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Education for Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Robert W. Cox
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The relationship between international organization and developing countries is one of interdependence: developing countries place hope in disinterested help through international agencies; and the needs of the developing world provide stimulus to the expansion of international organization. Yet these two contemporaneous processes of political development—the growth of international organization and nation building in developing areas—may not always be in step. Education is a convenient viewpoint from which to examine this relationship, with its element of discord and of convergence of interest. Education is a prominent aspiration of governments and people in developing countries and is widely considered to be a most efficacious instrument for modernization. This subject-matter limitation also makes it possible to focus on two international organizations: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as the agency primarily responsible for educational systems; and the International Labor Organization (ILO) because of its recent emphasis both on training in occupational skills and on the relevancy of the manpower factor for educational policy.

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Articles
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International Organization , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Winter 1968 , pp. 310 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1968

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References

1 Apter, David E., in The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965) p. 223Google Scholar, has distinguished between “modernization” as an early phase and “industrialization” as a later phase:

It is important to consider the political rather than the economic variable as independent in modernizing societies because the ensemble of modernization roles is not integrated by a dynamic subsystem based on rational allocation, as is die case in industrial societies. In-stead die subsystem is usually the … political group such as the army or bureaucracy (or in some instances, a religious body).

2 The vigor of ILO's defense of its acquired position as the international agency responsible for vocational training, management development, productivity improvement, etc., in the industrial field when the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) was being created by the UN General Assembly is a token of this perception of a vital organizational interest. In the outcome ILO's competency was preserved. See General Assembly Resolution 2152 (XXI), November 17, 1966; the negotiations are reported in ILO Document G.B. 167/18/25 of November 11, 1966.

3 Separate from this series but contributing to the same current of thought was the conference convened by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for countries of Western Europe and North America in October 1961 which consecrated as part of the now conventional wisdom the proposition that educational investment is good for economic growth.

4 ILO has more recently adopted the same method for setting regional goals for training and employment creation, beginning with the American region. See the “Ottawa Plan of Human Resources Development” approved by a regional conference held in that city in September 1966. Similar “plans” for Asia and Africa are in preparation.

5 The views of Hoffman, Paul G. as Managing Director of the Special Fund are in the pamphlet by him, One Hundred Countries: One and One Quarter Billion People (Washington: Albert D. and Mary Lasker Foundation, 1960), especially pp. 11, 31, 35Google Scholar; and in his World Without Want (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 53–54Google Scholar. The World Bank approach is described in an article by its President, Woods, George D., “Sow Education Aid, Reap Economic Growth,” Columbia Journal of World Business, Summer 1966 (Vol. I, No. 3), pp. 37–42Google Scholar. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) also stresses loans for higher education, linking this with its aim to promote Latin American integration by advocating a “common market of knowledge and talent.” See a speech by Felipe Herrera, President of IDB, at Bank headquarters, Washington, D.C., September 12, 1966.

6 The term ideology is used to mean doctrine designed to produce action, an interpretation of realities intended as a guide for acting upon it. Ideologies may be limited in scope, e.g., to education and economic development or the role of international organization in world politics, as well as comprehensive interpretations of historical change.

7 Especially Frederick Harbison and Charles Myers (following earlier work by Theodore Schultz) through die work of the Inter-University Project on Labor in Economic Development, die studies of which were backed by the Ford Foundation and die Carnegie Corporation, New York. See Harbison, Frederick and Myers, Charles A., Education, Manpower, and Economic Growth: Strategies of Human Resource Development (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964)Google Scholar. The most comprehensive interpretation by die Inter-University Project is in Kerr, Clark and others, Industrialism and Industrial Man: The Problems of Labor and Management in Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

8 Robinson, E. A. G. and Vaizey, J. E. (ed.), The Economics of Education (London: Macmillan, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Those who pursue the goal of educational expansion dispose also of a second line of attack. If it is objected that in some circumstances the economic growth argument does not justify greater investment in education, then education can be advocated as a “human right.” This second line is, however, strictly speaking, distinct from the educational development ideology.

10 The other issue area in which international organization might have been expected to play a role with potential to change the international system was disarmament or arms control. But the prospects were even more bleak. The big Western financial contributors took the position that progress toward disarmament was a precondition for more economic development aid.

11 Had wen, John G. and Kaftan, Johan, How United Nations Decisions are Made (Leyden: A. W. Setoff, 1960), pp. 85–111Google Scholar; and Se well, James Patrick, Functionalism and World Politics: A Study Based on United Nations Programs Financing Economic Development (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 97–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 E.g., the United States' International Education Act, 1966, and the high proportion of French bilateral aid going into the export of teachers.

13 “Education, science and communication in the UN Development Decade,” UNESCO Chronicle, 06 1966 (Viol. 12, No. 6), p. 229Google Scholar.

14 This is all very tentative and subject to verification. The models which follow are drawn from some recent studies which include a broader set of variables than measures of manpower, education, and economic growth. I am particularly indebted to Coleman, James S. (Ed.), Education and Political Development (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

15 Although the elements of this model are drawn in the main from studies about Latin American countries, the model is not meant to be a series of generalizations about Latin America. Its purpose is to suggest some relationships in terms of which particular situations can be analysed. In some respects model X seems to fit other countries with long-established educational traditions and an absence of recent revolutionary upheaval in social structure, such as India, while at the same time certain developments in Latin America may have broken out of this framework. The volume published by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, Problems and Strategies of Educational Planning: Lessons from Latin America, Ed. Lyons, Raymond F. (Paris: UNESCO, 1965)Google Scholar, contains some articles which have been helpful in delineating the characteristics of this model.

16 See Johnson, John J. (Ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1962), especially pp. 109–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Wolfed, Marshall, “Social and Political Problems of Educational Planning in Latin America,” in Problems and Strategies of Educational Planning, pp. 26–27Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 21.

19 Ibid.

20 This model is drawn mainly from literature about some African countries; but the same comment has to be made as about model X, i.e., it is not intended as a generalized description but as an analytical construct.

21 Cantorial, Haley, in The Pattern of Human Concerns (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, presents results of attitude surveys in some developing countries. One is struck by the cross-national differences in the extent to which education features in people's hopes for their country, e.g., for 47 percent of the Nigerian sample compared with 11 percent of the Indian and 6 percent of the Brazilian. Cantorial finds a more general contrast between die Nigerians, enthusiastic about die potentialities of their newly achieved independence and especially high in their hopes both for themselves and for their country, and the more “lethargic” Brazilians and Indians (pp. 70, 77–85, 156).

22 Denaturalise, Michael, “Education in Former French Africa,” in Coleman, (Ed.), Education and Political Development, p. 85Google Scholar.

23 Aye Mousey thinks, as regards Nigeria, that education may have some influence but is probably not decisive in supplanting the traditional tribal authorities. See Aye Mousey, “Nigeria,” in ibid., p. 140.

24 James S. Coleman, “Introduction: Education and Political Development,” in ibid., p. 27 off; Lip set, Seymour M., The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 72–73Google Scholar; and Aper, pp. 71 off., 133 off.

25 See a series of articles in Le Mon de by l'ain, B. Gird de, “L'école dans le tiers monde,” especially 11 28, 1966Google Scholar.

26 Educational output in developing countries has since the 1950's tended to increase substantially faster than gross national product which in turn has risen faster than wage-paid employment. See a forthcoming publication of the International Institute for Educational Planning, Man-power Aspects of Educational Planning: Problems for the Future.

27 Countries which want rapid economic development through planning need more administrators than were required to run a colonial territory in which governmental functions were much more limited. Education does not offer salaries or status sufficient to attract graduates, and so their surplus does little to diminish the shortage of qualified teachers. W. Arthur Lewis thinks the over-supply of educated people is a temporary thing.

In the long run the situation adjusts itself because the premium on education diminishes as the number of the educated increases.

As the premium on education falls, the market for the educated may widen enormously. Jobs which were previously done by people with less education are now done by people with more education. The educated lower their sights, and employers raise their requirements.

(Lewis, W. Arthur, “Education and Economic Development,” International Social Science lotirnal. 1962 [Vol. 14, No. 4], p. 687Google Scholar.)

28 Coleman, in Coleman, (ed.) Education and Political Development, p. 22Google Scholar.

29 Francis X. Sutton, “Education and the Making of Modern Nations,” in ibid., p. 67.

30 See Burt F. Hoselitz, “Investment in Education and Its Political Impact,” in ibid., p. 543:

At certain periods investment in a given set of non-human resources and at other periods investment in human resources brings about a higher sustained growth of average income.

Thomas Balogh is angrier:

It is quite illegitimate to claim that an educational system which in the framework of the United States has been accompanied by a certain rate of growth would, in a different framework, be accompanied by a similar growth rate or a growth rate which can be calculated on the basis of the educational status (assessed qualitatively) alone. Such a quantity of education in the feudal-aristocratic countries of South America, the colonial-aristocratic areas of British Africa, and the litterateur-colonial areas of French Africa would produce not merely no growth but possible refusal to work on farms, an increase in urban unemployment, subversion, and collapse.

(The Economics of Poverty [New York: Macmillan, 1966], p. 91Google Scholar.)

31 Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoc, Ill: The Free Press, 1958), p. 60Google Scholar.

32 See Lewis, , International Social Science Journal, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 692–693Google Scholar; and Hoselitz, in Coleman, (ed.), Education and Political Development, p. 564Google Scholar.

33 Coleman, , “Introduction to Part II,” in Coleman, (ed.), Education and Political Development, pp. 225–232Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 231. Though no private sector offers alternative channels of mobility in the Soviet Union, the continual adjustment of the educational system to the needs of the economy and the planned management of labor supply avoided the creation of disaffected “intellectual unemployed.” Coleman concludes that the real dilemma for the developing countries' leaders is that

they possess neither the disposition to emulate the Japanese or Philippine pluralistic example, nor the organizational and administrative capacity to pursue effectively the totalitarian alternative.

(Ibid., p. 232.)

35 Evidence of this “revisionism” is apparent in a new report, prepared through collaboration among technical secretariats, “Development and Utilization of Human Resources in Developing Countries: Report of the Secretary-General” (UN Document E/4353/Add.1), Part II, paragraph 107, p. 18. The International Institute for Educational Planning, founded by UNESCO in 1963, has produced studies and sponsored discussions making for a critical reappraisal of the educational development doctrine.

36 The “coordinated programs” prepared in concert by the international agencies through the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) are carefully negotiated between the central bureaucracies of die agencies. Their function is to provide a guide for orderly relations between the agencies and an assurance to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) that such relations are satisfactory and fruitful.

37 The report of the Secretary-General on human resources in the developing countries contains this plea:

It is important that the international organizations avoid giving inconsistent and conflicting advice on the selection of priorities. There is a danger, if agencies do not co-operate closely, that an individual agency, on the basis of its specialized knowledge of the urgency of needs in its own field, might give advice which would deviate from, or be inconsistent with, that which would be appropriate if the total needs and resources of the country were taken into account.

(Ibid., Part II, paragraph 107, p. 18.) The only structural proposal adapted to this problem is the reference in a footnote to the suggestion by the Administrator of the UN Development Program (UNDP) that there should be in each country a “cabinet” of agency field representatives under the chairmanship of the Resident Representative. What, one may well ask, is the cumulative bias which the “unplanned” influences of international organizations give to national development policies? Possibly to give more weight to social, humanitarian, and welfare measures than would otherwise be the case. It should not, however, be inferred that more comprehensive planning of international action at the national level would reverse this bias to neglect humanitarian considerations.

38 This theory has been formulated by various authors. A notable contributor is Mitrany, David, A Wording Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization (London: Oxford University Press [for The Royal Institute of International Affairs], 1943)Google Scholar. Functionalist theory has been critically reassessed by Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and Sewell, Functionalism and World Politics.

39 Apter, pp. 175–176. It can also be argued that their professional solidarity with others in their field—not only at home but chiefly in the outside centers of learning from which they draw their models—moderates (in the sense of Mitrany's functionalism) the integral nationalism inherent in nation building.

40 The “older” functionalist organizations might play the role of broker in probing the possibilities of East-West consensus on development policy.

41 Particularly in Apter.

42 Pye, Lucien W., Politics, Personality, and Nation-Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1962), pp. 38–41, 52–55Google Scholar.

43 Banfield, E. C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

44 Lewis, Oscar, “The Culture of Poverty,” Scientific American, 10 1966 (Vol. 215, No. 4), pp. 19 ffCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

45 Jacobson, Harold K., “Ventures in Polity Shaping: External Assistance to Labor Movements in Developing Countries” (unpublished paper presented to a round table convened by the International Political Science Association, Grenoble, 09 1965)Google Scholar.

46 Wolfe, , in Problems and Strategies of Educational Planning, p. 24Google Scholar, suggests the development of peasant organizations is a precondition for effective rural education in Latin America:

As peasant unions and other mass organizations penetrate the countryside and as agrarian reform looms larger on die horizon, the educational planner is beginning to encounter more insistent and specific rural demands for education. …

And in another article in the same volume, “Some Notes on Rural Educational Policies,” he states on p. 74:

In most parts of Latin America this goal [effective rural primary education] seems to be within reach if there is a sufficiently strong and coherent demand for such type of education. This would imply the emergence of political leadership responsive to rural wants and anxious to secure rural support, on the one hand, and a certain degree of political and economic organization of the rural people themselves, on the other.

47 The International Institute for Labor Studies, Geneva, offers education for potential leaders in die social policy field. The Institute is in fact searching for better answers to the two questions: Who are the potential leaders? What kind of education is good for them? See my article, “Four Keys to the Purpose of Institute Educational Action,” in the International Institute for Labor Studies Bulletin, 10 1966 (No. 1), pp. 8–21Google Scholar.