
Photo Dominique Roger, Unesco
relating to the revolution and were illustrated by photographs
which helped the student to grasp the spirit of the texts.
Technical work was aided by a propaganda thrust with three
main objectives: to motivate the illiterate by using all available
means from the mass media to fiestas and graduation
ceremonies; to create a climate of opinion which would en¬
courage as many people as possible to volunteer to be teachers;
to popularize the technological aspect of the campaign. The
teachers, as well as their pupils, acquired a political training.
Mostly volunteers from the cities, they came to know and
understand the peasants and workers.
Many other governments have tried to follow these examples
when launching their own mass literacy campaigns. Most of
them failed because the political factor, the national and social
revolutions basic to the cases cited here, were lacking. This is why
another concept, that of "functional literacy", emerged during
the 1960s. Launched by Unesco, it was adopted by the World
Congress on the Eradication of Illiteracy held in Teheran in
1965, and made operational the following year in the form of an
"experimental world literacy programme." This programme
was implemented with the assistance of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), Unesco, the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the In¬
ternational Labour Organisation (ILO), and the World Health
Organization (WHO) in some twenty countries until 1973.
The objective was to make literacy a basic part of development
projects (in practice development was generally reduced to its
economic dimension). The corollaries of "functional literacy"
are the following:
selectivity of activities which relate to areas of industrialization
and to the modernization of agriculture, and which concern
those individuals who are most likely to profit from the scheme
and who are, therefore the most motivated to learn;
intensity of the acquisition of knowledge and of the attitudes
which contribute to development;
adaptability to the needs of each project of each category of ,
workers; hence a diversification of programmes;
integration of teaching into everyday life, the workers' profes¬
sional activities, and the problems they meet when confronted
with change.
Before drawing up a functional literacy programme, apreliminary study is made of the environment (agricultural or in¬
dustrial) and of the persons concerned so that a list may be com¬
piled of the appropriate subjects to be studied and a timetable of
activities may be fixed. Theoretically, the illiterate persons are
encouraged to assume responsibility for each of the problems
they are asked to study and solve. In practice, more often than
not this solution is handed to them and the teacher's role consists
simply in getting them to recognize its soundness and to apply it
(whether the activity in question is planting out rice, harvesting
cotton, irrigation, health care, insect control, self-management,or marketing).
During these explorations of their everyday problems, workers
are taught to read, write and count, and their capacity for
11
reasoning and understanding is developed. Theoretical training
(professional, technico-scientific, socio-economic, oral and writ¬
ten expression) goes hand in hand with practical training at the
worksite. Synchronized learning to read and write aims from the
outset to develop an aptitude for simultaneously perceiving sym¬
bols and their meaning, in accordance with this progression:
sentence -» word(s) -» syllables -» letters -> syllables -»
word(s) -» sentence.
In addition to "revolutionary" literacy and "functional"
literacy, there is a third method, literacy through
"conscientization ' ' .
This is the approach of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freiré.
His point of departure is a reflection on culture which man
creates by virtue of his work. But the illiterate person is oppress¬
ed. If education is to liberate, not tame him, it must make him
capable of critical awareness of his own living conditions. It must
make him discover, by a method based on dialogue, that he is a
subject and not an object, that he plays an active role in his en¬
vironment. The illiterate person then feels the need to learn to
read and write in order to become more effective and more
capable of changing his situation. At this point learning to read
and write can begin. The achievement of literacy is a form of self-education progressing from the inside to the outer world through
the illiterate person's efforts helped by the educator: the content
and the method merge into a single process.
This is why the vocabulary that is taught is not put together
from the outside but springs directly from the verbal universe of
the particular group. Certain "key-words" are chosen on the
grounds of their syntactical and semantic values and their social
and cultural connotations. Examples: people, land, house,
poverty, work, drought, election. Each word is illustrated by a
picture depicting the life of the group. The illiterate person learns
syllables and families of sounds, and composes other words with
the combinations he can use. Within a month and a half or two
months he can read a newspaper, write a simple letter, and ex¬
press himself on questions of local and national interest.
What conclusions can be drawn from these different
experiments?
Motivation is the essential factor in success. It may be political
(social and national revolution), ideological (conscientization),
or economic (functional literacy). But only revolution is capable
of rousing a mass movement and eradicating illiteracy in a
relatively short space of time. The other methods have only suc¬ceeded within limited groups.
Motivation is not enough, however. Literacy campaigns must
be well organizedand this does not mean that the State must
direct the whole operation. On the contrary, it is preferable for
the people themselves to take matters in hand, with a minimum
of outside help. Post-literacy work is indispensable if regression
into illiteracy is to be avoided. There must be newspapers, books
and libraries and a constant social pressure must be maintained
(e.g. schooling for children, the development of co-operatives).
The language factor plays an important role. Literacy teachingin a mother tongue is bound to be more successful than in
another language. The spoken language may, for instance, be
different from the classical one, as in the case of spoken Arabic
as opposed to classical Arabic. This is a source of additionaldifficulties.
Lastly, let us examine the question of teaching literacy to
women, which faces far more obstacles than teaching literacy to
men. These obstacles may be material, such as a lack of transpor¬
tation facilities in rural areas, the burden of household and fami¬
ly duties in addition to their work in the fields. But the major dif¬
ficulty often stems from the indifference, if not the outrighthostility, of their men. In the most traditional regions, generally
rural, many husbands fear that literacy courses may be, for their
wives, opportunities "to meet other men", a gateway to a new¬
found feeling of superiority, or even lead them to refuse to do
manual work. In India certain religious groups and castes are op¬posed to letting women learn to read and write. In these cir¬
cumstances the wastage is considerable.
In Thailand a less direct approach has been adopted in the
fight to eradicate illiteracy. The country's Functional
Literacy and Family Planning project aims to help adults
develop an attitude of critical thinking through group
discussion techniques. Instruction in reading and writing
is seen as a by-product of this process rather than as its
main objective. Right, on the verandah of a school in
Bangkok.
12
Illiteracy among women acts as a brake on progress. Its effects
appear in many ways: in the family, where illiterate women are
handicapped in following their children's education and in
managing the household; at the economic level, since they face
difficulties in finding jobs, and in keeping them if they live in ur¬ban areas unemployment among women is twice as high as
among men; at the social level, with women playing a negligible
part in local affairs.
Apart from transforming the traditional image of women in
men's minds, a remedy must be found for defacto discrimina¬
tion in access to education and employment, as revealed in such
phenomena as the lack of women teachers, who are indispen¬
sable in the most traditional areas, the lack of adequate equip¬
ment and social measures geared to relieve women of some of
their household tasks, inequality of remuneration and
advancement.
The promotion and emancipation of women presupposes that
they receive the same education as men, rather than an education
which is limited to preparing them for the role of housewife and
mother or for certain kinds of employment which are thought to
be "suitable for women" and which always carry the least
prestige and pay: teaching, the social services, para-medical
work, the retail trade, the food and textile industries. In rural
areas women's needs for economic training are just as great as
men's in such fields as agriculture, poultry and stock-raising,
dairy farming, fishing, making and repairing fishing nets, spinn¬
ing, weaving, sewing, embroidery and other crafts which can
boost the family income. _ . . _.. . ......Le Thành Khoi
^r w}
1
fefelrto - *-*.^
V>
o ^M
©11sz
H
Demonstration of weighing with a
steelyard during a functional literacy ses¬
sion at Gounou-Gaya, Chad. The
villagers are cotton planters and need to
know how to weigh their cotton at the
annual sale of their crops.
Photo Madeleine Caillard, Unesco
Milestones to the
learning societyby Torsten Husén
TORSTEN HUSEN, ofSweden, is director of
the Institute of International Education at the
University of Stockholm. A member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, he was
chairman of the governing board of the Inter¬
national Institute for Educational Planning
from 1970 to 1980. He has been a consultant
with the Organization for Economic Co¬
operation and Development (OECD) since
1968 and is a member of the Max Planck In¬
stitute for Educational Research. He is the
author ofsome 40 books, the most recent be¬
ing The School in Question (1979), The Future
of Formal Schooling (1980) and An Incurable
Academic An Autobiography (1982).
WHAT constitutes a "mile¬
stone", or even a "revolu¬
tion", in education is, of
course, a matter of judgement. Impor¬
tant institutional changes in education do
not occur as abruptly as revolutionary
upheavals on the political and social
scene. Furthermore, it is not always easy
to distinguish lasting milestones from
ephemeral fads, such as the so-called new
mathematics, and only time can tell one
from the other. In education we can,
however, in retrospect, at certain points
in time, identify sequences of events that^
13
together constitute a change that over a
long period has had a strong impact on
the social fabric.
Looking back over a century and a half
it appears to me that one could identifyfive sets of milestones on the road to the
learning society of today. The first was
the introduction by the mid-nineteenth
century of universal primary schooling in
the northern hemisphere when legislation
on mandatory schooling was passed in
many countries. This occurred mainly
during the period 1815 to 1880. Thus,
there was some spread between
countries.
The second set of milestones marked
the gradual introduction of a common
basic school, sometimes referred to as a
comprehensive school, catering to
students from all walks of life in a given
area or community. This occurred well
into the twentieth century with the Soviet
Union and the United States taking the
lead and Western Europe trailing behind
with a more class-stratified system, par¬ticularly for the age range 10 through 15.
The third set of milestones could be
placed after 1960 and indicates the
"enrolment explosion" at all stages inboth the industrialized and non-
industrialized world. The fourth set
signals massive literacy campaigns inThird World countries and a new concep¬
tion of adult education under labels suchas life-long, permanent or recurrent
education. A fifth milestone, finally, is
represented by the entry of new
technology onto the educational scene,
something that happened after 1960.
There were certain socio-economic,ideological and political forces behindthe legislation on mandatory schooling(either mandatory attendance or man¬datory for the communities to set upschools). Important changes occurred in
the role of the family in connexion withindustrialization and the concomitant ur¬banization. There is no doubt that theneed for children to be cared for while
parents worked long hours in the fac¬
tories gave a strong impetus to the provi¬
sion of schooling. Typically, in severalEuropean countries, in rural areas wherethe children's labour at home was neededthey attended school only part-time,whereas in the urban areas they went toschool full-time. Many farmers were by
no means enthusiastic about parliamen¬tary decisions forcing them to send theirchildren to school.
Two new educational institutions
emerged in industrialized England during
the first part of the nineteenth century:the Bell-Lancaster system for providingelementary schooling (by using more ad¬vanced students as tutors) on a massive
scale with a minimum of adult teachers,and infant schools for children in the agerange 2 to 7.
A Swedish social statistician who went
to England in the early 1830s to study theinfant schools recorded his observations
in a travel report "Notes from a Journey
to England at the End of the Summer
1834". The infant schools which were
run by philanthropic organizations tookcare of the small children when their
14
parents were away for long working
hours. They taught the children certain
skills, such as very elementary reading
and arithmetic. This was, however, not
their main aim. In these schools
"children already from the age of 2 are
getting used to attentiveness, order, obe¬dience, reflection and self-initiatedactivity".
When in the 1830s child labour was
prohibited or limited by law in Britain,
children in the age range 7 to 1 2 came into
focus, and demands for their schoolingbegan to be voiced. The need for
custodial care of children in urban areas
was in the interest of several parties, such
as parents and owners of enterprises. But
it would be a serious mistake to believe
that this was the main force behind the
introduction of universal elementary
schooling. The liberal quest for universal
suffrage, for democratic participation in
the decision-making process both locally
and centrally as well as for greater equali¬
ty of opportunity was also an importantmotive for establishing a universalelementary school.
During the decade after the Second
World War, largely under the prompting
of Unesco, mass literacy teaching becamea prime task in Third World countries. Inspite of the fact that universal primaryeducation was proclaimed a top priority
for educational policy, for instance at themeeting of African Ministers of Educa¬tion in Addis Ababa in 1960, the moststriking feature of educational efforts inthe developing countries has been the
massive literacy campaigns. They are,
with the exception of the Soviet Union,
without any historical precedent in pre-literate Europe.
A characteristic of these campaigns
was the attempt to integrate literacy with
vocational skills with the aim of helping
to improve the economic plight in par¬
ticular of the small and poor farmers.But, again, as was the case in the at¬
tempts to make primary schooling
universal, the chief impetus was a strong
belief in literacy as the backbone of afunctioning democracy with the par¬
ticipation of enlightened citizens.
The demand in Europe and North
America for a common school forchildren from all kinds of homes can be
traced back to the time when legislation
was enacted introducing universal
primary schooling for "the people".Typically, the elementary school
established by law at various points in
time in some European countries was for
the next century referred to as the "peo¬
ple's school" {Volksschule, folkskold).
It was a school that reflected a highly
class-stratified society. Different types of
schools for the various social strata were
in most quarters taken for granted. For a
teachers' conference in 1881 a Swedish
conservative educator, teaching in the
classical gymnasium, published a
brochure entitled "What Direction
Should a Reform of Our Schools
Take ?". The overriding idea was that
each of the three main social classes
should have the type of school that cor¬
responded to its "needs". The generals
In the developing countries the
majority of human resources are
concentrated in rural areas where
illiteracy is prevalent and educa¬
tional facilities are meagre. Efforts
are now being made not only to
step up the facilities available but
also to encourage the child's in¬
tegration into his environment and
to introduce productive work into
the school curriculum. Right,
learning how to tend the land in a
school garden in Madagascar.
Photo Duré. Unesco
In Upper Volta 95 per cent of the
population work on the land.
Government plans to improve liv¬
ing conditions for the rural popula¬
tion include the establishment of
social centres for the education of
farm women. Right, a home
economics teacher gives a
dressmaking lesson at the centre
at Koudieré. Some of the cotton
cloth used for this activity was
provided through a Unesco Gift
Coupon scheme.
Photo Banoun/Caracciolo, FAO, Rome
elementary ("people's") school was
meant for the "working classes and the
lower classes of artisans". The grammar
school was for the upper class. What was
now needed was a third type of school for
the middle class of skilled artisans,
business men and farmers. The three
types of school should run parallel to
each other without any organizational
connexions.
Two years later in deliberate criticism
of this a young elementary school
teacher, Fridjuv Berg, who some twenty
years later became Minister of Educa¬
tion, published a brochure called "The
Elementary School as the Basic School"
in which he advocated a basic school
which would cater to children from all
walks of life.
Comprehensive versus a stratified,
selective education was a major issue in
European public policy in the years
following the Second World War. The
word "comprehensive" denoted from
the outset a secondary school which
ideally served all the students from a
given area under the same roof and of¬
fered all types of programmes, both
academic and vocational. In Europe,
with its traditionally segregated school
structure, the comprehensive school was
advocated as a replacement for the
socially and academically selective
school. The breakthrough for a com¬
prehensive conception of schooling in
Europe came after 1960.
Enrolment statistics in the twentieth
century relating to secondary and higher
education show certain striking features.
In the northern hemisphere, well into the
middle of the century, formal education
beyond a minimum (compulsory)
primary schooling was the prerogative of
a small social élite, although there was a
limited flow of academically gifted
young people from the lower classes to
schools which prepared pupils for the
universities as well as to the universities
themselves. But by and large the in¬
dustrialized countries were still what
sociologists call ascriptive societies,
where social status is more or less deter¬
mined at birth.
By the mid-twentieth century the
enrolment pattern had changed
dramatically in both industrialized and
non-industrialized countries. Both types
of countries experienced what has often
been referred to as an "educational ex¬
plosion". Since the turn of the century
enrolment in post-primary education in
most industrialized countHes increased in
a linear fashion. This had been the case
with elementary education in the
preceding century. But since 1950 the
growth in secondary and higher enrol¬
ment in these countries has, to express it
in mathematical terms, been exponential.
There are countries in which the number
of students doubled or even quadrupled
in less than ten years. Similar patterns of
growth have occurred in Third World
countries but they apply there to all
stages of the educational spectrum.
Equality of opportunity has become a
major objective for educational policy in
countries all over the world. It is a 'grow-
16
The People's Republic
of Benin is currently
creating a "New
School" system based
on the idea that each
school is a production
unit which will attempt
to pay at least 20 per
cent of its operational
budget. One of these
Unesco-supported pilot
schools is located at
the small market town
of Come. It has some
60 teachers and about
1,200 students and
owns its own grounds.
The students farm
more than eleven hec¬
tares, growing maize,
beans, cotton and fruit,
and they have set up a
co-operative to manage
the marketing of their
produce.
Photo Unesco, Paris
The Rural Production
Brigade of Shi-Ping, in
Shansi Province, is
typical of many Chi¬
nese rural commune
brigades. The leaders
of the commune are not
concerned solely with
agriculture but are also
responsible for the co¬
ordination of educa¬
tion, health, welfare
and cultural projects.
Left, members of the
Brigade at work on a
millet plantation.
Photo F. Mattioh, FAO, Rome
ing concern as the employment system
tends more and more to use formal
education as the first criterion of selec¬
tion among job seekers and as educa¬
tional achievements increasingly deter¬
mine social status. The expansion of the
number of places in further education
has led to an increase in both the absolute
and relative number of young people of
lower class background who have won
access to upper secondary and higher
education. It appears that social
background plays a less powerful role in
educational attainments in non-
industrialized than in industrialized
countries. This has been an important
factor in the expansion of post-primary
education in the developing countries.
Many developing countries have ex¬
perienced an almost explosive increase insecondary school enrolment. The finan¬
cial implications have been serious for
poor countries running schools entirely
on public funds and, with a population
structure dominated by young people.
The social structure of the enrolment
has, as indicated above, tended to
become more balanced than in the highly
industrialized countries and this in turn
has made formal education an even more
powerful vehicle of social mobility. In
other words, formal education is playing
a central role in an increasingly
meritocratic society. Educated in¬
telligence tends in our days to become the
substitute for social origin and inherited
wealth. No wonder, then, that formal
education is regarded as an almost
endless ladder up which one should try to
climb as high as possible. No stage or
level of the system tends to have a goal or
profile of its own. It is regarded merely as
a step to the next level.
Young people are keenly aware that
formal credentials in terms of schooling
are not only strategic in their life careers
but constitute the first criterion of selec¬
tion among those who enter the job
market. They are aware that unemploy¬
ment among those with a minimum of
formal education is much higher than
among those with more advanced educa¬
tion. There is much talk about the
"educated unemployed", but the fact is
that, all over the world, they find it much
more easy to obtain employment than
those with a minimum of education. The
employment statistics show that their
unemployment rate is much lower.
A fourth milestone on the way to the
learning society of today was recently
passed almost unnoticed: this was a
mushrooming growth of various forms
of adult education, not least the sudden
increase in many countries of adults "go¬
ing back to school". It appears that the
breakthrough in the industrial countries
occurred around 1970. Enrolment in for¬
mal schooling at the upper secondary and
the university level, which previously had
rarely included adults who had already
embarked on their working life, suddenly
exploded. This process was facilitated by
legislation on the right to leave of
absence for educational purposes and byfinancial support, for instance, from
pay-roll taxes.
17
The rise of adult participation in for¬
mal education is largely a phenomenon
limited to the more advanced industrial
countries where until recently adult
education, often under the aegis of
various popular movements, was
dominated by evening classes or study
circles. Education is now closely woven
into the career web of the individual in
societies where the occupational struc¬
ture and the requirements for efficient
job performance continuously change as
technology changes.
Formal education has always been a
labour-intensive enterprise. The in¬
satiable demand for teachers, particular¬
ly in developing countries, has been a
serious bottleneck which has tended to
stifle the expansion of school education.
No wonder, then, that hopes ran high
about what the new educational
technology would be able to achieve.
In the developing countries radio and
television were in the early 1960s seen as
the answer to the teacher shortage. In ad¬
dition, other forms of technology, such
as programmed learning and teaching
machines, were considered in the more
affluent parts of the world. Distance
teaching, particularly by means of radio,
proved to have a strong impact in Third
World countries suffering under the
"tyranny of distance", but it has also
been a godsend in sparsely populated
areas, such as parts of Australia. A
breakthrough in the new technology was
triggered in 1947 by the invention of the
transistor. Within a few years it revolu¬
tionized electronic equipment and
brought the small, portable radio within
the reach of almost everybody.
The most recent development in educa¬
tional technology, that might eventually
revolutionize education, is represented
by the mini-computer. All technological
devices used in education so far have
shared the drawback of allowing only for
one-way communication. You cannot
talk back to a TV-screen or a teaching
machine. The computer, however, allowsstudent feed-back and two-way com¬
munication, and the student can thus in¬
teract with the computer, both in pro¬
gramming and in the actual learning
situation; this affords him ample scope
for creativity and this in turn stimulates
his motivation to learn.
Computer-based instruction remained
an exclusive amenity of affluent societies
and their schools as long as the equip¬
ment used in the individual school or
classroom had to be connected with a
computation centre with its big and ex¬
pensive machinery. But as computers
have become increasingly compact and
prices have gone down, they have begun
to be within the means of the less affluent
countries. When and to what extent they
will be financially accessible to students
in poorer countries only time will tell.
But considering how quickly and unex¬
pectedly pocket calculators have made
their entry on the educational scene there
is reason to believe that this will occur
fairly soon.
Torsten Husén
18
1 ~"'
fcf v-t ^
/&*
:-*?¿$k*
w
.
>v^
Cubahâscreated a large number of"basic secondary schools ¡jr»
the countryside where theoretical study alternates with prac¬
tical work in the fietds.and the latest audiovisual methods are
widely used. Above, studentatoffthe Isle of Youth (formerly the
Isle of Pines) at work in a citrus plantation. : '*^Ä '*
tion of .Cuba w Unesco, Pans
«
Robinson Crusoe
goes to schoolSix pioneers of modern education
by Hermann Rohrs
JEAN-JACQUES Rousseau and
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi are the
two founding fathers of a revolu¬
tion in the methods and principles of
teaching. In spite of many differences,
there seem to have been marked
similarities between the personalities of
these two Swiss thinkers, as well as a
strong affinity in the salient features of
their thought. The reason for this is that
both men drew much of their inspiration
from the philosophers of Antiquity,
especially from the Platonic idea of
education as thecornerstone of the State
and the Stoic morality of Seneca and
Cicero. This affinity can also be partly
explained in terms of the strong influence
of Rousseau's thought on the young
Pestalozzi.
The influence of Rousseau (1712-1778)
on Pestalozzi (1746-1827) can be said to
have begun in 1763 when Pestalozzi, one
of a circle of young students who belong¬
ed to the "Patriotic Leagues" in
Switzerland, took part in debates on
ideas of social reform. Rousseau's Emilehad just appeared, and this book in
which its author sets out to show how
society can be reformed through educa¬
tion was the cause of impassioned
debate. Evoking this period in his
Schwanengesang ("Swan Song") of
1826, Pestalozzi would write: "This is
why, when Emile appeared, this dream-book, utterly remote from practical con¬
cerns, aroused the enthusiasm of my
dreaming soul which was equally remote
from them."
The experience of these two great
figures in the history of education can be
summed up in a few simple words: it is
through education that man's human
potential is fulfilled in a given social con¬
text. Hence education can only succeed if
it is directed towards the reform of socie¬
ty. Both Rousseau and Pestalozzi are
thus convinced that, because of the op¬
portunity for renewal it offers, education
can make a greater contribution than a
revolution to social progress.
HERMANN ROHRS, of the FederalRepublic of Germany, is head of the depart¬
ment of education at the University ofHeidelberg and director of its research centreinto comparative education, of which he is thefounder. The most recent of his many books
on the theory and principles of education isDie Reformpàdagogik des Auslands ("Peda¬gogical Reform Abroad", 1983).
The pedagogical theories of the Swiss educational reformer Johann
Heinrich Pestalozzi (1 746-1 827) are based on his conviction that man
himself is responsible for his moral and intellectual state and that his
duty towards the community is a harmonious extension of his duty
towards himself. Pestalozzi was also one of the first proponents of the
concept of lifelong education.
Published in 1761, Emile is the great
classic of pedagogical Utopia. Reflecting
on the origin and the consequences of the
social contract in his two Discourses,
Rousseau had glimpsed the possibility of
reforming society through education.
His aim was not so much to bring about
a "return to nature" as to find a formula
which would make it possible to base
social progress on the virtues of natural
man.
For Rousseau, the ideal conditions in
which to learn how to live are those of
Robinson Crusoe on his island: facing up
to the thousand and one problems of
everyday life is an experience which
brings a rich harvest of discoveries. Only
a state of want, experienced existentially,
permits a spontaneous acquisition of
knowledge. Rousseau thus seeks to in¬
troduce a Robinson Crusoe situation into
the child's daily life, so as to create the
natural condition for the challenge of
learning which he must face on his own.
This basic idea of transposing the
situation of Robinson Crusoe into the
child's universe and into the school has
revolutionized pedagogy. It is an idea
20
which recurs in the work of Pestalozzi,
Dewey, Montessori, Makarenko and
Freinet.
The crowning notion of Pestalozzis
educational theories is that of moral
autonomy, which man acquires as, in
confrontation with the universe and its
contingencies, he comes to define his own
laws and apply them while respecting the
demands of the community.
Rousseau and Pestalozzi were the first
thinkers to assert that education is not a
phenomenon limited in space or time, but
a process lasting a lifetime through which
man becomes aware of himself and then
of his possibilities within his universe.
Following Rousseau and Pestalozzi, theleading Western educational reformer is
John Dewey (1859-1952), who had
exhaustively studied the philosophy ofKant before he came to Rousseau.
Dewey's major contribution, what might
be called his "Copernican revolution",
was to relate education directly to the
necessities of life. He developed the con¬
cept of the school as an "embryonic com¬
munity", a reflection of his ideas on theinteraction between the school and life
and the priority that should be given to
civic education. The school should be seen
as the place where the social virtues may
be acquired. The more fully it performs
this function, the better it prepares young
people for life in the wider community:
The more fully it accepts this virtually per¬
manent task by developing the critical
sense, the more substantial is its contri¬
bution to the renewal of social and com¬
munity structures.
Any change in the pedagogical institu¬
tion requires a new approach to the role
of the teacher. An attempt to promote an
exchange between the real world and the
child means that the teacher can no
longer confine himself to the narrowly
defined role of transmitter of knowledge. I
Published in 1761, £m;7e, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), is the great classic of
pedagogical Utopia. Although Rousseau wanted children to grow and develop naturally, his aim
was not so much a question of a "return to nature" as to find an educational formula which
would make it possible to base social progress on the virtues of natural man. Above, "Naturelaid out all its splendours before our eyes" reads the caption to this illustration for Emile, by
Moreau le Jeune (1741-1814).
21
assistant Helen Parkhurst, a pupil of
Dewey.
Montessori's main contribution lies in
her application to pedagogy of the fun¬
damental principles of the experimental
sciences; her objective was to provide the
discipline of teaching with a scientific
basis. This explains her concern for
rigorous planning both of teaching situa¬
tions and of teaching materials, and for
maximum precision in the observation of
results. She abolished the role of the
educator as a remote and objective
observer, and replaced it with the child's
spontaneous creativity and boundless
love. Hence there is a certain duality in
her work, in the sense that many of her
reflections and writings recall the
philosophical meditations of a Pestalozzi
rather than the clinical descriptions of a
medical doctor. This duality often gives
her writing a visionary force, but it does
not always shield it from a certain
ambiguity.
Anton Semyonovich Makarenko
(1888-1939) showed himself more revolu¬
tionary than all his predecessors in
developing an uncompromisingly
political theory of education, the goal of
which was to encourage the emergence of
a new human being, the Soviet citizen.
His theoretical writings were directly in¬
spired by his experience in work colonies,
and were a step-by-step exposition of an
already existing practice from which they
cannot be divorced. Rather like Pestaloz-
Instead he must try to act as a mediator
who asks questions and explores their im¬
plications, and who does not fail to ques¬
tion himself. This approach is strongly
reminiscent of the Socratic dialogue, and
there can be no doubt that Dewey, who
knew his Plato, always had in mind this
pedagogical model which is centred on
the idea that it is necessary to learn how
to learn and that man's destiny is to carry
on a lifelong dialogue with his
environment.
None of the great educational
reformers created a system which achiev¬
ed more success than that of Maria
Montessori (1870-1952). After observing
the behaviour of retarded children with
whom she worked as a doctor, she made
the decisive discovery, which was to
revolutionize the education of young
children, that there is a distinctive world
of childhood and that the child's
development obeys specific laws. This
discovery was to bear fruit in the
"children's houses" (Case dei bambini)
which she started in the San Lorenzo
slum district of Rome. The teaching was
centred on the needs and interests of the
children, and devised so as to take them
through the different stages of their
development which can be discerned
after careful study behind the apparent
spontaneity of their behaviour.
It is not easy to see to what extent
Montessori was influenced by Rousseau
and his theories on the natural develop¬
ment of the child, as opposed to muddled
and inexpedient dirigisme by adults.
Nevertheless, there are many echoes of
Rousseau in the passages of her work
which describe the confusion of the child
lost in an adult world in which he is not
at home and which condemns him to an
uncertain future. There is certainly no
doubt that she was influenced by such
thinkers as Dewey, the Swiss educator
Adolphe Fernere (1879-1960), and the
Belgian Ovide Decroly (1871-1932). Most
apparent are her affinities with Decroly,
also a doctor, who founded his "School
for life through life" in Brussels in 1907,
the same year in which Montessori began
her work with the "children's houses".
But above all, during a visit to the United
States in 1912, she became acquainted
with the main principles of Dewey's
pedagogical theories; her knowledge of
these was deepened by contact with her
22
Like the ancient Greeks, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that "necessity is the
mother of all the arts". For him, the ideal conditions in which to learn how to live were
those experienced by Daniel Defoe's hero Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. Only
by experiencing a state of want could a child achieve spontaneous acquisition of
knowledge. Above, an illustration for one of the earliest editions of Robinson Crusoe.
zi before him, Makarenko gathered
around him a number of children made
homeless by war and succeeded in
welding them into a community with its
own rules and discipline. A decisive stage
in his work came when the community
moved into an abandoned farm and
became the "Gorky colony" after the
writer whose life-story' deeply impressed
Makarenko.
The exemplary nature of tasks and
duties is of decisive importance in the
education of young people who have
been abandoned, but life in such a
disciplined environment is prey to a cer¬
tain monotony. Makarenko sought to
avoid this danger in his pedagogical
system, above all by what he called
"perspectives". He unhesitatingly
agreed to create an establishment for
children and adolescents in the
monastery of Kurjash near Kharkov,
where 280 orphans were installed in
derelict buildings surrounded by waste
land. After the Gorky colony had
unanimously agreed to take on this new
mission there began what Makarenko
would later refer to as the "conquest of
Kurjash" (in his The Road to Life, an
Epic of Education - Putevka v zhizu,
pedagogicheskaya poema).
The pedagogical ideas of the French
educator Célestin Freinet (1896-1966) are
no less rooted in concrete realities than
those of Makarenko, but their
The American philosopher and
educational reformer John
Dewey (1859-1952) saw the
school as an "embryonic com¬
munity". There the young
could acquire the social vir¬
tues and develop a critical
sense that would enable them
later to contribute to the
renewal of social and com¬
munity structures.
The Italian psychiatrist and educator
Maria Montessori (1870-1952) is
credited with being the first to
perceive that a child's development
obeys specific laws. The teaching
system that bears her name em¬
phasizes development of the child's
creative potential and self-
confidence.
The French educator Célestin
Freinet (1896-19661, founder of the
"new school" movement in France,
based his pedagogical methods on
allowing pupils freedom of expres¬
sion and motivating them through
the "active method". He believed
strongly in the educational potential
of the school printing press.
In the early 1920s, the Soviet social worker and educational theorist Anton Se-
myonovich Makarenko (1888-1939) established the Gorky Colony, a settlement in
which he gathered together children left orphaned and homeless in the aftermath of
war. His book The Road to Life, an Epic of Education tells how he welded them into a
community with its own self imposed rules and discipline. Above Makarenko is seen
at the centre rear of the group wearing a cap. Seated in the foreground is the writer
Maksim Gorky (1868-1936) after whom the colony was named.
pedagogical range and ambitions are far
more limited.
Freinet's starting point was an analysis
of the frustrations which he himself ex¬
perienced as a primary school teacher.
He attributed a decisive role to the school
printing press, the educational potential
of which he had appreciated at Ovide
Decroly's school in Rue de l'Hermitage
in Brussels. This "school for life through
life", made such an impression on
Freinet that he took as the slogan for his
own pedagogical concepts "The school
for life through work." This formula
neatly sums up both the practice and
theoretical meaning of Freinet's work,
which he set forth in two major works,
The Printing Press at School (1927) and
The Education of Work (1949). A
meeting with Adolphe Fernere, who had
developed a version of the school of work
in his book L'Ecole Active, enabled
Freinet to develop his ideas by relating
them more closely to methods of educa¬
tion through work.
In Freinet's work the printing press has
a central role, both as an instrument for
achieving progress through work and as a
means of communication. The pupils use
the school printing press to produce work
such as articles, reports or newsletters
which are not only educational activities
but exercises in communication with
others. They can also use the press to
print newspapers or letters to their
parents or to the community at large, or
to exchange information with other
schools as part of "interschool cor¬
respondence". Schoolwork thus loses its
rigidly didactic nature and becomes an
existential activity.
Freinet devised his own teaching
materials and opened the way for pupils,
in almost all subjects, whether in¬
dividually or in groups, to master their
own work programmes. The teaching
materials are produced on the school
printing press or at the central printing
works of the "Institut coopératif de
l'école moderne" in Cannes. The pupil's
autonomy as he confronts his respon¬
sibilities in a school life in direct contact
with life in the outside world is also
reflected in the unconventional nature of
relations between teachers and pupils and
in the group's active participation in the
conception and realization of its work,
Hermann Rohrs
23
In 1 981 , an Intergovernmental Regional Meeting, held in Quito, Ecuador, laid down three main objectives for Unesco's Major Projectin the Field of Education in the Latin American and Caribbean Region: To ensure that by 1 999 at the latest all children of school ageare provided with a minimum of 8 to 1 0 years general education; to eradicate illiteracy before the end of the century; to improvethe quality and efficiency of educational systems. Above, Colombian schoolchildren work at their reading and writing.
The education gapA hard look at the plight of the world's rural areas
by Hamidou Lailaba Maiga
SOCIAL, economic and cultural
progress is inconceivable without
the development and mastery of
knowledge, particularly scientific and
technical knowledge.
While almost 100 per cent of children
of primary school age are enrolled in
school in the industrialized countries,
where education is compulsory up to the
age of fifteen or sixteen, almost all the
developing countries are still far fromproviding universal primary education.
In the latter countries illiteracy rates are
highest in the rural areas, and in this arti¬
cle when we refer to education in rural
areas we are thinking primarily of theneeds of rural areas in the developing
world.
HAMIDOU LAILABA MAIGA, of Niger,
teaches at the University of Niamey and is
secretary-general of the African Association
of Psychology.
It would, however, be wrong to think
that all is well in the industrialized coun¬
tries. Today they find themselves con¬
fronted with many tensions between the
dynamics of education, the dynamics of
economic life and social needs. These
tensions find expression in the changes
and reforms that are sweeping through
many national education systems and
which, although they may be a sign of
Experiment and reform in education are more necessary
today than ever before. Modern experiments include in¬
terdisciplinary instruction, group dynamics, self-
teaching and pupil-run schools, like the Barbiana school
in Italy. Above all, these experiments invite the child "to
learn to learn". Right, schoolchildren in Prague taking
part in educative games.
24
Above, an Ecuadorian workman áets out on the road to literacy. He is just one of the millions of people throughout the world who
are demanding the education which is their right. It was to help Member States meet this explosive demand that, in 1963, Unesco
established the International Institute for Educational Planning whose aim is to contribute to the development of education by pro¬
viding a centre for advanced training, and research in the field of educational planning.
W .^/^^^^¡Jf "'
» m^A ' «ST...>!
/&^
v±
r.>
f
M»,
"¡?«C
| ^^^HHI 1
The expansion of education systems
in recent years has made great
demands on material, financial and
human resources. In the world as a
whole, the percentage of gross na¬
tional product allotted to State educa¬
tion rose from 3.7 per cent in 1 960 to
5.6 per cent in 1979. In the develop¬
ing countries alone, the number of
teachers rose from 4,720,000 in
1960 to 14,375,000 in 1980. Left, a
primary school classroom in Niger.
Photo © Claude Sauvageot, Paris
vitality, are in the great majority of cases
an indication that the systems in question
are not working well.
If a country such as France has granted
certain of its sub-regions the status of
"educational priority zones", it is
because regional and zonal inequalities
have been identified; the reduction of
these inequalities calls for urgent
measures. It is not surprising that all
these educational priority zones are in
rural areas. Think of the situation in the
rural areas of developing countries, the
overwhelming majority of which are still
unable to provide the necessary
minimum, universal primary education!
Think of the situation in countries pro¬
viding an education unadapted to their
cultural needs and dispensed in a foreign
language spoken in some cases by less
than 1 0 per cent of the population ! As far
as the provision and quality of education
are concerned, I feel it is no exaggeration
to say that some Third World countries
are suffering from a grievous handicap.
There is no point in repeating here
what has been said by specialists, interna¬
tional organizations and research in¬
stitutes which have produced incisive
analyses of the situation, to demonstrate .
the bankruptcy of educational systems in
the developing countries both in terms of
their internal and external efficiency. Let
us simply remember that school wastage
has become virtually endemic and that
school systems are incapable of pro¬
viding training to meet the needs of real
development.
Even a cursory look at social and
economic conditions in the rural areas of
developing countries shows that these
areas are facing many handicaps: lack of
infrastructures; populations living in ab¬
solute poverty and deprived of the fruits
of their labour; an education unsuited to
the on-the-ground situation and cultural
values; low productivity of work con¬
trasting with a high expenditure of
physical effort; illiteracy. The economic,
physical and cultural possibilities are so
limited by this combination of factors
that access to school and consequently to
knowledge is difficult. Malnourished,
physically wasted children, sometimes
walking long distances to school, can on¬
ly reap a meagre benefit from an educa¬
tion which is hermetic because it is not
adapted to their culture, and which en¬
courages competition to the detriment of
co-operation.
Examination of the growth of Gross
National Product (GNP) in different sec¬
tors of activity shows that growth in the
services sector and (in the last few years)
in industry has varied between 6 and 14
per cent while growth in the agricultural
sector has oscillated between 1 and 2.5
per cent.
The author of this analysis, the French
specialist on education for rural develop¬
ment Guy-José Bretones, points out that
these figures indicate "stagnating living
conditions" for the rural populations
which nevertheless constitute the biggest
proportion of the working population of
developing countries. This is clearly "a
considerable brake" on economic activi¬
ty and a major handicap for develop-
27
ment. As the Nobel Prizewinning
economist Sir Arthur Lewis has said: "if
agriculture is in the doldrums, it only of¬
fers a stagnating market and impedes the
development of the rest of the economy.
If you fail to develop agriculture to a suf¬
ficient extent, it becomes more difficult
to develop anything else. This is the basic
principle of 'balanced growth'."
Noted economists point out that "the
improvement of human potential (educa¬
tion, training, health care)" and the
transmission of knowledge and technical
skills are far more important factors in
increasing GNP than the quantitative in¬
crease in capital and manpower. Mean¬
while, the way in which GNP is divided
up is one of the factors which conditions
development; research plays an equally
important role. The increase in a coun¬
try's income is due first and foremost to
the updating of its people's productive
potential, the development of its human
resources, rather than "the accumulation
of material goods".
In the developing countries, the over¬
whelming majority of these human
resources are concentrated in rural areas
and especially in the agricultural sector.
Depending on the country, between 45
and 80 per cent of the working popula¬
tion may be involved in agriculture. With
the exception of countries such as Cuba
and Somalia which have eradicated il¬
literacy in record time, this mass of pro¬
ducers is almost totally illiterate. Il¬
literacy is particularly prevalent in the
forty-to-sixty age range, among those
who take the decisions in rural areas.
Apart from any moral or philosophical
considerations, therefore, in developing
countries, and especially in those where
agricultural production makes the big¬
gest contribution to GNP, growth of na¬
tional income and profitability of educa¬
tional costs must be based on the defini¬
tion of new educational objectives which
will attach great importance to the im¬
provement of living conditions, produc¬
tion conditions and productive tech¬
niques in the rural world. Among the im¬
plications of this are the development of
education, both in terms of quantity and
quality, and notably the establishment in
rural areas of training structures best
suited to meet the real needs of the
populations and their emancipation.
Immediately after achieving in¬
dependence, the great majority of
formerly colonized countries made a
major effort to improve the supply of
education. The Addis Ababa Declaration
(1961) is a good illustration of the way
many African countries pursued this ob¬
jective. However, the priority given to
"quantitative development" was to ag¬
gravate the various disparities and forms
of discrimination which had been in¬
herited from the colonial era (disparities
between regions, inequalities between
cities and rural areas, inequality between
the sexes, etc.). In the former French col¬
onies in Africa, although the "symbol"
disappeared, African languages were still
not taught in the schools (as is still the
case in many of these countries). In
general, the variance between school pro¬grammes and local cultures and en-
28
vironments still creates and perpetuates
enormous problems of adaptation, learn¬
ing, and intellectual development. In
such conditions failure is hardly
surprising.
And so innovation appeared to be
essential. In practice it has taken three
main directions: the ruralization of
education; out-of-school training with a
rural orientation; and the integration of
productive work and in-school
education.
Niger and Cameroon each constitute
typical cases of ruralization of education.
In 1967 each of these countries asked the
United Nations Development Pro¬
gramme (UNDP) to help them finance a
college of education for training primary
school teachers for rural areas. Since the
teaching inherited from colonial times
had proved a failure, it seemed necessary
to train a new kind of primary school
teacher who could promote economic
development at village level. The teacher
training course lasted three years. In ad¬
dition to instruction in teaching methods
and practice, the courses included
sociology, child psychology, pedagogy,
technology, and a basic knowledge of
animal husbandry and farming. At the
end of the training period, the teacher
was to be equipped to look for the con¬
tent of his teaching in the local environ
ment. This teaching should be integrated,
by means of the study of the
environment.
Ruralized primary education, it is
hoped, will halt the exodus from the
countryside by encouraging the child's
integration into his environment, notably
by making him capable of "acting on it,
mastering it, transforming it and
developing it."
Neither in Niger nor in Cameroon does
the project for the ruralization of educa¬
tion seem to have met the expectations of
its promoters.
Out-of-school training with a rural
orientation is targeted at young people in
rural areas. It provides them with a
grounding in agricultural techniques
which are traditionally unknown in their
locality. The objective is to increase pro¬
ductivity and foster the economic
development of rural areas. Specifically
technical training is generally combined
with literacy courses and instruction in
elementary management techniques and
home economics. Experiments of this
kind are today being carried out in
several Third World countries, with vary¬
ing results. Tanzania, Niger, Mali and
Upper Volta are some of the African
countries concerned, and the case of Up¬
per Volta has attracted particular in-
The right to education has long been accepted as being one of
the basic human rights, but only in comparatively recent years
has it been recognized that this right encompasses lifelong
education extending throughout adult life. More and more
retired people are "going back to school" in order to pursue in¬
terests they were unable to satisfy during their active lives.
Above, a course in a "university of the third age", in the Ger¬
man Democratic Republic.
Education has become a powerful vehicle of social mobility,
with higher educational qualifications becoming more impor¬
tant than social origin and inherited wealth. Yet a multiplicity of
diplomas is not an end in itself and it is important that the con¬
tent of higher education be designed to meet the real needs of
society as a whole. Right, massed ranks of students taking an
examination in a sports stadium in Djakarta, Indonesia.
terest, notably in the Groupements post¬
scolaires (post-school groupings).
Post-school groupings have a dual pur¬pose; they aim to train young farmers
capable of innovating and setting up self-
administered co-operatives, and also to
encourage the participation of the village
community as a whole. The originality of
the approach is that it attempts to adapt
a traditional association of young peo¬
ple, the nam, to the needs of the village
today.
The purpose of integration of formal
education and productive work is to form
a link between training and production
within the context of formal education.
Many kinds of experiment are being car¬
ried out in this field; that of the "basic
secondary school in the countryside",
launched in Cuba a few years ago, seems
promising. According to a French jour¬
nalist, Bernard Cassen, "each basic
secondary school in the countryside is set
in the midst of some 500 hectares of land
for which it is responsible. Depending on
the region, the schools produce citrus
fruits, coffee, tobacco, fruit, or
vegetables. Each school has some 500
pupils of both sexes... The pupils alter¬
nate between work in the fields in the
morning and in the school in the after¬
noon, and vice versa." According to
evidence cited by Cassen, the results in
both agricultural production and school
performance are extremely encouraging.
Proposals for reform are not usually
based on a critical approach which calls
into question those contradictions which
objectively constitute the severest han¬dicaps for the society in question. Theprime target is the rural world, which is
usually said to harbour the potential
causes of failure. Attention is often
drawn to the rural world's resistance to
change, and particularly the resistance of
the old, who possess the powers of
decision.
This resistance is real, but is it a major
handicap? How can the rural world ob¬
jectively and subjectively go along with a
process of innovation conceived
elsewhere by a privileged minority whose
privileges weigh heavily on rural pro¬
ducers and their families? Can these pro¬
ducers modernize their farming tech¬
niques? Have they the means to do so inan economy where the domination of the
great landed proprietors, the urban mid¬
dle class and a host of middlemen is in
process of turning them into a "rural
proletariat"? Are those who most
systematically deplore peasant conser¬
vatism always prepared to abandon cer¬
tain of their privileges for the sake of a
more equitable distribution of the na¬
tional income? Are not those who profit
objectively from the fact that education
is ill-adapted to needs more conservative
than the villagers? The deterioration of
terms of trade to the detriment of the
raw-material exporting countries hits the
rural world first and hardest.
Many obstacles also exist in the field of
cultural and administrative policies. It is,for example, impossible for a schoolwhich does not use the language of the
community in which it is established to be
a part of that community.
The problem of rural development
should not be formulated simply in terms
of increased productivity or production
in the agricultural sector alone. The
problem should be set against a wider
background including such measures as
the massive transfer of capital from the
cities to the countryside, the establish¬
ment of industrial units in the rural areas,
a national policy for the development of
scientific and technological research at
every level, the supervision and develop¬
ment of natural resources, the promotionof national languages and cultures, the
growth of the capacity for training and
information through use of the mass
media, respect for liberties and a policy
of genuine national development instead
of the development of minority privileges
and dependence.
Hamidou Lailaba Maiga
The media
in the classroomby Michel Souchon
THE world is experiencing an
information and communication
explosion of such magnitude that
it is already being predicted that the post-
industrial society will be a "communica¬
tion society". Alongside the established
media (radio, cinema, over-the-air televi¬
sion), complementing them and widening
their scope, we now have sound and vi¬
sion recording and reproducing devices
MICHEL SOUCHON, of France, is head ofthe study group on communication systems at
France's National Institute of AudiovisualCommunication. He has been a Unesco con¬sultant on several occasions, and is the authorof several works on the sociology of themedia, including Trois Semaines de Télévi¬
sion, Une Comparaison Internationale("Three Weeks of Television, an Interna¬tional Comparison").
More human in scale and more flexible
than centralized radio and television
systems, since they lend themselves to
direct intervention by both students and
teachers (slowing down a lesson, repeti¬
tion of certain passages, the recording of
local events), audio-visual materials such
as tape-recorders, video-recorders and
cassettes hold great promise as a means
of meeting rapidly increasing educational
demands throughout the world. Above
left, members of a women's literacy
class at DaoudaboUgou, Mali, record
their feelings about their new-found
reading and writing skills. Left, villagers
at Kabala, Mali, watch a videotape about
the women's co-operative they have
recently organized in their village to im¬
prove agricultural production.
(tape recorders, video recorders, video
disc players), direct broadcast satellites,cable television and the whole range of
equipment and services that have come tobe known as telematics.
What changes will these new
technologies bring? Direct broadcasting
by satellite will enable countries not yet
equipped with television systems to avoid
the heavy cost of installing ground net¬
works. It will also mean an increase in
transborder flow of programmes and the
possibility of receiving broadcasts from
other countries. Television signals from
satellites will be received through special
individual aerials or through collective
antennae serving cable networks.
Cable television services will have the
advantage that, unlike over-the-air
television transmissions, they will not be
limited by frequency overcrowding and
will therefore be able to offer the viewer
a much larger range of programmes.
When optical fibres, which are now
beginning to replace coaxial cables, come
into more general use, it will be possible
to establish "interacting" systems, that is
systems through which the viewing au¬
dience will be able to enter into a dialogue
with the broadcasters and thus par¬
ticipate actively in programmes.
The television set will thus no longer be
merely a means of viewing a limited
range of programmes; it will become the
central core of an array of equipment and
services that is becoming known collec¬
tively as "peritelevision". It will be
possible to record programmes for view¬
ing at a time convenient to the viewer, to
watch programmes pre-recorded on
video cassettes and video discs, and to
view films taken by the viewer himself
with his personal video camera. It will
also be possible to call up on the tele¬
vision screen information supplied from
data banks through the telephone
networks.
This prodigious leap forward in the
field of mass communications, the
multiplication of channels and suppor¬
ting equipment, once again gives rise to
great hopes for education. It is as though
there were a sort of "pre-ordained" con¬
vergence between the possibilities offered
by these new technologies and the enor¬
mous growth in educational demand.
The mass media have the capacity to
meet the demands of the rapidly rising
numbers of those requiring education.
They can disseminate an educational pro¬
gramme to millions of people, they can
call on the services of the finest specialists
available on any of the disciplines it may
be thought necessary to incorporate into
educational syllabuses, they have access
to data banks that are always kept up to
date, and they can produce, stock,
classify and distribute audiovisual pro¬
ducts geared to the needs of both teachers
and students. Even the problems raised
by the economic inequalities in the world
seem capable of resolution; for although
the production of radio and television
programmes for schools may at first
sight appear costly, the number of
students reached means that the cost per
student is extremely low. Finally, the
flexibility of the new media and the in¬
teractive . capacity of the more
sophisticated systems meet the objections
that have been raised concerning the
rigidity and constraints of the traditional
mass media.
Nevertheless, it is advisable to guard
against excessive optimism. To begin
with, the new technologies are not
developing at the same pace everywhere.Whereas in California, for example, with
cable and satellite television, there aresome fifty television channels available
to viewers and the per capita ownership
of video cameras and video recorders is
one of the highest in the world, many
African countries have no television at
all, or if they do it serves only the capital
city and an area of about thirty
kilometres in radius around it.
To the problem of the uneven distri¬
bution of equipment must be added the
disparities to be found in programme
production capacity. Few countries
possess film and television production in¬
dustries capable of supplying the interna¬
tional market. The elaboration of soft¬
ware for computer-assisted teaching, the
production of audiovisual educational
programmes and the establishment of
textual or audiovisual data banks all re¬
quire heavy investment which only rich
countries are able to afford.
International exchanges (the buying,
selling and co-production of films and
programmes) will develop, but the in-^
31
Although at first sight costly to produce, educational television programmes, which can reach millions of viewers, have an extremely
low cost-per-student ratio. Their added visual impact, evident on the faces of these Panamanian schoolchildren, makes educational
television broadcasting an invaluable teacher's aid.
As microcomputers become more compact and less expensive they are
gradually invading the classrooms of the world. Children are strongly
motivated by the instant response they can obtain from the computer
and the dialogue they can establish with it, but it is essential to ensure
that the educational software devised for use in schools is shaped to
take into account differing .human values and needs. Above, children at
work with computers in a school in the Azerbaijan SSR.
32
equalities will remain with all the risks
that this implies. The primary influence
of foreign productions on national pro¬
ducers, on whom are imposed models of
international commercial success, is pro¬
bably just as important as the secondary
influence these productions will have on
viewers by their portrayal implicit in
fictional works and more explicit in news
and documentaries of certain stereo¬
types, models, norms and values.
This inequality of communication
resources may well actually widen the gap
between nations. Resources are seldom
available where educational needs are
greatest. A number of factors may fur¬
ther increase these inequalities: the abun¬
dant means available in the affluent
countries will tend further to improve the
education of the affluent; in the poorer
countries, the continuing poverty of the
mass media and the inertia of their
organizational structures tends to add to
the built-in rigidity of what is still a one¬
way technology; the newer media, at least
in theory, are more information
oriented, more geared to the transmis¬
sion of knowledge, whereas the older
media (cinema, radio and television),
which for some time to come, will pro¬
bably be the only media accessible to the
developing countries where educational
needs are greatest, are much more
oriented towards entertainment.
It might be wise to pause at this point
and consider the two major trends in
modern pedagogy. The first is the trend
towards rationalization, which stresses
the technical aspects of teaching (goal-
oriented learning, programmed teaching,
etc.). The second emphasizes the need to
take into account the personal motiva-
tion of the pupil (non-directive
pedagogy, the freedom to learn, etc.).
Both these tendencies reject intensive use
of the mass media to saturate entire
regions with educational programmes,
much as vast areas of agricultural land
are sprayed with crop fertilizer.
The rationalist tendency insists on
strict adaptation of pedagogical means to
precise objectives and on the imperative
need to verify the results of the teaching
process at every stage. If we examine
both the older and the newer media to
find which of them best meet these
demands we find ourselves obliged to
eliminate traditional radio and television
in favour of more flexible technologies
(records or sound cassettes, video discs or
video cassettes, interactive teletext
systems, etc.) which allow direct in¬
tervention in the classroom itself
slowing down or speeding up the pace of
a lesson or interrupting it so as to be able
to repeat certain passages.
Non-directive pedagogy insists that, in
education, only those things that the per¬
sonal interest of the student incites him to
discover for himself are properly
assimilated. To aid the student in this ap¬
proach he must be given the material
from which to draw his own conclusions.
The role of the teacher here is to en¬
courage the emergence of latent ability
rather than to be a fount of knowledge
which he dispenses in a manner which he
alone decides. This approach requires
primarily that use be made of audiovisual
archives (slide shows, with sound tracks,
films, sound cassettes and records, video
cassettes and video discs) that can be con¬
sulted at documentation centres.
Whatever the approach adopted, the
preference in the educational field goes to
the new and up-and-coming media which
offer greater flexibility, including the
possibility of on-the-spot consultation of
sources and more personalized use, in
other words, media that are likely to
spread only slowly to the developing
countries or to underprivileged areas and
sectors in the industrialized countries.
All this suggests a somewhat pessimis¬
tic outlook for the future relations bet¬
ween teaching and the media, or, to be
more precise, for the future of those rela¬
tions in the least favoured countries.
However, results of experiments in a less
intensive, more selective use of the media
give grounds for a measure of optimism.
In Latin America, for example, radio
schools have played an important part in
literacy and "conscientization" cam¬
paigns, as have mobile cinemas in India.
Such experiments have shown that
messages transmitted by the media can be
effective if they are adapted for use on a
more human scale.
It seems clear that technology is evolv¬
ing along two distinct lines, one leading
to the use of massive means of diffusion
(satellites that cover entire continents),
the other to more decentralized localsystems of distribution and the use of
individual means of recording or stock
ing audiovisual material.
If these two approaches are regarded
as being antagonistic, two irreconcilable
audiovisual worlds will emerge. But it is
still possible to hope that they will be seen
as being complementary to each other,
together providing more flexible services
than are offered by the rigid mass media
of today. These flexible services would
certainly be of great educational value.
Education satellites are a case in point.
Used to disseminate complete educa¬
tional programmes, designed and
packaged by cumbersome, distant in¬
stitutions, they would certainly prove to
be ineffective. This would not be the
case, however, if they were to be used as
"carriers" relaying short extracts that
could be received, stocked and made
available to teachers who could then use
them as they saw fit to illustrate their
lessons or for demonstration purposes.
When we consider 'the more negative
aspects of the media (their predominant¬
ly entertainment role, the inequality of
communication resources, the inertia of
old habits), we see a future in which the
schools and the media are cast as com¬
petitors and rivals, having only an obli¬
que contact and influence on each other.
The hope for a less bleak future lies,
perhaps, in experiments in more decen¬
tralized use of the mass means of com¬
munication leading to a more
tive collaboration between the schools
and the media.
Michel Souchon
School is the gateway to the future, and schooldays a time when everything still seems possible. Tomorrow's hopes and today's
realities are symbolized in this photo of an open-air classroom in a Third World country where the first pupils to arrive wait pensively
for the day's lessons to begin.
1if *
1
^B
2Ä
\»
A Unesco first traditional
music on a compact, laser-read disc IB f?
bart of Unesco's programme for
conservation of the world's
sical heritage, the International
sic Council presents the first
ligital recording in the Unesco collec-
n of recordings of traditional music
to be made on one of the new laser-
read, compact discs. This constitutes
a breakthrough which marks the first
step in the compilation of long-life
digital archives for the safeguard and
dissemination of traditional music
from all over the world. This re¬
cording, entitled Ayarachi and
Chiriguano, is of the pre-Columbian
music of the Quechua and Aymara In¬
dians of Peru. The recording was
ade in Quechua and Aymara corn-
unities in the region of Lake Titicaca
ring a mission undertaken by the In-
ational Institute for Comparative
c Studies and Documentation,
in 1981.
The development of the digital
APPEAL TO INSTITUTIONS
AND INDIVIDUALS
If you possess unpublished record¬
ings of the traditional music of your
region, or if you have any information
concerning such recordings, please
contact the International Music Coun¬
cil, 1 Rue Miollis, 75732, Paris Cedex
15, France.
RECENT UNESCO RELEASES
In the Musical
cassette):
CSM 012
Sources series (on
Traditional Music of South¬
ern Laos
CSM 016 : Aka Pygmy Music
CSM 029 : O-Suwa-Daiko Japanese
Drums
compact disc read by laser beam has
opened up new vistas for the world of
music and for the safeguaüdissemination and storage of
world's heritage of traditional mus
Compact discs have a level of sour
quality indistinguishable from that ol
the original master recording; they are
not subject to damage by scratching!
since they are read by laser beam]
rather than by mechanical means;
capable of holding one hour of con¬
tinuous music on a disc 12 cm. in
diameter, they will enable exhaustive]archives to be stored in a small spaceJand present none of the well-nigh in/superable problems of preservation
associated with magnetic recordingj
The most important immediate objj
tive must therefore be the trans,
without delay, to digital cor
discs of existing recordings
musical works most represeryfl
the world's musical heritac
CSM 034 : Aboriginal Music from Aus¬
tralia
CSM 036 : Inuit Games and Songs,
Canada
CSM 038 : Iqa'at Iraqi Traditional
Rhythmic Structures
In the Digital Archives for Traditional
Music series:
Digital Compact Disc
DCP 1: Peru, Ayarachi and Chiriguano
(With 20-page booklet with maps and
photos.)
These recordings are available from The
Unesco Bookshop at Unesco head¬
quarters, Paris, or by correspondence
from G.R.E.M., 22 Rue de la République,
94160 Saint-Mandé, France
Aga Khan University
inaugurated in Karachi
In a ceremony held in Karachi on
March 1 6, the Aga Khan, spiritual leader
of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, receiv¬
ed from Pakistan President General
Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq the charter of the
new Aga Khan University. Some 10,000
spectators attended the ceremony which
took place on the site of the new
721 -bed teaching hospital which will
provide clinical training facilities for the
Medical College and School of Nursing
located on the same 34-hectare site and
which together constitute the Health
Sciences Faculty of the new university.
When the hospital becomes fully opera¬
tional in 1 984 it will be the focal point of
a network of over 120 affiliated health
centres run by the Aga Khan Foundation
throughout Pakistan. Through its in¬
novative department of community
medicine the new faculty, which is open
to students who qualify academically,
regardless of race, religion or sex, will
prepare future health professionals for
work at the community level in both ur¬
ban and rural areas. The Aga Khan
University plans to establish other
faculties both in Pakistan and other coun¬
tries. It will be dedicated to the establish¬
ment and maintenance of a high standard
of education and will be oriented towards
addressing problems of particular
relevance to the Third World.
The UNESCO COURIER is published monthly.
Individual articles and photographs not copyrighted
may be reprinted providing the credit line reads
"Reprinted from the UNESCO COURIER", plus date
of issue, and three voucher copies are sent to the
editor. Signed articles reprinted must bear author's
name. Non-copyright photos will be supplied on re¬
quest. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned
unless accompanied by an international reply
coupon covering postage. Signed articles express
the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily
represent the opinions of UNESCO or those of the
editors of the UNESCO COURIER. Photo captions
and headlines are written by the Unesco Courier
staff.
The Unesco Courier is produced in microform
(microfilm and/or microfiche) by: (1) University
Microfilms (Xerox). Ann Arbor. Michigan 48100,
U.S.A.: (Z) N.C.R. Microcard Edition, Indian Head,
Inc., 111 West 40th Street, New York, U.S.A.; (3)
Bell and Howell Co.. Old Mansfield Road, Wooster,
Ohio 44691, U.S.A.
Assistant Editor-in-chief: Olga Rodel
Managing Editor: Gillian Whitcomb
Editors:
English: Howard Brabyn (Paris)
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Japanese: Kazuo Akao (Tokyo)
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Tamil: M. Mohammed Mustafa (Madras)
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Persian: Mohammed Reza Berenji (Teheran)
Dutch: Paul Morren (Antwerp)
Portuguese: Benedicto Silva (Rio de Janeiro)
Turkish: Mefra llgazer (Istambul) >
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(Dar-es-Salam)
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Assistant Editors:
English Edition: Roy Malkin
French Edition:
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Research: Christiane Boucher
Illustrations: Ariane Bailey
Layout and Design: Robert Jacquemin
Promotion: Fernando Ainsa
All correspondence should be addressed to the
Editor-in-Chief in Paris.
34
Just published
The New Unesco Source Book for Geography
Teaching contains practical suggestions and in¬
formation on ways of improving strategies and
methods of geography teaching at both primary
and secondary school levels. The book examines
such issues as the aims and value of geographical
education, mental development and the learning
process, teaching and learning strategies and
techniques, resource material, course planning
and evaluation. It supersedes the Unesco Source
Book for Geography Teaching, published in
1965, which has been out of print for a number
of years. This entirely new volume reflects the
conceptual revolution that has taken place in
geography teaching in the past decade.
New
Unesco _
Source^Book
Geography
Teaching
Edited by Norman J. Graves, Chairman of the Com¬
mission on Geographical Education of the Interna¬
tional Geographical Union, 1972-1980.
Co-published with Longman Ltd., who have ex¬
clusive sales rights in the UK.Longman/Tiie Unesco Press
394 pages ISBN 92-3-101935-X 60 French francs
Where to renew your subscriptionand place your order for other Unesco publications
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Moscow, G-200. - YUGOSLAVIA. Mladost, llica 30/11,
Zagreb, Cankarjeva Zalozba, Zopitarjeva 2, Lubljana, Nolit, Terazi-
je 27/11, Belgrade. - ZIMBABWE. Textbook Sales (PVT) Ltd ,
67 Union Avenue, Harare.
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A literacy class on the banks of the Blue Nile,
Ethiopia. In 1979 Ethiopia launched a nation-wide
campaign to eliminate illiteracy. The following
year, in recognition of the success of the cam¬
paign, Unesco awarded Ethiopia the literacy prize
of the International Reading Association.
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Photo Dominique Roger, Unesco
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